
Julien Baker having your back means you’re doing something right in the indie music space: The Ophelias have a new album, Spring Grove, set to arrive this week and Baker produced the endeavor.
When the group announced the project back in February, vocalist Spencer Peppet declared it has “zero songs about break-ups.” So, while that’s off the table as a discussion topic on the album, they still have plenty to say about pretty much everything else.
Ahead of the album’s release, the band’s Mic Adams, Andrea Gutmann Fuentes, Spencer Peppet, and Jo Shaffer sat down with Uproxx to talk about peeing before concerts, eggplant parmesan, whistling, and more in our latest Q&A.
What are four words you would use to describe your music?
Peppet: Cathartic, orchestral, interwoven, dramatic.
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?
Shaffer: I plan to still be alive and look exactly like a female version of Keith Richards. So ideally, people are just saying “Wow, she’s still alive! And she kind of looks like Keith Richards.”
Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?
Peppet: I think each of us would have a different answer for this! Mine is either my bandmates (cheesy but true) or Joanna Newsom, for her dedication to lyricism as poetry/storytelling and refusal to make anything except what feels real and true to her. Her music has been a companion in my life since I was a teenager, and it’s one of the coolest things in the world to have music you deeply care about that changes with you over time. I feel like I understand it differently now. (That could also be said about my bandmates – meeting as teenagers, growing together, etc.)
Where did you eat the best meal of your life and what was it?
Adams: My family is very food-oriented, and when we visit my grandparents in upstate New York my Grandma usually has one casserole dish each of homemade eggplant parmesan and chicken parmesan waiting for us at the end of our drive. Eggplant parmesan is my favorite dish and my Grandma makes it good.
Tell us about the best concert you’ve ever attended.
Adams: My best concert experience is (and forever will be) Paramore in the summer of 2010 on my 12th birthday… I remember the lights dimming in the outdoor pavilion where the show was, with a translucent curtain across the stage so you could just see the outlines of the band members backlit while dancing and riffing on an intro. Then the curtain dropped and I could feel my whole heart leave my little body.
What song never fails to make you emotional?
Fuentes: “Luchín” by the great Chilean communist singer-songwriter Victor Jara. It’s a song about a little boy living in a shantytown on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile in the early 1970s, playing with a ball made of rags and surrounded by his playmates — a cat, a dog, a horse. Victor sings, “there are children like Luchín / that eat dirt and worms / let’s open all the cages / so that they fly like birds.” Maybe second in line is “Cross My Heart” by Phil Ochs, who happened to be a friend of Victor’s.
What’s the last thing you Googled?
Shaffer: “National Security Archive MKULTRA document collection released?” The National Security Archive at Georgetown is about to make their collection of documents on Cold War-era behavior control experiments available online. I’m psyched. (A girl needs hobbies.)
Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?
Shaffer: Spencer and I have shared a bean bag twice. It wasn’t any better the second time!
What’s your favorite city in the world to perform and what’s the city you hope to perform in for the first time?
Mic: “In the world” is generous since we’ve only ever played in the States and Canada. I would say though that I tend to have the most fun in middle-of-nowhere towns, when it feels like the whole population is at the show because that’s the only thing happening. For example, we played a show in a town called Moscow, Idaho at a burger joint and it felt like we were on the moon. In the future, I would love to tour literally anywhere outside of North America.
What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?
Peppet: You’re good enough at guitar! Stop being mean to yourself about it. It’s cooler to figure it out yourself.
What’s one of your hidden talents?
Fuentes: I am pretty good at whistling, it’s a talent that I inherited from my grandfather and dad.
If you had a million dollars to donate to charity, what cause would you support and why?
Adams: If I had a million dollars to support a single cause right now, I would find the most efficient and direct route to send it to Gaza for aid. The genocide of the Palestinian people is the most horrific thing I have been alive to witness. I don’t have a million dollars, but that’s not a necessity in demanding a free Palestine by continuing to show up and refusing to accept or ignore the present circumstance.
What are your thoughts about AI and the future of music?
Shaffer: I see generative AI as a symptom of securitization, which is a symptom of imperial decline. Our economy is addicted to growth, which incentivizes ruthless cost-cutting. For the US economy to sustain growth without actually producing anything, it demands an infinite supply of dirt-cheap assets. AI generated music is an attempt to turn art into something predictable enough to sustain corporate growth. Gross!
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.
Peppet: Joanna Newsom, Hop Along, Jane Remover, Dijon, and Charli XCX in a big rolling field of wildflowers somewhere in the Midwest.
Who’s your favorite person to follow on social media?
Fuentes: Tony P in DC. I used to live there and I just love getting the inside scoop into the life of a 26 year old bachelor living in DC.
What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?
Adams: My favorite tattoo is my most recent tattoo, which is a temperance inspired siphon image — two glasses with water traveling from one into the other. Sobriety is something that has been somewhat of a recurring effort in my life, and I’m still trying to find a balance that’s healthy and sustainable for me. The siphon aspect represents the different parts of myself supporting and nurturing other parts, or community supporting individuals.
What is your pre-show ritual?
Shaffer: DON’T FORGET TO USE THE BATHROOM. Nothing worse than playing a sad song when you have to pee.
Who was your first celebrity crush?
Peppet: Ashley Tisdale and Cole Sprouse.
You have a month off and the resources to take a dream vacation. Where are you going and who is coming with you?
Fuentes: I’ve always wanted to go to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, or Turkey. I would bring with me loml Benjamin!
What is your biggest fear?
Fuentes: PayPal mafia.
Spring Grove is out 4/4 via Get Better Records. Find more information here.