^{Interview conducted by Josie Stahler}

^{Audio edited by Aidan Heilman}

This week WLUW had the chance to sit down with Frost Children, a pop duo from St. Louis, Missouri, to talk about their new album, drinking milk on stage, headline tours and vampitarian diets. 

Josie: This is Josie from WLUW hanging out with Frost Children. Do you want to introduce yourself? 

Lulu: Yes, yes. Yo, what’s up? This is Lulu. Lulu radio. 

Angel: This is Angel, Angel emoji New York City radio Chicago. 

Josie: Woohoo. You did it. So, welcome back to Chicago. 

Angel: Thank you. 

Last time you were here was with George Clanton, death’s dynamic shroud. How’s headline tour going?

Angel: Headline tour has been fantastic. A lot of fans that saw us from that tour and then decided to keep listening, and they dove further than they had before, and they’re coming back and they like it a lot. It’s been, it’s been super good. Almost every show has been sold out. We’ve had some dope openers. MSPAINT, Mother Cell our homies from New York. Yeah, it’s been lit. 

That’s awesome. Actually, I was gonna bring up New York, you both currently reside there. Talk to me about the music scene. Maybe describe it for those who are unfamiliar. 

Lulu: Well, we’ve been gone honestly for a little bit, so it’s hard to say what’s going on right now, but I know that we got a lot of homies there. Shouts up Blaketheman, shouts out Harrison, The Dare. You know, we just love going out and spinning anywhere we can. We love DJing at this place called The End, which is in Brooklyn. And we just, whenever we get the chance, we’ll do something there or like, just go there to see different DJs and stuff. But honestly, my, I don’t know if Angel might have a different opinion, but I’m a little tapped out because we’ve been gone for so long on the road. 

Angel: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff happening, but yeah, we’re on the road, like all the time now. You know, in New York, I feel like time moves like 4x speed, so when you’re gone for like a month, you’re actually gone for like four months, sometimes it feels like, but there’s a lot of stuff happening there. Our drummer, Eden, is in a band called Marble Mouth and it’s really epic, and they do shows like so freaking often. There’s like this label Sex Emo Records that we really love that makes cool merch too. My friend Aiden does. Yeah, there’s just stuff happening all the time. There’s so many cool artists and like, Comet is doing really good, Thoom. Yeah, it’s just like a lot of good artists doing stuff all the time. You know, it’s kind of like, as simple as that. Yeah. 

I love it. You mentioned Harrison Patrick Smith from The Dare. You both did freakquencies if I’m correct.

Angel: Yes. We’ve done a couple now.

Okay, nice. What’s the energy like, there, I only see it in photos.

Angel: You know, it’s great. It’s just a lot of people dancing to good music in a small and sweaty place, which is a, it’s a nice vibe when you are not, when you haven’t done that for a while, you know. I was going to Harrison’s sets way back in the day, pre-COVID When it was like me and two other people, and he was playing very similar stuff, you know. It just took a while for the world to catch up. And I’m really, I’m really happy that he has achieved what he’s achieved and, you know, we’re growing simultaneously and the vibes are always great there. We always DJ kind of like a little bit more psycho vibe, which I think complements it. That like the cool sexy vibe and like the more like, psychotic confusing vibes together. 

Honestly, what’s a night out without a little psychosis you know?

Angel: Exactly. Your psychosis needs a soundtrack you know.

For sure. So, completely different vibe. You’re both from St. Louis. Do you feel that your upbringing there affects the way you make music? 

Lulu: I think definitely, or at least the fact that we were like in the suburbs, just like listening to like mall emo, and like, you know, whatever. Like me, I was just listening to whoever’s CDs and stuff like our older brother would bring home and show us, which was just like, the big names like MCR and Green Day and stuff. So we were just there, and we would go to like, rock camps every summer and like, play in cover bands and stuff when we were kids. So I was like, definitely just drumming at home to like those records.

The oldest sibling influence, it’s very prevalent.

Lulu: Yeah, and he taught us how to produce too. He was like the, I don’t even know. 

Angel: The seed.

Lulu: Yeah, exactly the seed.

Angel: Johnny Appleseed. He was the Johnny Appleseed and us, but mere sproutlings in the field of life. 

For sure. I love it. You mentioned going to rock camps and things like that. I noticed you both have a very strong stage presence from like, drinking milk on stage to crowd surfing, whatever. Have you ever felt stagefright or does being in front of a crowd come naturally?

Lulu: I should probably just make it clear that my days of drinking milk on stage, that was, you know, that was months ago. That was, that was months ago. I was young. 

[gasps] Is it over?

