Remi Wolf: Inside her vivid tales of love and life in LA

It’s rare to find a collection of songs so expertly crafted by an artist at the start of their career. Replete with fresh funk, soul and R&B hooks that latch onto vivid tales of love and life in LA, it’s what makes Remi Wolf’s brilliant second EP ‘I’m Allergic To Dogs’ such a addictive listen.

With the help of producer Jared Solomon (solomonophonic) and a step-up in collaboration via writing sessions that for once proved fruitful, Wolf’s new EP shows that switching up the creative process doesn’t necessarily inhibit vision. ‘I’m Allergic To Dogs’ EP is a magical, catchy and fun record that begs to be played in the sunshine.

NME hopped on a call with Wolf to find out about the LA fuckboys, dentistry procedures and 3am Bossa Nova sessions that inspired the release.

‘Down The Line’

“This song is about my inability but my desire to commit to relationships. It’s a really complicated song; I kind of go on a bunch of tangents everywhere. The crux of it is that I can’t commit, but maybe ‘down the line’, I could.

The first verse is me establishing a high school scene. It’s super American, like, we’re in the bleachers and somebody you hate because they fucked you over walks by. It has this super West Coast energy, and it sounds very throwback-y to me. My songwriting was more experimental here.

I don’t really normally sing in that higher register. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Panic! At The Disco. They’re drama kings, and I’m kind of obsessed with that. We were also listening to a lot of Queen and jazz music at that time. So I feel like that kind of fed into the song’s aesthetic.”

‘Woo!’

“This encapsulates this mania I have a lot of the time, like intense mood swings. I was really in a panic the day I wrote it and the words came out in 20 minutes. They’re all over the place. It felt really good to write and release it even if I wasn’t even entirely sure what the fuck was going on. I didn’t exactly know what I was writing, but I knew that I felt it was true.

The ‘running out of Oxycontin’ line is me singing about the time I got my wisdom teeth taken out and the dentist fully fucked up all my nerves. I love those kind of painkiller depressants – drugs that sort of make you happy. As an anxious person I was stoked when I got them from the dentist. So I was referencing a time in my life when I was in a lot of pain.

There’s a feeling behind the song that’s really strong, which I think is sometimes more moving than saying particularly pointed lyrics.”

‘Hello Hello Hello’

“It’s about this man who was living in New York had a girlfriend there. I hadn’t seen him for a long time but he came out to California and we started a relationship. It was a couple of long months of him being like, ‘I want to be with you but don’t know how to break up with my girlfriend.’ It really sucked.

He didn’t want to be with this girl. She was controlling and it seemed like she’d make all the food and dictated how he lived. It always came up as a thing that he was upset about. Food became a big thing for us. Like, sharing food was really important to us bonding heavily at the beginning of our relationship. So it made its way into my psyche and into the song (‘When I’m gone my baby makin’ eggplant parmesan / When’s he’s with his other baby he’s a vegetarian’).

The guitar part is Bossa Nova-derived, I wrote it in my house at like 3am to a YouTube loop I found. I had to be really quiet cause all my roommates were sleeping and I was literally whispering the melody into my voice memos.”

‘Photo ID’

“This is my take on frustration. Everything I say is me being really frustrated at certain things like, ‘New week, no sleep, no key / I lost ’em in the street / And no I can’t see without you’. I’m kind of tying that frustration to one person because every line ends in that ‘I can’t [x] without you’. The chorus is the break from that and it’s like, ‘Let’s go party and get fucked up!’ It’s a dancey jam. I want to go dance to it in the club at some point.

‘Disco Man’

“It’s primarily inspired by LA fuckboys. We were exploring the classic cliches in the writing session. We ended up creating a story built around one dude who was just super shitty and annoying, who’s focused on his wealth and is kind of fratty but also hipster. He thinks he’s sick as fuck but actually he has no class, and he’s a poser. So with the, ‘He likes his movies when they’re Tarantino’ lyric, that’s just every fucking dude ever. I love Tarantino, but it becomes dudes’ identities.

There’s this cool dance party held on Saturdays in Echo Park and one night I saw these dudes dressed in crazy ‘70s cowboy outfits. They were so ostentatious and annoying, and my memory of them is kind of the ‘disco man’. The song is inspired by a lot of personalities and characters I’ve met in this crazy music industry, and my journey in LA meeting all these fucking wild people.”

Remi Wolf’s ‘I’m Allergic To Dogs!’ EP is out now

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