Boston’s own rock n’ roll group The Devil’s Twins are staring down a huge upcoming year. They’re going to be releasing a slew of singles, starting with the recently released “Bad Karma,” a fun tune with a with a sound even bigger than what they’ve done before. We sat down with Jeremiah John Louf and Nicole Coogan to discuss their new music and how they’ve spent their year. 

Allston Pudding: So I wanted to start big picture. I’ve seen you just described as quasi-siblings. I was curious how you came to start playing music together?

Nicole: So Jay and I, we both went to Mass College of Art in Boston. I was in illustration, he was in graphic design. And I was doing a lot of playing guitar and singing in a Chinese restaurant. And like Jay was doing some cooler-than-playing-in-a-Chinese-restaurant kind of stuff. But we had a recording studio at school that we had access to, which was awesome. And he was in there recording what was like the very beginning of The Devil’s Twins. And I was painting in the studio, and he was like, ‘Oh, I just need a vocalist on this track really quick. Do you want to come to sing on this? Like, I just need one part.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, okay, let’s go.’ So I ran down there and laid it down. And then I wouldn’t leave him alone ever again. So I’m still in the band today.  

Jeremiah: Yeah, we certainly have the same memory of it. I had a batch of songs that I [had] just been working on. And I put a call out for a drummer. And originally, it was just going to be like [a] studio project. And I think the description read something like, ‘if Amy Winehouse, like, had a backing band that was kind of The Black Keys, but swung like a hip hop song.’ Like that was the original intention. That was my pitch to find a drummer. At the time, Jesse, super cool drummer super good dude, was the first drummer that helped me with those first batch of songs. And really, what I kept finding was there were a bunch of holes lyrically and melodically in all of those songs. So Nicole came down. And the first song that we tried her on was called “I Can’t Stop Sinning (It Pays Too Well).” And I just remember that moment, like her stepping into the booth and just like singing tunes like, ‘oh god, where did that come from?’ So it felt very quick, like, let’s fill in all of these holes and record as a team now on all of these songs that made the first album as quickly as possible.

AP: I feel like you guys have done a whole lot of different stuff. Like, you know, some rock and roll, you had a rapper [Slaine] on one track, stuff like that. How important do you think it is to leave your own musical comfort zone? If you feel like you even have one?

Nicole: Yeah, I say when I’m talking to like customers, or just people at shows and things like that about music, there’s such a bigger thing than being like, ‘I’m a fan of rock music,’ or like, ‘I listen to metal,’ or ‘I do blah, blah, blah.’ It’s like, you can be just a fan of music. And I think that’s something that opens you up to so many different things. Like I listen to a lot of country, like older country, or metal, or anything else. And you can pull from all of those things and write like an awesome song or be inspired from so many different things. But I think for us, every member of our band has such different interests musically. Like we have a metal drummer, and Jay is into all different kinds of stuff too, [like] metal. But I feel like pulling from all those things, we kind of created a sound that made us fit into so many different boxes, but never have our own real box, I guess.  

Jeremiah: It’s changed because in terms of how I think of music and how I hear it, it’s very opposite of what Spotify wants – to list it where it’s genre-specific, and if this user A listens to A, B, and C, then those are related. Well, to me, I think that there’s so much to be said about tone and voice within music and feeling. That’s how I kind of bundled music together to where, you know, I listen to dark music, and in dark music, I’ll put a band like Dimmu Borgir which is like a Norwegian black metal band in the same category and the same feeling as I’ll put Cesária Évora, [who] is a Brazilian world artist. And, it’s just because to me, there’s that minor melody and there’s overtone. I’m listening to both speaking neither one of [their] languages. And it comes to find out lyrically, there are actually matches. We approach it that way, too, and I think that that’s given us a lot of opportunities to share the stage with a wide range of different artists going from Slaine to July Talk and Slash and Lupe Fiasco. So it’s kind of a privilege to just exist in that world of music and to be able to share that stage with anyone that you respect.

AP: Leads into my next question. I feel like we see a lot of that genre morphing in our regional scene here in Boston. Do you think that has had any impact on you guys? Early on, or even now? 

