Growing up in the East Village, musician Julia Cumming was surrounded by artists who created for the sheer joy of it – including her parents. Her father, a Burt Bacharach historian, penned the liner notes for the musician’s box set, while her mother, a neurologist, played in a 50s cover band in 1970s Wisconsin. Later, the two formed the 90s alt-pop group Bite The Wax Godhead. In their household, being a songwriter always occupied the highest rungs of artistry.

For more than a decade, Cumming has channelled that inheritance as the bass-playing vocalist of NYC trio Sunflower Bean. But this month, her debut solo release sees her step forward on her own terms. Eponymously titled Julia, the album places her songwriting squarely in the spotlight. The psych rock riffs have been replaced by finger snaps, and a show-tune buoyancy that belies the introspective allure at the core of the album – reflecting on an industry that often cast her as either never enough or somehow too much.

Recorded over six weeks at Hollywood’s legendary EastWest Studios with producer Chris Coady and collaborator Brian Robert Jones, the record feels like both a reclamation and a release. Cumming describes it as a “joyous space for the misfits,” and it carries the spirit of classic American songwriting – think Brian Wilson, Carly Simon, Dionne Warwick, Neil Diamond, and, of course, Bacharach. But here, no one’s voice rings louder than Julia’s own.

Shana Chandra: Congratulations on your new album, Julia.
Julia Cumming: Thank you. It was really exciting to announce it. That was very, very special, a once-in-a-lifetime feeling.

SC: I love it so much. When I listened to the first song, My Life, I thought it was so clever – despite the upbeat, showtunes-y sensibility, there were some deep, heartbreaking lyrics in there. How would you describe the feeling of the album?
JC: I use the word ‘anti-cool’ a lot, but I definitely wanted the feeling of the album to be ‘anti-morose.’ At the same time, I don’t think that means that we have to stay away from challenging stuff, because I think songs are a format with so much nuance that you can go deep. The way a melody feels and what you’re creating in a sonic production adds context to what you’re saying. I wanted to create something that gave people a different feeling, but still met them where they are, still met them at the depths of what they want to be feeling from something. I love super-sad music, I love slow-core, I love shoegaze, but there’s also a lot of other stuff that I love too, so I wanted to use these references, rather than make it sound like what it was trying to say.

SC: You cite the likes of Burt Bacharach, Dionne Warwick and Brian Wilson as references for the record, how did these artists influence you? Sometimes these artists are maligned for being too saccharine…
JC: That’s the music that really touched me in my childhood, especially between my dad and I. We shared a lot of that musical journey, and those songwriters made me fall in love with songwriting. As I moved through the world and became my own person, I developed these other references that were really useful for being in a band, which is what I always wanted to do, but as this record started appearing for me, I realised I was leaning on these references, and that I’d previously been afraid of leaning on their softness. That was something that I wanted to face head-on with this record and really feel proud of that. My guess is that there are a lot of people who, like me, feel that love, that music, and don’t really feel something reflecting it right now – I wanted to fill that space.

“I think for a long time, I wasn’t developing that sense of self that needed to be nurtured.”

SC: Your dad was a Burt Bacharach scholar, so Bacharach must have loomed large in your life growing up.
JC: Yes, [my dad] wrote the liner notes for the Burt Bacharach box set. Songwriting was considered the highest art form in my house. Even more than an art form, to be a great songwriter would be like being the president of the United States, or going to Harvard. That was the top-tier goal. In a way, I’m just doing that thing where you become your parents, or you end up fulfilling your family’s dreams. My mom is very musical as well, she grew up playing in a 50s cover band in the 1970s in Wisconsin with her brother when she was fifteen. So being close to music is really important to all of us.

SC: I know that you began playing the chords for what would eventually become My Life on the piano in the house that you grew up in. How did you know this was the start of something new?
JC: It was just what I wanted to say, and I wasn’t afraid to say it. I really was living inside the pressure of those years, the pressure that we were all feeling with the pandemic. It was having everything I knew become upended, and that also allowed me to upend my own idea of what I was doing it all for. [From very young] I went straight into working. I didn’t even go to my high school graduation because I was working. So I had these built-in restraints about who I was and what I was supposed to be doing. And somewhere along the way, because I had always been putting out music and wanting to play music, I lost the connection with the joy of creation, even if it has no purpose; the joy of making something because you want to hear it. That was just very freeing. I have a relationship to fashion that I’m really proud of and I’m really excited about —the brands and designers that I’ve had the pleasure of working with and want to continue to work with – but at the same time, you’re always seeing yourself in someone else’s light. I think for a long time, I wasn’t developing that sense of self that needed to be nurtured.

