A lot of Welcome To My House comes from Theresa’s lived experiences. Was it a cathartic experience writing these songs?
Theresa: “Yeah, it was really cathartic. It’s nice to get it out of my head and onto paper! I’ve really benefited from hearing about other people’s experiences through life – especially when it comes down to things like mental health. If I can share my experience, and someone hears it and understands that, ‘Oh, I’m not fucking crazy,’ and that they’re not freaking out on their own then that’s a big deal for me. Because they’re not alone in that, and I’m not alone in that. It feels good, and it just pours out. Sometimes I’ll write a melody and I’ll have to make words to the melody, and then sometimes when it’s just right there
the words come out at the same time as the melody.”
Is that how you guys normally come up with melodies?
Alex Crosby (bass): “Sometimes it can even just be a voice note. You just get an idea and then you’re scrambling to find your phone just to get a little teeny idea or something down. There’s been a few occasions on this EP where voice notes have actually ended up on the recording – on Welcome To My House, there’s one right in the middle. It was just an acoustic sound from my phone, and we couldn’t really get that sound anywhere else, there was something about just what we captured on that. But the sound of it is sort of charming: imperfect things, and just capturing something in the moment, can be really nice.”
Lastly, YONAKA are a three-piece now, with drummer Rob Mason having departed the band earlier this year. How’s that going?
Theresa: “Yeah, it’s been good. We still get drummers on board, because we still need drums! We’re still working it out and it’s a massive change that has had to happen, but we are enjoying it. Things do happen for a reason and changes do come, and it just depends how you roll with them. You either freeze and you go, ‘Fuck!’ or you just keep rolling and you make it into a positive.”
Alex: “For now, in terms of writing music, it’s going to be the three of us.”