Conversation With a Sparklemuffin: Suki Waterhouse and the road to self-discovery

WXPN: I feel like the songs, “Model, Actress, Whatever” and “Could’ve Been A Star” hold hands in a complimentary way. They and the record are kind of talking to it itself. How does it feel to step back — especially with those two songs that are very, you know, personal, about your outlook about yourself and the world — what is it like to step back and look at those two songs particularly?

SW: I was exploring that mother / daughter dynamic with fame and celebrity and desire to, you know, have like this expression that didn’t come to fruition for one of them. I guess like those two songs marry together because, kind of going back through like writing my memoirs and stuff, trying to remember who the 13, 14 year old version of myself was. That was like writing in her diary saying what she wanted to be when she grew up, and some of the kinds of emails I was writing to people or like, boys, I had crushes on, I was quite fantastical. Being like 31 or 32 and I was quite fantastical about ways for it to come true. And so I wrote this song about why I model, actress…

A Guiding “Blue Star”: Korine releases their fifth album ‘A Flame In The Dark’

Before the show, Frye and bandmate Morgy Ramone chatted in the JBs green room about the show, and about the new album, A Flame In The Dark, released March 28th by Born Losers Records – a record the band says is its favorite to date. Covertly exchanging glances and big smiles, Korine was giddy, dare I say gleeful, during their performance. Their lighting rig onstage still flashed moody blue with an occasional stripe of orange that flickered subtly, but the energy was at a different level, and it’s clear that A Flame In The Dark hits different for the duo than its predecessor Tear.

Recording the albums looked different from one another, too. The South Philly darkwave duo tells me they dialed in on Flame while recording in Frye’s home studio.

“We really just worked super hard on it for like one month,” Ramone said. “We wanted it to be an encapsulation of that moment. It’s better sometimes to have more of a snapshot of where you’re at right then rather than collecting songs from a few years ago then sticking them on an album.” Ramone sees the approach as more cohesive, and fully fleshed out.