NYLON Nineteen
The U.K. singer-songwriter talks to NYLON about her new album BREACH, and peeing at festivals.
Fenne Lily's BREACH is a deeply moving album about confrontation. Confronting old ghosts, her loneliness, and the bad habits orbiting her life — the London-based singer-songwriter's gorgeous sophomore album, out now via Dead Oceans, leaves no stone unturned in its meticulous rifling, all the way down to her smoking inclinations. "I gave up smoking when I was coughing up blood/ And when I felt better again I took it straight back up," she sings on the album's clean and guitar-plucked closer.
If that sounds like a reckless way of living, Lily already knows and has surely already come to terms with it. In fact, her album — much of which she wrote while alone in Berlin — is full of these difficult, level-headed observations, that as a listener, one can't help but put a mirror to your own life to also quietly observe. On "Somebody Else's Trees," she reflects on how a past near-death experience colored her life, and on "I, Nietzsche," how much she hates boys who like Nietzsche. If Lily's found a cure to the anxious remembering that plagues all of our days — more so now we're in quarantine — it's being hard and honest about your own limitations.
When we got Lily on the phone to get her take on the NYLON Nineteen, that frankness filtered through in nearly all of her answers, from how she takes her coffee (filtered black, of course) to her traumatic first Tame Impala concert, and curing her insomnia through watching storm chaser videos.
What's your go-to breakup song?
When I'm having a breakup I like to involve myself in music that isn't about breakups? I like to feel pain from a different perspective. Damien Jurado has a song called "The Last Great Washington State" and it's probably the most beautiful song I've ever heard. In terms of this really melancholy, emotionally intelligent story about losing someone and finding it difficult to fit your life around their life. It's completely devoid of anger or criticism. It feels really honest and really simple but it's got these mad strings on it.
What is your favorite red carpet look of all time worn by someone else?
Immediately I thought of the Björk swan dress. It's brilliant. Also swans do hug like that — they wrap their necks around things. I feel like if I was wearing that dress and I was at an event where nobody was speaking to me, not that nobody was speaking to Björk, but if I felt myself alone at an event, I would feel supported by the fact that there's a fake swan hugging me with its neck. Emotionally it feels important to me and also it looks tight.
What is one thing everyone should buy that is under $10?
A Shewee; it's to help women pee at festivals. It's like a funnel with a kind of oval shape opening at the top and a little tube, and you piss into the funnel and it goes directly down instead of spraying your feet and you can use it standing up. My friend bought me one as a joke and I took it to a festival last year and used it and it's changed the way that I pee. It looks suspect though. I have it in my kitchen drawer for some reason and every time I look in the back of the drawer I'm like "Oh! What's that?" But it's just the Shewee. It's fine. I've washed it.
What is your go-to sad song?
There's a song by Okkervil River that when I first heard it, I cried uncontrollably. It was one of the first times that I hung out with my now-boyfriend. We were in my house and he just put on this record and it's the first song on the record. It's called "Okkervil River R.I.P."
The first lyric is: "Hey my little baby/ Pointing at the sky's amazing/ In the lake now." It's like six-and-a-half minutes long, and it builds to this crescendo that, it's such a slow build, it naturally tracked the development of my crying. First I was crying a little bit, and then by minute two I was like really crying and then by the end I was an absolute mess. I was doing that diaphragm crying where you can't breathe and you can't see and this guy who I just met was just holding me and he didn't say anything. But I think I fell in love with him at that moment because he dealt with that outburst of unexplainable emotion so well. And ever since then, anytime I'm feeling like a need to cry, I'll put it on and every time it will let me cry.
What reality show would you most like to appear on?
Don’t Tell the Bride! It's an old show that is now on Netflix. It's British and the premise is, there's a couple who are engaged and the man is given the task of planning every aspect of the wedding. And, invariably, the woman says at the beginning: "I want to feel like a princess for one day." And the man says: "I wanna push her out of her comfort zone." And they don't get to have any contact through the process of planning the wedding. She just has to turn up on the wedding day to whatever this guy has planned, and it's so dramatic. There's often people like, "I need to think about our relationship. I can't go through this wedding. You've got this so wrong." It's perfect.
What is your coffee order?
Just a black filter coffee. I drink a lot of it. Recently, I've been trying to cut down so I've been splitting the amount of coffee I drink between two cups; rather than having six cups of coffee that are really strong I'll have six half-cups of coffee or whatever. So I'm watering down with oat milk. It doesn't taste the same. It doesn't feel as Parisian...? It doesn't feel like something Jacques Brel would drink. He wouldn't water it down.
What is your favorite fast food place, and what's your order?
When I was in the States, we went to an IHOP at midnight after an amazing day of driving down the Redwood trail in California. I got pancakes with fruit with yogurt and syrup and a side order of just broccoli. It was the perfect meal.