Nowadays, I venture to remember who I was before all this started.
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The first thing she says is that shes nervous.
Im like,Oh, shit, she says, laughing.
Her nerves are understandable.
With it, shes forced herself out of her hiding places in every sense.
Its full of wordplay and singular sonic experiments: dogs barking, supermodels meowing, chanting, bells.
She sees it as an artistic breakthrough.
Its also her first album where she had final say on all production decisions.
Read the story behind every song onFetch the Bolt Cutters.
When did you officially start working onFetch the Bolt Cutters?So little happens with me thats ever official.
I guess we started Oh, hi, Mercy.
[Apples dog walks into the frame and sits on her.]
Are you in your recording room?The whole house is the recording room.
[To Mercy] it’s possible for you to sit here, baby.
You want to sit here?
You just have to give me a place to be.
Its funny Ive never been able to jam with people.
I wish there was a better word for jamming.
Ive always been too shy to try, which is not a good way to be.
Some of the songs I started writing years ago, [like] Rack of His.
I did a couple of versions.
I almost put it on a couple of albums, but it was a completely different song.
Then there were quite a few months where we didnt record.
[Looks at Mercy.]
Mercy is having a feast of her own ass right now.
So there wasnt an official start, but it really started when we started redoing stuff in the house.
And when was that?A few months later.
So Im like, All right, Im going to give you what you want, house.
I know you deserve tobethe record.
Im going to make you the record.
This is where I feel comfortable.
When do I sing?
Okay, I can go do that right now.
It makes me feel like I wasnt ever given a chance to be a musician before.
Like, I would have a go at do certain percussion things and Im not a percussionist.
I wouldnt hire me as a percussionist!
So Id just do take after take until Id get something right.
I have fun with my voice, but Im not trying to make it pretty all the time.
Im not trying to convince anybody Im a singer.
It just turned out to be another instrument.
Theres so much strange stuff going on in the background of this record.
Bells and dogs barking, chanting, meowing.
Id just be like, Ill add something.
Ill do whatever I feel.
So the dogs would hear something and theyd bark, or something outside would happen.
But then Id play it back and Id feel like those barks kind of worked.
It didnt bother me.
She and I have been text friends for years.
But weve only hung out twice in person.
And I was in a very sad place.
So I was like, I dont feel up to anything.
She FaceTimed me and was like, Answer the phone.
Youre okay, everythings cool.
Theres one line to sing: [Fetch the bolt cutters.]
She was like, [affects exaggerated American accent] Fetch the bolt cutters.
And I said, Wait, can you just do it with your accent?
I love her voice, and I just knew our voices would go really well together.
And she brought her dogs, Leo and Alfie.
And then at the end of the song they erupted.
It was so perfect.
Oh, theres a metal butterfly that Im playing.
Its the sound on Fetch the Bolt Cutters, the higher clink, clink.
I found it outside of this elementary school in the grass.
So thats kind of random.
Did you do that consciously every time?Mostly its how they evolved.
I ended up improvising a lot of things.
Theyre all one-takes, and there are mistakes in them and stuff.
And then Amy did some kit drums on top of it.
So when I was doing vocals, I would just fill the empty spaces with things.
Id come up with a line.
A lot of it is just making a bunch of mistakes and liking a lot of them.
Is that new for you, putting mistakes on the final product?Yeah.
Not that theressomany mistakes its just all unguided.
I didnt come up with parts before Id press record.
I mean, Im definitely not always begging to be alone now.
I just choose my company better.
Im not so antisocial.
Im not so hell-bent against having a boyfriend.
Its just that my experience with that has taught me Im more comfortable without it.
But it doesnt mean that that always has to be my experience.
Are you single right now?Yeah.
Hes still my friend.
Its pretty cool youve stayed friends with some of these exes.
How do you manage that?I am.
I just heard from Jamie today, and I heard from Jonathan two days ago.
My ex-husband, Lionel Deluy, is a very good friend of mine too.
I was married very briefly to Lionel.
I dont think I knew that.
How old were you?Twenty-something.
It was very brief.
