PLAY IT AGAIN: BILLIE GALE’s Beth Garber Shares 5 Albums That Influenced Their ‘Imprint’ LP
Billie Gale – Imprint is available @ Apple Music.
by Beth Garber
Billie Gale is a mix of my personal style, rooted mostly in folk, Adam Wayne’s (guitar) Shoegaze influences, and our band’s collective affinity for anything raw, beautiful, and sincere. These records are some great examples of how various styles have intertwined into what you’d hear on our album, and I wish I had more time to include people like Fiona Apple, and bands like The Cure, Blonde Redhead, The Cranberries, and Beach House, who are all so important to us. I hope these few help to make some sense of where we come from!
Joni Mitchell – Ladies of the Canyon [1970]
This album was introduced to me by my mom, when I was 15 and overwhelmed with all that uncertainty of that age, wanting to connect and detach all at once. “The Circle Game,” was the first song I learned on guitar, and that fingerpicking pattern is one I still go back to again and again when I’m writing. “Ladies of the Canyon” was activating for me as a woman, a songwriter, a daughter, and an independent thinker, I owe so much connection to these parts of myself to this record.
Slowdive – Souvlaki [1993]
Adam Wayne (guitar) first introduced me to Slowdive when we started playing as a duo back in 2013. Adam’s guitar sound, which is heavily influenced by bands like Slowdive and Low, has formed much of who Billie Gale is as a band. I’ve since then retroactively adopted them as a personal influence. They’re a band I should have loved all along. “Souvlaki” is that wall of sound coined by Shoegaze: distorted, soaked, never catching its own tail-end, but there is also this really sweet quality. Within all the madness of everything turned up to 11, there’s a whispering, lullaby-like melody. The interplay is so genius and organic, like a birdsong run through a tidal wave.
Pedro the Lion – Control [2002]
David Bazan’s writing encompasses home for me: the Pacific Northwest with all its introspective, introverted emotionalism, along with his dealings with faith and faithfulness with heartbreaking honesty. “Control” verges on Southern Gothic, with all its gruesome, redemptive complexity. It’s my favorite of their records. Not to mention Bazan’s great sense of humor, albeit dark at times. It’s like if Flannery O’Conner had gone to Shorewood in the early 90s; she would have written songs like these; everything I aspire to as a songwriter.
My Brightest Diamond – Bring Me the Workhorse [2006]
I saw Shara Nova play in Vancouver, BC when she toured this record, and it was the first time I witnessed a woman really leading a project. She was present in every detail. She produced it, engineered it, directed the artwork, and gathered players who could play what she couldn’t. It’s brilliant. I had never seen that. And her sound was right in line with the (mainly male-led) music I loved at the time, the Asthmatic Kitty world of Sufjan, pioneered by Danielson Famile. There is so much skill and love of excellence in the way Shara writes and performs, and she’s got an unapologetic sense of the fantastic, and a love of the child-like. This album gave me a lot of courage to be authentic and sincere as I want to be.
Radiohead – In Rainbows [2007]
“In Rainbows” is the record we all agreed was our collective favorite of the Radiohead saga, which makes sense. It feels convergent, where all the accessible emotionality meets a cacophonous experiment. Our bass player Eric Shawn takes a lot of cues from Colin Greenwood, having been a great guitar player first, he tends to lead with melody, and elasticity, and we’ve taken a lot of inspiration from the way Radiohead writes together. “In Rainbows” is such a great demonstration of how far you can push your sound to the absolute limit and beyond without losing yourself along the way. There’s so much possibility in this record.
BILLIE GALE
Adam Wayne – Guitar
Eric Shawn – Bass
Justin Wayne – Drums
Beth Garber – Vocals, Synth, Guitar
Recorded at Tiny Telephone, San Francisco, CA
Engineered & Mixed by Brandon Eggleston
Mastered by Ed Brooks at Resonant Mastering
Additional Engineering by Ron Guensche at New Future Vintage
Written by Billie Gale
Lyrics by Beth Garber
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