Laura Hermiston doesn’t claim to be a Canadian cowboy, but the frontwoman of the indie dream pop band Twist can often be found wearing wide-brim hats of one sort or another. Sometimes it’s a pink stetson. Other times it’s a simple Boss of the Plains. When combined with fluffy faux-fur coats, fringe jackets, and floral tops, Hermiston doesn’t need soft, feathered photography or kaleidoscope videography to feel like she’s the ‘70s reincarnated. (Though those techniques certainly enhance her psychedelic aesthetic.)
Yet Hermiston’s mesmerizing stage presence almost never came to be. Although her father is a composer and many of her other family members are in the music industry, Hermiston was on her way to pursue her Master’s for social work before she started the band BB Guns for fun. Now almost 10 years into her musical career, listeners can chart her emotional growth between Twist’s debut album Spectral and sophomore album Distancing, which comes out this Friday. Allston Pudding had the chance to chat with Hermiston about writing the new album, Toronto band friendships, and the link between music and fashion.
Allston Pudding: To start, Weaves gave your new single “Venus” a shout-out on Twitter. How does it feel to get that early support?
Laura Hermiston: It means a lot when friends actually like the music you make. Jasmine and I have been friends for a long time. We played SXSW with them, which was really fun. We played Bungalow and they played lots of shows there. It’s really fun to hang out with some people from your city but in a different town, when it’s a different environment.
AP: Are you friends with a lot of the other bands from Toronto?
LH: More of the older bands, like Peeling. Annabelle and I used to work together so we’re really good friends and we hang out. This summer, we went camping around Ontario. She’s a pro.
AP: You had a heavy year of touring with a lot of different bands. What was one of the weirdest things to happen on the road?
LH: Those tours all feel so long ago. We almost forgot to pay for gas.
AP: Were you testing out new material while you were on the road?
LH: In March, we were on tour with a band called Wooden Sky and, yeah, we toured all the songs on the record which I’d written years ago. It took a while with some of the songs to learn how to play live. Because we only have four members, we have to deal with our limitations with what we can actually translate live. Some of the songs, we’ve only just started out now figuring out how to do it. But all these songs, I’ll have written like two or three years ahead of a record being recorded.
AP: Can you talk more about that writing and recording process? As an outsider, it seemed like you turned this around pretty quickly, but it sounds like that may have been different.
LH: I can be writing songs, arranging them, working on them with producers, looking at them with the rest of my band until very late in the game. Some of the songs on the record were written really fast. We ended up scrapping songs because of deadlines we had to reach. I had like a month to get them done. I work very well under pressure and I write all the time. I really like writing, so that was no problem. Putting a record together, you kind of like pick and choose songs that are becoming cohesive. As you go, some stay and some don’t.
AP: How would you describe the difference between the content of what appeared on Spectral and what’s going to appear on Distancing?
LH: Spectral was the amalgamation of what I wrote and didn’t really have the plan to put an album up. But I signed with a label, so I feel like that was more of an EP. The subject matter definitely feels young. We were just younger, less experienced as musicians. I guess the subject matter was more about personal relationships, like love. This record is a lot of being a musician itself and everything that’s involved in that. So, writing more critically of what’s going on in the world, the people, the things that I deal with. It’s less about romantic relationships. A lot of the themes are about traveling or wanting to get away or wanting to change. You know, like distancing yourself from people, places, things.
AP: Hence the name of the album.
LH: Yeah.
AP: Did finding your dad’s old synths help give you direction for this new album?
LH: Yeah, he had some really cool gear. He had a Juno-106 and a DX7. I like when I have with a new piece of gear, it makes me more creative. My ideas are sort of inspired by gear. There’s two songs on the record, one called “Blowin” and “Places” and the sound is called “moog bass.” I got really excited about it because it reminds me of this song I listened to a lot by The Style Council, called “Long Hot Summer.” When I’m writing music that I get excited about, I end up producing songs that I’m happy about and I’m excited to share.
AP: I read that you played flute and violin when you were younger. Any chance those instruments will make a comeback in Twist?
LH: I would love that. Flute’s pretty psychedelic. I listened to a lot of psychedelic music when I was first learning it. I have to find out where it is and brush up my skills, but you can make flute sound really cool for some pop music or rock music. A good example of what I’m talking about is the band TOPS. I don’t know what the song’s called, but my friend Marta’s playing with them now. [Jane Penny is] playing flute and people love it.
AP: You have a very ‘70s psychedelic wardrobe too. So which came first, the chicken or the egg, in terms of music and fashion?
LH: I’ve always linked fashion and music together, to be honest. Since I was little, when magazines were a thing. I think I was more into it when I was younger. You have this burst of energy where you figure out how amazing music and fashion can make you feel. I would say, music came first, and artists I liked would become inspiration for me. Not necessarily psychedelic music, because I don’t look like [that]. But anything like the early Rolling Stones or anything else the Rolling Stones would wear in the ‘70s would be a dream outfit of mine. And the hair. The best hair.
AP: What had you planned on doing before you started songwriting for BB Guns and Twist?
LH: I was going to University of Toronto and got my Bachelor of Science degree in psychology. I was going to go and get my Master’s in something like social work. But I just found myself working at record labels and music publishing houses, doing all this work for musicians and bands. People who I knew personally and some I didn’t. I was always musically inclined, but I didn’t start to get serious until I started a band for fun, then people start taking that seriously, so I started taking it seriously. The more people that I started to work with, I just kind of fell into it. It’s really crazy when I think about the path I was on ten years ago and how different it is now.
AP: You come from a musical family. Were they encouraging of going into the arts, or were they pushing you towards the BS?
LH: The side of my family that’s in music, I don’t think they were really that concerned about whether I continued with school or music. I think my family mostly thought I would continue with school. They’re probably proud of me now, but there definitely was some caution thrown my way when I started to take it more seriously.
I really do like writing. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, but as a female, having worked in the workplace and never feeling like I 100 percent fit in there…writing music, working with people, recording with people, I think that’s my strong suit. That’s where I feel like I belong and become more equal. I think that’s why I probably gravitate more towards to it.
AP: Do you have anything special planned for record release day coming up on 12/7?
LH: We’ll be in New York when it comes out, so I’ll probably be on Instagram a lot. I think New York around Christmas time is beautiful, so I’ll probably be walking around with the band, and trying not to spend too much money. It’ll be kind of fun to not be home. It would be nice to celebrate with like friends or family or people who were involved with the album the day of, but we’ll do that for our release party on the 14th of December in Toronto. We’re doing it at an art gallery, the Northern Contemporary Gallery. We had a lot of venues close in Toronto, so I was thinking about where I would want to have it. The beer company Grolsch—who is helping us out with our release party, which is amazing—suggested this place. I checked it out and it’s so cool. We’re turning this art gallery into a venue, essentially. It’s going to be a fun party as opposed to, if you wanted to play a regular show with four bands. I wanted it to be different.
Twist will be performing at The Lilypad on December 6th with Old Wave and Babydriver. Tickets are available for $10 at the door.