featured image provided by Herr God

“So, in that sense, I write like a maniac.”

says Chloe of Herr God on her journal habits and lyricism. Born from a Sylvia Plath poem in a Portland hospital, Herr God is a trio consisting of Chloe, Jack, and Benny. They like to release songs from omens in Chloe’s notes app that maybe are a sign from another life in the universe than a sign from above. The songs and melody comes naturally to them, which can be felt in “slow green water,” their latest single off of their upcoming EP, Something’s Out There.

Herr God is set to release their newest single, “female author,” august 5th. They are also touring the US all of August with info and tickets available on herrgod.com. 

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DEATH OF A RABBIT: What’s out there?

CHLOE: Who knows? Something. I don’t even know; it’s become like an alien thing. I think we’re transitioning from religious symbolism to alien symbolism.

DOAR: I fuck with that. And y’all are going to be touring in the Southwest, so you’ll be getting that. In another interview, you mentioned, “weird song names are going to carry over.” Is this still the case?

CHLOE: It definitely happened! I have no rhyme or reason for the song names that we choose. What’s the most basic song name that we have? “Stargirl” probably. Everything else, I just get random quotes or inspiration from poetry that I’m reading at the time.

DOAR: As you’ve mentioned in previous interviews and as we detailed just now, you kind of fuck around and find out or the music is based on your feelings and such. How does intentionality play into Herr God, if it plays into it at all?

CHLOE: I don’t know if anything I do is intentional. I feel like I try stuff, and then if it works, I just kind of roll with whatever plays out, like the Something’s Out There title. I didn’t originally have an alien thing in mind, but I’ve been really into X Files recently; I grew up watching it, so I feel like that’s a core part of my being. It kind of makes sense to lean into what works, but it usually starts as a really random idea.

JACK: A lot of these tracks, with how they have been put into this group, it always starts with Chloe and the guitar and she’ll sit down, write something, and that’s all it is. And so it’s kind of up to us a little bit to figure out what fits well with that kind of music or those chords and what the vibes we’re going for. We try to be really intentional about it, but a lot of the time it’s just like trial and error. We find stuff that we like, and use that, and then we try other stuff. We realize later that we don’t like it, or that something doesn’t work here, and we just adjust it a little bit. But the core always starts with just guitar and vocals.

CHLOE: It all kind of comes pretty naturally, which I think is refreshing. I don’t feel like there’s ever really a point where we’re all like, “What do we do with this part?” Because for me, if it’s not working, I’m just gonna scrap it. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Because I don’t really want to work for something that I don’t feel like is gonna work, but maybe it should come without struggle.

I think it’s cool getting different perspectives on everything too, because I’m so used to having things be just me and my brain.

DOAR: Instead of intentionalities, it’s more intuitiveness.

CHLOE: Yeah, we use the force.

DOAR: What color lightsabers do y’all got?

BENNY: Orange. I know they’re like rare.

JACK: I think I’m more of a green guy.

CHLOE: I want the double red one.

DOAR: Jumping into your upcoming EP, Something’s Out There, you released a single titled “slow green water.” Is there a connection to still water?

CHLOE: I wish that I had an answer for you. I don’t even know what that [song title] is from. It might be from something I was reading, or I have this humongous notes app page of just random phrases and things that I read or see while I’m driving or whatever, and then sometimes I write them down, and they get lost in translation and end up being really weird in a cool way. Other times they’re just really dumb. But when I write a song, I usually look through that page. If a song name isn’t immediately jumping out at me from the lyrics, I’ll find something I like, or I’ll find one word and then look for another word I like. 

JACK: It’s funny because when we get the voice demos, at some points they’re already titled, or at least have a working title. So especially for “slow green water,” knowing it was going to be called that the entire time, I tried to lean into the slow-moving creek vibe. The chord structure is basic, pretty much one chord the whole time, and it feels like you’re almost skipping rocks out on the beach. Mellow vibe. It’s interesting how the title can affect a lot of things that you don’t necessarily think about until you’re like, “well, this kind of feels like slow green water.”

