On their sophomore album, “Twentytwo in Blue,” New York trio Sunflower Bean is focused. Their edges still might be fuzzy — a good amount of reverb should never leave the sound of a true garage-rock band — but their message of strength and action is clear. That thread is present through the excellent LP’s 11 tracks, but never does it pierce your psyche like it does on “Twentytwo.” Julia Cumming’s voice floats above the bright guitar, lulling the listener into a gauzy dreamscape, but her words are profound: “I do not go quietly / Into the night that calls me / Even when I’m alone.” It’s clear that this is close to her heart.
“Twentytwo” is definitely a song about powerlessness, Cumming says. “Or, really, that feeling of powerlessness that you’re always sort of fighting against … It’s like this white knuckle feeling [about today’s politics and society] alongside this feeling of being young and everyone saying ‘you’re beautiful, you should go out and meet a lot of people and you should go and have fun and do all these things.’” While these complex feelings were never foreign to the band, Cumming’s much more confident about expressing them than even a couple of years ago. As she sits in a small backstage room at Resident in Los Angeles, Cumming chooses her words carefully and assertively. “What happens when this skin falls off of me?” she continues. “Who’s underneath there? And [“22” speaks to] that powerlessness of being who you are in this moment and not really having a choice of that … It’s rejecting this youth, this beauty and all of these things that are being said to and forced on you. It’s saying that you’re not going to give up.”
Cumming, at only 22 years old, is already a veteran at pushing herself through anxiety, pain or awkwardness. “I think one thing I’ve always done — for better or worse (a lot of times worse) — is take these chances or push myself beyond what I’m comfortable with to see what happens and to grow,” she laughs. As a multi-hyphen artist, fashion model and muse, Cumming has had the unique opportunity to see the world through many different lenses. Now she’s on her way to carving out a space of her own while encouraging others to change with her with her newest project Anger Can Be Power — a DIY-inspired community catalyst for political and social change.
“[After the presidential election] I felt like there was a lot of creative energy that was kind of sitting there,” Cumming says about the origins of Anger Can Be Power. “It was anger, it was powerlessness, it was just kind of sitting here and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to just play a benefit, I didn’t want to just protest because [when] I was protesting and I was screaming and I was [having] these mental breakdowns after protesting. So [as a politically aware person] you can call, you can vote, you can write letters and you can protest — and you should do all of these things — but I felt like I wanted to try to find something different to add to that repertoire.” Anger Can Be Power was born as a self-described “combination of friendship and community with self-education” and “a place on a regular week night where you could go somewhere, meet people and start to talk about everything that you’re feeling.” She even registered the website domain right after the election.
While Cumming is quick to help embolden women around her, she’s harder on herself. “I don’t have everything figured out. I’ve never even been to college! You know?” she says. “I’m not a teacher or anything, I’m just really passionate about people integrating activism and paying attention to their surroundings into their lives.” This passion has always been a part of Cumming’s life — she had a political internet radio show with an old bandmate as a teenager — but sometimes other priorities stepped into the spotlight. “I stopped because it takes a lot of work [to be active] and because I really wanted to work on bass and I had these other priorities… I was kind of entering a new phase but also I was just getting kind of complacent … And I had to look at my privilege as a white woman. It’s a lot easier for me not to care because I’m not being persecuted actively in that same way that other people are. They don’t get to turn that off. And the important thing about that I needed something to reignite [my activism]. And that’s not something to harp on and feel totally guilty about — or never start — it’s just about starting when you can. It’s about paying attention whenever you can and always striving to do your best.”
On top of her almost masochistic touring schedule with Sunflower Bean, Cumming is moving forward with her vision for Anger Can Be Power. “We’re working on a lot of exciting things … I have a really, really wonderful team working with me and we’re figuring out how to bring [Anger Can Be Power] to more people, how to make it more accessible,” she says, waving her arms around as she gets more excited about the possibilities. “We’re also figuring out how to create events that I don’t necessarily have to lead because I can’t be in more than one place at once, or all the time.”
A big smile comes across Cumming’s face as she discusses Anger Can Be Power’s future; it’s heavy thinking about all the ways the world needs to change, but Cumming is up to carry some of that load. As the conversation circles back around to the anthemic “Twentytwo,” Cumming’s resilient attitude and hope beam even brighter. “The track’s verses are filled with all the anxieties and worries that you feel, but the chorus is really where the heart is,” Cumming says. “Even in your darkest moments, or even at the end of the day where you’re finally by yourself and it’s the hardest to be strong, you’re not going to give in.”
The Three Best Pieces of Advice that Julia Cumming Ever Got (and Actually Followed)
No one can take your education away from you.
“There was a girl in school, her name was Shanika and she was a beautiful singer. I went to performing arts school [and] I had just joined vocal [class] and she was older than me, but I looked up to her a lot … I remember her talking to me about how no one can take your education away from you. I mean except for dementia, but it’s true! All sorts of economic circumstances, life circumstances, all these things that can happen, [but] if you cultivate your mind, if you cultivate yourself, if you cultivate your interests and push yourself, [no one] can take that away. And I feel like that really shaped me inadvertently because it’s something I still believe in. While information is still free for us to look at. We need to be taking all of that in as much as we can at all times and not be lazy about it because that will be our strength.”
Wake up every morning and tell yourself that you’re a “Bad Bitch from Hell.”
“This piece of advice is really funny because it’s almost like conversational advice between me and my friend Kate Nash. She took my old band on tour and produced my old band’s record. It never came out, but [we’re] still really, really close and have been friends for many years. And when she produced this record, I was living with her in England. I was 15 and I remember we were all going through really hard times: Kate was going through a rough time, we were going through a rough time. And I can’t remember exactly, like, I think Kate said it (and she’s taking credit for saying it), but I almost feel like it was something we were all kind of like saying at time which is ‘Every morning when you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you’re a bad bitch from hell.’ [laughs] It’s like such a ridiculous statement: it’s like you’re a bad bitch, you’re also from hell. There’s something so fierce about it because it’s like, you’ve already been to hell, you’ve already seen it, you were already there, and now you’re back! [laughs] Nothing can stop you.”
You make a record and then you have the rest of your life.
“This isn’t really advice from a particular person, but it’s something that we, as the band, tell ourselves all the time. It’s a Lou Reed quote, and I don’t know if I’m exactly saying it right, but the quote is ‘You make a record and then you have the rest of your life.’ Which I really love because it’s so easy when you make things to get so caught up in it. Like it’s all I care about this so much and it’s going to go out in to the world and it’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done and it’s the only thing I’m doing and oh my god! It’s just really important to try to maintain perspective and be like, ‘Okay, we did this. This is the record we made, this is what we’re doing.’ As long as I’m healthy [and] as long as I stay alive I’m going to probably make another record and that’s going to be cool, too! I think that’s something that gives me a lot of joy or relaxation, or contentness. Knowing that there will be more, it’s knowing that this thing right now isn’t the only thing that’s ever going to happen is really beautiful and full of opportunity in itself.”
BAILEY PENNICK 