Grunge-y San Francisco trio chokecherry have been gradually working toward their debut EP since meeting on Hinge in 2022. Izzie Clark and E. Scarlett Levinson were both kicking around the Bay Area DIY scene but hadn’t crossed paths until they swiped right. After attending a show together, they decided to start writing songs, using their love of live music, and the intensity that flows naturally onstage, as their guide. Along with drummer Abri Crocitto, the band take cues from Mannequin Pussy, Pavement, and Turnstile on their latest project, Messy Star, which is out today via Fearless Records. Possessing blown-out fuzziness and vulnerability in spades, the EP points at their immense potential as they blast toward a heavier direction while delving into themes of love lost, insecurity, and burning out too quickly. “Messy Star is an intro into our heavier side, drawing inspiration from our live shows as well as our musical heroes,” Levinson tells AP. “Our softer, bubble-grunge catalog a la ‘Glass Jaw’ is definitely present in our live repertoire, but we often play into darker and louder motifs verging on hardcore during our sets. We love to oscillate between lulling siren vocals and jarring screams back into reality. I am so grateful to everyone who helped to make this EP happen.”
Read more: 5 songs that influenced GEL’s Persona EP
To celebrate the release, the group ushered us through the lore of all five songs on their new Messy Star EP. Dive in below.
“No Other Place”
This was the first song that we wrote entirely in the studio. We wrote it with our producer Zach Tuch (Knocked Loose, Movements). We started out by jamming on guitar in the My Bloody Valentine tuning, tuned a half step down (C# G# C# G# G# C#). It was a new creative process for us — we were used to jamming in rehearsals, seeing what we could pull out of the ether, and then testing it out live. The vocals were written Cocteau Twins-style first, and we searched for melodies before lyrics. It was a great exercise in prioritizing euphonious words. A band that does this super well is Twen (check out their album One Stop Shop).
Having Zach’s brain on this song pushed it in a new direction, and it was super cool to explore new creative territory — it was like having another band member for the day. We had just met Zach that day, and by the end of the session, we had a song in hand that we all loved, and we had become great friends. This song is about fighting off the metaphorical mean person in your head. It’s a battle cry. It’s also an abstract encapsulation of a very complex feeling of trying to love and forgive yourself. This is a snapshot of being at war with yourself, but at the end, it feels like a catharsis. —Izzie Clark
This was our first time trying a collaborative writing process in which we created a song from scratch with a producer, and we loved the result. Vocal lines became guitar solos became hooks — it was a daylong group brainstorm that yielded magnetic results. Massive shoutout to the magical ways of producer Zach Tuch. This song is two self-conscious voices dueling in your head; the metaphorical hypercritical devil and soothing forgiving angel are sitting on your shoulders, exchanging verbal blows. —E. Scarlett Levinson
“Afterglow”
The first iteration of this song was born during a bad breakup that I absolutely brought on myself. Post-split, I was immediately swallowed by both mostly truthful memories and highly exaggerated fantasies of the not-so-distant past. The first verses were sputtered out on a sobbing Voice Nemo at half-tempo, turning into a doomed amalgamation of all past heartbreaks combined. When we came together as a band and expanded on the idea, we made a dream-pop-turned-grunge breakup anthem that really encapsulated the experience — in true chokecherry fashion. We hope if people hear “Afterglow” and relate to the pain, they’ll find some comfort. —E. Scarlett Levinson
Mitski is a huge inspiration for me (and everyone, let’s be real here); her earlier bass-lead instrumentation on tracks like “Francis Forever” and “Once More to See You,” which open with just bass, vox, and sparse drums really influenced the choices in the opening lines of “Afterglow.” We close the track with a campfire moment in which Izzie and I embraced the first take best take philosophy — it was just us, a room mic, and an acoustic guitar. I cried afterwards. (I do cry pretty often, but this one was special.)
