In 2019, the best band in the world formed, Girlfriends. After over 10 years in the music scene and many career turns, Travis Mills & Nick Gross together created this project. They’re essentially a pop-punk band with a truly unique sound that makes you hit repeat. After the success of their debut self-titled album, they are back with the release of their sophomore album, (E)motion sickness.
Recently released singles off the album, “High Again” & “Toaster For a Swim,” has made the anticipation real. I had the opportunity to sit down with my favorite band during their stop in LA on their first headlining tour and talk about (E)motion Sickness.
Girlfriends Exclusive Interview
RMR: I asked our Girlfriends Discord family what they wanted to know about (E)motion Sickness, these are some of the questions they came up with! What was the main musical influence this time around?
Girlfriends (Travis): I feel like we don’t know if there’s anything that we’re listening to. I feel like we just got to spend a lot more time with this album. Like the first one we just kind of got in the studio, we’re writing like one or two, maybe three songs a day. And just like, Alright, cool. Like, we made an album in four months. This time. It took us a year and a half. And so we really kind of like, sat down. And we’re really intentional with all the songs and I think finishing the songs we spent a lot more time on too.
Girlfriends (Nick): Yeah, I don’t think there was like an influence. We were like, hey, we want to sound go in this direction or sound like this or whatever. But I know we wanted to mature our sound from the first album. So I think Travis’s point, just taking more time to think about those things was helpful.
RMR: What is the meaning of (E)motion sickness? What and how was the process of creation, visualization, and significance in this album?
Girlfriends (Travis): I feel like (E)motion sickness kind of it’s the same way we came up with the band name. It’s like, I feel like it’s me poking fun at my tendency to be overdramatic, all at the same time, like trying to encapsulate a feeling of everyone collectively over the last two and a half years feeling way too much all at once. And like how do you put that into words? And so when, when that title, it kind of popped into my head, and I told Nick, it just kind of felt like the one, and what’s crazy is so we came up with the title. We wrote the song. And then we changed the title of the album at the last minute.
Girlfriends (Nick): We wrote the song first and then we were like…
Girlfriends (Travis): Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. Yeah, we wrote the song & we’re like, oh, this would be a fucking great title for the album. Then we’re set on the album title & then at the last minute, I remember it was like, we did a photoshoot in LA. And we came up with another title. And we’re roped on, they’re stoked on it. We’re like, we told everyone like our whole manager, we told everyone we’re like, alright, new out and titled in. And then it was like, after our Orange County show with Bad Suns.
I remember I told our manager and when it came out of my mouth, it like just didn’t feel right. Me and Nick texted each other like a day or two later, like, at the exact same time saying the exact same thing like yo, I think, I think it needs to be (E)motion Sickness. Like we kind of just knew that the album was going to be called that all along. And I feel like it’s very similar like with band names, like, that makes no sense. But when you know, you just kind of know, you know? Yeah, it’s hard to put it into words.
RMR: What song from the album has been the most fun to play live?
Girlfriends (Travis): I love playing “Shower.” “Shower” for me is super fun. A burner. 100%
Girlfriends (Nick): I’ll probably go “Toothbrush.” That one’s been a lot of fun to play live. I’ve always looked forward to playing that song first on the album. So that was definitely intentional for the energy of the song. We played that song last night in San Diego.
RMR: How do you think (E)motion sickness compares lyrically and technically to your debut album?
Girlfriends (Travis): I think I just think we’ve gotten better as a band and I think stronger as songwriters. I think being able to spend more time comes with like more kind of thought and even afterthought with lyrics and kind of like refining, I feel like, for the first record, it was a lot of like, going to the vocal booth and just kind of whatever comes out is the song. This one like “Break Me” we rewrote what, three or four times.
Girlfriends (Nick): 16 times…
Girlfriends (Travis): Like the verses, the hook was rewritten twice. And then like the verses, we’ve had, like, four different iterations of each verse. And the last, the last version we made like, two weeks before we turned in the album, and that’s what’s on the record. So I think it was like, yeah, a lot of like listening and being like, is this what we really want to put out into the world does this resonate with me? How is this going to make you know, other people, feel how does this make me feel? And yeah, I think we’ve just gotten just better as a band.
