Horsegirl on working with Cate Le Bon on new LP, moving to NYC, peanut butter & more (BV interview)

A lot has changed since indie rock trio Horsegirl released their debut 7″ single in 2021. At that time they were still in high school in Chicago and part of a tight-knit scene that also included Lifeguard and Friko. They signed to Matador Records, worked with famed producer John Agnello at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio for their 2022 debut album, Versions of Modern Performance, which featured contributions from not one but two members of Sonic Youth.

Around that same time, the band relocated to NYC (bassist/singer Penelope Lowenstein and guitarist/singer Nora Cheng were attending NYU), opened for Pavement and The Breeders, and checked off other boxes that many veteran indie rock groups only dream of. It’s also stuff that could go to your head but Cheng, Lowenstein and drummer Gigi Reece are very down to earth and affable over Zoom a week before the release of their second album, Phonetics On and On, which they made over two weeks during the dead of Chicago winter 2024 with Cate Le Bon at Jeff Tweedy’s studio The Loft. It was a perfect pairing: Cate encouraged the trio to try new instruments and sounds, resulting in an album that’s lighter on its feel, more melodic, and an all-around step up from their dense, hazy and very good debut.

Subjects covered in our conversation: the creative process with Cate Le Bon, how songs changed in the studio, moving to NYC and whether they’re planning to return to Chicago, the pros and cons of releasing an album on Valentine’s Day, the “voutfit” and other essentials that make touring more livable, peanut butter preferences, their upcoming tour, the importance of taking creative pauses between albums, and more.

Read our conversation below.

Phonetics On and On by Horsegirl

When I heard that Cate Le Bon was producing your album, I got very excited. I thought that was a perfect fit and it clearly worked out great. Who suggested this pairing?

Penelope Lowenstein: Well, when we were doing press for the first record, someone once asked us if we could work with anyone, who we would work with, and we actually said Cate Le Bon. So she had been kind of a dream for a while, but then we demoed out the songs on this record a couple months in and sent them to everyone we work with. And it was really minimal and there was lots of strange experimentation with percussion and stuff, and I think they could hear the direction we were going in and they had suggested, “What about Cate?” And we honestly never thought she would be interested in working with a band that had only put out one record and we were so young, et cetera. So they suggested it, but we had been dreaming of working with her forever.

So what did Cate bring to the table that had previously not been on a Horsegirl record?

Gigi Reece: Well, I think that first thing that always comes to mind is she really expanded the way we talk about music. At least, in the studio, she gave a bunch more words that I felt like helped me understand how to talk about our desires in the studio. And I feel like she really changed the way that we can use all the tools of a studio and really give ourselves to that process.

Penelope: I remember on the first day of the session, we weren’t even going in to start recording or anything, we were just chatting with her. And she was like, “I think so long as things are playful and we find sounds that feel exciting and follow that path, creating kind of a creative energy in the studio, then there’s no way this won’t turn out good.” And that had not been our approach to recording. Our approach before had been very Albini-esque, capturing the live sound, that kind of philosophy and the idea of using the studio as an instrument. And having actually a creative experience in the studio was something we had never been comfortable with. And so we felt so on the same page with her, what Gigi was saying about language and stuff like that, that we were open to trying that process for the first time, which was something we had already been excited about exploring, but didn’t know where to start.

Your first album is dense and loud, and this one is more spare and has a lot more space in it. How much of that was already where you were going and how much of that was Cate Le Bon sort of being like Coco Chanel saying, “When you go out on a Friday night, look at yourself in the mirror and take one thing off,” that sort of…

Nora Cheng: We were definitely heading towards this direction just with how we were thinking about the songs and I guess the parts themselves. But then they got really pushed in the studio when we were finally in this creative space together with Cate.

Penelope: Sometimes I feel like she pushed us in a less minimal direction at times. Sometimes she would be like, “Why don’t you add a synth here?” Or, “Why don’t you add a percussion element here?” When I would be nervous that it was adding too much. So I think we chose her because she is such a master of minimalism and that was the direction we were excited about going in. But I think the lessons we took from her were more about arrangement in the studio than it was about minimalism, which was something we had already brought as an idea on our own, I think.

