When Indianapolis-based sisters Lily and Madeleine Jurkiewicz – better known as the musical duo Lily & Madeleine – released their self-titled debut a decade ago, they were fresh out of high school, with little knowledge of the music industry. Recently, the folk-pop group decided to revisit one of those songs, “Come To Me,” for their latest album Nite Swim. The song has over 50 million streams on Spotify and has become an all-time fan favorite.
For the sisters, it was a fun challenge and experience to reimagine the song, enhancing it with their collective growth the past decade. The new version combines acoustic guitar, mandolin, ambient-like electric guitar, distorted cello, and 80s-inspired synth to support the new song’s grown up, darker lyrics. The original song features the premise: “if everything falls apart, will you come to me?” The new version provides an updated response and revelation that “I’ve been with you through it all and I’ll be with you forever.” They were able to breathe new life into the song.
“It was kind of an experiment because we just wanted to release some new music to reintroduce ourselves to the listeners and, honestly, to the computer, to the algorithm, before we officially started putting out tracks from Nite Swim,” says Madeleine. “So, this was just a good opportunity to reimagine one of our older songs, one that has continued to be a pretty popular song of ours for the past 10 years, give it new life and tell the listeners, ‘Hey, we’ve got a new sound and we’re ready with some new music.” So, here’s a taste of what’s to come.’”
Their new album is their fifth, but they feel it’s almost like a second debut, a chance to reintroduce themselves. Like was the case for many musicians forced off the road during COVID-19 lockdowns, the sisters used their unexpected downtime to reexamine their path.
“It was a forced break, we didn’t really mean to, but just the world had shifted so much that we had to reconsider what our career looked like,” says Madeleine. “So, this album came out of that, and we thought a lot about the past few years working in the industry, and a lot of the experiences we had gone through.”
“The best part is that we partnered with our longtime friend and bandmate Shannon Hayden, and she produced the record, and added most of the instrumentation. So, it was a very intimately done project with the three of us ladies. I would say that this is certainly a new sound for us. We’re kind of reintroducing ourselves with this newer more rock, pop sound.”
The album was made over three years in DIY fashion with the help of friends and family and in multiple cities, from professional studio settings to their parents’ basement in Indiana. In addition to Hayden, Devon Ashley, Heidi Gluk, and Jared May also contributed to the album.
We recently caught up with the sisters to talk about their continued growth on their latest album, finding confidence to express themselves and find new ways to write about relationships and the world around them, and why hope and humor in serious songs is important.
In what ways has your sound and chemistry grown most on this album?
Madeleine: I feel like as we continue to get older, we just have more confidence and more self-awareness, and I feel like we have more of an idea of really what we want to talk about and what we want to say. Our first album came out 10 years ago when we were still in high school, and we really had no knowledge of the industry, or not much knowledge on how to create music in general. I think it’s just really coming from a place of growth, absolutely.
The lyrics for your song “No Part of Me” have a little bit of sadness, but also joy for one entering a new chapter after leaving a relationship. What was the inspiration for the song?
Lily: I wrote that. It’s a breakup song technically, but yeah, what you said is totally true, it was this moment of clarity that I had, where it was like me and this person do not belong together, we never did, and I could just be free of this now. So, it’s a little bit sad, but it’s also very freeing.
Why did it feel important to write a positive type of breakup song?
Lily: One of my favorite kinds of songs are these songs that sound really happy, but the lyrics are either sad or sinister or angry or whatever. We were just listening to “Bad Moon Rising” in the van yesterday, by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and that song is an example of a song that sounds really happy, but the lyrics are kind of scary. I just really like that.
A lot of breakup songs are kind of mellow, but this one there’s some hopefulness to it.
Lily: Yeah, exactly. There is some freedom and some hope.
The band’s song “Rolling Rock” deals with a different kind of end of a relationship, with a friendship. What was your journey like writing that song?
Lily: It’s kind of similar to “No Part of Me.” That was a friendship breakup that I had, with one of our roommates, actually, when we were living in New York. It was really sad, but it just needed to happen. Writing that song allowed me to process the feelings that I had about that. Again, it’s like a little vignette of this moment with this person, and even though that person’s not in my life anymore, I still appreciate the fact that she was there at one point.
