Following acclaim for her affecting sound collages, the Texan’s new album flips her old ‘emo ambient’ to ‘ambient emo’, inspired by Young Thug and Sparklehorse – and an unexpected show of charity from the Wilco frontman
For Claire Rousay, a bed can be a studio, a sanctuary and a suffocating cocoon. On the cover of her exquisitely sad new experimental pop album Sentiment, she is seen huddled under the covers, blankly staring at the camera. On her current tour, she is recreating on stage the various bedrooms where she made the record, complete with 16ft walls, a poster of avant garde hero Arthur Russell and, at the centre, a bed. When we speak via a video call in March, Rousay is sitting cross-legged on her mattress in a striped T-shirt, the Los Angeles sun providing a gauzy glow through the window.
“The bed has been very central to me throughout the last couple years of making music. I’ll even mix tracks in it,” she says. “I’m also just so depressed, all the time. So I’m in bed a lot.” She smiles and lets out a small laugh, dulling the sting of her candour; no matter how bleak the conversation gets, she maintains a dry, mischievous wit. Some days, she adds, she’ll pull her blackout curtains down at around noon and stay in bed until the following morning. “It’s comforting but also enabling. My therapist says it’s an unhealthy coping mechanism.”