Is there an example on the new record of something that changed because of her that you can really tell?

Gigi: I was just thinking about on “Frontrunner,” the percussion, which is just the little taps. She fought hard for those.

Penelope: Yeah. That was the biggest battle we had.

Gigi: That was the biggest battle. And I mean obviously I was down to have them on there because I wanted to have more than tambourine. I mean, I was obviously happy with tambourine, but that’s the first one that came to my mind.

Penelope: And on “Julie,” that was a song that had been written with the full band arrangement with guitar, bass and drums. And then she pushed Gigi to go on a synth instead, which was something that we never would’ve done. The idea of having synth on a Horsegirl record, considering our upbringing as a rock band in Chicago, I feel like I would’ve been terrified to make that choice without her even bringing that to the table. Just because I felt nervous that we would be losing our ethos in expanding beyond the trio in the studio. She understood us so much that she told us, “You guys are so janky in everything you do. If you play a synth, it will sound as messed up as it does when you pick up a guitar.” I just needed someone I trusted to tell me that because I didn’t want to make a polished second record by any means. I wanted to make a sophisticated second record, but I didn’t want it to feel like we left all our rock sensibilities behind us.

So were most of the songs written when you went in the studio, like ready to go?

Gigi: Yeah, all of the songs except for “2468 “were basically completely done with the form. We had recorded them in demos and then Cate gave us some suggestions. Then when we got in the studio as we were recording and exploring, the songs that we had written and the parts we wrote before then started to change. But the songs were all the ideas that they were before we came into the studio.

Gotcha. As a personal fan of doot dos and la las, your record makes me very happy. That’s not a question, but I really like the vocal arrangements on this record.

Penelope: Thank you.

Nora: Thank you.

Penelope: We are fans of doot dos and la las as well.

Nora: Totally.

One of my favorites in that respect is, “Well I Know You’re Shy,” which is maybe the most pop song on the record. Could you walk me through how that song came about? 

Penelope: That song was the last full song written before we went into the studio. We live in New York now and we had gone back to Chicago to record this, and I was living at my parents’ house during that period. And I just went to my parents’ basement to practice for the recording session and then ended up writing that bass part, which became the start of the song. The bass part is so melodic and carries the melody of the song, whereas Nora’s guitar arrangement, I feel like almost takes the percussive role or adds more of a textural thing. So it was kind of a reversal of what bass and guitar I feel like usually do in that sense. Then we just kind of put it together in this final moment before heading into the studio. And lyrically, I mean, not to talk about it too much, it is very personal, but it is completely one of those things where you leave a recording session and you’re like, “Well, that just captures that exact moment.” And maybe if the recording session had been a couple months later, those lyrics would’ve been different or that song would not have existed. And it’s weird to look back on it because all the other songs were sat on for so long, and that song feels like just a moment that kind of snuck into the record to me.

Gigi: So true.

Penelope: I love that song, but I think there’s something sweet about how one of the most pop songs, it just kind of was really intuitive and out of nowhere.

Gigi: And I think at that point we had already really had a solid vision of what these songs were sounding like in the record we wanted to make. And I think we wanted to throw in another pop song.

Penelope: Totally.

Gigi: And it happened very naturally. But I think that the vision of the album really helped us create what that song is.

Penelope: Totally.

Your album is out on Valentine’s Day. Was that a conscious decision?

Penelope: No.

Gigi: No!

Penelope: Matador was like, “You could release your record in February on Valentine’s Day, or you can release it in the summer.” And we were like, “Well, we will choose Valentine’s Day, although it’s totally loaded.” So I want everyone to know it’s not loaded. No messages.

Gigi: It was not our choice. We were literally like, “Could it be even just one week later?” And they’re like, “No.”

