UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT WITH CARLY COSGROVE

Photo by Julia Leiby

Local Philly band Carly Cosgrove tells us the ins-and-outs of the process of creating their new album See You in Chemistry.

In 2018, longtime fans of the popular Nickelodeon shows such as Drake and Josh and iCarly  Lucas Naylor (he/him), Tyler Kramer (he/him), and Helen Barsz (she/her) joined forces to create the band Carly Cosgrove. “The whole Nickelodeon theme came from the decision to name the band ‘Carly Cosgrove’ in the first place and so far we have been able to commit to that bit.” 

Along with the bit, the band creates music with track titles that subtly reference the television shows. “We try to tie every reference into the theme of the song, whether it be a character trait or how the music in the song generally makes us feel. If you take a close look, you could figure out the connection between each song name and it’s lyrical content. Some connections are easier to conclude than others. Additionally, we try not to name a song until it’s completely finished. It gives us something to look forward to, as if we’re christening a ship or something.” 

Speaking of something to look forward to, the band has an upcoming album, See You in Chemistry. Starting as early as 2019, Carly Cosgrove began to write portions of the record. Holding onto riffs and lyrics that would soon be revisited for the album, Carly Cosgrove explains, “We really wanted to make sure that everything stood the test of time for us and we wanted to create a realized album where the decisions we made were very deliberate. I think that we have a lot of rich musical history to dig into from Philadelphia and we’d like to think that it informed our understanding of ‘trope’ in music both in how to play into it and how to subvert it.”

They also give credit to Joe Reinhart from Headroom Studios for making the process as fun as it could be. “He pushed us to get the sound we were hoping to achieve. He’s super easy to work with and made recording an enjoyable and exciting process.”

When it comes to creating an album, you can expect some songs to come together instantly and others to be a bit more difficult to write, but Carly Cosgrove didn’t experience any major difficulties when creating the album. “It was like fitting puzzle pieces together to get it to come to fruition.  Some of them came pretty quickly, like one thing after the next.  Others took a little more time and were points of contention at times even.” 

Having the chance to experiment with different sounds and instruments throughout recording, the band goes on to tell us about a personal favorite of theirs, “Chowder.” “It has a different sound and feel from the rest of the record, so we were able to branch out and get super creative on it.” 

See You In Chemistry artwork designed by Skyler Norbury

They then continue to tell us about another personal favorite of theirs, the title track “See You in Chemistry.” “When we first started writing that song, all we knew was that we wanted it to be an epic closer. We just kept coming up with new sections that made the song more intense and almost unexpectedly ended up with an 8 minute track,” Carly Cosgrove explains. A song that fans can for sure look forward to hearing! 

On top of creating the album, Carly Cosgrove decided to put out their own zine as well, Titled “Seven songs in two years”. Following the theme of their single “Really Big Shrimp,” Carly Cosgrove says “We have a really unique feature as a band in that a lot of our early history has been documented by friends of ours who happen to be really talented photographers. Even though we’ve only been a band for about three years or so, we really feel like we grew as a band and as people since our beginning – we wanted to showcase that. Having a visual piece to go along with the music is something that’s really important to us. Art isn’t one dimensional and we wanted a compliment to the auditory experience of the song.” 

Before they released “Really Big Shrimp,” the single “Munck” had also debuted. Carly Cosgrove reveals to us that the songs are back to back in the tracklisting, an intentional decision for a plethora of reasons. “The overall arc of the album sees the narrator realizing that very little of their personal growth was tangible and over the course of the record they ‘find the floor’.  These two songs appear early on and somewhat represent the more hopeful side of that early spiral, with “Munck” seeing the subject attempt to stay true to their natural tendencies and “Shrimp” challenging that resolve as the subject experiences changes in their lives.” 

Carly Cosgrove can assure longtime fans and even new ones that they are super proud of the work put into creating the album, and they are taking risks and building a team to create the best music for it. “We really worked hard to make something that we feel is really special. A lot of people's efforts went into this, not just us three, but all those friendships came together and this is where it brought us.” 

They then tell us how they’re looking forward to everyone finally being able to listen to it however they’d like to. “We really love these songs. We really hope music fans do too. We all have our own opinions of this album. It'll be exciting to hear other people’s feelings on them too – which tracks are their favorites, what emotions does each song evoke for them, what lyrics feel the most poignant, etc. We also really look forward to touring and getting to play these songs live for our fans.”

Touring is, of course, a crucial component to any band's success and Carly Cosgrove doesn’t need to worry about not being able to play their new album. This coming spring, the band will be joining Retirement Party for their farewell tour. “Playing live is one of the best parts of being in a band. We've been sitting on these songs for a while now, so it'll be amazing to finally play them for other people.” 

Lastly we asked the band members “What’s next for Carly Cosgrove?”

This is what they had to say: “No clue! Hopefully more shows, more music, and more really rewarding experiences. In the meantime, I’m gonna take a bath.” 

See You In Chemistry will be available on every major streaming platform on March 25th. The album will be released physically as well in vinyl and cassette format. Vinyl records can be found on the Wax Bodega webstore and tape cassettes will be on the Moon Physics webstore. This is an album you’re not going to want to miss out on!

At this time, Carly Cosgrove would like to give special thanks to those that have helped them along the way – Santo Donia, 4333 Collective, their manager Ally, and all of their friends.