Empowered and Electrifying: Double Standard Talks "SWEAT"

PHOTOS BY EMMA FISCHER

Double Standard is navigating the music industry as a non-man, queer band. Based in New York City, members Lydia Eberling, Siena Chanel, Lauren Dinhofer, Zoe Arora, and Meg Cournoyer are unapologetically carving out space for themselves in an industry that very often feels dominated by the boys’ club. (Because it very often is.) Their energetic music, profound talent and magnetic personalities make them a dominating force as a band and one you want to keep an eye out for. Their newest release “SWEAT” is out January 23, so Pleaser sat down with the band to talk about it’s creation, and letting themselves take up the space they deserve:

Pleaser: ​​How would you describe “SWEAT” to someone who has never heard the song before?

Lydia Eberling: Dance rock track, ‘80s, very anthemic, catchy adlibs, cool guitar with a borderline punky sound. A little bit of riot girl thrown in there for fun. It's sexy. It's hot.

Sienna Chanel: Horny, really our horniest song.

What is the backstory behind your new song?

SC: Only part of it comes from anything fully real. I was in a moment where I thought ghost rhymes were really funny and so that is the main chorus of this song. I thought it would be silly to have an omitted word that if you're keyed into the rhymes of it all, would make you giggle. That is the crux of what inspired this song.

What was the process of writing and creating this song like for you as a band?

SC: This song has existed for a super long time; Lydia and I already had the skeleton of this song down before we found Zoe, Meg and Lauren. The sound of it changed a lot while we were trying to rockify it up in the studio once we brought the band in.

LE: This song started having a swingy, jazzy feeling. We were trying to retroactively change a melody to something with a more straightforward and pop rock leaning. It had a piano, jazz bar feel, and we were like, “How do we make this rock and roll?”

I remember playing the song “Untouched” by The Veronica's, and that's when I feel like it clicked in our brain [that was] the direction we wanted the song to go in. We made the melody more forward and on the beat, as opposed to on the inbetween. I threw a horny bridge in there to match Sienna's energy. Then everyone added their own flair and pizzazz.

Meg Cournoyer: Both of the verses used to just be the same thing twice. I thought we should probably make it different the second time. There was one day that we sat around, and were trying to come up with a fun, catchy, horny second verse. 

SC: Meg just straight up recited the next verse out of thin air.

What is your favorite memory from making this song?

Lauren Dinhofer: I would definitely say Meg in a wig [in the music video] for me.

Zoe Arora: Meg diving.

LE: In the music video, we are getting up close to the TV and that's us getting sucked into the TV. There was a super epic duke out battle between Lauren and Meg. They both dove for the TV at the same time. People were injured in the process.

MC: I still have rug burn on my knees from that.

How did you all meet/form the band?

SC: Lydia and I knew each other for a long time and we naturally fell into collaboration, and that turned into our project. After a while we were like, we're a band, but, can we have other bandmates and can they be swag non-men? Once we decided that, we went on a hunt for these three. Miraculously, we found them all in the same month, and they were all really awesome and got along. I thought to myself, “Wow, this was way too easy.” 

We have a saying at Pleaser, “The boys’ club is so boring.” I’m curious how you go about navigating a male-dominated space as a queer, non-man band?

LE: When we're putting together our own bills for our shows, it's really important to us to not really have any straight men on the bill. If we're the headliner, we want the people that we're playing with to be representative of who we would like to support in the scene.

It happens a lot that the same artists are opening for and collaborating with the same artists, then people say, “All New York rock sounds the same.” Maybe you're actually only listening to bands that look exactly the same. If people spent the time to get to know artists all around the city, there's a really wonderful scene of queer people and non-men and people of color to uplift and collaborate with.

LD: An important thing we do that we might not always think about is we are taking up space in these male dominated situations. So why not just be ourselves, when we're opening for bands or artists where there might be one woman in the band or it's all men?

LE: We love to throw in little bits in our set that we think [are] funny. Our last song of the show, we were like, “Can we get all the men in the room to raise your hand? F*ck you.” It was crickets. A lot of it is trick of the trade. You have to deal with people you might not always want to have to deal with, but we're always gonna represent the things that we believe in and be very unabashed about that. 

It is a weird oscillation between being really unashamed about calling us a girl band or a non-man band, then on the other hand, well, we're a band. There shouldn’t be a caveat to that and it shouldn't necessarily have anything to do with what we're making, but at the same time, it has everything to do with it.

ZA: We've done a pretty good job of having this balance between who we are and [knowing] we're just good because we're talented, but also we are going to talk about how we're a non-man band that's queer that has people of color in it. It's important for people in those demographics to see that we're in the scene. We say those identities for the sake of showing that we can exist in mainstream spaces.

What is one piece of advice you’d give to a group of girls wanting to start a band?

LE: As non-men there is almost this necessity to be the best in a room. Lauren is in grad school right now and she really experiences this in a lot of her production classes. When you're in a space with a lot of men, there's a lot of pressure to not mess up because you don't want them to think that you're less capable. There is a lot of stigma around being a non-man in those spaces. It is important to be really unashamed and almost overly confident in those settings, so that you're not made to feel smaller. We do really awesome things and we’re not shocked about it because we are super capable.

It's so worth making the effort to not take the easy way out. A lot of people use the same producers and play with the same people. It is worth seeking out like minded people, like other women, non-men, queer people to work with. You're getting a wider set of voices.

ZA: Those people will show up for you.

LE: We make an effort to go see shows of friends of friends or any other queer, non-man bands and artists. You show up for their shows, they're gonna show up for yours. You post them online, they’ll post you online. People really ride for each other in a really awesome, special sort of way. That is worth fostering those relationships.

LD: Just do it. There's so many reasons you can come up with for why you shouldn't do it.

Just focus on you and what makes you happy. If you like playing instruments and singing and want to do it with a bunch of girls, go for it. 

MC: What I've noticed thus far, even though we are still very small and early in our career, is that there doesn't seem to feel this sense of competition when we're talking to other non-man bands. The only thing we've ever seen from other non-man bands is love and support. There's this community with all of these other small groups and we get to know more of them every day. 

Sometimes the industry can feel like a competition, who is destined, who can have the most followers in this amount of time and who can play this venue. We've all just felt support from other non-man bands. If there are people that want to start music, they should know that there is community out there that will lift you up.

SC: Let yourself mess up. Let yourself not be the most experienced drummer or bassist or whatever you're playing in the world. It's so easy when you're faced with men in the industry to fall into the trap of feeling like you are representing your gender. A lot of the time when women are mediocre on stage, people are really judgmental. You just have to keep reminding yourself that when you see a mediocre man onstage, you look at him and you think, “Oh, he's learning, he's getting better.” Always remind yourself that you have to see yourself in that way, too.

ZA: It is fuel for me to keep doing this when I see that men are affected by the fact that we take up their space. We're gonna take over and you're gonna have to deal with it.

What can we expect from you in the future?

LE: Our single, “SWEAT” comes out on January 23 and we have a music video dropping the next day.

We might have another single and video coming out really soon after, and then maybe a big project. Who knows? Maybe a project that's coming out in the next couple months. Maybe not. Then maybe an epic celebration.