RMR: Are there any songs on the album that have connections to one another, whether lyrically, rhythmically, etc?
Girlfriends (Travis): I think well, there’s a hidden track on the record, but people won’t be able to hear it unless they get the physical album. But I think Shower and kind of Kinky Rabbit Club are very much in the same vein of just fun songs like songs, you know, that I want to listen to when I was growing up and like some of like, my favorite bands, right.
It was really cool because Kinky Rabbit Club, we got to write with Fat Mike from No Effects. There’s a fucking legend. I grew up loving his band. And like, me and him were sending each other voice memos of like, just all the weirdest lyrics that we could think of. And so for that, I feel like those two songs are kind of in the same vein of like, teenage dick jokes. You know what I mean? Like, very, very, like middle school, in terms of like the approach overall to this album.
RMR: What was the most challenging thing you guys experienced in creating this album?
Girlfriends (Travis): What songs to put on it.
Girlfriends (Nick): That was hard. Yeah, figuring out the right sequencing and songs. I mean, like the first album was definitely a lot of just get songs and put it on an album. Although it flowed well, but I think the second one we just took more time to think about, we have 50 songs. How do we create 14, 15 songs out of these 15 that float with each other? And then tell a story and then you can listen to from start to finish and not getting tired of I think is the goal with any album so yeah, it was probably the most difficult part I would say narrowing it all down and like kind of picking and swapping things around and like where they’re gonna go live you know?
RMR: What was the first song you wrote for this album?
Girlfriends (Travis & Nick): Therapist!
RMR: Does drawing on the album cover relate to a specific song? How did the idea of having the drawings come about?
Girlfriends (Travis & Nick): Yeah, then like an amalgamation of all of the songs on the album and we got to work with this really talented artist, his name’s Bill he’s out of the UK we love his artists’ name is Hands Out of Pockets and he’s someone that you know I’ve been a fan of forever and we didn’t even know if he want to like work with us on an album thing that’s like not really what he does but he was super down and so we hopped on and kind of sent him the records and like this like dollar bill underneath said boner at first and we crossed it out and wrote shower like we got like the High Again smiley faces, na na na’s for High Again.
This is the Toaster For a Swim, kind of you know, unicorn and there’s like a bunch of like drawings right here like Maniac and stuff like that. Just like monsters and crazy shit. Yeah. Nick was like put a dinosaur on there. And so yeah, we’re really stoked, like, when, you know, we’re kind of refining and editing and putting all this stuff together. And the way that it all came out was like, definitely haven’t seen anything like it. No, I would like to hang this in my house. You know, like, we really approached it like, like a piece of art. And I feel like the end result was exactly that.
RMR: What’s next for you guys?
Girlfriends (Travis): We’re playing these shows and we’re going to Portugal next month, which will be really cool. You’ll get to see us play a show in a volcano. And then we’re gonna go to Sacramento after this and play another show just kind of touring and playing these radio shows, which is something new for us. August will be fun radio show in Denver. Yeah, we get to play with like A Day To Remember, The Maine, Jimmy Eat World. The fact that we’re being invited to even just go play the shows with these bands is super cool to us. And it’s something that we didn’t think would happen, you know, this quick, especially just given the trajectory of like, the last two years and how touring has been kind of stop and go.
It’s kind of crazy that we’ve been able to put out two albums, you know, since then, and we really haven’t even been able to properly tour them. Like we have like 35 songs that you know, we can go out and play shows with. And I mean, we’re already in the studio writing more songs. You know, we have a batch of new stuff, too, that we’re already working on and excited about. So like the third album.
As someone who was at their first-ever show in December of 2020 with nobody in attendance just being outside of the venue watching the live stream on my iPad. Subsequently, their first live performance was last June in a warehouse with a secret location and all their supporting shows. After that, seeing them headline their own tour in their hometown of LA was a whole-hearted experience for me.
The whole show was everything I could have asked for. Hearing songs from their previous record and new come together on the set list was like a perfect harmony. The energy from every single person in the crowd was phenomenal, it felt like everybody else was on the same cloud I was. If you ever get the chance to see Girlfriends live, please do. Above all else, I certainly cannot wait till I get to see the best band in the world, Girlfriends, again.
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