On the Rise
Claud

“When I first write a song and the concept is new to me, and everything sounds different, I’m like, ‘This is revolutionary. I’ve never written anything like this before.’”

It’s a cold day in January when Claud Mintz begins to describe the process of crafting the debut Claud album Super Monster, over a Zoom call from a relative’s warmer LA home. They’ve resided there for the past few months, watching episodes of Shrill (starring SNL’s Aidy Bryant) in their free time.

“I was really listening to a lot of music that I grew up on at the time when I was writing my record,” Mintz explains. “The Smashing Pumpkins and even some older Lady Gaga. My record feels nostalgic to me. I don’t know if it’ll feel nostalgic to anyone else. But to me, it feels very reflective and like a time capsule.”

Super Monster stands out as a creatively ambitious debut, blending bedroom recording with mixing done at New York’s famed Electric Lady Studios. Located on an unsuspecting street in Greenwich Village, Claud is now amongst the many legendary artists — including Stevie Wonder, Adele and Patti Smith — who’ve all finalized works of art at Jimi Hendrix’s commissioned studio.

“It was cool, hearing it on desk monitors and stuff that’s in my headphones, in a room as spectacular as Electric Lady was a great experience,” the 21-year-old Mintz tells me. During their time mixing their debut, the recording studio’s manager gifted Mintz an old artwork he found from the late Daniel Johnston’s sketchbook titled “Claud and the Super Monster” — inspiring the album’s title. “I asked the family if I could use Super Monster as my album title, but I didn’t use the artwork. I drew my own.”

“It just really struck a chord with me,” Mintz says. “One of my best friends in the world showed me Daniel’s work probably four or five years ago now. Ever since then, I’ve just really been intrigued by his work. I find it interesting how he talks a lot about creatures, monsters and feeling like Frankenstein — I tend to talk about that too.”

Claud’s initial path leading up to the realisation of Super Monster was a childhood growing up outside of Chicago and splitting time between New York and Los Angeles. “It was a suburb. It was a typical suburban-artist-leaves-suburb and going-to-big-city type of thing for me. I feel like everywhere I lived definitely informed my music.”

They briefly attended Syracuse University for freshman year in upstate New York, meeting longtime friend, producer and album collaborator Josh Mehling during the time spent there. The pair initially formed Toast — and kept the group’s name, until a lawsuit from Wonder Bread prompted a shift. Toast’s sound leaned into an airy bedroom pop, with music released in 2018 and invites on various tours. “In summer, The Marías & Triathlon asked us to go," Mintz tells me. "The person who was in [Toast] with me didn’t want to go on tour. He wants to stay in school. I wanted to go, so I was like, ‘Okay, let’s just try this first semester, I’ll go on tour.’ And then, I just kept getting asked to go on tour. I never really went back to school, but I still take online classes.”

Claud began gaining traction as a solo artist in 2019 with “Wish You Were Gay”, a soft ballad about longing, in this case, for a straight girl. The track, alongside others included on their EP Sideline Star, released later that year, invited Generation Z to relate to a musician representative of queer and non-binary identities across the globe.

“Writing from your own experiences is way more interesting and cathartic than trying to be poetic if that makes sense,” they say. “I think a lot of the message is ‘It’s okay to fall in love. It’s okay to have these feelings. And it’s okay to get emotional.’”

After uploading their music to Soundcloud, they soon crossed paths with Phoebe Bridgers, who discovered Mintz through the streaming platform. The pair had several meetings before the pandemic - with Claud eventually announced as the first artist on Bridgers’ new label imprint Saddest Factory Records last October - and Super Monster as the first full-length release. “[Phoebe] is good at marketing," Mintz explains. "She has so many cool ideas. Her manager is hands-on with the label too. For me, I wanted to stay some form of independence, and it’s a small business. I still have full creative control,” Claud says. “When the record comes out, maybe I’ll do a couple more videos, but I just am excited to dive back into songwriting. The music’s gonna do what the music’s gonna do. I hope it touches a lot of people."

Super Monster builds upon the elements of love, loss and longing with songs like the nostalgic “Ana” and ending track “Falling With The Rain”, while still shifting Claud into new sonic territories. “I co-wrote it two years ago, maybe, and I liked the production, but it didn’t fit with the rest of the record,” they explain about the album’s closure. “I think we reproduced it three or four times.” On the latter half of the album, “That's Mr. Bitch To You” is another song that brilliantly encapsulates Claud's range. Specifically, their ability to turn a negative encounter (“Somebody called me a bitch, and I was like, ‘That’s Mr. Bitch to you,’”) into a knockout song that blends early 2000s pop-punk influences with a modern middle finger to misogynistic men.

“I cry a lot, and I’m sensitive, but I’m also strong," Mintz says. "Humans are complex beings. We’re not one-sided creatures. There’s a duality in everything. I like being able to showcase that. I don’t hold anything back. I’m pretty honest.”