Writing love songs It was never really Marina Allen's thing. “It almost felt like I didn't care,” says the 31-year-old Los Angeles-based songwriter. “I've been in love before, but I don't think I could write about it in a way that felt like I had something to say.”
But all that changes with Allen's new album, Eight-pointed star, out June 7 via Fire Records. Over nine tracks, he spins legendary tales in folk and Americana tones that mark the first love songs he ever wrote. Some venture beyond romance, like the crushing opener “I'm the Same,” which documents the dissolution of a friendship. Others, like new single 'Deep Fake', are a meditative love song for the internet age. “Love sits in the loneliness of your beloved and you leave her,” he sings.
“As a codependent person in recovery, this was a huge lesson for me,” says Allen. “The best thing we can do for our loved ones is just sit with them and not try to fix it or save them. When you truly love someone and can empathize with their pain and suffering, it is much easier to sacrifice yourself than to live your own life. I spent many years hiding in someone else's pain and it was only when I got into music that I was able to find my truth again.”
It's a late April afternoon in New York, and Allen is sipping a cappuccino at Veselka, the beloved Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village. In a few hours, he'll appear a few blocks away at Webster Hall, opening up Real Estate. Because she's touring with her band (including her boyfriend, guitarist Jasper McMahon), she'll be less nervous on stage than if she were solo. She speaks frankly, describing herself as shy and introverted. (Since she's already admitted to being “a recovering codependent,” Allen is incredibly self-aware.)
Allen is no stranger to New York. He lived here in 2011 when he temporarily dropped out of college in Vermont. He took a job with singer-songwriter Terre Roche – a member of the Roches' brother trio, who went on to a long career after being discovered by Paul Simon in the early '70s – mainly helping Roche copy her CDs to iTunes. “She took me under her wing and taught me some guitar and I'd go to shows with her,” says Allen. “She was the first person I met and A, she was a woman who had no children and B, she was also an artist.”
Allen returned to college and graduated in 2016, then moved to Los Angeles a year later. She released her debut, Candlepowerin 2021, followed by 2022 The central ones. “I think with my other two albums, I was trying to be the songwriter that I thought I wanted to be, rather than actually being,” she says. “With each record, I get closer to its source, and with this record, I feel more myself. It's all about self-acceptance.”
Self-acceptance is an important issue Eight-pointed starnamed after the quilted pattern and the idea of the North Star. Throughout the songs, Allen navigates the baggage of her past as she decides to integrate it with her present, bringing the two together to create a new future. “It's about embracing my own failures and weird parts and allowing yourself to plant the seeds, even though there's shit in there,” she says.
It is here that she touches on her family history. Allen was born in New Jersey and began singing in churches as soon as she could talk, then moved to the Bay Area at age 10. But she is deeply connected to her mother's side of Nebraska. She had grown up hearing stories about her grandmother living there before the area was fully industrialized, among hard-working farmers, wild horses and grasslands. “A lot of weird stories about addiction and grief come from this area,” he says.
Many of these stories are more myth than truth, notes Allen. “You base your entire identity on that one thing you did wrong,” he says. “I was really puzzled by that, because when you think about your relationships with your family and your background in that way, a lot of it is inaccurate to a degree or mythologized. And I think that's what folk music is: Storytelling and cherry-picking, exaggerating certain parts and taking certain parts away, based on whoever's telling them.”
He fantasizes about the town of Red Cloud, Nebraska, in the song of the same name—a representation of what he imagines life there was once like. “I make a stew of rainwater and frozen meat, thick with pine needles, hot beer and baby teeth,” he sings. “I suck it in spoonfuls, I sleep dumb and half/Vibrating in circles, in circles I wake up dazed/On the Red Cloud.”
“This is not a real thing,” he says of the meal. “Stew was this magical elixir. I love Joanna Newsom and I challenged myself to make a Joanna Newsom song so I did my best. He's a master at these kinds of wanderings, but you're on the edge of your seat all the time.”
Allen accomplished what she set out to do without simply imitating the famous songwriter. Rather than sounding like another Newsom, her voice is original and pure—like those vast prairies. “Music is definitely a burden but also a calling,” he says. “And sometimes I wish I was just a normie working at Google, but I never was and I had to come to terms with that. Music was always there as a path. I had to really accept it, finally, which meant accepting myself.”
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/marina-allen-eight-pointed-star-interview-1235016039/