Q&A: Blending Together Authenticity and Nostalgia, Noah Sties puts out his Debut Album, Sungold
Photos by Zayne Isom
Emerging into the music industry from small town Fort Wayne, Indiana, Noah Sties’ highly anticipated debut album, Sungold, is poised to captivate audiences worldwide on February 2. Sties is no stranger to the Indie-pop sound, effortlessly drawing his inspirations from many and providing a glimpse into the intricate and delicate creative DIY journey of how this album came to be. Here is an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the forthcoming Indie-pop sensation that listeners will not be able to overlook.
PLEASER: Let’s jump right into it, what inspired the concept for your album?
STIES: Nostalgia. I feel like that’s a really watered-down answer. But about three years ago, I came up with this idea. I named it after the street I grew up on, Sungold Boulevard. I was going through a lot of relationship struggles at the time and I guess I was really searching for this real sense of authenticity. I liked the idea of tying those two words authenticity and nostalgia together because I feel like the most authentic things in your life do have that kind of warm feeling that you get from something nostalgic. So that's where this weird kind of umbrella term “sungold” came from. I tried to use that on all the songs in my album and kind of play into that idea. Some people have described it as a concept album. I think it's a concept album if you want it to be a concept album, nothing too deep.
PLEASER: That's so cool, I love how you're able to tie those things together. What did the creative process behind the album look like for you?
STIES: Listening to a whole lot of music! I don’t really sit down and try to work [on music], when I force myself to work on things I can’t get anything done. My creative process really kind of just looks like going throughout life and listening to cool playlists and finding cool music and delving into production. When I knew I wanted to start getting serious about making an album, I would go back to my hometown and sit in my car in my elementary school parking lot, because I felt it's proper, like, that's where I grew up, so I had to be there. I would sit in my car and make demos on GarageBand in my notes app on my phone. And then I took those and took them back to this room right here and threw them in Ableton and kind of made them into full tracks. But the whole recording in my car thing played a pretty big role in the making of this album because I can't really record at this apartment, anything too loud, because my walls are paper thin. So it was a lot of nights at like 2 am driving somewhere and bringing my Macbook and all my mics and everything and trying to fit my guitar in my car. It was a good time.
PLEASER: Were there any specific themes or messages that you aimed to convey with the visuals on the album?
STIES: I was really inspired by Dominic Fike and his Sunburn era. I really like what he did with film photography. I'm obsessed with film photography, and film in motion pictures too. So I kind of wanted to capture that aesthetic, and really keep a consistent color scheme. So that's where those visuals came from nothing too specific, but I really wanted to make it feel authentic and nostalgic, visually and lyrically.
PLEASER: Speaking of lyrics, how do you approach your songwriting? Are there specific places you go to write?
STIES: Besides my elementary school parking lot, it's really anywhere but my house. I just have to be somewhere that's not normal for me; somewhere else to get my mind in the right place. Usually, I can't write unless it's like two in the morning either, I don't know why that is. I think I get really caught up in my daily life so my creative life and my daily life are kind of separate, it's like Batman or something. I found myself writing my best songs after being in super social situations. I'm somebody who gets socially anxious, so to be in a super social situation and then immediately rip out of that, I think that just left me at a very vulnerable place to write my songs more effectively.
PLEASER: You said you like to separate your daily life from your creative life. Do you feel like you draw inspiration from your daily life? Are there things that happened during the day that you like to jot down in a Notes app?
STIES: Yeah, that actually reminds me, for a while I had a long note in my phone of all these cool lines. I would write them down at work and be like, “Oh, this line is perfect for a song.” Going through that note and finding a line when I didn’t know what to write down was also super important to my writing process. And then sometimes I'd have to twist things to make them apply to the theme of the song, but I always made it work in the end.
PLEASER: I totally get that too coming from one writer to another. I know that the process is a bit different, but it's cool to hear that even though we're working on different types of writing, the process can be so similar.
STIES: The other thing I've realized with writing my music too, is, surprisingly, the writing part for me is the easiest, it just kind of flows out of me. And I'm not saying I'm a great writer or anything, but I just enjoy it. It doesn't feel like a chore to me. The whole production and the recording process feels like a lot more of a chore to me than the writing part.
