It takes a lot of guts to bin off an actual Music Industry Job. After landing a straight-out-of-college role as merch tour manager for Gus ‘popular on the internets’ Dapperton, that’s precisely what Claire Chicha – aka spill tab – did. Not because she couldn’t stand ol’ Dappers, but rather to focus on her own music. Delivering perfect slices of super-smart bedroom pop, she’s just dropped a brand new EP, ‘Oatmilk’. Given that it’s Really Rather Great and all, we asked her to run us through the stories behind it.
Calvaire
‘Calvaire’ was the first song David (David Marinelli, my main collaborator) and I made in Fench. Half my family lives in Paris, and I grew up with that influence as a huge part of me. I had always wanted to create music in French, but never felt confident enough to full send it, but David is so good at creating a space that’s open to experimenting – we love to say ‘try anything’ – because the worst that can happen is it sucks, and at that point, we can just scrap it. So we started this song together, and the lyrics felt so good in French, and from that, it was just a thing of having fun with it.
Cotton Candy
I wrote ‘Cotton Candy’ at the end of last year on my friend’s uke in Brooklyn. After fucking around with some chords, the whole thing came out of me in like 15 minutes. I had just come out of an intense and exciting sitch with a boy and was feeling absolutely overwhelmed and was questioning everything. Writing that song was mad therapeutic. I sent it to David months after and we finished it in like five sessions, which is ridiculously short for us, we usually mull over shit for MONTHS. But this one felt like it was supposed to be a bit barebones, and David slam-dunked the production.
Santé
For the past year, I’ve been wanting to get into playing bass so bad, so one day in quarantine I borrowed my roommate’s and was trying to create little bass lines here and there, and that’s how ‘Santé’ came about. David then fleshed it out over a few zoom sessions, I really wanted to create a sweaty European discotèque type vibe, and the lyrics in French talk about this deteriorating relationship full of bitterness and anger. I love the intensity and imagery of the whole thing.
Name
I was having a really weird day with my significant other the day I made ‘Name’. I was feeling confused and insecure around this person that I liked, and that made me want to blame all our problems on him. I was getting into production at the time, so put together the rough idea in Ableton and recorded some initial vocals. The lyric ‘give you back your first name’ is a reference to all the little endearing nicknames you give to someone you’re dating in exchange for their real name, but when the relationship ends, you basically have to trade all those back in for their real first name. So being the one to give back his first name alludes to being the one that decides to call it quits. We ended up keeping the first vocals I recorded, I couldn’t catch the same feeling in the new takes like I did the day I started it.