Penelope: That’s how it goes. But now we love that it’s being released on Valentine’s Day, right guys?

Nora: Yeah. I think it’s sweet. Very sweet.

Gigi: We’re going to party it up for the singles.

Penelope: Totally.

You recorded this album like a year ago, so I’m sure you didn’t want to have to sit on it any longer than you already have.

Penelope: Certainly not, yeah.

Gigi: But now I feel very grateful that we have. I think that once we were hearing those songs in the studio, it was so exciting that we were like, “I want everybody to hear this as soon as possible.” But now that we’re a year after that, I feel really glad that we’ve gotten to hold it as our own for so long.

Do you all have another whole record worth of songs ready to go at this point?

Nora: No.

Penelope: We’re big proponents of pausing between records. I think a big part of why the sound of our second record is so different is because we were adamant about not hitting the road and touring for the rest of our lives. We really paused and lived for a second, and I think even this year, pausing and living for a second will give us a breath of fresh air for what do we want to do for this new record. And I believe that that’s important for bands, and I feel grateful that the people we work with do not pressure us into the other way around.

Gigi: I also think genuinely our lives wouldn’t allow for songwriting at the moment because all the time we get together, we basically have to spend rehearsing or preparing stuff for the album. So it’s just kind of like, it is a hard time anyways. That’s sort of what happened I feel like between the first and second album too, is we were just touring or you guys were in school, so the songs only came when we had the time to actually explore that.

Penelope: And there’s sweet, frivolous songwriting that comes up out of necessity in kind of a year off. But I think it’s fun to then get to look back on everything that you did in a year where you’re not trying to make a record and then just assess where you want to go.

Your lives changed so much from the making of the first record to this one. You moved to New York, you graduated high school, not in that order. You’ve opened for Pavement, The Breeders… how much of all that has changed the band dynamic, if at all?

Nora: I feel like it has kind of… Because in Chicago it’s like we had our families and we had the friends that we’d kind of grown up with for years, and now we all moved to this new unfamiliar city. So it’s kind of like suddenly we’re relying on each other like we’re family. And Penelope and I live together, so we all feel kind of like siblings and we annoy each other like siblings do.

Penelope: We were just talking about this because we were on a flight, and it’s like whenever we’re annoyed with each other, it doesn’t even mean anything, because at this point, we have spent so much time together and I know their families, it just is… Real time has passed and we’ve seen each other through all the shit that’s on the record and whatever. It’s very sweet. So not to mention the change that automatically happens between the years of 18 and 21. So seeing each other through that period I think has been very important for our friendship.

Nora: Mm-hmm.

Gigi: And I think moving to somewhere where you don’t know anybody else but each other, it automatically turns into like, “Okay, well, we were already best friends, but now you guys are all I know.”

Penelope: Yeah, and when that somewhere is New York and everyone’s so messed up. That was a joke. That was a joke.

You find New Yorkers more messed up than Chicagoans?

Penelope: Chicagoans, just like they have their head on straight. Chicagoans know who they are. New Yorkers are like, “I’m going to reinvent myself.”

OK, fair.

Gigi: But I also think New Yorkers our age, which none of them are actually New Yorkers.

Penelope: I’m speaking on the kids who moved to New York for college…who I also love, and I’m one of them.

Nora: Who we also are, yes.

Penelope: But when you move somewhere with your friends, it’s like they hold you accountable. You can’t take on a whole new identity.

Gigi: But this is The Brooklyn Vegan, so we’ve got to watch ourselves.

I’m not the Brooklyn Vegan. I just work for him.

Nora: Good clarification.

Speaking of New York and Chicago, what does New York do better than Chicago and vice versa?

Nora: Party harder in New York.

Penelope: New York is more fun.

Gigi: Yeah, I mean, it genuinely is like… The night never has to end here. Where in Chicago, it’s like it hits 1 AM and everyone’s like, “All right, the bar’s closed.” Which not that we’re huge all night partiers or anything, it’s just like when the bars shut at one, then I feel like a 10 PM hang is nowhere to be found.

