Holly Miranda is on the rise

Did the album turn out how you wanted it to sound?
Yeah. Well, I didn’t have that much of an idea of how I wanted it to sound really, Y’know, kind if just…. going along. But I love it.

Who did you work with making the album?
Dave Sitek, from TV on The Radio produced it.

How did you end up working with him?
He’s been an old friend of mine for a long time. It was just something that we talked about, trying to get our schedules to overlap so we both, y’know… had a month off together. Then we ended up working from like December 19th to January 19th, not this year, but… over Christmas. When no one was doing anything.

When playing the songs live, do you tend to change them around a bit from the albums arrangements?
Yeah, we change it alot. We just did a show in New York where we had a seven piece band. At one point we had thirteen people on stage, that’s not something I can do on a tour. I can’t bring that many people, I can’t afford to bring that many people out. So now we’re touring as a four piece. Y’know, we kind of lose horns and strings but then you kind of try to make it up, everyone’s playing and singing and doing as much as they can at one time.

Do you enjoy touring?
Yeah, I mean… ‘enjoy’. I do like it, it’s really fucking hard. It’s definately not a vacation, but it can be fun.

How did you end up signing with XL?
I don’t really know. I was in negotiations with a couple of different labels, and it was taking really fucking long. It was getting really draining, and then XL came out of nowhere. I mean, Sitek, y’know, TV on the Radio is on Beggars, and I have alot of friends with Beggars. But I didn’t really know XL, except for like Elvis Perkins. But they kind of swooped in with the perfect equation and it just made sense.

Had you been to London before you came last year? Because you played that show at the Boogaloo club.
Yeah, I did something at Boogaloo in May, then I was back here on the 4th of July for an XL showcase. And then, I toured with the XX and played a show at The Social (TLOBF’s Club Night), just me and Timmy. So this is my 4th time to London, but no, I hadn’t been here before.

How does London compare to New York?
I haven’t had a ton of time to really explore the city on my own. I have friends here that take me around, to the whatever….

Would you ever consider living in another city besides New York?
Yeah. I think about it all the time. I mean, I’ve been in NY for 12 years now. But I’m kind of ready for a change, but I don’t know where. It’s hard, it’s hard to live somewhere else after being in NY for so long. But definately it would have to be a city. But I like the ocean alot.

Where did you live before you lived in NY?
Detroit. And I was in Nashville. I grew up between Detroit and Nashville. I moved to New York when I was 16.

Why did you move?
My old sister lived there at the time. And I’d gone to visit her over the summer when I was 15, going on 16. I played an open mic night at this bar in the East Village. I just knew that it was what I wanted to do…

So, you’ve been getting alot of press attention lately. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve had happen to you since all this started?
What started it all, what’s the weirdest thing to me, was the Kanye blog. I don’t know him, and I don’t really know his music. A friend of mine wrote me and was like ‘How’d you do it?!’ and I hadn’t even seen it yet, I was like ‘What are you talking about? Did you meet him?’ and he was like angry at me that I hadn’t told him, this huge Kanye fan. I was like ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’, he’s like ‘you’re on Kanye’s blog. This is gonna be huge’. I was like ‘Ok. That’s weird’. Since then, every interview is like ‘how’d you meet Kanye?’.

Have you met him since?
No. He was at a TV on the Radio show I went to, but Dave was like, ‘Nah, I don’t think you want to meet him’. He didn’t want to introduce me, it was like, alright, whatever. I don’t really care…

I really like the ‘Forest Green’ 7″. I like the artwork on it, I think it’s really beautiful… who did that?
This artist, a really good friend of mine in New York, David Hochbaum. Who I actually stole this tattoo from, he has a little tiny black heart (shows a tattoo on her neck of a black heart). He’s one of my really good friends, and I stared at his little black heart forever… His is much smaller. I was like ‘can I steal that?’, so I stole it. And now whenever he comes to my shows he’s really self conscious about people thinking that he took it from me. And we’ve actually been talking about getting little temporary tattoos to give out at shows (laughs)… which I’m sure he would love. But he’s actually doing the artwork on the record too. He and I worked on a painting. You should look at his website, it’s davidhochbaum.com. He does like, alot of stuff, he did a series for a while… He takes photographs of girls, mostly topless or naked (I wasn’t), and he puts the photograph onto the canvas, he transfers it onto the canvas, and he paints a really magical, y’know, sometimes the girls are riding dolphins or, crazy oceans, y’know. Just really trippy. So, he took a photograph of me holding this cathedral he built, and I’m wearing this long dress, it’s really stoic, and we put it into a canvas. And he painted me in this gold leaf forest where I’m taller than all the trees. So that’s originally what I thought might be the cover of the record, but I instead made it so that there’ll be a fold out poster of the artwork. And we also used his other artwork for the cover.

Do you do much of your own painting and stuff like that?
Yeah. I draw. I’m working on a graphic novel…

Oh! Really?
Yeah.

I love that stuff!
Me too. I’m obsessed with Jeffrey Brown… and I found this new one recently called ‘Three Storey Man’, have you read that one?

No…
I can’t remember who wrote it but it’s about this guy that grows to be three storeys tall. And it’s told in a few different chapters, it’s told from the viewpoint of his mother, his wife and his daughter. It’s like 3 different stories. It’s really really sad… but it’s really beautiful. So check it out.

Have you got many new songs ready?
I do, I have quite a few new songs. I haven’t had alot of time to teach them to the band, or to figure out full band arrangements. We’ve worked about two into our set, I don’t know if we’ll play them today. But I’m trying to find the time right now, to work out and stuff. I just kind of got a little portable… I actually plan on doing that today, I’m just gonna go back to the hotel, work on a little XX cover. I got a little portable studio, like the M-Box minis, have you seen those?

No.
You can plug a microphone into a computer… yeah, I love recording.

What instruments do you play besides guitar?
Piano, piano was my first instrument. The guitar. I can play some trumpet… y’know, anything piano related.

I literally just remembered, when I first found your music, I found… I’ve forgotten the name. There used to be that video website, that recorded stuff in Amsterdam….
Mhhmm.

I’ve forgotten what it’s called.
Yeah… it closed down. That was from the tour with Scott Matthew.

You played ‘Hallelujah’…
No, I played…

Well, that’s what it was labelled as…
Yeah, it’s not THE ‘Hallelujah’… I forgot about that song. I should try to record that (laughs). Maybe I’ll try to record it, and then I’ll send it to you. And you could post it with this…