Sir Chloe graduated from writing songs in her college dorm room in 2016 to opening for Beck and Phoenix on a summer tour across the US.
The Vermont-based band Sir Chloe released her first EP, Party Favors, in 2020, a culmination of songs she had written throughout college.
After two and a half years, Sir Chloe released her outlook on the mayhem of everyday life, I Am The Dog.
I Am the Dog began as a concept album. The elevator pitch: the world from the point-of-view of man’s best friend.
“Dogs take on many roles and have many responsibilities or lack thereof many times,” Sir Chloe said when I asked what “A dog to a shepherd; what is a dog to a sheep” meant.
Like many other musicians, Sir Chloe had a muse for her first album. It just so happens that this muse was a pooch.
Yes, there was a dog.
“It was a dog I was living with and she was a rescue…she had been through some trauma and we weren’t sure what it was,” she said, “I wasn’t used to being around dogs who spoke a language that I didn’t quite recognize. She communicated very differently… temper tantrums, or she would get violent.”
The concept album idea was shelved with only the title track, the album name, and lyrical easter eggs leaving a clue to what could’ve been.
People say one human year is equivalent to five dog years. Sir Chloe reversed that experience by writing a follow-up album to her acclaimed first EP, Party Favors, within a year.
“It was different because I never set out to write something, a complete body of work, all in one period of time, where it was working towards a common goal,” Sir Chloe said.
Meticulously perfecting songs is a luxury that Sir Chloe had in college. Now, confidence and efficiency are the main focus of her songwriting process.
“A lot of judgment has to change. You can’t sit around saying ‘This is good or bad.’ You get a lot less quantity if you’re sitting around judging yourself and you just get a lot less done,” she said.
Sir Chloe performed a concert as her end-of-year thesis, an anecdote that now lives on as an opening graph for every article and Sir Chloe album review.
“It’s interesting the concert versus a traditional thesis. There was one press release at the very, very beginning that made it sound like I didn’t want to write a paper but the school made the music students put on a concert as their thesis,” said the songwriter. “It wasn’t in lieu of anything.”
“It’s so funny because it was like one piece of writing and now I feel like I’m having to say ‘No no I didn’t just want to put on a concert,” Sir Chloe joked.
Sir Chloe received mainstream attention overnight with the song, Animal and Michelle blowing up on TikTok. Michelle would be used in over 40k videos.
“Between Animal and Michelle there was a real radio silence. It was a lot of attention all of a sudden – and it all went away very suddenly,” she remarked. “It was like that’s it, we had our 10 seconds of attention.”
Sir Chloe wasn’t the only indie group to gain instant TikTok attention.
“It felt like a real sweet spot where people were discovering music and artists could break through without the help of a label, and it felt really exciting. It was huge. It really disrupted the industry, which was so great for independent artists.”
Sir Chloe is set to continue her tour across the US and embrace all the mayhem that comes with it.
FOLLOW SIR CHLOE
Set List: “Salivate”/ “Know Better” / “Should I”
Album: I Am The Dog (Atlantic)
Musicians:
Dana Foote – vocals, guitar; Teddy O’Mara – guitar; Palmer Foote – drums; Emma Welch – bass; Austin Holmes – synth, guitar
Credits:
Producer: Deidre Gott; Production Assistant: Stephanie Robinson; Audio Engineer: Jake Perlman, Rene Chavez; Audio Mix: Rene Chavez; Cameras: Renee Dominguez, Michael Minasi, Deborah Cannon; Edit: Deborah Cannon; Host: Laurie Gallardo