Penelope: Yeah, that’s totally a silly example but I mean, I think Chicago is still a really livable city and New York is not. I think it’s so much easier to live as an artist in Chicago, which is why we probably will move back after we graduate. And so I think New York is really fun, but I also think that my experience in New York is I meet people who are from all over the place whereas in Chicago, all my friends grew up in Chicago, and it’s a city with an artistic history, but it’s also too freezing for anyone to move there who is not from the Midwest. So I really feel thankful to have come from a place that’s a little bit under the radar, but also has everything of a huge city and it’s livable and family friendly, just things like that, that New York… When there’s a great party, it turns out it’s not a great place to have a family.

I haven’t spent much time in Chicago, but I definitely agree that New York is a hard place to live except for the very few, but like Fran Leibowitz says, somehow we make it work. You’re going on tour soon. What are some things you need to make life on the road more liveable? 

Penelope: Granola, which is an annoying answer, but you don’t get to eat breakfast on tour. And so just a bag of food that you could eat in the van when you wake up is big for me because I’m a big breakfast person and these guys aren’t. And our tour manager likes to sleep in, so it’s my way of making sure that I can have a breakfast schedule alone on tour. That actually has brought me a lot of stability and schedule on the road that is important to me because I love my schedule.

Nora: This one’s a little bit general, but books are very important. We all kind of go on tour with a little stack. And for some reason, I’m a person who gets car sick very easily, and for some reason tour is like the van is the one place…

Penelope: The only time you can read in the car.

Nora: It makes no sense, but it’s the one place where this is okay, and this is what you want to be doing in this moving vehicle. So books are a big one.

Penelope: Another is the Voutfit, a word we created, which is your van outfit. The one outfit you wear in the van, because otherwise if you wear the outfit you want to wear on stage in the van, then it gets smelly really quickly, because things are hot, you’re under the lights. And so the Voutfit makes it so that way you have a clean pair clothing that you’re basically just sitting in the van in every day and then you change when you’re at the venue. But last tour, which was over the summer, my Voutfit was long pants and long sleeves. That wasn’t a very practical Voutfit.

Nora: But the concept is sound.

Penelope: I will never tour without a Voutfit again.

Gigi: Two that I thought of, number one is my stuffed cat from childhood. I bring her with me into every hotel room and she loves the van. But no, it genuinely is really nice to have something from home. And also when you’re in a different bed every single night, that’s nice to have something that is familiar like that. And I can’t foresee myself growing out of it really at this point. And then similar to Penelope’s granola, I like to keep a jar of peanut butter around.

Penelope: Oh, that’s good.

Gigi: I eat that stuff like ice cream. It really does not matter. Good protein. And it’s great with a banana that we might get on our show rider.

Penelope: Bananas are a good one. We toured with someone who was like, “Anytime you feel sick, you shouldn’t complain, you should just eat a banana and then you’ll feel better.”

Nora: Yeah, we throw bananas around the van, just pass the banana.

Gigi: Yes, famously, pass the banana.

What else is on your tour rider, if I may ask?

Penelope: Oh, okay. Another good one. This was kind of a fancy thing that we added recently that I love, dark chocolate because I eat an insane amount of dark chocolate every night, and I grew up like that. But it melts in the van immediately. So the first time we toured I was like, “This is going to be great.” My schedule, as I mentioned, I’m a big schedule person, I’ll like have dark chocolate, it’ll remind me of home. And then it all melted and was disgusting. So now we get it on the Rider and I feel like we eat that all.

Nora: Yeah.

Penelope: And Nora and I eat the dark chocolate here in our apartment. And honestly, it’s like a treat that is a little bit frivolous, which is nice when you’re on the road and maybe your dinner is hummus and pita from the rider, which we also have on there.

Nora: “Local lager,” that’s on the Rider, so the venues get to have a little fun with that.