I want to go back to your middle-school years, which the album explores on the song Shameika.
Mainly because thats where my relationship to women started getting fucked up.
And I never got chosen.
Boys can be mean but its just kind of stupid mean.
Im not traumatized by boys bullying me.
Im more traumatized bygirls rolling their eyes at me.I got silenced a lot.
I silenced myself because I was afraid of the other girls saying I wasnt cool.
It was all about what other girls thought of me.
Middle school is where my sense of myself started based on what other people thought of me.
Is your relationship to women something youre just now interrogating?
On the album, you address women youve burned and who have burned you.Certainly for the past few years.
I made the album, and it helped me.
Im over the hump of a lot of the things I was dealing with on the album.
Which means it was successful, you know?
Because really, the first reason to do any of this is to help myself to live.
I dont mean with money, although thats necessary.
Youve got these stories youre not telling anybody.
Each one of those stories is like this little ball of yarn.
If you dont [express them], they end up getting tangled together inside.
Then its really hard to sort through them.
And mistress kind of stuff.
Was I intimidated by them and I used the easiest avenue to assert my equal worth?
In both cases, I felt a boost in my ego at first.
Maybe I tried to, but the women understandably made themselves unavailable to me.
I am so sorry for my selfishness, but thats not enough.
I have to understand it, and I dont yet.
I remember my grandmother used to talk about my grandfather and his mistress.
And his mistress actually was his wife for the rest of his life.
They were married for 50 years.
But to her, she was always mad at this mistress.
And it was always like, Man, she didnt do it.
Our grandfather did it.
Your husband cheated on you.
She just fell in love with some guy.
Then they were together forever afterwards and had a family.
Be mad at the right person, dont feel mad at the wrong person.
Later on in life, Im with a guy.
I found out, hes seeing some other woman.
I meet that other woman Im nice to that other woman.
She didnt do it.
She didnt cheat on me.
I think a lot of women would say what youre saying.
Like, Yeah, Im not mad at the woman.
I answered the door, I put my arms up, and I was like, Come on in.
She turned me down.
She didnt hug you?No.
And I get it now.
Its not really like she would want to be talking to me.
But yeah, thats how I react to that stuff.
You started writing Evil Is a Relay Sport at 15.
Why return to it now?I just always liked it.
Then you just put it on somebody else.
The assault when I was 12 made me think about innocence and guilt and forgiveness.
It made me think about a lot of big things.
Because the first thing I did after it happened was pray for him.
Are you serious?Yeah.
I went to an Episcopalian school.
All these white people were calling her names and throwing things at her.
And she said that she prayed for them.
They were teaching this to us when I was a kid before the thing happened to me.
And it really got to me that she said she prayed for them.
Because they were the ones that were in trouble.
Because they were the ones that needed help.
They needed to find goodness and they didnt have it.
That clicked into my head when I got home safe.
When I shut the door, I was like, Thats what youre supposed to do.
You have to pray for the people who hurt you.
But you cant stop at praying for them.
You have to hold them responsible.
Because I was not angry at that man for years.
Last year is the first time I felt anger towards that guy.
Why last year?Yeah.
And when it came on, it came on so big.
I was so happy when it came on, too.
It was the weirdest feeling.
I think women do that a lot.
Well be like, Oh, but he was hurt when he was a kid.
Thats why he did that to me.Fuck you, I was hurt when I was a kid.
I didnt do it to him.You know?
Were very understanding, women.
We want to take care of people.
We want to protect people.
But, like, not at the expense of ourselves anymore.
Heavy Balloon is one of the most evocative songs Ive heard about depression.
I was really overmedicated.
I had been put on an antipsychotic.
Nobody who is not psychotic should be put on an antipsychotic.
But I was put on one when I was inthis mental statewhere I didnt even realize what was happening.
When you take a stab at come off an antipsychotic, the withdrawal is much different than other medications.
I was getting tics, and it was the worst.
This is dangerous stuff.
Anyway, I was on so many different medications.
They were all downers, and I was drinking.
I cannot believe I was awake for any of the time over the past ten years.