“Songwriting was considered the highest art form in my house.”

SC: It’s such an intimate album, do you think the songs pulled that out of you, or did you consciously want to create something intimate?
JC: With every album that I’ve made with [Sunflower] Bean, and with every album that I make [solo], I want to go further, I want to go deeper. Also, not having to necessarily fit into any kind of agenda – because nobody knew I was working on the album – also made it possible for me to be more intimate, because you’re not representing anyone else. If you’re working in a band, you’re working as a team, and you get so many benefits – you’re working with the strength of that team, so you’re never alone. You’re fortified, you’re strong, you’re united. Without having to go through those conversations with others, I was able to have more conversations with myself and say some more intimate things. I hope that people will connect with that.

SC: You’ve spoken before about how growing up in New York really shaped your view on how to live artistically, within a community, and to make art for the sake of it. Was there anyone from that time who also influenced the album?
JC: I wouldn’t say there was anyone in particular from that scene, but definitely that ethos has been important to me for a very long time. It gave me a lot of strength through the ups and downs of this career. Being able to create my own idea of success also helped; it helped me to protect myself and inspire myself. The album is very joyful, creative, and fun too, and that is connected to that community and stays with me all the time.

SC: You’ve described this record as “a joyous space for the misfits in middle school that didn’t fit in.” Was this an album that you needed in middle school, and what were you like back then?
JC: Definitely. I don’t want to say that this album is written for middle school girls or even myself in middle school, but when I think about the purest essence of feeling like an outsider, I think probably for everyone, thinking about that time in your life, no matter who you are, there’s always that feeling of strangeness and never quite being enough. At that time, I was probably dorky and nerdy and liked attention – like I do now. [laughs] A lot of things are very different, but a lot of things are the same. I had to move to Miami for a couple of years, from New York, because my mum got a job there, and I was such a loser. By the end of my time there I had a group of friends, but we all didn’t fit into anyone else’s group of friends. We were all different heights, shapes and sizes and interests, but we stuck together. I think about that feeling a lot. And I think it would’ve been fun to have had an album like this then, that would be fun to spend time with.

“I was able to have more conversations with myself and say some more intimate things.”

SC: You recorded the album in six weeks, what was the most chaotic or unexpected thing that happened in the studio?
JC: I worked with producer Chris Coady, who’s a legend, and also my collaborator, Brian Robert Jones. I think probably the craziest part of it for me was being at EastWest Studios, which is this legendary Hollywood studio where The Monkees and Frank Sinatra recorded. I’ve had the privilege of visiting some really fantastic studios, sometimes recording in them, mostly just being in awe of them. I remember having the band assembled, everyone knowing their music, and I was in the control room with Chris watching everything go down. Before the mics were up and everything was mixed, I could hear it through the monitors, and I just started crying. Chris thought I hated it and thought something was horribly wrong, and I was like, “Are you kidding?” It was the first time I was in a studio like that without my band, and it was very moving to see this album come to life.

SC: What’s the one thing about making a solo record that nobody warned you about?
JC: Nobody warned me about how many questions there’d be asking if Sunflower Bean was breaking up. That was often the first question when I told people that I’d started this album. I can see why people would ask it, especially since Sunflower Bean has been our artistic output for ten plus years. Luckily, my band really supports me, and Sunflower Bean is an entity that’s never going anywhere. It’s certainly a new era, a new endeavour, it’s a new phase of my career that I’m so excited about, but I’m excited about how it’ll make me a well-rounded artist and songwriter for the rest of my life, for whatever projects I want to be infusing that with.

SC: How have your feelings for the album changed since making it?
JC: I think my life has changed because a lot of time has passed, a lot of things have happened, and that makes it different. But as far as my pride and excitement about the work that Chris and Brian and I did together, I have the same level of excitement. Also, because this thing was created completely outside of expectation, I got to massage it and mess with it as much as I wanted to, which was totally joyful. My excitement is continuously compounding.

Julia is out April 24th via Partisan Records.