Jeremiah: You know, I feel like I see it. Just recently, Oompa and Walter Sickert did that song together. I think it is my favorite song out of both artists. I don’t think you can quite put a pin on what Walter Sickert’s music is. And it would be easy to put Oompa just in hip hop because she’s an MC but I mean, they got this other amazing piece of music that, to me, is my favorite out of both. With us, with “Satan Stone,” that was just a pipe dream. You know, I love Slaine as an MC and La Coka Nostra, and I love him in the movies. And he’s from Boston. So I think, [the] choice to try to get Slaine on a song with us, was very much more about Boston than it was about genre. 

Nicole: I think we’re really fortunate in this city to have a melting pot of so many different types of genres. Like we have this crazy, awesome hip hop scene right now in Boston, which is so cool. A lot of members of our band are really into that type of music and kind of dip our feet into trying. I don’t know, we have different elements of our music that I think have a lot in common to do with a lot of different genres. There’s so many shows [that] were happening with so many different types of artists on them.

AP: I want to talk about the new song “Bad Karma.” [I] really enjoy the horns on it! [I] was wondering if you could speak to how the whole song came together. I feel like it’s a particularly rollicking one.

Nicole: Yeah it’s so fun! The horns [Eric Ortiz & Aitan Ben-Joseph] came to join us when we played for WGBH. We wanted to have this really big sound, give people something that was super unpredictable from us and see how far we could push our sound, because we were [a] three-piece for so so long. I felt like we had so much further that we could go, we’re always trying to push a little bit more. So they played that show with us, with Josh Knowles on violin and Kevin Landry on upright bass, and that show felt so good. And we got through it, and it got posted and it was awesome. And we had a good turnout there. But then the next week for practice, the horns hit us up and they’re like, ‘So practice this week?’, [and we were] like ‘yes, practice this week,’ and they’re still here. But they’ve just given us this, like new life that I didn’t know personally was missing because I feel like we’re always trying to be better than we are today, tomorrow. So I feel like it’s just getting better every day writing with them and performing with them and playing with them. And just writing with them was such a big experience for us, too. It just felt so different to have all these brains in the room to make these songs that I think are like the best ones we’ve done so far. They make it a little more of a parade. Definitely rollicking.

Jeremiah: You know, for me, talking about the addition of the horns, I’ve always written [for] an album versus how we do our live sound, where the primary melodic instrument, aside from the vocals is just one guitar, generating the bass in two different types of guitars. So there’s some tricks in my rig that I do to split that up. And then there’s the drummer. But in a recording setting, we would always write extra melodies. And in that case, they were always built for guitar or keyboard or whatever other instrument, and then translating those live, there was always an element that was exciting: ‘how can we do this live? Or do we just sacrifice that melody.’ And in some songs, the sound doesn’t sound as good live by sacrificing melody; working with the horns felt like we were always missing those band members. We did have those melodies pre-written. So when they kept hanging around after the objective of doing WGBH, it was like, ‘cool, what can we do with you?’ And I’m like, ‘you know what, there’s this old song, I want you to play this guitar lick.’ And now it becomes a horn part. So in writing the new album, which we’re releasing as a series of singles, over the next year and a half – or however long it’s going to take – the majority of it is completed, about 90%, I’d say. And that’s what we went off to record with. But it’s a mix of tons of brand new material, but also some songs that were older songs that having the horn section allowed us to really reinvent. So there are going to be some songs that have been released previously, but completely reinvented. And kind of fulfilled.

AP: For this new album, for this batch of singles, what are some of the influences that you’ve incorporated into these? Are they all gonna be somewhat similar to “Bad Karma”? Or is it going to be a pretty eclectic mix?

Nicole: I feel like they all share in common this, like we keep saying, every time we listen to the song, it sounds like elephants, it’s just this round and triumphant sound. And I feel like it’s a totally different type of triumphant than the songs that we’ve released previously. This feels so much bigger. So in a way, they’re all very similar, but also so different. Like, Jay and I write a bit differently. Lyrically, he’ll usually come in with like a great hook. Or sometimes we’ll write, the entirety [of the] lyrics, or I’ll come forth with the entirety [of the] lyrics. We write differently every time but, through that, we come out with these different types of songs. So some of them are like very cinematic storytelling, visual-type songs. We have like a handful of those; you could like close your eyes and just picture a little movie in your head through it. And then some just make you want to dance. They just feel good to listen to, make you feel good to be bad, which is like what all our music sounds like. So they’re similar, but also very different. 

