I first heard Molly Burch a few years ago on Daytrotter and was immediately captivated by her incredible voice and restrained songwriting. Her first record, Please Be Mine, was a sensation, and she’s just released her follow-up album, First Flower, and it’s stunning. It’s groovy and intricate, while also putting Molly’s vocals front and center. We got to chat with Molly recently just ahead of the album release about the process for First Flower and naming some of the anxieties and insecurities that all of us deal with.
RLR: I feel like there is a real call and response between your vocal and the guitar melodies, especially on “Wild.” What’s involved in getting that emotional quality matched between you and Dailey?
MB: Thank you so much. We’ve been playing together for a while. We have gotten to a point where we’re just super comfortable, and there’s lot of trust there, and it’s pretty natural. With this record, it was a bit different than the first, in that it was just done a lot faster, [whereas] with the first album, I had written those songs over many years, I had played them live, I had changed a bunch before we recorded them. And this was a fresh batch of new songs that I wrote last fall. The first thing I do after I write a song is I bring it to Dailey and play it with him, and that’s a good way for me to tell if I really like the song–if I like what he’s playing and we can figure it out together. It’s just a lot of trust and I just really love how he plays.
RLR: What are you mutually listening for in that first iteration, as you think you have this song?
MB: If I’m going to bring a song to him, I probably I like it and we’re doing it. I wouldn’t show him something that’s not finished. I like to finish a song and be confident about it before I show it to him. Then it usually comes together pretty quickly with him. I never want something to overpower the vocals and the lyrics–we’re looking for something that complements.
MB: I got really lucky: the drummer who recorded on First Flower is Matthew Shepard, and he’s this amazing Austin drummer and musician. I’ve always wanted to play with him. I love what he did with the record. It was just kind of organic with him and I think he has such unique ideas, and he really brought a lot with some arrangements that we didn’t think about. Neither Dailey or I know how to play or arrange drums, so I totally attribute that to Matt. Thanks for mentioning that–I think it sets it apart from the first record in that way.
RLR: I really love “To The Boys,” as it explores the idea of what it means to have a voice. And who defines what your voice is, and how it might differ as a performer as opposed to your regular day-to-day life.
MB: With that song, I was inspired by a couple of things. For one, what’s going on in the world and our country and I felt compelled to write; I wanted a feminist anthem, just a strong song on the record that represented power.
On First Flower, I talk about my anxiety and struggles with insecurities and fears, so I wanted to add in qualities of myself that people seen as negative, and one of those is that I’m soft spoken. So I wanted to talk about that and turn it into a positive thing, and just take confidence in that, and embrace myself. I’ve been told that I’m quiet a lot by men. I used to work in restaurants, and I got that a lot and I was thinking about that–just gross men telling me to speak up at these shitty waitress jobs.
MB: I was so touched by that. I had no expectations, so I was not expecting people [to respond that way]. I didn’t know what it was like to release an album or how it would be perceived. So to have people, and young girls, come up to me and say it helped them through a breakup, I was just so moved by that. I couldn’t believe I did that, even for just one person.
I didn’t feel pressure at all from that; I put pressure on myself in other ways. But with that [response], it almost made me feel more comfortable to talk about things like anxiety, or things I struggle with, and I feel like it’s important to talk about. It always makes me feel good when people talk about it because I tend to think that everyone else in the world has it figured out except me, and I think that’s a pretty common feeling. It’s important to me that, say, a young girl knows that I struggle with the same things she’s struggling with. So using whatever platform I have to talk about it is important to me.
RLR: And I feel like this is more a topic of conversation now than when I was young.
I think so. I feel like it was totally taboo to talk about. And now it feels more comfortable to talk about being in therapy, or just anxiety. I feel it’s way more common, which is good.
RLR: To work on this album, you committed to writing every day. Can you talk about that process and how you got going and how you were able to overcome moments where it may have felt forced?
MB: Writing has always been hard for me and very secondary. I’ve always been a singer, so writing came second, and I have a lot of insecurities tied to writing. Writing this album was really hard, because I was coming off touring so much, and overstimulation, and then we moved to a small town outside of Austin for a little bit. That’s where I wrote First Flower, but I felt so confused about how to form a day, because there had been so much energy and anxiety from the tour. So I had this rough timeline for the next album, so I have to write, but all I want to do is watch TV and numb my brain. Even though I don’t get any pressure from my label, I was putting pressure on myself, because I just felt so insecure about not being able to write a song again. But it was a really cool experience, because I was able to push myself to do it and finish an album pretty quickly and see it through. I’m glad I can look back on this and be like, “I can do it.”
Molly will be at The Lilypad in Inman Square (Cambridge, MA) on Sunday, October 14. You can check out tour dates and find more information about Molly at her website.