Lulu: I was young. I, you know, I was just testing out things. But these days now, I don’t drink milk. I drink whiskey, Jack Daniels on the rocks on stage. Because I don’t know I, you know, I don’t regret drinking milk on stage, but it did make me feel good. And my vocal coach told me to do it. 

Oh, interesting.

Angel: Yeah, things like that help with the stagefright, you know, but I don’t think we feel a ton anymore. Sometimes I get a little shy. At the beginning of the set it takes like two songs. Especially when like the band that plays before us is really freaking good, such as last night in Detroit, MSPAINT played a really amazing set, and when we started ours, I was like, I was feeling a little shy because they, you know, they, they ate it up. Other than that, you know, I don’t feel I don’t feel a lot of stage fright anymore. 

That’s great. 

Angel: If you fail on stage, it’s still interesting, you know.

Very much so. So let’s chat about your greatest feat of 2023, arguably, is releasing two albums in a year. Speed Run and Hearth Room. Was that meant to be a double album project from the get go? 

Angel: Yes. I wanted it to come out one week from each other, like Friday, and then the next Friday, two albums, but it ended up taking longer to finish the second record. And yeah, but they were always, always planned to be presented both ways. It felt like the most sincere way of presenting the two kind of like, vibes that we liked making. Older albums that we made kind of tried to do a lot of things all at once, and arguably, I guess we still do, but we wanted to do two more focused projects next to each other. I guess it was what, how long between the two albums like officially eight months, seven months? April to November? Yeah. If I had my way they would have come out one week from each other, but you know.

That I would have been cool for sure.

Angel: The suits came in and said, “Angel. That’s not how it’s gonna go.” 

Come on, suits!

Lulu: No, if we put it out when we when that happened that would have been like eight like random demos.

Angel: Yeah, it wouldn’t have been the product that it is now. So no, it actually was good and if anything, we were like, We sped through that. It was a speed run of hearth room you could say. 

There you go. So most recently, you just released a single with Eliminate. Can you tell me a little bit about the process for that collab?

Angel: Eliminate, we’re huge fans. We DJ his stuff all the time, are huge fans of his like weird bass house vibes. Yeah, and then we’re choosing who to do a remix of our song “Flatline” he was top of our list, and he ended up being down. We didn’t know him, but he was like, “Sure.” It was awesome. He liked it, and then when we were in LA, he just hit us up to do a session, and we’re like, “yes.” And I walked in the studio, and I said, I want to make a song where the, it’s like an acronym. It’s like a new acronym that we invent, you know? And I want to say like, baby girl or like baby girl, like 10 times in it, and that was like the, like prognosis, you know? 

Yeah. 

Angel: And that’s what we did. It took like two days. Two sessions. 

Sick. 

Angel: Yeah, he’s an amazing producer. We usually don’t really like to work with people. [swallows]

[laughs] You don’t like to work with people?

Angel: I swallowed. I cut my, I swallowed mid-sentence and it sounds like that was a full sentence. We usually don’t like letting other people produce for us, because production is kind of integral to what we do, but we love working with people. And we love when producers we really admire…

Lulu: He was like, we came on a Thursday and then made the song, did all the vocals, and then we came back on the following Monday to finish up the track. And he opened up the door and he was like, “I’m gonna be honest, I have not…You’re the first humans I’ve seen since you were last here.” [everyone laughs] Because he was not doing anything else except for working on the track and then he completely built out all these crazy bass like sounds and stuff.

Angel: You’re doxxing Nate as a nerd right now.

You know what, we all need our alone time.

Angel: Yeah, actually, we did the session and then we came back the next weekend. And he was like, “You won’t believe the crazy week I had. I met so many insane people and went out so much.” That was what happened. So cool. 

So cool. You guys also model in addition to, you know, playing music. Do you feel that modeling influences onstage performance and vice versa, or are they separate for you?

Angel: Yeah, I was. I mean, you know, I was always doing music before, but then when I moved to New York, I just got like street scouted to do like random modeling stuff for fashion brands. And I think it was definitely like, the first time I had been in front of large crowds and been in front of like, celebrities, even though like, you know, obviously, they didn’t know who I was, I was just a random model, but it was like, the first time I had been like, it’s just me and like, a ton of people looking at me. So that happened to me when I was like, 18. 

Wow. 

Angel: And I think maybe it helps with stage presence, because I’m just used to like, a lot of eyes on me now. And I really like clothes, but I don’t really have time to model anymore. Those days are behind me maybe unless it’s like a really cool thing.

Fair, I hear you guys have been on like a 10 day stint or something, you know, like, just constant driving around performing?

Angel: Yeah, they, they really wanted me in this recent Marc Jacobs show that was the same day as our New York show last week. And they were like trying to make it work so that I could like Uber there and like, go straight on and then straight back and I was just, it was stressing me out. And I was like, I don’t even see really the benefit of it anymore. But I love getting sent things and I love wearing them onstage you know, told us sort of like how it’s evolved for me. 