Jeremiah: Also, we’re planning to release this as a sequence of music and not just choose the tracklisting and put it out as an album. What we’re really excited about, and particularly right now, literally right now, is that we get to kind of pick and choose what the next one is going to be, according to how we feel how our society feels at that moment. And I think with that there’s definitely something to be said to where we may be a rock and roll band that very much looks up to AC/DC. But it is really not just “Bad Karma” over and over. So, you know, I think musically speaking, the kind of core instrumentation of loud surf, super reverb-y guitars, under [a] solid bassline, drums, horns and vocals is there on all of them. But we certainly on this one did not fear pushing even beyond what we can replicate live, and really kind of owning the reality of the tools that we have, that all musicians have at our disposal now. We are owning this album, the fact that Ryan and I co-produced it. Ryan and I work really, really well with MIDI drums. Ryan is performing all of those drums, but everything you hear is samples, and I know that that’s thrown in the shade with rock bands often. But to us, the reality is, it gives us far more control, it allows us to be even more creative with sounds. And quite frankly, you go to a recording studio, and you have your three drum kits and the assumption is that, to capture the realness, using one of those drum kits is going to be the solution. Why? Oh, because we’re a rock band and rock’s not real if it’s made digital. It’s like, well, you still capture someone’s performance. And that’s what’s important. And, you know, they’re all building blocks to the song. Nicole was saying with her lyric style she brings a complete song to the table. It is very cinematic. So we said, ‘How cinematic can we build a song?’ So we start with the basic music and lyrics and build out the rest of it. And we don’t let the song be determined by the core instrumentation of what we do live. 

AP: With COVID shutting the whole world down, some musicians have been really roadblocked, where others have kind of used this opportunity to really invent new things. How much of this series of songs has come from that? Or, how much has COVID interrupted your whole process?

Nicole: In the beginning, all of us kind of had this little internal debate, like, ‘is this the right time to be releasing music and in a time that was so heavy? Should we be releasing things that feel so loud and sometimes joyful, sometimes sad? Was it self-centered to release music right now?’ But also for me, when I thought about it, like the times that I feel most isolated in my life, or the times that I need to relate to other people and need to feel like I’m part of something [is when] I’m not by myself. So for us, like for ourselves as a group, it felt like we needed each other then to create. And then we have this awesome fan base called the 2Crew that they’re awesome. And for them, we needed to feel like we’re still like a family, like we’re here for them. We have crazy lives and trying to fit that time in to write or do whatever it’s can be hard sometimes. So we have this time that was put on our laps. So we’re like, ‘Okay, what can we do to use the most of this and create the best things that we can to give to everyone?’ So we were all writing independently and just kind of doing this type of thing, talking to each other online. And we decided to quarantine and just like hunker down, and then we got an Airbnb, an A-Frame house in the woods. And we just shacked up there for like a week, and wrote and recorded and did most of that work. Jay and Ryan kind of went down in the basement and produced so much stuff and we used that time to the best we could to create as much as we could and the best quality things we could, because when in life can we have that time? 

Jeremiah: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that we saw it as an opportunity, right? We’ve been hustling as a live band with releasing albums for quite some time now. And it almost felt like, as much as we are a live band, that it felt like an opportunity was given to us, and that was time. So using that as an opportunity to, after quarantine, make sure everyone was okay, and then say ‘fuck it, you know, we’re not going to go to a studio, we’re self sufficient, we’re going to record it all ourselves. So let’s grab this A-Frame, and bring a recording studio to it. And just really spend the week and get it,’ like Nicole said, as much done as we possibly could, without distraction and without knowing that there’s a string of shows that we have to rehearse for and build different setlists for right around the corner, hanging over us. So that was really our first time doing that, really writing and recording very proactively. [As] opposed to when we get a batch of songs again [and] record them to get the album out, and then push that setlist. So I really feel like it’s given us more of an opportunity to do this now.

