Who Is Grimes?

Whether lo-fi or hi-fi, this Canadian chick has the indie world buzzing.

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Image via Complex Original
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Intro

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Growing Up Goth In Vancouver

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Growing Up Goth In Vancouver

Grimes: “When I was a kid growing up there, it was a really cool place because there was a really cool legacy of industrial music and stuff. There was always a lot of good stuff going on. Like, really cool shows, and I liked the shows when I was a good kid. There was this place called the Cobalt and it had this thing called Fake Jazz Wednesdays, where bands could just play—like, any band could play. Whenever. It was just cool because there was a lot of stuff to do.

“I was very opposed to the folk scene. I had a huge rivalry, me and my friends were Goth, so we had a huge rivalry with the hippies, which, I guess, still persists perhaps to this day. But we were serious enemies with the hippies. I’ve matured out of it in a lot of ways, but I think it’s in me forever. It’s pretty deeply embedded.”

The Name “Grimes”

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The Name “Grimes”

Grimes: “Me and my friends used to make all these different MySpaces when MySpace was cool, when it still worked. I just had tons of MySpaces of all these fake bands and then when we were going to put out [ [my cassette-only debut album] Geidi Primes my manager, who now runs my label, said, ‘What are you going to call your band?’ and I was like, ‘Uh I don’t know.’ At the time the Grimes page had the most hits, so I was like, ‘This one is the most popular. It already has a thousand hits and it already exists so let’s go with that.’”

Influences

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Influences

Grimes: “Tool was one of my favorite bands for a while, Marilyn Manson for a while. I love Western medieval music. My parents listened to a lot of classical music when I was younger. We’d always listen to classic medieval music. But I’ve always been into specifically vocal music.

“There’s nothing I don’t like and I’ll pretty much take from anything. I’m really not into contemporary country music but that’s pretty much about it. I like most other kinds of music I think.”

Producing Her Own Music

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Producing Her Own Music

Grimes: “I’ve always produced all my own music. That’s why I was so bad at the beginning. I was using GarageBand, I’ve since moved on. I’d just like to clear that up: I don’t use GarageBand anymore. [Laughs.]

“I took a break this Christmas-ish where I was like ‘Ah, I can’t wait to produce for myself again.’ I produced some songs for my friends who were rappers and that was definitely fun. It’s really fun to produce for other people.

“I did one thing with my brother, who’s a rapper, on Christmas. We just smoked so much weed, me and my four brothers and cousins. We went down into the basement and everyone was just yelling at me, like, ‘Turn the bass up’ and ‘Add a weird synth here,’ and I was producing and my brother was freestyling over the beat. It’s called My ‘Christmas Song’ by Grimes and Jay Worthy.”

Visions

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On Her New Album Visions Compared To The Previous Two Albums

Grimes: “It’s always just a long continuation. You get better at whatever you’re doing. I was just getting better at music and I’ve had a lot more chances to play music live and I’ve been hanging out with musicians a lot more so I’ve been developing a more cohesive idea of what I want to be doing, like attaching meaning to it as opposed to just randomly making sounds.

“This is pop music and it’s just more hi-fi and it’s more accessible. At the end of the day we’ve attached more of an image to it and people are getting it. It’s very aesthetically driven but also its easier for people to listen to hi-fi music and music they can dance to. Not that I seek to make really accessible music, but by virtue of being better at making music, it’s just a lot more accessible. My old records were all lo-fi.”

Hip-Hop

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Hip-Hop

Grimes: “I’m really into hip-hop. More on the production end, but I like working with rappers since I listen to hip-hop. Having momentum and tempo in vocalization is cool when you’re not worrying about pitch or anything. Because it isn’t pitched to anything, you can totally change what the music is. It’s really great and malleable for remixing.

“I had a favorite rapper, but then I found out some terrible things about him. I don’t want to say who it is, because I’m so emotionally afflicted over the whole thing. He said some really homophobic stuff that upset me.

“But I guess my favorite rapper now would be the Notorious B.I.G. I’d have to reevaluate the situation. Big Boi and Andre 3000 are up there, too.

Sailing Down The Mississippi River On A Houseboat

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Did She Really Raft Down The Mississippi River?

Grimes: “Anything in the article is not true. Anything on the Facebook page about that article isn’t true. Basically, me and my friends went to hang out at my friend’s house, he lives by the Mississippi, and just went and got a bunch of garbage and a bunch of doors from Habitat For Humanity and barrels from Coke and tied it all together and each barrel could support about 400 pounds each, and just rafted down the Mississippi River. The police just like, smashed all our windows, fucked up the boat, took my passport, impounded everything, and yelled at us a lot. Then I was homeless in the States for a while.”

Live Performance

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Live Performance

Grimes: “[The live show] is in a transitory period right now. We’re trying to figure out something beyond just playing. Something we can do with visual stuff. But right now it’s just me and the band I’m on tour with, Born Gold—but they also play with me as Grimes. It’ll be dance music.

“Usually it’s pretty dancey and chill, a lot of girls in the crowd. But sometimes I get some girls and gay guys. [Laughs.] they’ve been pretty amiable, Lately they’ve been dancing a lot, which is really nice.”

Performing at SXSW 2012

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Performing at SXSW 2012

Grimes: “It was good, it was very different from the first time. It was extremely exhausting. After we got back I went like nine days without sleeping or something crazy and my body had a complete breakdown. I was sicker than I’d ever been. I had to cancel a bunch of shows.

“But I mean SXSW was fun so it was kind of worth it, but by the end it was just so intense. It was just this crazy going, going, going thing. I played with Light Asylum. I love them. I played with Purity Ring, Charlie, I played with Charli XCX, The Dream. It’s weird because you play the show and then you immediately have to pack up and leave and you don’t really see the people you played with that much.”

All The New Attention

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All The New Attention

Grimes: “I don’t know. It still doesn’t feel big. I don’t read my press. I read my press for a day because I was sick in bed and I was just utterly horrified. I read it for 20 minutes and freaked out. I made a New Year’s resolution that I would never read my press again. I’ll never read it again.

“I just say so much stupid stuff in interviews and people make really mean comments. I just don’t want to know because it’s out of my control at that time. It’s not the art that I’m making it’s the way journalists interpret it. They tend to interpret it poorly. Not that you’re going to interpret it poorly or anything. There was an article like ‘Grimes says she needs drugs to make music.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible.’ How could you write that? That’s not what I said at all.”

Drugs

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Drugs

Grimes: “I will use drugs but I in no way require them. If someone was like, ‘You can never use drugs again,’ I’d be like ‘OK. Chill. Not a big deal.’ I think relying on substances to be creative is really a bad idea. If anything, they can enhance stuff, but they’re not necessary.”

The Future

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The Future

Grimes: “There are a number of directions I want to go in for my next albums. I’m thinking about releasing an industrial noise EP. Then I’ll be releasing another album that’s like, quite pop, but in a different direction that I haven’t decided upon.”

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