Interview by Hannah Fulkerson

Edited by Hannah Fulkerson & Karla Mercado

The duo band from Chicago celebrates the release of their new EP, Flash, as the summer gears up. The two members, Brewster Durbin and Fairys (Jack Sadlier), hope to fill the summer’s noise with electronic pop that closely resembles that of the nostalgic 2010’s era. The EP contains five songs, 6AM, SNW (Party With Us), I Want It All, I’m Your Man, and Fallback. We sat down and talked with them to ask a few burning questions…

Who are your ideal party guests, who would you want your plus one to be?

Brewster: My roommate Nolan and I have been hosting a lot of parties at our apartment recently, I really want Lightris and sero to pull up from Milwaukee and come to one. Every time I see them doing anything they’re lit. As far as dream party guests, definitely Rae Sremmurd. Matthew McConaughey maybe. Just some Southern boys.

Jack: If I could turn my cat Habanero into a human being he would be the best party guest.

In the about blurb, you use the term Gaga-era, what’s your favorite Gaga album?

Brewster: Probably Born This Way. I really like the Big Freedia remix of “Judas” on the 10th anniversary re-release too.

Jack: I think either The Fame or Mayhem, but leaning towards The Fame. Talk about a debut! Some of the most interesting modern pop songs, at times it feels like a 2010’s Thriller just hit after hit. But Mayhem really gripped me when it was released and I still go back to it. There’s so much solid material on it and she’s translated into the 2020s very well while keeping what makes her so unique at the forefront.

What are your main influences for this project beyond musicians

Brewster: There’s a picture of Sufjan Stevens on spring break in Miami that he posted to his Tumblr in 2013… that was definitely always in my mind when working on this music. Also, there was a period of time last summer before I moved out of Lafayette where one of the local bars started letting my friends and I host DJ nights, so for 3 or 4 Saturdays in a row I would show up, drink a bunch of High Noons, and dance nonstop from 10-2 until the bar shut down. That was such a fun time and a great send-off for my life in Lafayette, and I was thinking a lot about that energy while working on Flash. 

Jack: I always say my 2 main influences before I started creating my own music were the records my parents owned (Beatles, Billy Joel, etc.) and the Top 40 radio in the 2010s. I was obsessed with the charts and what the biggest songs were and it served as the basis for how I write songs. There was just a very fun energy about in all these songs that now we’re all nostalgic for, but I didn’t wanna make Flash this sort of nostalgia bait project. I feel like these songs have that energy while being their own thing.

What made you two come together to create this collaboration? 

Brewster: We’ve been good friends and collaborators for years at this point. Jack asked me to hop on “Fallback,” and I asked them to hop on “I’m Your Man,” and once we had those two songs together it kind of seemed natural to do an EP. We’re both planning on doing more “serious” solo albums later this year so we wanted to get out all of our pop music somehow.

Jack: Brewster is one of the best songwriters I know and I always tell people he has some of the best pop sensibilities. We’re both obsessed with pop music and hooks and production of this stuff but our main projects are usually rock leaning, but we love this stuff. This is sort of an excuse for us to shake out all the electronic pop stuff we love before we lock in on our own projects later this year.

What does New Orleans bounce mean to you?

Brewster: It’s basically like the Louisiana equivalent of Jersey club or Chicago juke; it’s a regional Black dance music. Like any subgenre it has this whole world of samples and tropes that come along with it. It has its own language, and I’ve been really inspired lately to blend that language with other genres and sounds. You can hear an “ALRIGHT” sound effect all over this project — it comes from bounce but we’re putting it in all these different contexts and genres. I grew up hearing bounce played at so many parties and dances so it just made sense to want to bring some of that sound into this dance-focused project.

Jack: I don’t understand why it never had a bigger mainstream moment than when NERD did Lemon or when Drake did his singles in 2017 because there’s such an infectious rhythm and groove throughout it all. I understand why it’s also called Twerk music because it just makes you want to move every inch of your body and keep it going. It’s the perfect tempo for ass shaking. And then you get this modern Milwaukee sound that’s derived from Bounce and it’s even crazier! It’s so incredible.

What does Flash Summer look like? 

Brewster: This is my first big city summer. I’m trying to hit the club!!!!

Jack: Literally just hanging out with friends. It’s the most important thing in life.

What’s not in for Flash Summer?

Brewster: Anything too cliche.

Jack: I think culture has evolved around social media to where we now live in this anticipation of a constant threat of surveillance. Even these new Meta glasses make it so that literally anybody could be filming you while talking to you and you wouldn’t know. So this summer we gotta let go of our inhibitions and holding ourselves back out of fear of embarrassment.

Stills from “I Want it All” music video

What is the plan for Flash, any tours? Etc?

Brewster: We’re gonna run it back with a remix EP, with each of the songs getting remixed by an artist we’re friends with or admire. As far as live shows, no Flash-specific tour but stay tuned…

Jack: What he said…

How has the underground music scene yall fall under inspired the directions of not only this project, but you guys’s solo projects as well. 

Brewster: I think the audience of our scene is so genre-accepting that it inspired us to go all-in on this EP and feel comfortable doing that even though it isn’t necessarily either of our typical outputs. Something I’ve been thinking about recently is how to be in tune with our scene, whatever you want to label it as, but not be exclusively influenced by it, which is how you progress as an artist but it’s also a bit scary. There’s a few times when I’ve been writing for my upcoming solo album and I’m like, okay, this is basically a Bruce Springsteen song, is my young and online audience really going to fuck with this? But it’s what’s true to me so I’ve got to stick with it

Jack: Pop music has evolved so much in the past 6 years and seeing what everyone is writing and taking inspiration from is inspiring me a lot. There’s a lot of love being put into pop music and pop songwriting and I’m glad it’s being held to a higher standard than it was many years ago.

You can find FLASH through their website, https://flashep.neocities.org/videos or instagrams, @BrewsterDurbin and @Jckdog7