(Lulu is playing with a lighter we brought as a gift)

Angel: Whoa, Lulu just did a cool lighter trick with the 88.7 FM sponsored lighter.

The number one comment I get from artists is, “why is the safety on this thing?” Like we should really make this sucker like explode.

Angel: Make it engulfed.

[laughs] So in addition to you know, modeling and onstage performance, let’s talk about Instagram a little bit. I’m really fascinated by both your Instagrams but specifically like your stream of consciousness videos that you’ve got going Angel, tell me about the process.

Angel: My stream of consciousness videos? Basically, I don’t know, I write these little like, poems, just my thoughts and feelings on things and I go around and make videos, I call them like my like pensive posts, where I’m sort of like dawning this pseudo-intellectual pensive character that’s really like, you know, thinking about life. And then I film myself, I like prop my phone up against the wall, and just like walk up and down the street, like as if I’m deep in thought. Well, I guess I kind of am deep in thought. The first time I made one of those actually was when the whole sky in New York City was red, because of the wildfires in Canada. And I had this like idea where it’s like, the night or the day that the world burned or something it was like, such a dramatic thing. And I was like, I want to make like a really like dramatic like Instagram video of just like, Where were you the day the world set ablaze? And so that was the first one and then I just kept doing more of those. And yeah, I want to do more, but it takes a lot, it takes more time than like, it should because I’m really bad with video editing. 

Angel: Yeah it’s like literally being a film director almost.

Angel: You know? Yeah. Add that to the laundry list of my achievements. 

Yeah, there you go. Are you continuing the vampitarian diet at all on this tour?

Angel: I am actually, yes. So I’m not doing it the way that I was doing it on the last tour where fans would bring me organs because it was a little unsustainable, and I was cooking the organs in the greenroom. And everyone really did not like it. I feel like there’s times where I’d clear the room cooking these organs so now I’m just trying to find them out in the in the wild. So like, you know, I had like lengua at like, like a Latin food restaurant we went to. I had like, liver and onions is probably the most dependable at least in like American diners, but this place right across the street from our venue yesterday in Detroit had lamb liver, so it’s just like sometimes life works out like that. 

There you go. 

Angel: But I’m still doing it and my white blood cell count has like quadrupled so I will say it’s working.

There you go. And then, last question I have for you both is what was it like to work with Enzo and Sookie, the Hearth Room dogs on the album cover?

Lulu: They were, they kind of like, fell in love with each other, and were like they were fighting at first. We have videos of it that we have never posted, but they really liked each other for a little bit. And then they didn’t and they kind of kept going back and forth. But ultimately they settled their disagreements and decided to…and then they got really good with the camera randomly. 

Oh, okay. 

Lulu: First it was hard to sit them down and then they like it was weird watching them go from like being these like, you know, like, just running around to like, “where am I?” And then they like realized what was happening. And then we all saw them, like get into character and like stay and actually look at the camera even. It was like their first photoshoot, but like, I’m like, damn, I guess like some people really do like train their dogs to do this. And like it’s possible. Totally. Hopefully they have a blooming career from this. 

Lulu: I hope so too. Not just album covers, maybe…dog walks, and, you know.

Angel: I will say this, because I don’t think they’ll ever read this, but the two owners of the dogs ended up having personal beef with each other, and so now it’s sad because those dogs will probably never be together ever again.

No!

Angel: Isn’t that so sad? 

And they had just fallen in love. Well, thank you so much both for taking the time to chat with me.

Angel: Thank you.

Any last thoughts?

(Just before this interview we were talking about avoiding calling to action, an FCC rule for the radio. This is the end result.)

Angel: I would say if you’re listening to this, it might be favorable for someone in your situation to perhaps consider listening to Frost Children music, on streaming, buy a vinyl, you know, do something like that. You know, if you’re in the situation that would be favorable for you to do such a thing, attend a concert or something like that.

Lulu: I agree with Angel. I think that if given the situation or the opportunity, and you whatever, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, it would bring you lots of light, and, and positivity and comfort. 

Angel: I think Steve Jobs has a good quote. 

Oh I think so, yeah. 

Lulu: As Steve Jobs, in his autobiography, said chapter four. That if you really want to get to know, the motherboard, then you would probably be, it would be in your best interest to go to the Frost Children’s show. 

That’s beautiful.

Angel: I remember that one, too.

You know, I think I can recall that. Yes. [laughs]

Angel: Page 20 of Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs.
Frost Children have finished their headline tour and will be opening on specific dates for Dorian Electra later this month. You can listen to them on Spotify, or follow them on Instagram.