One day in the studio while we were recording demos with Christopher Grant, Scarlett began hinting at a song she was writing at home. I was like, “Show us that shit right now!” And I’m so glad she did. It’s such a vulnerable and touching song. We started jamming on it, and I went upstairs and started humming some “doo doo doos” in the hallway that ended up being the chorus melody. Abri came up with an incredible drum part, especially for the breakdown (a total vibe departure, our stylistic go-to). When we played it all together for the first time, breakdown and all, it was such an adrenaline rush. This song has all the dynamic parts that define this band and what we love to do. —Izzie Clark
“Messy Star”
This song has taken so many forms — at first, it felt like a slow, trudging journey. When we took it into the studio with producer Zach Tuch, he pushed us to experiment with a trip-hop style beat in the verses. This creative choice gave the song a much more unique feeling than our other tracks.
The format of “Messy Star” and its departure from our usual method of only using live instruments broadened the world of the track. This song is our first incorporation of samples, playing on our shared love for artists like Massive Attack and Radiohead. Our drummer virtuoso Abri Crocitto taps in during the chorus for a full live moment, and if you listen closely, you’ll hear sprinkles of his hi-hat over the samples in the verses.
So alas, the track still felt like a journey, but instead of simply a long drive, now it felt like crawling out from the underworld into heaven itself. The chorus breaks into an entirely new world than the one the verses occupy. It turns from strange trip-hop grunge to a more classic heavy shoegaze track with layered vocals.
The song is accompanied by a similarly abstract, ominously beautiful music video directed by Breanna Lynn. In this track, we play a role as a star that is “burning out”; it’s meant to be a commentary on the destruction that celebrity culture can wreak on artists, and the clinical feeling of being perceived. The track and video draws upon feelings of being seen and scrutinized, wanting things other people have (or even wanting to be someone else), and the desire to break away from stardom and the feeling of being watched and perceived. The video depicts us as trapped, crazed animals, drowning in the feeling of lost freedom.
“I Know You”
Pavement is a band I’ve always loved — I’ll never forget that “holy shit” feeling when I first heard Wowee Zowee. That influence really came through while I was writing what would become “I Know You.” It’s an homage to the ’90s (like so many of our tracks).
It’s a slow burn of yearning — a conversation with someone you wished you were closer to, colored with an aching to understand their inner world as you’re falling deeper into a vulnerability that feels dangerous. In the end, it all falls apart — the closeness you tried to build is lost to the unpredictability of relationships. I wrote from the feeling of being alienated from someone (or many someones). When we brought the track to Sarah Tudzin and Zach Tuch, it took on a new life. Zach collaborated with us on the chorus melody, which ended up feeling like a gut punch, a subdued feminine rage that leads to an explosion of emotion in the breakdown. —Izzie Clark
When Izzie brought in the original version of this track, I was mesmerized by the musical choices and begged her to let chokecherry have a chance with it. The harmonies on this track are some of my favorites on the entire EP, and Sarah Tudzin’s vocal production on this track (as well as on “Afterglow”) really cuts deep for me. There’s a in-the-room quality to it, as if the voices are in your ear. –E. Scarlett Levinson
“Mirror Mirror”
Often [our] closing number during live sets, it’s a thrashing nod to our heavier sound, taking inspiration from artists like Turnstile, Ty Segall, Osees, and Mannequin Pussy — a nod to our doom, psych, and hardcore first loves. The track tells a story of metaphorical demonic possession, and being at the mercy of a mischievous and destructive “shadow self.”
Lyrically, the song touches on themes of being at war with yourself (or rather, your shadow self) and peeling back the curtain on the dark parts of the human psyche. The narrator of the track sits in a more fictional role than our other songs, which was fun to explore and build a narrative around — a sort of villain arc, if you will. The nature of the “possession” is open to interpretation, but listeners can relate to its references to addiction, insecurity, and self-destruction. For us, it invokes memories of the sweaty LA/SF punk shows that shaped our musical repertoire.
This is the earliest chokecherry track that made it to a record. From the track’s first inception, it was an odyssey that took different forms from its live performances to its eventual recording for this EP. “Mirror Mirror” was originally seven minutes long with a psychedelic jam at the end, but eventually embodied a shorter format with a hardcore-inspired breakdown at the end. We wanted our EP to end just as our live shows do — with a bonafide scream into the void.