Late Slip is the Retro-Pop project of New York-based artist Chelsea Nenni. Her first full-length record, I Love You, will be arriving on June 7th, via Party Mermaid Records. For the new record, she worked with longtime collaborator and Producer Lewis Pesacov (Best Coast, FIDLAR, Nikki Lane, Poolside), but that didn’t keep them from experimenting with new sound directions.
As the album title suggests, the collection is also somewhat themed on relationships of various kinds, but it’s far from simple and sweet, as often pulling from razor-sharp assessments of encounters gone wrong as from more positive emotions. What makes the album particularly exciting is the way that retro sounds play into those emotions, whether lifting them into a more reflective Pop sphere, or bringing in soulful hints of Rockabilly or Americana. It also features one of the most Honky Tonk versions of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” that you’ll ever hear, a favorite in Late Slip’s live set.
Today Glide is excited to offer an exclusive premiere of I Love You and we spoke with Chelsea Nenni about the peculiar allure of New York City, channeling rage, and making difficult experiences into satisfying art.
I saw that you played SXSW this year. Did you play songs from this album?
We played mostly everything except for “Mind Your Business.” We couldn’t nail the Ska thing, it was just too hard [Laughs]. And we played a really cool arrangement of “New York City.” It was really fun. It was a great weekend.
I’m going to jump right in with the song “New York City” because that song has so little instrumentation, and there’s so much emphasis on the vocals and the drums, that I think it’s incredibly brave. And even braver to play it at SXSW!
It was terrifying! That song is terrifying to play live because it is sparse, but I think that’s why it’s special.
It’s a big risk and a big reward because if people respond and connect, they are going to be all-in.
Yes, that’s what I’ve found. I’ve only played it live three times because it’s one of the newest songs, and the scariest, but it’s been exactly that. There’s like a hush that falls since it’s so different. It was also my first single in three years, so that was exciting but risky that it was so different!
The video is also a nice accompaniment because if people are “in” for the song, they are going to be even more “in” with those pictures of your time there and the way that relates to you. They’ll associate it with their own New York.
Yes, those are my own pictures that I’ve taken over the past 13 years. I was going to do something more professional, but then I scrapped that and wanted to do it myself. I was crying making the video, because while I was missing New York, those were the memories that I was thinking of. These experiences in the photos are what I was pulling from for the song.
You really never know what memories are going to stick with you the strongest and be the most emotional, and I feel like you become more aware of the strange surviving memories as time passes.
It’s so weird, right? Why would those be my main memories, like walking down the streets at night? Well, it’s because during Covid, I was on lockdown in Denver, Colorado, somewhere I didn’t really want to be, and I couldn’t walk around outside. I just missed how comfortable it felt to be independent and free, and on my feet all the time. There were little things that I just missed. Now that I’m back, I’m wondering, “Do you really miss waiting for the trains?” [Laughs] But I did! I missed all those things that make New York, New York. It’s a funny thing.
It’s the texture that sticks with you. What is it about New York that “gets you” as the song says? Or you could flip that to, “What is it about New York that you get?”
That’s so esoteric! It’s always been one of those things that’s just the way I feel. The energy of the city kind of carries me, but being back is interesting. I’d lived here on-and-off since 2011, and I’ve gone through many changes in my own self-growth, as you can imagine. When I first moved here, I was 26, and I came from San Francisco. That’s such a sweet, quiet city, comparatively. I was happy there, and it was peaceful, but I had this dream of moving to New York, and I knew that if I didn’t do it, I would never do it. It was nuts, and amazing, and scary. I had never lived somewhere with so much energy and opportunity. It was mind-blowing. You could do anything! You could be anyone! That was so nuts to me.
When I moved here, I had this thought, “I really love retro style.” I did. I thought the 50s style and 60s style was so cool, but I’d never dressed like that before at home. But when I moved here, I didn’t know anybody, so I thought, “Who cares?” I actually ended up getting a job at a 1950s style dress shop where we had to dress like that for work. It was so weird! Nobody on the streets cared. That’s what I loved. You could just be yourself here. Everybody is just doing their thing. It’s always felt like a place where I could be myself fully.
But in this last go around, after a separation and coming back, what I realized that I loved and missed so much were the people, for better or for worse. New York is so extreme. It’s so amazing and it’s so hard to live here. It’s exhausting. It’s so loud, and cold, and all those things, but what I always appreciate is some little magical moment that hits and makes you say, “I love this city!” It just gets ya.
That’s what reels you back.
It’s like a bad boyfriend! [Laughs] But this is a place where things happen and I think I’m drawn here when I need to learn about myself and to grow, change, and become. You can’t escape yourself here.
I think a lot of artists would agree with you about New York, and a lot of that lines up with my own experiences of the city, which has also had a big impact on my life. But how did you get to that sound for the song “New York”, though? Did you know you were going that bold, or was it something that happened in the studio?
