A Lifetime of Harmony Tividad

I first met Harmony Tividad in the mountains of Idyllwild, which is probably where you’re supposed to meet someone like Harmony. Somewhere high up, slightly outside of reality, and a little mystical. She's spiritual, she's electric, she hands you her energy. And at the same time, there's a quieter version of her in the corner, clocking everything.

That doubleness is the engine of Lifetime, her new album. Executive produced with Yves Rothman, it was written across the years after Girlpool, the beloved indie-rock duo she co-founded. Now, her new album arrives as Hollywood indie heartbreak candy for the new age: emotionally fervent, spiritually relocated, existentially aware, and a little bit brooding girl at the function. Across twelve tracks, Harmony holds the constants of life and its transitional nature in the same hand. Lifetime is about the pursuit of freedom on your own terms, even when those terms are being rewritten daily.

At some point during our catch-up, Harmony pulled up some blurbs she had written for the label. On the title track: “Mundane things make up our lives, and it passes without our recognition, and that is the beauty and the pain of living.” On “In the Light of the Sun”: “There is no reprieve from the weight of life, but finding beauty in the sun, and the levity, and the laughter is all we can offer ourselves.” On “Pantomime”: “There’s this pressure to settle down and become a good woman or a wife. A lot of us are taught to silently feel.”

Which is maybe the great tension of Harmony’s work: she is interested in freedom, but not as a clean escape. Freedom, for her, is messier and more lived-in. It is the party girl and the writer learning to share the same body. It is the outsider deciding she can operate perfectly well from outside the room. It is writing every day, believing in past lives, loving LA’s ghosts more than its present performance of itself, and insisting that joy is not the opposite of seriousness. It is the thing that makes seriousness bearable, and, if you’re lucky, even fun.

Gutes Guterman: First things first—how are you feeling about the album coming out?

Harmony Tividad: I'm so excited, I'm really happy. I just shot a video yesterday for "Best Dressed," and I'm feeling really pleased. It's really cute.

For anyone meeting you for the first time through Lifetime, how would you describe it?

It's this overarching processing of growing up and bridging all the parts of myself together. I've always been confused about how I could be so social but then also really a writer—like those personalities don't go mix, they don’t go together. Lifetime is the integration of all my beingnesses.

It's like all your phases or something. How would you break them down?

I've always been a party girl, I think is the term. During Girlpool days, I kind of hid that that was such a big part of my personality, at least when sharing things about my work. People who were around knew, but people who didn't know me didn't. I've just accepted that I require a certain amount of chaos to keep myself stimulated in life. That's one element. The other is this more introverted, observing person that coexists in all those settings…Processing and clocking silently, internalizing things in a really emotional way that I'm not leading with. So it's about the writer and the party girl, and letting her be both.

She should be both!

There's also this energy I've reckoned with as I've gotten older. How you're supposed to live your life as a lady, what the appropriate way to live is...There's a lot of processing social norms and wanting to exist outside of them. Being a little bit inappropriate, not the right way — that's definitely part of it too.

What are your rules to live by? What's important to you day-to-day?

To be really grateful for whatever comes your way, but also not be forceful with what you're asking of the world. An element of surrendering. And leading with as much love and compassion and patience as I can muster, even in moments that are compromising. "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" is such a trite-sounding thing to say, but that song and its themes really stuck with me. One of the songs on the album was kind of inspired by it, because I've listened to that song so much. Every version. I'm obsessed with it. There's a song called "In the Light of the Sun"—to me, life should be joyful and fun, and if a moment is painful, finding the levity in it. That's a big thing for me. You're inevitably going to have uncomfortable situations throughout your life, and how you approach them changes your life. That's what I think about all the time.

Those are great rules. You said you're a party girl…From one party girl to another, what makes a good party?

Oh my god. I think there is such a thing as too many people. That's number one. True maturity is knowing there's a party with too many people. Music, but not so loud that you can't talk. An outdoor area, but one that isn't isolated from the inside. These are the things I think about.

That's a very LA party request.

It can't be too far from outside, because then it's disjointed. I've been to a lot of parties where there's a porchway up a bunch of fucking stairs or down a bunch of fucking stairs, and you're like, drunk people are going to die tonight in this scenario. It creates social awkwardness. But there's also something intangible that needs to be named. If the energy is right, it's right, and if it's not, it's not. That is real.

Spiritually, everyone has to be in the mood for the same kind of party for it to work.

Yeah. There has to be a consciousness that has joined together in the right way.

You're a born-and-raised Angeleno, right? And songs like "Mulholland Drive" really lean into LA mythology. What's your relationship with LA right now?

