Today, the Madrid-based artist Irenegarry has launched into the world a new single called “maligna.” The song serves as a bit of an outlier within the larger body of work on her forthcoming album, which tends to be built on the back of guitars—"maligna" is driven by internet-informed synthesizers, a reggaeton-leaning beat, and percolating harmonies. The music feels in conversation with a lot of the activities coming out of her city, which, over the past few years, has been incubating an exciting leftfield indie pop community. We recently talked to Irenegarry about this and more. We get insight into the process of writing music for other artists and the visuals around her new project ... and we also learn about her favorite Lana song. Read the piece and listen to “maligna” below.
Tell us about the new single.
Irenegarry: It’s called “maligna,” and it’s my first time hopping on a beat that someone sent me and working from there. Talks about waking up one day and simply deciding to be bad. I wrote it after reading a novel called Vida y amores de una maligna where a woman is abandoned by her husband and takes consciousness of a profound change inside of her, becoming una maligna. As it was a new form for me to get into a song, it felt right to write about a new state of mind. I produced it with Diego and Héctor García, two great musicians and producers who I loved working with.
How does “maligna” differ from your previous releases? In what ways is there continuity?
This song is the little rascal on my album. Sonically, it appeals to a more dance-y part of my music taste. With the drums and everything going on in it, I think it comes off as a more chaotic (non-derogatory), fun track. The continuity relies on the brightness of the harmony I’d say, and also in that kind of velvet mood that starts and ends this song.
How do you approach live performance?
Well, if I’m honest, historically I don’t love performing. I don’t really understand the situation when I’m on stage. I just want to ask everyone in the audience why we’re there, talk to them. I feel very weird about the exceptionality of being in front of people, claiming for their attention, the unidirectionality of it all. I do love attention, but the situation is somehow dictatorial, a bit violent. And I haven’t developed a dissociated personality for shows so It’s just me, having a hard time.
For this record, I decided I’m doing things I like even less than performing while I perform, so I get to be rightfully uncomfortable. You know, if I’m suffering I want to get the most of it, do it on purpose. New instruments I don’t fully master, blindfolded singing, eating fruit, writing my diary in front of everyone … Those are some ideas.
Could you talk a bit about the visuals that are connected to these new songs?
Yes. I really want to answer this question. I got to work with who might be my favorite visual artist in the world, Molly Soda. I’ve grown seeing her online, surrounded by images she’s done or curated. I feel like she relates to images and the internet the way I connect with music—as if it was inevitable. It just felt right to ask her to meet me offline to create all these images to be paired with the tracks. It’s been a whole exercise of knowing each other in some kind of speed_dating_image_making in New York.
There’s this obsession in my writing about feeling I’m the exact amount of different from other girls to firmly believe I need to make music—this feeling of uniqueness or whatever motivates my will to write—and also feeling that I am the exact amount of similar to other girls to believe I can be fully understood by them. I feel like that with Molly Soda’s presence and performance on the internet. She’s literally one of a kind, she kind of invented a whole thing, a whole language, but at the same her production is valuable and relevant because it feels like it would have happened anyway, with or without her. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself right. I hope so. She just has the kind of taste that molds others’ visual education. I’m so lucky she listened to the record and wanted to do this with me. I admire her so much, I really needed someone like her around.
You started playing the guitar at a young age, but at what point did you start writing your own songs? Can you remember the first song you wrote?
I started writing kind of late. I had always loved music and writing as two separate things. In my mind there was this huge gap between being able to play instruments/read music and creating it. I had never even thought about giving it a try. It felt like a huge event. One day I had a fever and I was at my parents’. I was 19 I think. I was so bored and weak and desperate to get out of bed. It was so dramatic that I took my guitar and started to hallucinate on purpose. I was so sick I didn’t feel any responsibility for my thoughts. I wrote a song called “Contéstame a La Historia,” that talks about provoking someone to slide in your DMs on Instagram just by posting. Stupid, but the right amount of stupid to let myself go for it for the first time.
You sometimes write music for other artists, right? What have you learned from that process that you have applied to your own songwriting?
I’ve learned you can actually almost always write a song. Like, every day if you want to. Even good ones. But that’s not impressive, to be a songwriting robot. What’s hard is to really get engaged with what you’re writing, to be heavily compromised so you can get the most out of it. When that happens, it’s not only that you get good lyrics or beautiful chords, you get a whole feeling about how it should sound, how it could be displayed onstage, you imagine a whole world, a situation where the song works for someone who listens. Lyrics can usually be improved. Aligning with the idea behind it is more defiant.
Also, I’ve learnt that sometimes nothing happens in six hours and then you get the idea that writes the whole thing in the last 20 minutes, when you’re about to leave the studio and give up. That’s amazing, makes everything exciting and tortuous until the end.
What is the scene like in Madrid right now? Any new Spanish music you have been excited about?
There are amazing things going on, actually. Vvvvvery talented musicians. I’m afraid we all replicate the same formula sometimes, tho. That’s a sad, but inevitable feeling. The thing is I don’t think the industry is strong or mature enough to give all projects a right path, a right place. Same with music journalism. Everything seems to standardize or be standardized by others quickly when it reaches a certain amount of attention.
I’m excited about: new Las Petunias. Awesome, reckless, funny band. Also about a very especial project called .bd. that recently released a very nice EP. They should all be on Nina, I keep on telling them. Also new and final !!!!!! Baywaves LP. I started in music working closely with them and now they’re saying goodbye with a very very good album. They’re very generous musicians and I’d say they helped out a whole generation of young people get their first works out. Paula Felices is also recording a studio album that I can guess will be awesome. Yes. Yes. Definitely great times for music in sunny Madrid !!!!!
What is your favorite Lana Del Ray song and why?
Hardest question. No right answer. I’m going to say “Diet Mountain Dew” because it’s not so claimed ????? but might be one of the songs I’ve listened to on repeat more in my entire life. I get to a new city, I listen to it. It just has that whatever you’re feeling, feel it fully to it, whether it’s sadness, anger, boredom, love.
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