PLEASER: When you come up with a song, do you have the production in mind? Or is the songwriting process completely separate from the production?
STIES: All my songs are not produced before I start them, but my process developed into hearing a set of songs I like, and then building the sonic vision in my head and then writing the lyrics, and then producing it. So, all my songs start with production but that doesn't necessarily mean they're actually produced. It's kind of the sonic vision I have in my head. That's just how my process works.
The first couple of times I tried making this album and failed, I would actually make a playlist of songs in the order of the tracklist. Like, I [wanted] this song on the album to sound like this specific song, and then I would just binge that playlist and kind of get a vision in my head for what I wanted things to sound like. Part of that might be because I don't find myself paying attention to lyrics quite as much as I do production. I mean, obviously, I pay attention to lyrics when I'm listening to music, but my brain really just focuses on production more than anything.
PLEASER: That's such a unique process, I love that! With that being said, who were some of those artists on those initial inspiration playlists?
STIES: Hippo Campus was a big one, that’s no secret to my fanbase. Dora Jar was pretty significant on some of this. I really like her stuff, especially her production. Dominic Fike. There's some Vampire Weekend on there. A lot of Dijon and Mk. Gee, who is Dijon’s guitar player, and also a fantastic producer. There's probably some Coin on there. Honestly, I think when I describe my sound to people, the closest thing I can compare it to it's like a hybrid between Coin and Dijon and Dominic Fike. I'd love to say I sound like Hippo Campus, but I'm not much of a technical guitar player.
PLEASER: Were there any challenges or major roadblocks when recording the album?
STIES: Yeah, I'd say one of the most difficult parts was actually finding time to record. I work two part-time jobs and I'm a full-time student, I'm constantly bouncing between my hometown and where I am now. So just finding a balance of time, not only physical time, but also mental time to keep myself from getting burnout to actually record this thing. It took like six months to record this album because it's just me doing 99% of everything. So a lot of these songs went through like 10 versions of me tweaking little things. I can't afford to buy the full version like Ableton, so I'd have to record eight tracks, bounce it, record eight tracks, bounce it, which was another challenge. I have access to a studio but I don't feel creative there. I feel like I'm more focused on cleaning up and setting things up than I am about being creative. So I've been telling people I'm trying to bring the next wave of like, true bedroom pop back, like Still Woozy, Boy Pablo, the early days of Clairo, where it actually was made in a bedroom, not a studio. Not that there's anything wrong with studios. But there's a certain vulnerability about spaces like this.
PLEASER: Creative space is so important to any creative process. I think that it's really cool that you chose to continue making music in your bedroom when you have that option. Are there any particular songs on the album that hold special significance to you?
STIES: Absolutely. “Baggage,” which is the second to last track on the album. I wrote that briefly before a pretty important trip to Mexico before my Senior Year of High School. I guess, it was one of the first trips I took when I was old enough to go out and take walks on the beach by myself. That trip is also where I found Del Water Gap, who inspired a lot of this record too. “Baggage” was a song written around that time. It was produced kind of like a Dijon track, I was listening to a lot of Dijon at the time. It was in an in-between phase because I knew these crazy changes were coming and I had my own high school drama struggles. Also due to COVID, I was only in high school for two years. So I was kind of learning how to be an adult before I even moved out. And I just love how that song turned out. It was on YouTube for a couple of years before I brought it back for the album and remade it.
PLEASER: Were there any tracks that surprised you in terms of how they turned out?
STIES: Yeah, the track “Disco” is actually my least favorite song on the album, but I've had so many people tell me that it's one of their favorites. It was originally like an Elton John piano ballad. That song went through so many complete rewrites, sonically and lyrically. So that one was definitely an interesting one.
PLEASER: Yeah, I really liked it though, the production was awesome. That was definitely my favorite on the first listen. Were there any tracks that didn't make the album that you might end up using on future projects?
