Remi Wolf doesn't just want you to hear her world – she wants you to taste it, touch it and smell it

Remi Wolf's eyes scan the immediate area around the metal table we've staked out on a side street in New York's Chinatown. “Damn, there's no wood,” she says, spinning her head once more before finding what she's looking for. About six meters away, outside a barber shop, sit two wooden chairs — and, as he sees it, the key to continuing his streak of good luck, or at least preventing any potential bad luck. “I've developed a knocking on wood tic,” she explains after jogging to thump her fist on the seat twice. “Another friend of mine has it. Maybe I got it from him.”

Wolf, 28, has too many stars aligning right now to take any chances. A few weeks after we speak in March, a two-month tour for Olivia Rodrigo will kick off in Europe, following recent dates with Paramore and Lorde. Then comes the big one — or rather, Big Ideas, Her second studio album, which will be released on July 12th.

For more than a year, Wolf split her time between the stage, the studio and her home in Los Angeles, settling comfortably into an insular creative circle as she crafted the 2021 sequel Hera — the lyrically unpredictable debut LP that marked her as one of alt-pop's quirkiest, catchiest artists. Now, she's reacquainting herself with a completely different routine. “I've made this record, I've written everything, and now comes the other half of the job: I go out and I have to look good,” he says. “I just try to do what I would naturally do, but at a certain point — when you're constantly being noticed — I don't really know how it affects my psyche.”

Wolf noticed some signs of how all the attention was changing her in 2022 and she didn't like what she saw. “I went through this long period where I had so much anxiety,” she recalls. “I couldn't leave my house. I hated seeing someone I knew or someone who knew me. I was just saying deep down, “I can't handle the thought of people using me or wanting something from me.” I hate the idea of ​​ulterior motives and it always happens.” (Keeping a tight-knit group of friends has helped minimize this problem, he says.)

Big Ideas sees the return of Wolf's longtime producer Jared Solomon, whom she has known since she was 15. Her drummer Conor Malloy is another major character in the cast of her life. They met while she was attending the USC Thornton School of Music and living in a house of nearly a dozen people in the mid-2010s. Wolf has a special fondness for the people who met her during that time, when the parties she threw and the songs she played writing alone in her room contributed more to her education than to her actual course.

“I was a bad student and didn't listen or go to class,” admits Wolf. “I mean, I went to some classes, but a lot of the classes where it was like, 'Let me teach you the right way to do this,' I was asleep.”

Her brand of pop music therefore strays far from the melodic math of someone like Max Martin. Her lyrics are often sprawling and overly specific, like messages leaked from a group chat of close friends. And her melodies will occasionally take three different shapes within a single chorus. Where many pop traditionalists would push for glossy stories and pristine production, Wolf favors distorted slogans and metaphors that liken chaotic relationships to making buttermilk from scratch (“One second we're good, then it's too much”).

She credits TikTok with making her more of a “pop consumer” in recent months. “I think TikTok has gotten me into Ariana Grande's album,” she notes (Eternal sunshine was co-produced by Martin). And there is one place where she and someone like the veteran blockbuster overlap. “I'm a stickler for syllabic ease,” adds Wolf. “I'd rather say a word that feels good than a word that makes sense.”

When Wolf was growing up in California, her mom often played Prince and other '80s pop giants. Her father, meanwhile, leaned into acts like AC/DC and Guns N' Roses. Once she was old enough to pick her own records, the first album she started working on was Lindsay Lohan's 2004 debut. I speak.

Wolf took a new mental approach Big Ideas, which was largely recorded on vintage equipment at Diamond Mine and Electric Lady Studios in New York. There's a horn section on the “Cinderella” single, plus the same Rhodes that Stevie Wonder played in the 70s. Elsewhere on the album, you'll find tracks that are pure synth-funk magic, and others with viscerally metaphorical sensory details — all burning rubber, chlorine and tangerines. Wolf doesn't just want you to listen to her world. It also wants you to taste it, touch it and smell it. “I'm really trying to describe what I was experiencing,” he says. “We live in a world where we eat and kiss, touch and smell.”

The songs themselves usually take shape, at least on paper, within one to five hours. The events that inspire them tend to be much larger. “I try not to paint any picture that's far from the truth,” says Wolf. “That way, I don't feel like I'm directing the characters. I feel like the characters direct me and the people in my life influence what I do, what I write, where I hang out, where I go to dinner.”

In a highlight from the new album, Wolf recounts an actual solo trip to Art Basel, where she was invited to attend a Idle party. “It's like there's cocaine everywhere, and I'm out there meeting people I've never met before and making new friends,” he says. “But it's all under this kind of psychotic, manic, cocaine fever.” Wolf has been partying since she was 18 and feels like she's gotten it out of her system in the last decade. “There's still a beast in me that wants to get angry, but it's more tame,” he says with a laugh.

Much of her debut album circled the boundaries of sobriety, particularly alcohol. Those lines are still blurred for her, especially in social settings. “I hate feeling like I'm somewhere and I can't participate in what's going on,” Wolf says. “There are times when I drink and I feel like shit. There are times when I'm sober and I feel like shit. I'm trying to figure out how to not feel like crap in both areas.” He acknowledges that it's a non-linear process, adding, “If you've struggled with it, it's going to be a struggle for life no matter which way you go.”

Incorporating consistent routines into her daily routine has helped Wolf feel more present, both physically and emotionally. When we speak, she's been in New York for four days and still hasn't managed to complete all three of her daily goals: take a two-hour walk, do yoga and drink a cup of coffee. “It's hard to feel grounded when you have to think about your feelings all the time,” she says.

Even going to yoga alone was something she had to talk herself into at first. “My job is to know and understand myself. It's an amazing pursuit, but it's exhausting,” he adds. “And sometimes I just don't want to think about myself.”