RVBY MY DEAR at Knitting Factory, Interview with Songwriter/Vocalist Gabbi Coenen

Press photo by Luis Ruiz, courtesy of the band

The crowd at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory on Monday night appears to be mostly musicians in the avant-rock/artpop community, and they all seem to know each other on some level. The band I’m here to see tonight is RVBY MY DEAR, an alternative band that I would put on playlists with CocoRosie and Imogen Heap. The project of singer and keyboardist, Gabbi Coenen, RVBY is a group of New School alumni who originally trained to be jazz musicians. Tonight is the release show for their EP, Unravel. They take the stage following Eda Wolf, a perfect transition from one ambient rock act to the next.

RVBY MY DEAR opens with “10:17,” a number that moves from scintillating keys to rock thick with layers of bass at the nucleus of the sound, a sturdy vehicle for Coenen’s delicate, dreamy vocals. Repetitive lyrics break apart and snap together with the cadence of a Gertrude Stein poem, tempered with a Priscilla Ahn attitude. The second number, “Animal,” features enigmatic drumming that changes pattern swiftly and frequently. There is a youthful quality to Coenen’s voice, a tone that is soft with peaceful longing. She slides up and down melodic hills in “Hidden Threads” with a refracted clarity that teases you into melting into the soundscape, complemented by a piano that moves from major to minor with the ease of improvised dialogue in a film. The song blooms and builds like a hallucination, intensifying and shifting with a suitable pace before gliding back to a gently rippling finish. They slide into “Flourisher,” a punchy pop rock piece that allows guitarist Oscar Rodriguez a little more spotlight with several simple yet potent riffs that sound rather in the classical vein. Set closer “Balloons” finds Coenen’s voice in a wild, bluesy territory that falls nearer to her jazz roots than the other material. There is an evident formula to this music, and a well-crafted one: organically create graceful fervency by growing the sound with mathematical exactitude, then shrink it down to atomic size while maintaining the tension only to blow it up like a star before letting the song quickly dissipate, leaving the listener wanting more.

Gabbi Coenen reached out to Hydrogen Jukebox a few days before the show to tell me about it, and I immediately became excited about this deeply emotive ensemble. The day after the show, we meet at a coffee shop in Williamsburg to talk about RVBY MY DEAR. She tells me that following nearly a lifetime of piano lessons thanks to a supportive and encouraging mother, she found herself finishing a music degree and simultaneously discovering a fondness for composition. While many similar artists pursue solo endeavors, she prefers the balance that comes with a group. “I wanted an outlet for my own music and I liked the idea of having a band…I like having a group of people that I can play with and workshop ideas with.”

Their audio-collage style of blending the euphonic and the distorted, the found sound with the carefully played instrument, is what I find so attractive, and I ask about the writing process. “I write everything on piano…I usually start with music, just chords or a whole song that doesn’t have any lyrics or melodies. I write words separately. I keep books of poetry, ideas jotted down. At some point I try and combine the two. Find some words that fit this music that I’ve written. I’m very inspired by film scores, so when I’m writing the music I keep picturing things and sometimes that informs the lyrics and other times it’s more of a challenge to find words that fit…Usually I’ll write keyboard parts as well and have an idea for the beat in my head…Once that’s done I bring it to the band, and Oscar usually will write his own parts…Darren, the keyboard player, will take what I’ve written for him and add to it…So it is collaborative in the arranging process, but the songs themselves are all what I’ve done.” She cites artists such as Massive Attack, Portishead, James Blake, and Daughter as influences, as well as jazz greats like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. 

As far as where she gets inspiration for her brief and poetic lyrics, she has one literary touchstone. “There’s this book called The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy, that I love, I read that in high school, and just the way that she writes is so interesting. She has this childlike way of putting words together, but the thematic content is very mature.”

Press photo by Paul Benjamin, courtesy of the band

One of the more unique aspects of RVBY’s formation is that there are two keyboard players. Darren Denman plays a large keyboard that appears to be 3-in-1 while Coenen plays a Casio. I ask if there is a separation of parts similar to having a lead guitarist and a rhythm guitarist. She tells me it changes depending on the piece, and how the idea of having two keyboardists began. “I was just singing at the very beginning, but the song ‘Dirt,’…I bought a Casio off eBay…And I wrote ‘Dirt’ on that, and I brought it into rehearsal and I was like, “Darren, you can do this,” and the guys were like, no, you should actually play that on the Casio…It varies song to song, the part that I’m playing. With ‘Dirt,’ that’s sort of the integral part of the song…But with another song, like “Animal,” that stuff is more textural, not super integral, it just adds extra color.”

Booking a show at the Knitting Factory is no small deal, and with several EPs and two videos under their belt, RVBY MY DEAR seems to be gaining traction. I ask what she finds the most challenging part of being a New York-based musician. “Everything,” she laughs. “There’s two parts of it. The logistics of having a band is challenging: trying to find space to play, space to rehearse, time to create. It’s tough. Living here is great because there’s so much going on, but it’s also bad because there’s so much going on. So how do you find where you fit in all that noise?…I think a show like last night’s is a good example of bands who maybe wouldn’t fit on many other bills in Brooklyn all coming together and doing our own thing. I think the upside of being here is you can find your niche.”

Finally, what does Coenan hope listeners find in Unravel? “I’ve always wanted the music to be accessible but still interesting, and I think the cool thing about the new EP is we got a little more intensive with the production…I wanted this really visceral, spilling-your-guts-on-the-floor kind of sound…I guess the songs are pretty personal and have a lot of feelings in them, so I just hope that people find something to connect with.”

Press photo by Paul Benjamin, courtesy of the band

Unravel will be available this week on BandCamp, SoundCloud and via their website. Below is the video for “Dirt,” a whimsical marriage of sound and color that will stir chilly nostalgia in any viewer. I can’t wait to see what this band produces next.