Now, Now return: “I had to unlearn things about myself”

As the beloved emo-pop band release their first new music since 2019, KC Dalager and Brad Hale talk growing up and facing a changed industry.

KC Dalager and Brad Hale don’t know how it happened but they’ve slipped into a seven-ish year cycle with their midwest emo-pop project Now, Now. 13 years ago, in 2012, they released their beloved second album Threads. Almost seven years later arrived its follow-up, Saved, the band’s pop turn and most marquee-level effort. Another seven years have passed and right on time the duo are back with a new EP, titled 01, out today, October 29, in full.

“We’re having our third Saturn return,” Hale jokes when I meet up with them over a video call. Like 2018 was just yesterday, Hale and Dalagar, her hair still dyed its signature shade of peachy pink, sit side-by-side on her bed ready to jump back in the rigamarole.

But of course, time has passed and much has happened behind-the-scenes. The pandemic affected them like all other musicians — “It was the first moment where I was able to question whether or not I wanted to do this,” Dalager says — and she embarked on her own side quest in 2023, releasing a solo album, Think I’m Gonna Die (which Hale helped produce). That project followed an official autism diagnosis and getting her license to become a somatic sound practitioner. On his side, Hale has been producing for artists like Miya Folick and creating graphics for Bon Iver and American Football.

Sometime in the last two or so years, the two friends and housemates (who say that they’re each others’ longest consistent presences) felt that seven-year itch again and reconvened in their shared home studio. This is where their latest package of new songs — four brilliant, cathartic tracks — begins, perhaps the start of something more.

The FADER: It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Now, Now. Does it feel like you all took as big of a gap for you both?

Hale: I was saying it has been a long time. It feels like it has but also we have been constantly doing other stuff through it all and working on our music, so the time doesn’t seem as extreme. I’ve been busy with music making. And we’ve been working on our stuff in the mix of all that. What do you [Dalager] have to say?

Dalager: It feels like our pattern with music. We do something, we go in really, really intense, it takes us years to make, we tour on it for years, and then we’re like, “Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah.” Then we start sprinkling it all back in. And all of a sudden we’re like, “Wait, we like this. Maybe we should put this out.” It’s never really a plan, it just organically unfolds.

The space between Threads and Saved was also similarly…

Dalager: …as dramatic. I think we release albums at such pivotal times. It’s like the all-encompassing chaos of your 20s. And then we’re like, “Oh, we’re adults now.” And then Saved comes and we’re like, “No, we still don’t have it figured out,” you know?

Developmentally, another thing shifts. I kind of feel like that’s what happened here. There’s a developmental shift into actual, more adulthood. [And] we end up writing an album or, you know, some sort of music chunk.

 

KC, you released a solo album in 2022. For that project, you shared a lot about your autism diagnosis and working through that and how it reshifted your perspective about yourself. When you talk about your journey of growing as a person, are you referring to this, and what was it like to return to Now, Now with this new knowledge about yourself?

Dalager: Part of what was happening for me, especially when the lockdown part happened because of COVID, was [that it was] the first time where I was able to question whether or not I wanted to do this. Since our last album, there was so much that happened personally for us that didn’t really come to the surface emotionally. When everything paused, it was the first time where I felt this rebellion against Now, Now in a way, because in my mind at the time, it had been the cause of so many bad things that happened. I wanted to prove to myself that I had some sort of capability outside of it, which was what my solo album was. To overpower this “Now, Now has run my life and it has run me into the ground.” Not necessarily the band itself, but everything attached to it, the music industry.

My re-wiring thing was happening simultaneously with working on my album. That shifted a lot of how I saw myself and how I interact with the world because it gave me language to explain better. It made it easier for me to interact in my relationships just because it helps explain my tendencies, you know? As I say that, I feel a little bit frustrated because I feel like with autism or any type of neurodivergence, it can’t just be a preference, it has to be like, “Oh, it’s because I’m autistic.” Instead of just being like, “This is causing me stress. Can we do this a different way?” That’s a whole other thing.

Do you feel less rebellious now?

