Brooklyn band Sunflower Bean’s biggest breakout to date was 2018’s Twentytwo In Blue and the trio has kept it rolling since then. They followed with Headful Of Sugar in 2022, and now their fourth LP, Mortal Primetime, is out in a matter of days.
The new album comes after a tumultuous period for the group, as members faced personal challenges and changes, but ultimately found their way back to each other. The result is an album with one foot in the past and another in the future, using an amalgamation of classic influences to create something novel and determined.
Ahead of the album’s upcoming release, the band’s Julia Cumming, Nick Kivlen, and Olive Faber sat down with Uproxx to talk about AI, sinus infections, tattoos, and more in our latest Q&A.
What are four words you would use to describe your music?
Faber: Sexy drama rock n roll
Cumming: What Olive said!
It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?
Cumming: A remnant of human tangibility.
Faber: What Julia said!
Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?
Faber: There are so many. For me, Lou Reed is always a guiding light. He was a deeply flawed person but had so much transcendent humility, beauty and love in his art.
Cumming: It’s hard to say one person, but glam rock as a genre was very inspirational for me, especially as a child. That spirit stays with me in every performance.
Kivlen: Kurt.
Where did you eat the best meal of your life and what was it?
Faber: Every Sunday, I try to get together with my family and friends to make meatballs and sauce, nothing beats it.
Kivlen: Luv2eat Thai in LA, it’s super affordable and incredibly delish. Definitely order the crab curry.
Cumming: Tsubaki in LA. Their short rib made me ask the waitress if other people think that’s the best short rib they’ve ever had… I then became known as “the short rib girl.”
Tell us about the best concert you’ve ever attended.
Faber: One of the best was Broncho’s fake last show in Brooklyn in 2022. They played for 2 hours, they blew through most of their catalog Ramones style, barely saying a word. It was so cathartic and I’ve never been to another show where the crowd is bouncing for an entire 120 minutes.
Seeing DIIV and other local bands play DIY venues when I was in high school was incredibly inspiring. It showed me that you could create a magical transformative performance in even the most humble places.
Cumming: Iggy Pop, Desert Daze 2017. Performance perfection. Everything you need from a show which isn’t pyrotechnics or LED screens. Just a living legend screaming into the void and making us all feel a bit less alone.
What song never fails to make you emotional?
Cumming: “Twilight” by Elliott Smith.
Faber: “Candy Says” by The Velvet Underground.
Kivlen: “Dancing Queen” by ABBA.
What’s the last thing you Googled?
Faber: What is the hot key for fades in Ableton
Kivlen: “What is a sinus infection?”. We’re on tour and all battling different illness, it’s hard to keep who has what straight.
Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?
Faber: Yeah, there’s been so many. What comes to mind right now is when we stayed in this random guy’s studio in the sketchiest part of Vancouver. I remember it being so dusty and smoky in there and we were all just sleeping on the floor. The guy told us to make sure we keep the door locked, because the day before someone came running in with their finger chopped off, bleeding profusely.
Cumming: Oh my God, that’s a crazy question. We’ve slept on so many floors. We used to get so sick, it only ended when we stopped sleeping on the literal ground all the time. One time, Nick and I put some jackets on some amps and tried to sleep on them so we weren’t on the floor.
What’s your favorite city in the world to perform and what’s the city you hope to perform in for the first time?
Faber: New York City is the best city in the world. I’d love to play in Brazil one day.
Cumming: I love to perform in Japan, they are so kind and great listeners.
What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?
Faber: You’re a girl, and you should probably address that.
Cumming: You don’t need to listen to what everyone else says, they don’t necessarily know more than you.
Kivlen: Don’t take any specific music or song too seriously, let them breathe and change. Work on songwriting everyday. There is no limit or secret trick to being creative besides hard work.
What’s one of your hidden talents?
Faber: Not hidden, but cooking. I love to cook, it’s like making music but more quickly gratifying and delicious.
Cumming: I’m very good at picking restaurants! And ordering. Does that mean I’m good at eating?
Kivlen: My hidden talent is painting and crafts. I don’t post them anywhere or do anything with them. It’s something I do purely for my own enjoyment and creativity.
If you had a million dollars to donate to charity, what cause would you support and why?
Faber: I would create a totally free HRT access situation. Build our own labs, and have our own doctors and scientists, and get the gender-affirming care to everyone and anyone who needs it.
Kivlen: I would donate to the Palestinian people.
Cumming: There’s a million answers to this question, but I would start with funding programs that support extracurricular studies and activities for the public school students of New York City. They are our future and deserve everything.
What are your thoughts about AI and the future of music?
Faber: We have to resist AI. It’s funded and invented by the billionaire lizard class. It also is substantially worse for the environment than most things. We need to hold on to humanity.
Cumming: As of now, I think AI has the capability to be a tool for usefulness in lots of directions. But I think you have to continuously rally against it with your own efforts of finding serendipity, and use its predictability to find ways to be more creative as a human being.
Kivlen: I honestly don’t know enough about it to have any opinion, I still don’t understand how it’s different than any other computing process. The people who seem interested in developing it, I don’t trust.
You are throwing a music festival. Give us the dream lineup of 5 artists that will perform with you and the location it would be held.
Faber: The Ramones, Broncho, Tonstartssbandht, Pure X, and The Roches in my backyard on Long Island
Cumming: DEVO, CHER, IGGY POP, MADONNA, B52’S!
Who’s your favorite person to follow on social media?
Faber: My girlfriend.
Kivlen: All my amazing musician friends on TikTok. I love the music community on there, it’s very creative supportive and funny.
What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?
Faber: I have one tattoo. It’s the trans icon on my wrist. My ex got a stick-and-poke kit and I asked her to do it randomly one night. It was the first one she ever did. I love it.
Cumming: I have a tattoo that says “life’s a gas” after the T-Rex song. I’m a huge glam rock fan. Sometimes I think it’s silly I have the word “gas” on my body, but sometimes I think it’s cool, too.
Kivlen: My most prominent tattoo was done by a South Korean artist named Git B. It’s an abstract piece that she designs beforehand. You don’t see it until you get it. I absolutely love all her work.
What is your pre-show ritual?
Kivlen: If we’re in a town with friends, I like to have a party environment in the green room. I love hosting.
Cumming: 1 and 3/4 sugar free Red Bull, 1/4 tequila.
Faber: Center myself, drink a Red Bull, take a shot.
Who was your first celebrity crush?
Cumming: Mike Nesmith from The Monkees
Faber: Rachael Ray, which is super embarrassing, but I loved the Food Channel growing up and would always watch 30 Minute Meals.
You have a month off and the resources to take a dream vacation. Where are you going and who is coming with you?
Faber: Probably upstate NY, just hanging with friends, maybe build a studio, record a record, and eat lots of good home-cooked food.
Kivlen: I like to do a road trip vacation, or a really long stay somewhere remote. Have lots of friends come throughout the time.
What is your biggest fear?
Cumming: Wasting time or talent with ungratefulness or unworthiness.
Faber: Succumbing to the fear. It can be exhausting, but you have to keep going.
Kivlen: Getting bit by a tick with Lyme or dying in a car accident.
Mortal Primetime is out 4/25 via Lucky Number Music. Find more information here.