Julia Kugel of The Coathangers Reflects On Releasing A Deluxe Edition Of Their Debut Album (INTERVIEW)

On December 4th, Atlanta punk rockers The Coathangers acknowledged an upcoming 15 year milestone for their previously out-of-print self-titled debut album by releasing a Deluxe Edition of the collection with Suicide Squeeze Records, featuring remastering of the tracks and bonus material. A timely and punchy music video has also been released for one the tracks, “Nestle in My Boobies”, drawn from footage of a sweaty live performance in 2011. Watching the video now definitely promotes a vicarious thrill, aware that no concert like that one could occur at this time, but that also highlights The Coathangers’ particular magic as a band, always conscious of the value of capturing specific, unique, moments in time in all their glory. 

Coathangers singer/guitarist Julia Kugel recently joined me in conversation to discuss this reflective moment in time for The Coathangers, what life was like for them around the time of recording that first album, how they fit into the musical scene at the time in their hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, and where this record fits into the bigger picture alongside recent albums like their 2019 release The Devil You Know. 

Hannah Means-Shannon: What’s it like being based in California right now?

Julia Kugel: Life is just gnarly, and you put Covid on top, and it’s stress central, but I fully believe in positive thinking and seeing the light. You have to see it, otherwise it won’t come to you. 

HMS: I really appreciate you saying that, because I think we all definitely need to hear that. Sometimes making a choice towards positivity seems to cause good stuff to come our way. We can affect a little bit of a shift, I think.

JK: I think it always makes a difference. I think thoughts, words, and prayers, whether you’re religious or not, are what you’re putting out there. We are moving towards something good, even if we don’t realize. With music, your artistic identity can really get wrapped up with the work and all the traveling, and I’ve spoken to a lot of friends recently who have really valued this time because it’s something we don’t usually get. 

A moment of stillness is really profound in many ways. It’s brought around a lot of interesting conversations. We didn’t have time to reflect on things because we were just part of the machine, just going, going, going, and now we do. Now it’s, “Why do we have to do this? It’s pretty unhealthy in every way.” Maybe we can figure this out so that we can live more balanced lives.

HMS: This is true for everyone, but especially for those in the music industry, the events of the past year really show the pressure points. It seems like for The Coathangers, you were always very much a live performance band and very much about the events. It seems like you were a little ahead of the rest of us because in 2018 you reconsidered that approach.

JK: It felt like we had no choice. The way that it works, you have to keep producing, but in order to keep producing, you have to stand still sometimes to have that come to you. But we never stood still. We just pushed. When you’re in your 20s, that’s cool, but 10 or 12 years into it, you realize, “I think I’ve exhausted my backup supply of oxygen.”

Oddly enough, we were planning on taking this year off. But we were so lucky to get to play that Coach show with Blondie. Our only show of 2020 was the highlight of my fucking life, all of our lives! That’s pretty much 2020 in a nutshell, asking, “What the fuck?” But we hadn’t been home much in 12 or 13 years, so we were going to take some time off. This is the most time we’ve gotten to meet ourselves. It’s that Zoolander moment of asking, “Who am I? I don’t know.” The universe decided for us how extreme the time alone would be. 

I do wonder when touring will start again because we are really the most vulnerable group of people to go back to work. Because we constantly travel and are always in super-spreader situations. That’s our job. It’s daunting to actually think about.

HMS: For real. I think there’s a lot of uncertainties about touring.

JK: As a performer, I just want to feel safe, but I think things will come back, they will just be outside. I just edited that “Nestle in My Boobies” video, which was a house show. It was super trippy editing that footage and thinking, “When is this ever going to happen again?”

HMS: Yes, it’s so crowded in the video! Was it filmed in night vision somehow?

JK: It was a couple of cameras that were kind of like night vision, and I did color correction on them. It made all of us, watching it, feel reminded of the greatness of it all. Like how epic it was and how we didn’t even realize it. Throughout the show, there’s this one person shouting, “Fuck you! This band sucks!” But at the end, I was thanking everyone. How did this show even exist? We were all sweating on each other. It’s so funny. That show was in 2011. The video is now an ode to the audience, and to people, and to basement shows.

I think we’re going to be going back to outdoor shows, though. That’ll be our first go-to and everyone is going to be stoked. Can you imagine the first show? I’ll probably cry on stage. It’ll be very emotional.

HMS: I think a lot of people are going to cry.

JK: I think so. It’s like we didn’t even realize how much we need it. We need it.

HMS: We spoke a little about how big a part of the band’s identity shows have been, but how does the physical release of music tie into that for you? Did you base the songs that made it onto the debut record on what you liked most from live performances back then?

JK: No, actually. We pretty much wrote for that record. And all of our records are kind of snapshots in time. That’s why they are so varied, in my opinion. Some of them were made when we were really excited and some of them were made when we were really exhausted. We have a live record, and that’s the coolest one. It’s my favorite because there was no adjusting. 

