The singer-songwriter’s debut album ‘Who’s the Clown?’ is immediately endearing
Who’s the Clown? — out on Aug. 15 by way of RCA Information — establishes Audrey Hobert as an unconventional new voice in pop.
Lenne Chai
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Lenne Chai
The opening observe of Audrey Hobert’s debut album got here to the 26-year-old when she was sitting at residence on a Friday night time, watching a documentary about Steve Martin.
She had simply completed writing a number of songs along with her childhood buddy Gracie Abrams — a number of of which might find yourself climbing Billboard‘s Sizzling 100 chart and turning Abrams right into a Gen Z pop sensation — and Hobert was making an attempt to determine what her subsequent transfer can be. She’d just lately labored as a workers author on two seasons of the Nickelodeon present The Actually Loud Home, a comedy a few preteen boy navigating life with 10 sisters. The songwriting stint had been new and thrilling, however Hobert did not actually contemplate herself an artist but. Then she turned on the Apple TV+ doc STEVE! (martin) – a documentary in two items and located inspiration within the white suit-wearing, banjo-carrying comic she watched as a child.
“I observed that his complete profession and life fell into place as soon as he determined to only be himself on stage utterly,” Hobert tells NPR. “So I picked up my banjo guitar. I used to be on the time writing a one-woman present as a result of I used to be nonetheless uncertain of like, what am I going to do? I began writing the music as a result of I used to be like, ‘How would I open my one lady present?’ “
The outcome, “I Like To Contact Folks,” is a hilarious, whimsical tune about making small speak at a celebration, having a people-pleasing mother and — nicely, touching folks (figuratively, positive, but in addition perhaps bodily?). It units the tone for Who’s The Clown?, a bubblegum pop album with goofy but weak lyrics that make Hobert an immediately endearing narrator. “I am taking thirst traps within the mirror in my room,” she sings in a single observe over an unrelentingly upbeat melody. “I feel I look unhealthy, so I take 100.”
Over Wheatus-like guitars and drum machines, Who’s the Clown? — out on Aug. 15 by way of RCA Information and produced by newcomer-slash-Finneas-protege Ricky Gourmand — establishes Hobert as an unconventional new voice in pop. The album’s stream-of-consciousness writing performs much less like what you’d discover on a serious label launch and extra like an unfiltered voice memo out of your most optimistic buddy (even after she’s simply had the worst day of her life). In “Do not Go Again to His Ass,” Hobert delivers directions for staying away from a poisonous boyfriend by way of people harmonies. Within the music “Chateau,” she micro-doses psychedelic mushrooms earlier than going to an trade occasion the place everyone seems to be making an attempt too onerous to be cool, which Hobert clocks routinely as lame. The music video for “Moist Hair,” a lackadaisical music about not getting a blowout earlier than assembly up with an ex to show a degree, has the DIY high quality of one thing a tween would make on the household laptop when left residence alone in center faculty.
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“I feel what I actually need to do greater than something is make an viewers giggle,” Hobert says over Zoom, calling from the identical kitchen by which she lipsyncs with a wood spoon for the “Moist Hair” video. “I do transfer by way of the world with a humorousness on the forefront of every little thing. I feel it is like a survival methodology. I additionally assume it is a extra enjoyable solution to be and to stay.”
That sentiment is shared by lots of Hobert’s pop friends proper now — assume Sabrina, Chappell, Olivia and Reneé — however Audrey’s clownery feels distinctly and delightfully down-to-earth. It is much less polished than that of her theater and Disney-trained comrades (although she is a dancer and theater aficionado raised by a sitcom author), and extra blunt. The butt of the joke, oftentimes, is the ruthless honesty with which she overshares to anybody who will pay attention — a buddy, an Uber driver, God — and the best way she will pack so many phrases and emotions right into a line. As a listener, it typically feels such as you’re enjoying catchup, laughing a beat behind whereas she’s moved on to her subsequent epiphany. Hobert’s off-screen sensibility (she studied screenwriting at New York College) offers her the eccentric, confident attraction of somebody who has not been advised how one can fastidiously curate a industrial model or picture, and as a substitute selected to pose for her debut album cowl in barely mismatched socks and Dansko clogs.
However, she admits, it took her a minute to determine she had a pop album in her to start with. The Nickelodeon present she’d been engaged on bought canceled. Because of her collaboration with Abrams — which Hobert describes as “one thing enjoyable to do with my finest buddy” — she’d signed a publishing deal. She spent months in classes with producers and musicians, making an attempt to put in writing lyrics for different folks. It simply wasn’t working.