AP: Yes exactly! You talked about live shows – a Great Scott show was my first exposure to you guys. Do you have any other 2021 plans beyond the album? Do you think you’ll try any sort of live stream shows or anything like that? Or is it just too up in the air right now?

Jeremiah: Yeah, I guess? We’ll wait and see. There could be something in the very near future. But I don’t think we want to just commit to [that] just yet. You know, I think that we’re very hyper aware right now that there’s a lot of ways for us to be present, and be creating things. And I think, for maybe even the first time, hosting more of a conversation with a community. So whether that’s collaborating with other artists, doing interviews like this, talking to the people that improve our following even more. I think that focusing on the dialogue right now is the paramount element. And any opportunity that falls in our lap, or that we create, that helps that mission, [I] think is worth doing. I see 2021 with these series of releases, [and] it is going to be the most attention that we’ve ever paid to a full body of work. Because the reality is, you pop an album out, you only get a handful of songs out. But with doing it this way, we’ve always wanted to make music videos for every single song. [We’ve] always wanted to put out and communicate the right dialogue of what each song’s about right away. But it’s never been like that before. So this is the opportunity to do that. So 2021, I think the plan is to have the most content, album, singles, that makes sense as possible.

AP: So [if] everything goes back to a completely normal tomorrow, what’s the first thing you guys are gonna do?

Jeremiah: I think we have a “Bad Karma” in-person release party for the music video.

Nicole: Yeah. That’d be great.

Jeremiah: So the music video is coming out on November 19th. We’re going to premiere it on YouTube. But we’re going to have kind of a before and an afterparty on twitch, where we really open up the invites. We’re going to ask everyone who was In the music video, which is about 35 people- 

Nicole: Separately!

Jeremiah: -that we filmed separately, so we literally filmed one person at a time. And the concept behind the video was: how can we put someone in front of the camera and just give them full liberties of self-expression? And the one thing in common is we asked everyone to dance. And that is what the video is. So we had 35 people, worked out the logistics so that it’s a safe environment for everyone, [and] film[ed] everyone one at a time. And then we put together this video, which has taken on so much more than what we thought it would be, which originally was just [going to] be a fun video putting the spotlight on everyone else. It’s not just about us, it’s about everyone else. It was people from every walk of life, every sexual preference, every gender and and I think the piece, because of them, kind of took on this really beautiful light that is more of a statement about wanting who you are, and being confident that expression, even if you’re somebody [who] looks silly when dancing. And it’s, it’s really, really exciting to put the video up.

Nicole: Yeah, I think it was cool. Like, when people came in, it was like the first time anybody had heard the song. So we’re like, “okay, we’re gonna give you a little sneak preview.” So we listen to it. And then at first, some people were nervous, and then after, like, 15 seconds, going wild and being crazy. But, for me, I think it was like when we recorded ourselves doing our parts for the video. I was like, “this is the first time I felt like myself in like months.” I think we’re all so used to going to shows, like the last time we were all together at The Paradise. And that was like the best I’d felt up to that point, because it was such a big night for us. And I felt like we were on top of the friggin’ world, everything’s gonna be awesome. And then just nothing for so long. So like, opening up the closet and putting on show clothes and going, “oh my god, I get to put on my friggin’ superhero outfit for the day and let loose.” I think that’s how everybody felt was just like, finally, we could be ourselves again. So even though we’re dancing to something called “Bad Karma,” which sounds like such a negative thing in itself, it’s like it was time to finally feel like ourselves again and feel good about something. So it was good. So I’d probably play that same show tomorrow, if [the pandemic] ended, and then have a release of the music video, and then we could all have a dance party. That would be awesome. And have a drink that I didn’t make for myself at my house. 

AP: That’s probably exactly my answer too. Everybody at a show together, it’s where I want to be.

Jeremiah: And if we can just close it out, the most important thing to support our band right now is [to] stream the song on Spotify. Follow us on Spotify. That’s where our focus is going to be driven. We’re going to work out some form of physical release for each single over the next year leading up to some sort of collection that I think it’d be really cool for everyone to own.

The video for “Bad Karma” was released yesterday, and the song can be streamed on Spotify. We look forward to whatever the band has coming up next!