Dalager: Yeah. I did my album. Played some shows and was absolutely terrified. I was like, “I don’t like doing this by myself.” [But] I had to try. I had things I wanted to say that didn’t feel at the time they could be on Now, Now. But I don’t feel that at all anymore. I was just like, “Never mind.”

Hale: I think it was good for you as well, regardless.

Brad, what was it like for you to be there while KC walked through this period? You helped her with the album.

Hale: I mean, I’m so used to the whole thing. Being her friend for over 20 years, nothing’s really different. We maybe have some words to use. I don’t know. It’s the normal KC swirl of things, and I’m just on the outer edge being like, “What can I do to help this swirl in the best way possible?” It was fun for me because I got to help a little bit.

Brad, you’ve been producing for other people and doing graphic design for Bon Iver and American Football. Is that something you want to continue building on?

Hale: I don’t think so. Graphic design and music are such inverse brain power things that doing them simultaneously is very difficult and draining. When I’m doing one, the other one kind of suffers because I’m not exercising it as much. I do like to do design for our project because it feels like a natural extension. But I’ve been taking less design work in the last year, unless it’s something I’m super excited about, like the American Football stuff.

KC, the other new thing in your life is that you’re a licensed sound meditation practitioner. How has this practice fit in your creative world?

Dalager: It’s connected because it’s music in general, and there is a somatic experience with music that I really enjoy. I really love the sound meditation instruments. But it almost feels like completely energy work and not music. It feels like a totally different process, sometimes confusingly separate to me. Because in Now, Now, I am this tormented, disintegrating, struggling [person]. And then with sound meditation, I’m just healing. It’s two different panels of myself.

I want to talk about the new songs. Why only four? Are there more coming?

Hale: We cannot confirm nor deny.

Dalager: It is called 01 for a reason. What we were discussing earlier, it was a little bit of a capsule of the time. It’s a past version of self. Things that I’ve learned about myself that I don’t feel are true. Things I had to unlearn about myself. These four songs all felt thematically in that container.

Sonically, “Talk To God” sounds like a continuation of Saved. But then “About You” and “Speck” feel like new territory. You both have been working in the Now, Now universe for so long, what is making you guys excited to make music in terms of exploring sounds, exploring new things?

Hale: I think Saved opened up the possibility of not being pigeonholed as a project. Now we feel the freedom to go anywhere that we are excited about. It’s not any one thing in particular, it’s just on the day what is sparking our creative interest, be it a sound that I heard or some chord progression that KC came up with. It’s refreshing because I do so much songwriting and producing in the [Los Angeles] songwriting sphere that’s very reference-based. Everyone’s like, “Let’s make a song like these two songs put together.” Whereas we can’t force ourselves to make something unless it’s giving us a feeling.

Dalager: It’s physically uncomfortable when we can’t get the feeling of a song right. We go through four versions of a song until we are like, “Yeah.”

It’s been so long since you’ve both toured as Now, Now. What are your thoughts about the industry these days, from what you’ve seen and read online?

Hale: I think it’s the most undefined it’s been, which is cool in some ways, but also really not cool in a lot of other ways. I get easily bummed by it, which was maybe a barrier to why this also took so long. We can’t just make shit and put shit out. And that feels like what people think is the greatest method of being an artist right now, is just constantly throwing shit at the fan and hoping it works. I really miss the days of where an album was a precious, long-term project and there was not this pressure from the outside to be doing the most constantly, 24/7.

Dalager: I have a conflict about this internally because I take everything that we do really seriously, and so much of the music industry has turned into, honestly, more TikTok than music. I saw this quote recently that really resonated, and it was, “I’m not an artist, I’m an idiot.” And I feel it’s [saying], not everything is so precious, you know? [Sometimes] I get really icked out by the intensity of everyone calling themselves an artist.

Will you guys go on tour?

Hale: We are discussing some options, but we don’t have anything booked at the moment.

Dalager: We’re we’re being very mindful of how we do it. Energy and resources. Another thing about the music industry is many of my friends that have talked about touring have said it’s just been even more of a slog than it was before. We’re trying to figure something out.