I grew up here and I had a hard time with it. I felt like there was a secret I wasn't part of. But I have that relationship to life in general. At this point, I've accepted that I don't need to be on the inside. I can operate perfectly based on how I feel. I have outsider syndrome forever, but that created a strained relationship with LA growing up, because I just didn't feel like I was supposed to be here. As I've gotten older, I've leaned more into the vintage mythos of LA rather than the modern one, because the modern one makes me feel alienated. I watch a lot of old movies, I love reading about the history of different places, the land where I grew up, and where I live now. Reading about all of that makes it feel more sacred and spiritual. Growing up in LA, in the 2000s and 2010s, it was cool, but it wasn't my scene. I appreciate it now, but it didn't make me feel like I belonged. I love all the old history and the characters. Seeing how long these character types have existed gives me appreciation for the more complicated people I meet. There are lots of ways to write off people today—lots of new ways always being invented to write off people—but when I remember these tropes have existed for literally generations, it makes it more funny than painful to exist around people I don't relate to.

This is the Out of Body issue, so I have to ask—have you ever had an out-of-body experience?

The most tangible one, or like my strongest memory, was when I was a kid at the beach. My dad always says, "Don't turn your back on the ocean, Harmony." I got overtaken by a wave and was just rolling in it, and I felt like I was outside myself, like I could see myself from a third-person view. I wasn't even drowning, but somehow I just wasn't in my body in that moment. It was scary. I felt like I could see myself from the outside.

Was there any time while working on Lifetime that you felt like you were seeing yourself from the outside? Or is it just so personal?

To be a writer is to be constantly trying to do that. Especially when the work is so intimate and self-critical, attempting at self-awareness. There's always a pursuit of: can I really get a grasp on what I'm doing and who I am as an outsider? You can't, but it's fun to try.

I feel like I know the answer to this, but do you believe in past lives.

Yeah, 100%.

You're a very spiritual person. Fair to say? On the record?

On the record. Put it down.

How much does that spirituality contribute to making music or writing music?

It's like everything, but not on purpose. I'm not going out of my way to be more spiritual. It's more of a daily practice of just being present and appreciating things as they are. That's the spiritual reality I want to practice. I'm interested in taking it further, but for me, spirituality should be considered more commonplace, not something we have to go out of our way to get or access. When I write, which is every day, constantly, it's just always right there. Writing to me is inherently a practice of experimenting with my consciousness, and the wider scope of what I know or don't know.

That's a beautiful answer. What's your ideal way to write, or ideal place to write?

I mainly just write in this bedroom, and it's perfect because no one is here. I write my best stuff alone, then bring it to the record with someone. I write on guitar. Sometimes I'll take a few days off because I'm busy, but sometimes I'll have full ideas come to me, melodies and lyrics, and it's just right there. I sit down, and it's 10 minutes, and I have a full song. That happened today. Sometimes that song doesn't even need to go anywhere. It's just about always allowing the thing to run and not stopping the process. Even if the idea is just a sentence, putting it in my phone—never neglecting that creative urge. I want it to feel like it can be experienced in its full capacity. I don't want to ever judge it or subdue it.

How does that carry over into the studio?

It depends on who I'm working with. Some people are more producer-y and drive the ship more. I also demo my own stuff. When I'm doing it alone, I'm going really fast, and it doesn't sound that good. I mean, it doesn't sound bad, but I'm not a super adept producer where I have my plugins and setup down. When I'm working with people, I'll play guitar, I'll be like, "this drum sound, this drum pattern." When I'm alone, I'm in locked-in mode on some freaky weirdo thing that maybe sounds like poop. Then I listen back, and I hear things as they could be…That's what an artist is, to hear things for what they could be. Then I bring it to a producer, and they actually flesh it out, make the sounds sound normal and not like in my head, where I'm like, "this sounds like it was born in a trash can."

People always say, "I see the potential." But you literally hear the potential.

Yeah. I honestly think it's delusional. I don't think I understand what it sounds like. I'm like, "This sounds amazing and perfect," and then you bring it to a producer and they're like, "Yes, but…" I can sing a melody and I'm like, "this is this, and these words." I'm so songwriting-focused that I hear things before they're there. Some people are great at production, but for me it's word and melody. Even the chords, I'm like, I don't care. It's just the words and the melody. That's where I am.

Is there a song you're most excited to play live once the album's out?

I need to get a band together so bad, and I keep putting it off. I simply must do it. Playing "Apple Pie" with a band will be cool. But also the title track "Lifetime" and "In the Light of the Sun.” To me those two are the thesis of the album, and they're in the dead center of it. They're pretty existential. The whole album is a bit of brooding girl energy. Playing them will make me feel strange in a good way, which is the goal.

Anything else you want to say about the album?

We deserve joy and fun, and to live freely, not so seriously. There's seriousness, but we can bring joy to those moments. That's what I want Lifetime to be about. This felt series of experiences that are layered, but that we also love. What would we do without those moments? Life would be so dull if it was just, like, I'm eating pancakes every day. We would never appreciate that we're having pancakes.