SPILL FEATURE: IT’S JUST ME TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF MY LIFE – A CONVERSATION WITH BRIGHID FRY (HOUSEWIFE)

IT’S JUST ME TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF MY LIFE

A CONVERSATION WITH BRIGHID FRY (HOUSEWIFE)

Housewife is the musical project of Brighid Fry, who is one Canadian artist that should be on everyone’s radar. The band had previously been known as Moscow Apartment. Formed in 2017, the name was changed to Housewife in 2022, and in March 2023 became Fry’s solo project.  With a timeless sound that is both nostalgic and fresh, their newest EP, Girl Of The Hour, is a dazzling spectacle featuring contagiously cathartic choruses, grunge-tinged pop hooks, haunting vocals, poignantly tender songwriting, and enthralling instrumentation.

“It’s a coming of age – It’s just me trying to make sense of my life and figure that out,” Fry says about Girl Of The Hour. “It’s just my experiences and trying to make sense of the last couple of years.”

“Life Of The Party” addresses Fry’s anxiety and the assumptions people have about Fry being super confident because they play music on stage. “I have never been a confident person, and even before doing music, I’ve always been perceived as a confident person,” they say. “Ever since I was really little, people were like, ‘Brighid’s just this cool and confident person,’ and I’m like, ‘No, I actually have like crippling anxiety that I am on medication for.’ Housewife doesn’t feel like a separate thing to me. It’s not like, ‘I have to step into this different role.’ It’s just I love being on stage, so I’m gonna feel confident there. But I think that perception of me being this really confident person has always been there my whole life. I don’t know where it comes from.”

Reflecting on the writing process behind “Work Song”, Fry exclaims, “It’s a song about burnout, just being a bit of a mess, not having a healthy relationship to work, and it’s something I really struggle with. I’ve been working at music professionally and non-stop since I was like 14. I’m neurodivergent, so I go really hard and then have to take a lot of time off. It’s not a healthy dynamic. I’m learning to try to find a more consistent way of having a healthier relationship to work… I have high expectations for myself and often don’t reach those. It’s just about my work ethic.”

“Divorce” sees Fry drawing inspiration from a variety of artists. “We were kind of all over the place, especially because my friend Hans [Li], whom I co-produced that with, is usually in a completely different musical lane than me like he does a lot more R&B stuff,” they note. “Feist was a really big inspiration. “$20” by boygenius was a really big inspiration. I love boygenius. Frank Ocean. Weirdly enough there’s Frank Ocean influences in this song. I was inspired by Slow Pulp and Lizzy McAlpine.”

In the demo of “Wasn’t You” there was no outro. Eventually, Fry settled on one. “I wanted the outro to feel like, you know when you’re at a show, and maybe it’s the not last show of the night, but it’s the last song of the band’s set, and it’s high energy” they state. “I wanted the feeling to the end of that song to be like, ‘OK. I’m really sweaty and I’m gonna grab a glass of water at the bar before coming back to the show,’ which is kind of a weird thing, but that’s the vibe I wanted the outro for that song to create. It is usually our last song in our set now and I think it manages to give that vibe.”

Girl Of The Hour has a visual component for each song. There is four music videos and two visualizers. One music video Fry loved filming was the one for “Matilda”. “That one was really cool to see because I had COVID right before making it, so in the actual immediate pre-production process, I had to be hands-off, but I had made a really in-depth concept and had all the ideas out, so I had to trust these people to put my ideas in place, and then it turned out exactly what I envisioned,” they comment. “I’m really proud of the music video for that one because I think it was the one I was most directly involved in and really it was kind of my idea from beginning to end. I’m also proud of the music video for that because I love working with friends of mine who are like my contemporaries. I got to bring in one of my dear friends to act in it, which was really fun. I got my roommate to do costumes for it. She’s an incredibly talented designer.

PURCHASE/STREAM GIRL OF THE HOUR

The music video for “Life Of The Party” was another enjoyable experience. “A friend of mine, who’s very talented, he’s in film school, my co-director, just reached out to me, and we decided to do a music video together,” says Fry. “I had a very simple idea for it, and he turned it into this grandiose thing with tons of extras and tons of crew. [It became] this huge thing that I was not expecting, but I think it turned out really wonderful.”

Fry also is an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive freedom, and environmentalism. They have played at numerous Women’s Day events, spoken at the Canadian Climate Music Summit, and is a co-founding member of the Canadian chapter of Music Declares Emergency, among many other things. Fry thinks social activism is very important. “I think it should be important to everyone; it’s important to me because it’s my lived experience. My Mom has always been a climate activist, so it’s something growing up I was always aware of, but we’re seeing the effects of climate change all over the world pretty directly. And I am queer, and I am a woman. It’s not like, ‘I need to be a champion of these things,’ it’s just that these things are important, so I’m gonna talk about them at every opportunity I get because they are things that affect me daily. People will specifically ask, ‘Why do you think it’s important to talk about climate in music specifically in the music industry?’ To me, it’s not about the importance of the music industry specifically, like I do think there’s a lot to be said about art tying into activism, but it’s like, this is the sector I’m in, so I’m gonna do the change, and I’m gonna do the work in a sector I’m in and a sector I know people. Everyone should be doing that work in their own way in their own spaces, like in theatre or finance; if that is your life and if that’s the people around you, then do the activism that relates to improving that kind of section of the world.”

“I think anyone who is not using their platform to speak out at this day and age should kind of feel ashamed, to be honest. We are seeing the backslide into fascism in many countries in the world, and everyone should be talking about it, everyone should be worried about this, and everyone should be trying to figure out how they can help people who are at more risk.”

Recently, Fry came out as nonbinary. “I’ve grown up in a very queer-friendly community and neighbourhood, so it’s not necessarily something I ever struggled with,” they say. “I think the idea people have of gender stuff is like if you’re nonbinary, you have to be androgynous and look a certain way. It just took me a long time to realize what I was feeling was this gender stuff because I still love wearing makeup and I love dresses. Meeting more genderqueer people, seeing more on the Internet, and reading more about it; I was like, ‘OK. Right. Gender identity and gender presentation are two separate things.’ Once I was really able to identify that then I was like, ‘OK. All this stuff that I like have been feeling is gender stuff and realizing, yeah, I feel genderqueer or nonbinary.’”

Girl Of The Hour dropped on March 7th. “I just always hope that people can relate to the songs and find them comforting in some way because the process of making them is comforting for me,” comments Fry. “I don’t want people to necessarily relate to the sadder parts of the songs, but if they are, having something they can kind of relate to and attach to and maybe help process stuff because that’s such a big thing for me, both the process of making my own music but there’s also been so many songs that have been such a great help for me… “Divorce” and “Matilda” are about grief and loss, and I think everyone has those moments. “Life Of The Party” and “Work Song”, those songs I think, are a bit more vulnerable and maybe stuff that isn’t talked about as much, which those songs are about neurodivergence and feeling like an odd one out. I want there to be people who feel like they feel represented and reflected by my songs.”

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Main Photo Credit: Quinn Hall | Background Photo Credit: Carly Boomer