STIES: There were no tracks that I wrote specifically for the album that didn't make it. There were a couple of demos a while ago that could have landed on this thing that didn't, just because I wasn't excited about them anymore. Those will probably stay in the past because some of the lyrical content is outdated and they didn't really go anywhere. I'm kind of a person where if I don't feel a song going somewhere while I'm writing it, I'll just dump it completely. I'm not one to hold songs in the vault. If I believe in a song I'm gonna see it through.
PLEASER: Do you feel like there's a time and a place for certain songs? Do you feel a different connection to the songs you wrote when you were first starting this album now that you are in a different place in your life?
STIES: Yeah, absolutely. “Fantasy” definitely comes to mind when you say that because I was writing about the same kind of relationship issues, but in a friendship instead of a romantic relationship. And it's kind of crazy how that's flipped with the whole context of the album, because I wrote that, like a year before I started on the album. That song was also really important too because it was the first song I released while I was in college when I'd started taking things a little bit more seriously. That opened a couple of doors for me. It's weird that it was the only song that was really out before the rest of the album.
PLEASER: Are there any future projects that you're currently working on?
STIES: I'm really passionate about going on tour, I want to go on tour. I don't know if it'll be with this album, or if it'll be with other stuff. My dream is to open for a 1000 cap venue, like just be an opener. At that point, I'll be super happy. So that's kind of my main focus right now, instead of putting out more music, because I really want to put out music to perform it and promote it. But every day, I'm getting another idea for a song. And it's like, I can make this so much better than anything in my album. But I try not to jump the gun too much because I gotta focus on making sure that what I've already made is successful before I focus on the next thing.
PLEASER: How do you see your music evolving in the future?
STIES: I think, like a lot of other artists that I'm into, I'm just aiming to kind of develop my own thing. I always start off with a band or a song that inspires me, but it always ends up kind of being my own thing. And at first that really frustrated me, because it was like, ‘Oh, why can't I make something that's good.’ But as the years have gone by, I've come to appreciate this, like, well, that's my sound, you know, I don't know how it gets there, but it always ends up sounding like me. I see myself running with that farther in the future. I also do want to look into getting produced by somebody else. Not necessarily exclusively, I still really want to be hands-on but I would love to work with somebody that I'm really inspired by. I'm usually pretty hesitant to collaborate, but I think it would be a good challenge for me to work with somebody else. I think that could push me to make better stuff. It's easy for me to get burnt out on songs.
PLEASER: Collaborations are where the magic truly happens! Who are those producers that you'd love to work with?
STIES: Caleb Hinz is somebody I really want to work with, Hippo Campus, Samia, Raffaella, Miloe. I would love to work with Jack Antonoff one day too. Also, George Daniel, super inspired by his stuff. And then a smaller one too, that I'm sure you are familiar with, is nickname jos. I would love to work with him, I'm super inspired by him. And Billy Lemos as well, I'm a big fan of Billy Lemos, he's an electronic producer.
PLEASER: How do you connect with your audience through your music and social media?
STIES: Making friends! I tried to be careful about not following back everybody that follows me because I don't want to become a follow-for-follow kind of thing but I really do try to respond to everything, I want to be the friend that makes music rather than “there’s this artist I really like.” So that's been really helpful through TikTok and Instagram and I know most of my audience starting out was all from Hippo Campus, meeting people online and showing people my music at shows.
PLEASER: What do you hope listeners take away from the album?
STIES: I really hope that they can take my waffling and kind of apply it to their own lives. Because that's the kind of music I love the most. I feel like growing up in Indiana, in a very conservative, not very indie-friendly area, there weren't a lot of people that really got my creative side. So I kind of had to make friends through artists. I hope that my music can do that for somebody else too.
PLEASER: Well, that's so exciting that your album is coming out and people will be able to connect with that in all different ways. I'm so excited for you. We're honored to have you on Pleaser. We loved having ya.
STIES: I remember first following you guys. And I was like, I have to get on this one day. It's a cool milestone for me.
Don’t miss your chance to listen to Sties’s new album, SUNGOLD, out on all streaming platforms February 2! And make sure to follow him on Instagram and TikTok @noahsties to stay up to date on what he’s up to next!
