Planetary Group took some time to get to know Sylvia…
Planetary Group: Tell us about your latest release. How did you come to create it?
Sylvia: A Miss/ A Masterpiece was a pandemic record. I wrote most of it in 2020 & recorded all of it that year. It’s just taken a couple years to release it because I don’t like to do anything halfway.
PG: Share a bit about your musical journey, from when you first started making music until now.
Sylvia: So anybody who’s been paying attention to the albums I’ve made (I’ve put out five) will have noticed that I’ve put out an album every two years since 2014. My first few records were very much country albums. I was playing fiddle with alt country bands, and that’s just kind of what I was doing and what I knew how to do, even though I was a very rock-influenced kid.
That’s just kinda what I fell into in my twenties, because people wouldn’t hire me to play bass as a woman in Alabama. But then each album got progressively more rock-forward until Bad Luck, which was definitely like half and half, alt country/ Americana. And then A Miss/ A Masterpiece is just straight up emo/ pop punk-inspired, rock and roll. Anybody that was really paying attention over the years saw this coming. And if they didn’t, they were a little surprised… they weren’t paying attention.
PG: Let’s talk about the music that you love. Pick one album for each category below & tell us a bit about it!
- An album you grew up listening to:
Sylvia: I grew up listening to 10 by Pearl Jam… I wore it out, still wear it out. The first copy of 10 that I had on CD, I played so many times that it split in half!
- An album that inspires you as an artist (I’m sure there are many, but pick one of your choosing):
Sylvia: Futures by Jimmy Eat World. I think it’s a perfect record, & I think Gil Norton is a perfect producer. Everything about that album is an 11 out of 10.
- The album you currently have on repeat:
Sylvia: Riot by Paramore, because it was just the 15 year anniversary of the album. I’m in my thirties, so that’s my teenage years. And it seems impossible that that album’s 15 years old but yeah, I’ve got that back on repeat now to celebrate.
PG: What do you want people to take away from your music?
Sylvia: That fun, uptempo songs can have good lyrics; they can be lyrical and smart. And also that you don’t have to make your deeply lyrical songs sonically boring, just for the sake of making the lyrics stand out.
What’s next up for you?
Sylvia: I have two follow-up singles to the album releasing on July 15th. They were recorded at West End Sound with Tom Tapley and we did those back in March. And I’m really excited to share them this summer.
Thanks to Sylvia for speaking with us!!