CHLOE: I also have synesthesia where a certain song or word will remind me of a color. So for that, I just knew I wanted green because it felt green.

DOAR: In the song, there’s a lyric that says, “I write like a maniac.” I think it’s interesting given that you don’t write detailed lyrics and you usually let the music speak more than the words. You may have been writing about a story or character, but I just thought it was interesting because it’s more statements through your lyricism.

CHLOE: I journal like a maniac. This is very male manipulator of me, but I also read a lot of Bukowski. He’s so fucked up in the head and the way that he writes is so, “every single thought in his brain is on paper,” no matter how good, bad, or chaotic it is. I write similarly in my journal, and it turns into poetry, and then sometimes it turns into a song. But if someone were to read my journal, I think they would have me committed. So, in that sense, I write like a maniac.

DOAR: I also wanted to touch on “female author” because the vocals differ from your usual style. It sounds more like a voice memo or phone call. What’s the idea behind that?

JACK: I’ve always been into effect tracking vocals and stuff. You know, we’re using a lot of analog tones and amp tones with the whole album, but a lot of it had to be kind of pushed to the next notch digitally. There was a lot of bussing distortion and stuff we did with the guitars and basses and a lot of the vocals too, that fit into that raw-but-modern vibe. And it’s kind of sultry, the lyrics, they sound like a voicemail that you would get if it were in a song form, maybe.

CHLOE: I feel also the thing that might inspire it too is the fact that I do just send voice memos to you guys. I like to record them sometimes in GarageBand and when I do that, I use the actual telephone vocal effect. So that could be another subconscious thing I’m doing and influencing them with. 

I feel like we are trying to go for less of a shoegazey-vocal-thing now and lean more into the rawness, especially with “female author” because there’s screaming and we didn’t want it to be so drastic between the singing and the screaming. When the screams happen, it’s already kind of pushed into that box to where it distorts in a very natural way. It kind of sounds like a guitar.

JACK: I mean, I am using guitar effects on it!

DOAR: Another song on the EP is titled “stargirl.” I was curious if it was inspired by a manic pixie dream girl motif or the book Stargirl.

CHLOE: Maybe subconsciously? I don’t know if I read that book, but I remember seeing it a lot in middle and elementary school. I don’t even know why I started singing that song like that, but when I sit down to write songs, I just come up with a progression, think of a melody, let my mouth do whatever it wants to do, and see what comes out. And if it’s cool, then I’m like, “Oh, okay!” So that one for real, was just my own brain. I didn’t even try to find a phrase of any kind of inspiration. But I know that I wanted a whispery and talking, speaking song. 

It’s different than the rest of them, but it felt like we needed it. There were a couple of more melodic songs and a couple of screamy songs, and then I was like, “What’s different than those two things?” I’ll just talk and rock. Noisy too.

DOAR: Are y’all on tour now?

CHLOE: We leave like next week! 

DOAR: What do you want to do differently on this tour? This is your biggest tour to date!

CHLOE: This is our biggest tour to date! This is the first time doing the West Coast with this current lineup with these two [band members], but we all went to the East Coast in November together, and that was fun.

I feel like it will be better to drive a car than fly this time. It’ll be nice to do a more gradual time change because we are gonna be making our way across the country instead of just waking up on the other side. We gotta kill time in the car.

DOAR: death of a rabbit likes to focus on lyricism and poetry — I was wondering, what’s a lyric that you’ve listened to lately that you really enjoyed, or what’s a lyric that you wish you’d written?

CHLOE:

I love you mom

Dirt Buyer, “What Luck, Goodbye”

JACK:

I will not surrender

Something in my brain

I will not defend thеm

Lies you told today

Fighting for the future

Watch thе witches burn

I cannot defend them

The Strokes, “Dine N’ Dash”

BENNY:

I really don’t wanna sink back down

(All this time alone, I swear)

I really need you around

(You were there, inside my head)

I really don’t wanna see you go

(All this time alone, I swear)

Without you I’m not whole

(You were there, inside my head)

Dead Sullivan, “You Were There, Inside My Head”

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Check out Herr God’s music below!