It was so scary. My Producer, Lewis, is really good. He’s a wonderful human, in general. He Produced Best Coast’s Crazy for You album way back, and that’s always been one of my desert island albums because of the Production. I just think it’s a perfect sounding record. Lewis is very intuitive and he creates a very safe environment to take chances and to be yourself. I studied opera, so it’s really hard for me to allow myself to make mistakes. I’m working on it. That’s why I taught myself guitar, so it would be okay to do something I could make mistakes at, just because I wanted to. I brought this song to him and it was very personal. Our stuff is usually very layered and there are lots of nuggets in them.
This time, he said, “What about if we do something different. Do you know the song “Wicked Games”?” I said, “Okayyy.” It was like, “If Roy Orbison did this song, what would happen?” We kept it really empty. We were going for what it feels like to be walking down the street in the East Village in lower Manhattan late at night when it’s quiet. That was the feeling, of being sort of empty, but not desolate or creepy. Another song was Elvis’ recording of “Blue Moon”, which is amazing.
I know what you mean because when the streets are almost empty, there’s a certain kind of echo off stone buildings, and the song has a kind of hollow space to it in a similar way. Everything’s a little echoey and has that feeling. It worked!
I feel so lucky that I get to work with someone like Lewis who listens to me and who advocates for me. He leads the way to a creative space where we can take a risk. That’s the most risky of anything we’ve recorded together.
It’s also kind of risky to call and EP I Love You and to have love songs as the theme. Though a lot of them are definitely tumultuous and reference revenge.
There’s a bunch of them! “Love Me True” is a little more pithy. For that one, I was actually pissed.
I really like that one a lot.
That’s one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written, and it just came out. Some songs are already done. It was so simple, the way it came, and it was so accurate as a reflection of how I really felt.
I think we often in life stop ourselves from saying these various phrases out loud to people. Sometimes, that’s for good reasons since it’s just not worth it.
Right, sometimes it’s a waste of breath because it’ll fall on deaf ears. I’m married now, and I look back on all of this heartbreak I had when I was younger and I think, “That was so painful.” Whether it was three months, or three years, it is so hard to bounce back time and time again from getting your heart stomped on. Even if the other person doesn’t think they are doing that. If you do want to find your person and you are trying your best, every time it goes wrong, it’s so hard to bounce back. You have to continue to feel that you deserve love.
I’m so thankful that I’ve had this outlet in my life to work out those feelings, and to put those experiences that I’ve had to good use. I got to make art out of it. What a cool thing for me. It’s almost like, “Thank you for breaking my heart, because now I have this awesome song.” [Laughs]
Is it meaningful for you then have something of your own, that you’ve created out of that experience.
Yes, it makes it worth it somehow for me. I don’t know why. I you go through life and think, “Why did that happen?”, because I want to understand why and understand why people do the things they do. Why do we do these things to ourselves? But part of my processing and how I work through my feelings is music.
I think when I’m stuck looking at someone else’s psychology because of something they did, and going in circles, it’s because I actually hope I can find some good in it. But sometimes you can’t, and just need to say so. And this song really is freeing in that way. Sometimes we need to be judgmental.
That’s a really good point. It’s understandable to try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but maybe they were just being a dick. Most people don’t even think about what motivates others, though.
I think “Love Me True” could be helpful for some people to hear because there are lots of people who don’t admit their own anger, but it can be good to address it.
Yes! It’s amazing to do that. Burn it down. The oldest song on the record is “Tidal Wave” and I was fucking furious when I wrote that song. I had a date set up with this guy who I knew really well, and he just didn’t show up. I’d known him for years. It was so weird. I was going to have to see him, and I started singing this song in my mind, that I had just started writing. I was so pissed.
Before that, my wonderful voice teacher had told me, “You have a lot of rage. It’s in there and you need to let it out.” I was so freaked out, and I said, “No. What are you talking about??” I had always been one of those people who thought, “I have to be nice. I have to be sweet. That’s my role.” I was a people pleaser. But after that song, I was like, “Whoah! Maybe it’s okay to be made.” It was the impetus for me to be a little ragey and let it out. That song was the first time I’d harnessed that, but I also made it really fun. It’s also almost a surf song.
I love how “Tidal Wave” could be taken in different ways. It’s dark, but it has this lightness to it, in the way that songs in the 1950s and 60s often did and were indirect. They encouraged you to read between the lines, which is fun. It’s amusing that the threats are not very clear.
Yes, exactly. It’s like, “Does she literally mean knock him out? What does the song mean by that?” That’s what’s fun about it. I really did pull from those 50s and 60s girl groups with the background vocals. I could see it as The Pink Ladies, but all the layering was channeling The Shangri-Las. I was cracking up. We kept calling it a “girl gang.”
