The Blow is Khaela Maricich. After several years of being off the radar, the early 2000s band from the Pacific Northwest is rebuilding and getting back into the swing of things. Onstage, Maricich is a solo presence, and yet - to the crowd - she announces herself as a plural,“We are The Blow”, as if she has roused other energies, a larger collective entity. There is, indeed, something seemingly greater than herself there. Her stage presence is all lithe, sinewy moves and raconteur narratives about characters that may or may not exist, delivered in a likable, oft-quivering voice over pulsating beats. Cameos from her older much beloved material make sonorous appearances during the course of her shows (among others: “Hey Boy” from the album Paper Television; “Parentheses” from Poor Aim: Love Songs). Over afternoon drinks in Paris (one of the many destinations of her just-finished European summer tour), she divulged future projects, her interest in the New York trans performance art scene, and her tendency to be a self-described “lazy essayist”.
 
Dazed Digital: One thing you’d mentioned in your blog is that you don’t write songs on the road. You’re doing an international tour now; does traveling to other countries inspire you or does the movement of the touring, regardless of where, still prevent you from writing songs?
Khaela Maricich: It’s definitely inspiring to be on the road, and if anything I get little notions about things. But the point I think I was trying to make is that it’s hard to find the quiet inside your own head, with travel, especially in Europe actually. It’s not just changing cities, but changing countries, and it’s really stimulating, you want to pay attention, it’s so much more exciting to go to Paris than to go to Denver. You really soak it all up. But if you’re being a receiver, it’s really hard to switch you mind all of a sudden and be an output system. We actually had to decide that we were gonna focus on playing the shows and kind of pretend we’re in The Matrix whenever we saw people speaking other languages or other strange exciting surroundings and just had to ignore it -- it’s all fake! -- and just keep going, keep focused.
 
DD: You’d mentioned that you did music for a movie?
Khaela Maricich: Yeah, it’s a super indie film. With movies, you mix something for a film and then you don’t even know what really happens with it. It was called Norman; it might be released? It has this kid who’s the son in Cougartown, he’s the lead character. It seems like a good movie. He’s a high school kid, he’s faking that he has cancer to get attention and all of a sudden he becomes really popular. I collaborated with Richard Swift. I worked on the song with my girlfriend Melissa and then we were both like, it would be more fun to share this with somebody else.

DD: Can you tell me a bit about your life in New York since you moved the northwest?
Khaela Maricich: My experience of New York is that people are really excited to talk about everything. They’re just really excited to have conversations about things and ideas. On the west coast tends to be that people talk about themselves, they see things funneled through themselves, processing their influence of the world and I’ve definitely been influenced by that, I think it’s good having a sense of who you are and what matters to you. But it’s nice to come form that background and then go to New York; people just wanna talk about anything. It’s so nice to process the world through conversations with people. There’s like a sense of camaraderie about that.
 
DD: Did you already have a big network in New York, or did you seek out these dialogues?
Khaela Maricich: Well, we knew some people, but it was definitely lonely. All my best friends live in Portland. And it was funny to feel like, unpopular. [laughs] I mean, if you do it with a partner, it’s not as lonely. That said, it’s really a good place to get work done, New York is, because I’m not surrounded by my best friends and, like, going swimming at two in the afternoon in the river, though that’s lovely. In New York, everyone’s like I’ll see you at six. Also what’s nice is the sky is the limit, in a big city. In smaller places, if you talk about a success that you’re excited about, people’s reaction is more “oh, well, that’s nice for you”. It could sound like you were bragging or something. But if you’re doing that in a big city, like “Beyoncé lives a mile away”, people are like cool, alright, well that’s great.
 
DD: Yeah, they’re probably like, “well, Solange lives next door to me”, so…
Khaela Maricich: Yeah! “I was out with Solange last week!” No one is impressed; they’re just cool. It’s nice, 'cause it makes you feel like you gotta press on, and there’s no time to waste.
 
DD: You’ve got to be pretty sharp at all times.
Khaela Maricich: Yeah, in London and New York – the audiences can be pretty ruthless! They’re like, well, I saw Tina Turner last week, so I’m comparing you to that, I hope you know.
 
DD: No one’s said that to you?!
Khaela Maricich: With their eyes, they do!
 
DD: And what about the New York music scene? It’s so cultish, in a way, do you feel connected to it? Does it feel collaborative? Competitive?
Khaela Maricich: The scene that I found myself hanging out with the most is not the music scene as much. It’s more performance art. Kinda gay. I didn’t mean to only hang out with gay men, but it’s like this strong lesbian and fabulous gay boy scene. I don’t mean to sound like I’m not interested or involved in the music scene, but we haven’t totally nuzzled into that niche as much. Maybe that cultish aspect is a little bit more of a younger scene, maybe I found that part of my identity in the Northwest – I definitely have really good musicians friends there – and I had access to music there but less so performance or art, so I’ve spent as much time as possible seeing weird dance pieces or art lectures; things I couldn’t have gotten as much fill of before. People are trying things out, and it’s really exciting to see.
 
DD: The Blow has been around for several years, and included Jonah [now performing as the band YACHT] at a certain point. Is there a coherence to the band?
Khaela Maricich: [My solo stuff] is wild and scrappy; it’s not as clean and electronic as what I did with Jonah, but I feel like it really retains the same DNA… It’s been a similar skeleton but it’s been able to be fleshed out with varying degrees of slickness. It depends on what sheen you can polish it to. My mum likes the more recent music better, and that’s cool. It’s cool to have mums like it.

Photo by Chas Bowie