Im not anti-medication at all medication can back up your life.
And not only that, but medication is not something that takes your personality away.
It can make you more yourself.
It doesnt mean youre always going to be dulled down.
I cant even imagine the process of coming off something like that.I was in bed for a couple months.
In yourNew Yorkerprofile, you said that you shake when you have to write about yourself.
Things Ive done or said that have been disrespectful to myself or other people.
Looking at mistakes Ive made.
Theres some footage of me, when Im 18, of somebody asking me, What is your motto?
or something like that.
And I know that at some point I said,Always question your motives.I always questioned my motives.
And there are times when Ive slipped and I havent.
Thats when I ended up doing and saying things I regret later.
If youre going to write about yourself, you have to look at [those moments].
Which I still do, but Im older now and its boring to think that way.
It doesnt do me any good.
Its just going to keep me in the same place.
Ive got to start taking responsibility for some of the things Ive done.
And then I can go, Wait, thats too far.
You should forgive yourself.
Lets look at the truth here.
But I dont even know if Ive successfully called myself out on this record enough.
What do you should probably be called out for?I dont know.
Im finding this question interesting, and I shouldnt even be wanting to answer it.
I think I can hold a grudge.
Even though I think I dont hold a grudge, a lot of times I do.
But then again, wait a second no, I only hold grudges against shit that was really wrong.
So no, I guess I dont really hold grudges.
Its just like, having these conversations with yourself.
Im doing really terribly at this right now.
From the time I was 20, for the next few years, that got broken down.
I started to get down on myself.
Nowadays, I have a go at remember who I was before all this started.
For the most part, I think Ive gotten better.
The music is the manifestation of the process of trying to acknowledge things so you can get over them.
Help people understand why they do things and help people find ways to make it right.
I was really fucked up during this time, and I did some shit I am not proud of.
And you know what?
Ive been thinking about it.
This is why I was doing that, this is what I was getting out of doing that.
And this is why now that wouldnt work for me, because I have moved beyond that.
Im a different person.
I know this is jumping subjects, but to me its tied together.
These are people who are an afterthought.
They are so dependent on their elders and on each other to maintain their culture.
This is a really, really dangerous time for them.
So I wanted to acknowledge the lands.
Not acknowledging things is nothing less than disrespectful.
I know hes got such a great brain and he understands why he did that shit.
I feel robbed that hes not giving us what he thinks about that.
Did everybody have a great year?
That was a bad joke when it was done the first time, but its not even a joke.
And for the record, he didnt apologize.
I cant tell you how many men have advised me not to apologize because it makes you look weak.
And thats true, but dont you fucking act like their discomfort and not-okay-ness wasntexactlywhat got you off.
I am a very forgiving person.
But I cannot forgive someone who cannot acknowledge what needs to be forgiven.
What is it like acknowledging things about yourself in public?I think Im used to it.
I dont think I know any different.
I feel weird, obviously.
Nowadays, its totally different because of the internet.
Knowing there will be people talking about me at all its very uncomfortable.
So it seems stupid I would put out an album.
But this is what I know how to do.
I dont mean that overall.
Just because our understanding is very different than mens understanding.
The point of putting albums out for me is to measure my progress against these things Ive done before.
I think about the situations I was put in [back then].
I dont feel like I need to put myself in that position at all anymore.
I dont need to run around and hustle.
Im angry, for me, for that time.
If I had had more female friends, I wouldve been a lot better off.
I wouldve been able to defend and express myself better.
I was pretty isolated.
And not isolated with the right kind of people.
So I took it all to heart and I took everything those people said to heart.
That fucked me up for a long time and still fucks me up.
It does seem like youve healed your relationships with women because you have so many close female friends now.
And you live with your friend Zelda.I know.
I was never closed off to relationships with women.
Once I got signed, I was on a bus with 11 men for two years.
Because you start seeing them in the ways that the guys are describing them.
You want to be one of the guys.
But I was never closed off to talking to women; I just didnt meet a lot of them.
The reality of that situation was when I saw that picture, I was like, What the fuck?
Because I had no idea I had that makeup on my eyes.
