![]() “Like, let’s just make it as bombastic as possible.”įans of showy, flashy bullshit – a term she uses with affection – don’t go entirely short-changed. “We were like, ‘Why don’t we just make pop songs that actually sound like pop songs?’,” she says. While her attempts to spice up her relationship with the guitar using less complex chords and alternate tunings had “felt unnatural or just unpleasant,” writing on the unfamiliar D-50 kindled the simplicity she’d been looking for. The breakthrough came when she got her hands on a Roland D-50, the classic ‘80s synth behind the pizzicato chords of Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” and the notorious ‘DigitalNativeDance’ factory preset used by everyone from Prince and Michael Jackson to Miles Davis and Tangerine Dream. “I started thinking, ‘Am I just gonna do the same thing forever?’,” says Birgy, halfway rolling her eyes. Sidelining the “showy, flashy bullshit” of her last few albums to work within new, self-imposed limitations, it’s as much about reclaiming a sense of fun as it is an exercise in shaking the band free of foregone conclusions. Thirteen years later, End of Everything arrives as the seventh full-length entry in the Mega Bog universe, and in many ways the most direct. Moving to Seattle to be with Burba, Birgy started her own label, Wizards of the Ghost, through which the first two Bog tapes were born. It was in Olympia that she met musicians Shelby Turner and Zach Burba, who helped bring Mega Bog into being as a full-band evolution of earlier projects Little Swamp and Midi Marsh. By the time she was 18, Birgy had embedded herself in a creative community based around countercultural spaces like the Olympia Free School and The Finger Complex, which doubled as both a venue and her home. Spokane was an important stepping stone but it’s in Olympia, five hours west, that the origins of Mega Bog lie. Her earliest poems were published there, along with a weekly column that revolved around tea and conversation with strangers and engrained in her a passion for community that lives on through the Mega Bog extended family – Birgy once counted over 80 members who’ve flitted in and out of the band, with regulars including Big Thief’s James Krivchenia and Hand Habits leader Meg Duffy. “It’s funny, I’ve been seeing this person and every time I have a little anecdote about my childhood they’re like, ‘Wow, you’ve seen a lot of bloodshed,’ and I’m like, ‘Dude, I haven’t even begun!’”Īt 15, she finally got out of the family ranch, moving to the nearby city of Spokane with her only friend (and former first love) Joel Gregory, where they both became regular contributors to alternative newspaper The Finger. “It was an insane way to grow up,” she says. As well as the “massive abuse” she experienced at the hands of her family, who she says she’s now “semi-estranged” from, the frequent horrors of the rodeo life were hard to bear. Her mother’s first husband was run out of Idaho state for trying to kill her, while her second husband, a wild horse racer, was the reason why Birgy spent much of her those years as part of a travelling rodeo. Soaked in violence, blood and death, Birgy’s teenage years were mostly miserable. Like, what would happen if everything was just over, right now? I hadn’t felt like that since I was a teenager so it was interesting to circle back fully, to sort of complete a pattern, and then just let it go.” “Maybe it was just a perspective I was choosing to explore. “It just made sense to have a really dramatic title like End of Everything, because I felt that really was an option at one point,” says Birgy. We’re here to talk about her new album End of Everything and its companion book of poetry The Practice of Hell Ending – both released through Brooklyn-based label Mexican Summer – and evidently there’s a lot to unpack. With her lively ocean-coloured eyes, dimpled smile and distinctive, giddy laugh, she projects a sense of warmth and spontaneity that even a jittery internet connection can’t stifle. A desk in the living room will have to do today, it seems.īirgy, who records as the sonically slippery, avant-pop entity Mega Bog, has an immediately likeable presence. There’s no respite from the noise though, and she eventually gives up and goes inside. “Just annoying human shit,” she huffs lightly, taking her laptop – and me along with it – on a walk around the plot where she lives, spilling her drink as she goes.
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