Penelope: We like to take full advantage of, you know…

Nora: We also kept a tally of we put peanut butter on the rider and whether they did Jif or Skippy, we took a tally…

Penelope: And which one came out on top?

Nora: Jif.

Gigi: And I was converted to Jif from Skippy,

Penelope: We discovered that when you put the dark chocolate in the Jif, that’s like a really good combination.

So no venues try to give you the natural peanut butter that you have to stir for an hour before you can use it?

Penelope: We clarify.

Nora: Do we say “Jif or Skippy”?

Penelope: Yes. And I think that we had it so there was an A day and B day, and one day was Jif and the other was Skippy. And then we had tons of jars floating around. Correct me if I’m wrong, Gigi.

Nora: The options were Jif or Skippy, and then they would decide.

Penelope: Well, I felt like we had too many jars of peanut butter.

Nora: Yes, because that’s crazy to put on your Rider.

Penelope: Yeah, because we’re not eating a jar at night.

Nora: No.

Gigi: Yeah. But we would say Jif… It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. But I will say the one thing on the rider, or the one thing I feel like maybe I become a diva about on tour is if there’s no Diet Coke in the green room, that’ll get hard for me. I need the boost of caffeine.

Nora: Totally.

One last question. Any records or other bands that you want to let the people know about that you’re into these days?

Gigi: Our friend / person we’re about to tour with, Free Range is about to put out a record, and just put out the first single and it’s so good. And that album is so good.

Penelope: That album is so good.

Gigi: We recorded our albums at the same time and now we’re releasing them a month apart, so it’s very sweet.

Penelope: And then we’re also playing our Chicago release show and New York release show with this band Answering Machines who are originally from Denton. The live show is just so awesome, and when I saw them for the first time, it was completely reinvigorating, so I’m really excited for that show.

Phonetics On and On by Horsegirl

Horsegirl – 2025 Tour Dates
Sat. Feb. 22 – Chicago, IL @ Metro (Record Release Show) ^ &
Fri. Mar. 21 – Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church %
Sat. Mar. 22 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat %
Sun. Mar. 23 – Raleigh, NC @ Kings %
Mon. Mar. 24 – Richmond, VA @ The Warehouse %
Wed. Mar. 26 – Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom %
Thu. Mar. 27 – Somerville, MA @ Arts at The Armory %
Fri. Mar. 28 – Woodstock, NY @ Bearsville Theater %
Sat. Mar. 29 – Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw % &
Sat. June 7 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
Tue. June 10 – Hamburg, DE @ Molotow Club
Wed. June 11 – Berlin, DE @ Badehaus Szimpla
Sat. June 14 – Porto, PT @ Primavera Sound Porto
Mon. June 16 – Cologne, DE @ Bumann & Sohn
Tue. June 17 – Antwerp, BE @ Trix
Wed. June 18 – Paris, FR @ Petit Bain
Fri. June 20 – London, UK @ Scala
Sat. June 21 – Manchester, UK @ Band on the Wall
Sun. June 22 – Glasgow, UK @ Mono
Tue. June 24 – Dublin, IE @ The Workman’s Club
Thu. June 26 – Bristol, UK @ Thekla
Mon. Aug 4 – Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon #
Tue. Aug. 5 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry #
Wed. Aug. 6 – Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck $ #
Fri. Aug. 8 – Dallas, TX @ Sons of Hermann Hall #
Sat. Aug. 9 – Austin, TX @ Parish #
Mon. Aug. 11 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar #
Tue. Aug. 12 – Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room #
Thu. Aug. 14 – Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom #
Sat. Aug. 16 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall #
Tue. Aug. 19 – Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater #
Wed. Aug. 20 – Seattle, WA @ Neumos #
Thu. Aug. 21 – Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl #
Sat. Aug. 23 – Boise, ID @ Shrine Basement #
Sun. Aug. 24 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court #
Tue. Aug. 26 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater #

^ w/ Lifeguard
& w/ Answering Machines
% w/ Free Range
# w/ godcaster
$ co-headline with Sweeping Promises