“I actually admire songwriters who can get thrown in with whoever and make an incredible music. I’m not that sort of author,” Hobert says. “I feel that is why it labored so nicely with Gracie was as a result of we knew one another so nicely and the context was all there.”
Collectively, they crafted songs like “That is So True” — Abrams’ greatest hit up to now — and “I Love You, I am Sorry,” which Hobert additionally directed the music video for. Each of those tracks characteristic a few of Abrams’ wittiest lyricism up to now. In a VEVO quick movie in regards to the making of her album, That is So True, Abrams stated Hobert typically pushed her to “scream the very first thing that involves thoughts” whereas they have been writing collectively. “This can be a good instance of [your] finest buddy enabling you to have full freedom and area to say something that involves thoughts,” Abrams stated.
Writing on her personal, Hobert went pedal to the metallic on that methodology, leading to songs she felt have been largely too private for a stranger to sing (although she briefly thought Halsey is likely to be as much as the duty). Ultimately, she got here clear to her writer that she’d written materials she wished to show into an album. She enlisted Gourmand, who’d been equally working the session circuit and with whom she felt an actual connection, to do it along with her.
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In Could, the only “Sue Me” arrived with a splash and a self-directed music video, that includes a montage of Hobert dancing ecstatically by herself and with Gourmand whereas a clown sits within the nook, ignoring them. The early Kesha-esque confessional about hooking up with an ex who seems superb in his Amazon Fundamentals went viral, racking up greater than 23 million Spotify streams up to now. Hobert shortly offered out reveals in New York Metropolis, London and Los Angeles. Listeners latched on to her hyperspecific lyricism and dance-like-no-one’s watching demeanor.
However Who’s the Clown? is not all carefree punchlines. On songs like “Intercourse and the Metropolis” and “Phoebe,” Hobert turns cheeky popular culture references into sentimental introspection. The latter she wrote whereas watching Mates for the primary time. She says she shortly recognized with Phoebe Buffay, the Lisa Kudrow character who presents a lot of the present’s comedian aid. However Phoebe, she notes, is the one one who’s not pursued romantically inside the buddy group.
“Why does not any of these three essential dudes need to be along with her? It is unnecessary to me,” Hobert explains. “And I’ve simply at all times felt that approach a bit of bit. I actually wished to put in writing a music about not feeling bodily worthy or very stunning for many of my life, after which I bought to attach it to that character.”
Within the music, she grapples with insecurity till she will personal her magnificence. “Trigger why else would you need me? I feel I’ve bought a f***** up face,” Hobert sings. “And that thought used to hang-out me, ’til I fell in its candy embrace.”
(Phoebe, for the report, finally ends up marrying a captivating character performed by common heartthrob Paul Rudd — Hobert hasn’t made it that far into the present but.)
At a time when social media platforms like TikTok continuously serve younger ladies micro-trend aesthetics and persona labels to commodify themselves into — “tomato woman,” “clear woman,” “Pilates princess”— Hobert presents one thing totally different: a sort of cool that may solely come from being your self, even when it is messy and complicated and perhaps a bit of embarrassing. Her press photographs, for instance, embrace a shot of her on her palms and knees exterior Hollywood’s Chinese language Theatre. To launch her web site, she posted a photograph on Instagram carrying a fedora and holding a wood pipe. Her on-line presence feels deliberately cringe and avant-garde without delay, blurring the road between what’s a bit and what’s honest. It feels much less like advertising and marketing and extra like an artist who is aware of she’s enjoyable and horny even when she’s carrying smart sneakers. She will get known as “quirky” in lots of label conferences, she says, and she or he’s high quality with that.
When requested if she thinks of her comedic efficiency streak as subversive, a la Pee-wee Herman, Hobert gasps and holds up her telephone to indicate off the background: a photograph of Pee-wee, the fictional youngsters’s TV character initially developed by Paul Reubens for the Los Angeles improv troupe The Groundlings. “Efficiency artwork is probably the most fascinating factor to me, actually,” Hobert says. “To be utterly earnest and to additionally perhaps make folks have a tough time telling when you’re being critical or not.”
Who’s The Clown? is a one-woman present of kinds, a peek into Hobert’s colourful, wacky world. But it surely’s only a style of what is to return. When requested if writing for tv is now on the backburner, Hobert does not hesitate.
“I plan to do all of it. Proper now, that is my complete whole life — songwriting and this album. Each fiber of my being is that this proper now,” she says. “However I really feel like I really like tv and I really like films equally. And theater, oh my God. Theater particularly! I’ve huge, huge aspirations. And I plan to do all of it.”