I’m a studio nerd and I’m always trying to adjust levels and rerecord stuff, but that one is a snapshot of us live. We’ve never been able to exactly capture in a studio how we are on stage. Because there’s something about it. In our live shows, we are how we are in the moment. Sometimes we’re smiling, sometimes we’re angry. We react to our moods and whatever happens is very in the moment in a show. 

That’s what I think the first record captures, because it was done in one night and we mixed the next night. There was no reflecting. It was, “Bam, bam” and capture and go. That’s what it’s all about. That’s why live music is so important, because you’re having a moment together with the band and the audience. It could be magical. It could be super frustrating, but you use it. We remastered the deluxe album at our studio here, and going through it, it felt like it seemed almost daring to be so unpolished. Over time, our ideas have shifted into being more serious in the studio. For us, the playing is the fun part. 

HMS: On the first album, did you and the other band members have any experience working in studios prior to recording, or was that the first time you walked into one?

JK: I had done some work in studios with backup vocals. I think maybe Stephanie [Luke] had, since she dabbled in managing bands. Meredith [Franco’s] brother was in a band, so she’d probably been in one. But we’d never really been on the other side. It was a brand-new thing, and the room was so big and so pro. It was an old studio where Elvis had performed and the B52s had recorded, and it was a super-old room, a beautiful live room. It was very surreal. We were excited to be there and trying not to fuck up. No expectations.

HMS: Did you record it in a live way, or more tracked?

JK: It was live. We usually recorded live. Definitely drums were live, and sometimes guitars were later overdubbed. But vocals are hard to do live. I don’t know that we ever did live vocals.

HMS: How long had you been working on the songs that were recorded for the album?

JK: I think we had been writing songs, but we thought we were going to do a 7 inch. Then when they said, “Let’s do a 12 inch”, we scrambled to get some more together. But we had a lot fun, and put a lot of inside jokes into it. We thought of it as working on an art project together. When it came out on the vinyl, we couldn’t believe it. We thought that we had made it. But when we got an offer for a second record, that’s when I started freaking out.

HMS: Did you feel more pressure about doing a second record?

JK: I was so scared. We didn’t even go into a studio. We went into our practice space. That record sounds cool, though, with a smaller, more compact feel, like it’s coming from the basement of our souls, which it was. It was definitely a different experience, because we’d had our first taste of critics and reviews. And we thought, “We didn’t sign up for this!” We didn’t know they were going to critique how we dressed. I didn’t know that was part of the deal. 

People were really gnarly to us, initially, even in Atlanta. It was a weird time. We stopped reading comments because they can suck the joy out of it for you. 

HMS: How did you fit into, or not fit into the music scene in Atlanta at the time?

JK: We were definitely inspired by and supported by everyone in the scene. We were inspired more by the camaraderie than the music. We kind of wanted to play like the boys, I think. We didn’t want to play like anyone else, but we also didn’t want to be gender-specific. We didn’t want to be an all-girl band. We were just a band. When people started commenting, mostly on what wore, we said, “Okay, we’ll just wear t-shirts and jeans, then.” Also, that was more comfortable for us. 

I’m not trying to start anything about that, but I’m just giving our story. We just wanted to be a band, but constantly, all the time, all we got were questions about what it was like to be girls. We said, “We’ve only ever been girls in a band, so we don’t know what you want us to say. Our guys have only ever been cool to us. We’re just a band.” And that’s kind of how we went through life.

HMS: Thank you for sharing that. I totally get that. The band L7 faced similar issues, with constant questions about gender, and the critique was harder on them because they were women. They resisted gender associations too. They just wanted to play.

JK: We just weren’t hung up on it. We know they were able to make strides, and if we have been able to all genders in the position of greater power and acceptance, then that’s okay. That’s our journey.

HMS: Did people call you Punk or did you ever call yourselves that?

JK: Oh, we never called ourselves Punk, because that’s kind of un-Punk to do that! When people would shout at shows, “They’re not Punk!”, I would shout back, “I never said I was Punk Rock, bitch!” I think we’re Punk in attitude and inspired by it, but there was not a formula of sound that we tried to follow. Punk is fast, though, fast and short, and that shit’s awesome, it pumps you up! The best description we ever got was “Psycho-Pop”, so we called ourselves Psycho-Pop, No-Wave, and a bunch of others. We used to throw things out at people just to confuse them.

HMS: When you look at songs on the most recent album from 2018, The Devil You Know, with very finely crafted songs, and this debut album, do you see any sound traditions in the band that have continued?

JK: I think we are the same. Not better, but just more confident. You don’t find that adrenaline high on the later albums because the adrenaline is used up on the first album. And then it’s about, “How do I craft this?” That’s more thoughtful, which is also so fun. You don’t want to make the same record over and over. You want to progress. The Devil You Know was one of the most fun records to make because the girls came here and stayed in our house and we wrote in our home studio.

Everything was really chill and comfy, and we focused on creating something really cool that we could be proud of. The three of us are always the common thread. It was cool to be able to layer some vocals and enjoy the craft of recording instead of necessarily trying to capture a specific moment as much. That was one of my favorite records to make.