You Need to be Listening to Herr God

I have never figured out if “speedrack” is a common term for the crate of most-listened-to albums you put next to your record player. If it isn’t, it’s likely one of those things my dad made up and I accepted as given too far into adulthood. In any case, my speedrack always contains a copy of Bedhead’s WhatFunLifeWas, their full sound and unflinching intimacy repeatedly pulling me into a trance. A present-day group, Herr God, has the same effect.

Herr God manages to thread the needle masterfully: elegant main vocals and soft piano accents contrast beautifully with fuzzed out guitar and screams. A cathartic listening experience that can only be described as excellent. Though I do have to wait for the rest of the EP, it’s gearing up to be close to a perfect 10 for our print edition reviews.

Even in the midst of her busy pre-tour schedule, Chloe of Herr God answered a few questions I had.

Cover photo by Leija Wellwood.

PT: What brought you to music and this sound in particular?

HG: I kind of spearheaded this project. I've been doing music and performing since I was a kid.  My parents are both musically-inclined, so there's always been instruments around the house. I grew up going to see my parents play at little coffee shops, open mics, and then my dad's in a more-alternative band. My mom is very singer-songwriter and my dad's pretty goth and alternative so I feel like I naturally landed right snack in the middle of those two genres.

I ended up leaving school to see what would happen if I put all of my energy into writing music and performing and did a solo project for a while.  But I've always wanted to be in a band. For some reason when I grew up,  I,  as a girl,  nobody wanted to be in a band with me. Then I moved to San Francisco and started writing Herr God stuff. It was for the first EP and it was very dark and different, I just did it on GarageBand on my iPhone.  Then I kind of just threw a band together when I was in the Bay and we did a few shows. That was probably a year of shows and a little tour.  We toured in Portland and I really liked the vibe here. It's way more affordable than San Francisco but also, everyone here has a similar drive.

So I moved here and then found the band that I have now.

PT: How did the current group come together?

HG: I was invited to my bassist’s graduation party, I didn’t know him well at the time. I ended up meeting Benny there and we started dating immediately. It’s such a trope.  I am in fact dating the drummer of the band.  But Benny and Jack are best friends so it all fell into place.  They both wanted to be a part of some kind of slowcore project and are both extremely driven in the same way that I am, which I've never had before. It's not just, like, me doing it and then asking people to do me a favor and play. We've been a group now for over a year with this lineup.  

It’s cool working with people who want to do all the different things involved with being a band. Like, they take care of making the merch and do a lot of the driving for tour because I do all the prep for the tour and all the planning.  It's very cute, we're all besties and it's a really nice organic little trio that we have.  

PT: What's your process like for writing songs?

HG: It's funny, whenever people ask me this question I feel like I have such a boring answer because I really don't really have a formal process.  I do write pretty much everything.  It'll either start as a voice memo on my phone with just an acoustic guitar or if I'm feeling like I want to build something out a bit more I'll do GarageBand on my phone.  I write all the drum parts on the little kit on GarageBand, I hit each drum with my finger.  And I think that’s maybe why the piano came to fruition. A couple of the houses, including the one that I live in now, have a house piano.  So I would just mess around with it. But I also feel like it's because GarageBand on the app is so limited in which instruments I can make sound good as an automated instrument. The piano is one of them. Just like poke little keys and see what sounds good.

We were in the studio and we were like, “what other song can we use piano for?” Jack ended up messing around with the piano on “slow green water.” If you listen really closely to the beginning of it you can hear him saying “one, two three, fuck it,” or something like that, in this little gremlin voice because it was his fifth take doing this thing on the piano that we hadn’t planned to do. 

For the longest time he thought it was me in the recording because we couldn't figure out where that was coming from, like which mic it was coming from. We ended up realizing it was him when he was recording the piano and we just kept it in. 

PT: I love those human parts to songs. Not quite mistakes, but something that’s a little unpolished that gives a point of connection. And, in a broader way, I think a lot of your sound is pushing away from the norm right now of a very professional, polished sound. It does set you apart.

HG: Totally, especially with a lot of the AI stuff that’s going around. Jack is a jazz musician and he has a degree in music engineering and so he's a very like technical person.  He loves for things to be perfect. I think one of the like interesting challenges for him in this band is that whenever we like record something or play something, I'm like, “I want this to sound shittier.”  I always want it to sound worse but in a cool way.  

PT: I'm not a huge gear nerd, but I do want to know what pedals you use to fit that distorted sound.

HG: I have mostly just the RAT pedal. The RAT and then the Earthquaker Hizu. And I literally just rock with those two pedals. I like another pedal that I use live, it's an overdrive or boost pedal but I use it for the opposite.  I have it really turned down so I can hit it when I'm singing quieter parts but still have a crunchy tone. Jack also is rocking with very minimal pedals.

I wanted very little reverb because my last solo project was dreamy and bedroom pop-y, very reverb-focused. Then with this project I just wanted to be crunchy and raw. 

PT: What do you listen to? What do you go to for inspiration?

HG: It honestly varies a lot. Because I've been touring for the past couple of years and I do all the outreach and management for this band, I get to meet bands that I think are really cool. As cheesy as it sounds, my inspiration does come from the friends we’ve made along the way. They're very influential for the sound that I create. 

One of the songs on this EP we do with the band Villagerrr. We became really good friends just through mutual admiration for each other's music and we started sending demos back and forth. I feel like Mark, the frontman of Villagerrr, and I have a very similar process.  So, I guess, talking to other bands that I really like and hearing how they make their music is the inspiration. Sometimes it’s really different so I can try what they've been doing.  I like to try new things and if I listen to something  interesting that I haven't heard done before I'm like, “oh, whoa, like, how can I do something that gave me this feeling about this band?”

I do listen to a lot of pop music just for the sole purpose of  being aware of what the industry standard is right now.  Like, “what's what's happening here that I could like somehow incorporate to what we're doing in a way less pop way.”

PT: And, the opposite of that,  what music do you listen to in your personal life that's completely different from the type of music you make?  Anything that we wouldn't expect you to listen to?

HG: When I'm on really long road trips I need a palate cleanser so I'll listen to Post Malone. It's my guilty pleasure.  The guys were both really shocked at my Post Malone love.  I like it. I'll say it.

PT: I totally get it. My palate cleanser for years has been “I Started a Joke” by the Bee Gees. Except that one is a genuinely embarrassingly terrible song.

HG: I so get it. All I do is consume music. All my social media feed is band stuff and people going on tour and new music releases so sometimes I just want to listen to, like, the Doobie Brothers. 

PT: You’re on Patchwork now?

HG:  Yeah, that's a newer label for us.  I found them through Gawshock who we're going on tour with.  David from Gawshock does a lot for that label, behind the scenes stuff,  which I didn't even know until after we had started working with them.

I really like the small tape label vibe.  We were doing one out of Portland for a while called Pleasure Tapes, and that's what our last couple releases have been through. They've been blowing up and getting really busy and I wanted to see if I could get a faster turnaround so I hit up Patchwork.

I was talking to David saying, “oh dude, it's funny, we're touring together and now we're on the same tape label.”  And he was like, “oh yeah, I know. I work for them.”

It's so brand new but they're so efficient and putting out such great stuff. 

You can listen to Herr God on all streaming services. Check out their upcoming tour dates and look out for updates here.

Read more in the fall print edition.