I know you, I trust you, Ive talked to you before.
I know your heart is good.
I know youre a good writer.
TV appearances, radio stuff, photo shoots.
I dont have to do all that stuff.And the records done.
So it just seemed very logical to me to put it [the album] out early.
David Garza did [the cover art].
That happened forExtraordinary Machine,too, with the picture of the flower on the front.
That face is very much me.
I just wanted to be like, Hey, guess what?
Here are some songs.
Want to listen to the music, huh?
Hi, hi, hi, hi.
It just seemed like me.
No, no, no, no.
Im not sitting on that until October.
Im not going to go and ask for it.
I dont want to go and ask anybody to put me on their show.
I dont want to ask anybody to put me on the radio.
I dont want to ask anybody anything.
If they want me, they can have me if they ask.
But I dont want to ask anybody if I can have the pleasure of being invited.
[Id reply], Fuck that.
This is why that doesnt matter, this is why that doesnt happen.
I was so proud of myself.
How long was that text chain?
Was that argument going on for days or was it quick?It was two days of light argument.
But it was like how they do those fake debates for politicians to prepare.
My manager was telling me all the things the record company would have a problem with.
And I was trying to help him make the case.
I like playing lawyer sometimes.
But then it felt really good to be like,You know what?
No.First of all, with the TV shows, how am I supposed to perform?
Youve earned that.Yeah, I feel like I have.
And I like honoring the 18-to-20-year-old me by not doing the things she didnt want to do.
I like honoring her by saying the shit she was told not to say.
Thats the sad part.
But Im going to kick it in the face as much as I can going forward.
I love being in my house, but Im not going to stay here out of fear anymore.
Thats not really me, but a little more, yeah.
Sometimes that goes for depression too, like in my song Heavy Balloon.
Otherwise, people are kicking you down there.
You might as well just stay down there and make a home because its safer here.
At least this way, I dont have to feel the way down all the time.
Its no way to live.
Even if you cant do it physically.
Thats a big thing that happens if youre a heavy drinker.
If its an everyday thing and then you stop, so many memories come back.
You didnt even realize what you were trying to push down until you stop pushing it down.
It all comes out and then youre like, Oh fuck, give me the vodka again.
Its hard, but I feel so much more sure of myself because Im sober.
How long have you been sober for?Is it two or three years?
Whos breaking the windows and the doors so you can get some air.
And I was like, Wow, actually theres nothing.
Maybe the first song is the slowest.
Other than that, there are not really any soft songs.
Most of them are pretty uptempo.
My mom is big on wordplay.
We had a game where youd take a big word and make a false dictionary entry for it.
I remember my two I was proud of as a teenager: Catastrophe.
It was an award that you got for your felines ass, for a felines posterior.
Scarlet was a diminutive wound with Hollywood aspirations.
Thats the kind of shit my mom and I would play.
I dont really think of myself as funny, but I laugh a lot.
I laugh a fucking lot.
Ill be in tears, just thinking about annoying her in some way.
I was going to ask!
Does it feel any different?Were always quarantined together.
But its going to be crazy once everybodys allowed to tour.
Theres not going to be much room.
Us theater performers are going to be fighting for that space.
How have you been spending your time during quarantine?Im taking Hindi on Duolingo.
And Spanish because I feel like everybody should probably learn Spanish.
And Hindi because my friend Nalini speaks Hindi with her family.
So I thought maybe Ill start doing that.
Learning a new alphabet makes my brain so happy.
Im actually able to read in Hindi.
How long have you been doing it?Just a couple weeks.
But Im doing really well at it.
Okay, this is a weird question, but do you think youre a genius?
Who learns to read Hindi in a few weeks?
[Laughs loudly]Not like I can read all of it.
But I can read, Julia and Peter are coming from India.
And Niha and her father are going to America tomorrow … Nihas cow is bigger than my cow.
I didnt know how my brain was going to handle a new alphabet until I tried it.
You seem at peace in a lot of ways.
Would you say youre happy?Im happy right now.
In the past, so much stuff would happen that just wasnt me.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
