Notes on Lina Tullgren’s newest release Free Cell

Photos and feature by Lola Pistola

Enhanced by a variety of textures and elevated sonic experimentation, Free Cell doesn’t built up by suit, instead Lina Tullgren’s sophomore effort responds to the expectancy of life and manages to achieve it’s final form without the need to press the reset button. Created in different spaces, Free Cell muses in the idea of being in the moment. After longtime collaborator and friend Ty Ueda was unexpectedly injured in a car accident, they took power in adaptation and started producing on their own. The result is a moving and chaotic portrait of the Queens-based artist — a soft, yet colorful and reverberating effort that implements a mysterious foundation from the get go, only to later, and defiantly, motion between scenarios that are borderline theatrical.

For example, in the title track “Free Cell” Tullgren sets the tone with introspection,

Staring into my golden dreams / Staring backwards and in between

In “110717” Tullgren sings lethargically, still emphasizing syllables along the guitar melodies — it’s incredibly catchy and moving. The solo is effervescent, controlled, less dramatic than other endings in the album. Although we see more of this later in “Bad at Parties”, a personal and sad, maybe nostalgic track, where emotionally investing yourself to it while listening was not only my first impression but the straight up reaction. “Glowingx10000” and “Nervous Yet” have more prominent guitar arrangements, their voice sounds convincing, commanding, cohesively dismantled throughout the songs respective climaxes. For “Glowingx10000,” their voice leads the path against a mountain of strings. In “Nervous Yet,” probably one of the loudest and fuzziest tracks, there’s a paradoxical interaction between the guitars and the song structure, an arrangement that feels like a false, but intentional step. Sort of like standing in the middle of a crowd screaming to yourself. Towards the end of the record, nothing is lineal. Tullgren approaches and opens up to the listener with intentional sounds that are just intimately colossal.

After their show at Webster Hall in Manhattan, Lina took the time to chat a little with us. Check out the interview below

How space has changed the writing process since Won? I read Free Cell comes out after being a little bit reclusive while living in New England?

I wrote most of the songs for Free Cell while spending time at my parents place in Maine. A bulk of the material was also written ahead of a tour where I was performing solo, so I thought more about space within the songs and what had to be conveyed in a more sparse performance. The songs from Won feel for me, very much like rock songs — they’re all structured similarly and a little blown out. After releasing that album I felt I had succeeded in making rock music and could move into a new approach, one with more space and more abstraction within song form.

There seems to be two sides to the melodic approach of the songs. One is meditative, defiant, and the other deconstructed, shifting heavily and sometimes unexpectedly towards chaos. The atmosphere feels as a current moment of adaptation, of evolving with or within yourself. Is that the case?

I think it’s more about sitting inside those dualities as opposed to seeing them as two distinct worlds and finding ways to convey that sonically; the record was written and recorded in between moments of intensive touring and the burnout that follows those phases. It also is a portrait of growth, of finding power to make work on my own.

I once talked with Sasami, also classically trained, for an interview and she mentioned that she approached music writing in studious way, and she didn’t started writing music until she felt she had the skills to. How do you approach your education and apply it towards your writing? Do you go to that space at all?

I think more about the intense self discipline that you develop as a classical musician. There’s a lot of self hatred involved especially when you’re young and forcing yourself or being forced to practice obsessively. I put an immense amount of pressure on myself to be producing constantly at a high caliber and in a very serious way, sometimes to my detriment but often it yields positive work. Since quitting classical music years ago I’ve been trying to strike a balance between productive self discipline and an ability to let things go.

I read in an interview how you consider Hildegard von Bingen as a favorite composer. As I am not familiar with their work I started listening to clips on YouTube and I felt overwhelmed by their radical work and how the divinity subject is attached to the work and experience. Also, the prolonged chorus, which makes me thing of the way you vocalize and deconstruct words. What do you like about Hildegard’s work? Do you consider your music attached solely to your experiences?

There is something larger than life and space about Hildegard’s work. I was introduced to her work at a time when I was predominantly listening to a lot of contemporary drone music and sound art and was so taken by the holy vastness of the music — it feels like standing in a blizzard staring out into the abyss but somehow still feeling very safe and held. I am amazed by liturgical music. I want to live inside it.

In “Bad At Parties”, specifically the video, I can’t help but think how you are in that scenario your own party. Following you in it, and then being this sort of complicit character on your journey. What’s the point of the video and following you? The song is so theatrical and lifting at the same time.

The video takes the idea of investing emotional energy into an object (in this video, the gold box) so much so that at some point you don’t have anything left for yourself and you have to separate. My friend and collaborator, Ty Ueda, directed and shot the video . Ty was my collaborator for many years until getting into a car accident 2 years ago. We did everything together, sometimes to the point of investing so much into our collective project that we didn’t have any empathy left to give one another. So the video has some undertones of our friendship and also takes place in New England where we grew up and spent many years making work together.

You mentioned in an interview that you gathered a few people to collaborate on the album, whilst you took a more hands on role in the production on it. How was this?

I am fortunate to have surrounded myself in a beautiful community of humans who are also brilliant genius musicians and self producing this album reinforced things I already knew about myself but am often unsure of: knowing I was strong enough to do this on my own and understanding how to communicate and listen to other people to produce the results.

Is there a play in words by using the word ‘soft’ in a couple of the songs, both “Soft Glove 1”, and “Soft Glove 2”, and “Soft Again”?

It wasn’t really intentional. Soft glove 1 and 2 are the same song, just arranged differently.

I was going to ask in person about the video of Golden Babyland… I can’t help but think of two different scenarios, where this man was longing for his own child. Or this man is truly disturbed and obsessed. It could also be a mirroring image of the man, and how he lived alone his life, and still does. The song unravels from to such a gritty note and dismantles into a scenario where it unhinges from both the listener and the viewer. A gnarly twist, where you either empathize with the man or you feel grotesque by him. How does it connect with the song?

I think the alienation that’s conveyed in the story of the video and how it’s shot is what really connects back to the music. Haley (the director) and I had a conversation once about how feeling ignored by someone you love is actually incredibly claustrophobic and I think they took that sentiment and ran with it for this film.

Coming back from tour, was there any song that you connected with the most playing live?

“Golden Babyland”. In the recording there is an absolutely shredding guitar solo by the great Wendy Eisenberg. Unfortunately I cannot bring them on tour with me so I had to learn to fill in that gap in a different way seeing as I cannot shred like they can. It was really fun observing how the band interacted with the free section of this song: it took on a slightly new form each night and I think it was always the most fun when each player drifted further and further away from one another, only to snap it all back into place for the last section of the song. Very skronky , fractured yet still comedic.