It sounds like there’s much different and complex feelings compared to a romantic relationship.
Lily: Yeah. I don’t know about a lot of friendship breakup songs, but in my experience, a big part of your twenties is figuring out the kind of people you want to be surrounded by. And yeah, it’s really complicated, it’s really difficult.
I like how you were able to use your vocals and instruments on it to convey the roller coaster of emotions.
Lily: Yeah, the way that song builds, and then Shannon comes in with that crazy electric guitar solo, you can feel the catharsis and the emotion in that solo.
The song’s video shows some behind the scenes footage of the album’s creation. Why was it important to give people a chance to get a peek into your lives and showcase the process of putting the album together?
Madeleine: We had taken a bunch of footage while we were making the record and didn’t know what we were going to do with it, maybe we would put it on social media, I don’t know. Then, as we were putting out “Rolling Rock,” we thought, “oh, this would be the perfect opportunity to edit all these videos together into a video, that just kind of showed our lives over the past three years, and how this record came to be, and all of the ways that it came together.”
We recorded it in many different places. We recorded in Indianapolis, in Boston, Palo Alto, California, and Venice Beach, California. So, we really just got to showcase the whole wide range of experiences through making this record with that video. And I think it gave listeners a better idea of what it took to put this together, and how important and authentic it’s to us.
The album’s creation was very DIY centric as you recorded it over three years in a lot of different places around the country with friends and family. What was it like creating it in that DIY group effort?
Madeleine: It was a bit of a learning curve. I mean, to be honest, it was really frustrating at times, because we just wanted to get the album done and we wanted to put it out. We didn’t want it to be three years, but that’s just what it took. It was also fun. I think that the time that we spent on it allowed me to really have a deeper appreciation for it. I’m just really proud of the end result and I would make our next record in a similar way, just hopefully with a quicker turnover.
I imagine being in different places had helped further inspire the songs.
Madeleine: Yeah, somewhat. Like Lily said, taking this record in a DIY fashion allowed us to have a deeper appreciation for it because we put so much heart and soul into it.
What were some of the biggest things you learned about yourselves recording the album in that manner?
Madeleine: I learned more about what I want out of our music career and for my future. I feel like I’ve learned how to navigate the industry better and I can just see a clearer picture of how we can create the career that we want to have. So that’s a good outcome. The industry is very uncertain right now. There’s a lot of competition and so it is challenging to be an artist right now and especially playing live shows, but I just feel like I have a better idea of how to get to where we want to be. So that’s empowering.
In the past five years or so, you’ve taken stock of your lives and who you view as important in your lives. And the album’s lyrics reflect that. What spawned that line of thinking and how has it led to clarity as individuals, sisters, and songwriters?
Madeleine: I kind of feel like for the first time I’m able to actually express myself. I think especially since we started so young, the first five years or so of our career, I really just didn’t feel like my voice was important. The things that I had to say and the things that I wanted to express didn’t seem to really be of interest to anybody. And I think that I felt a lot of pressure to present this wholesome image and really just not display my personality. So now I feel like I’m at a point where, honestly, I don’t have anything to lose by being transparent and being open and expressing myself. So, I feel like that’s the biggest thing that I’ve gained from this experience of making this record and then moving forward into the future. I feel like I just want to stand strong in who I am, and I think that Lily and I are better than ever as business partners right now.
How do you think your bond and chemistry as sisters has grown most with this album? Are there specific ways that you think so?
Madeleine: Our bond has grown so much closer with this album.
Lily: We’re just really different and I think that we’re kind of figuring out how to use our differences to the advantage of the band. We really balance each other out. The great thing about having a partner is that when I’m feeling down and I don’t see it for us Mad does. And when she’s feeling down and she wants to quit, I keep her inspired. So yeah, it’s been really nice.
What’s the story behind the album’s title?
Lily: The album is about rejection and loss and loneliness. I feel like water is kind of a big theme and a lot of our music, a lot of our albums are blue or have water themed, so that was kind of coincidentally. But water represents in dream mythology, emotion. So, I just thought that was a good metaphor, swimming pool being a metaphor for connection.
A lot of the lyrical themes on the album seem to revolve around finding strength in difficult situations even and what we may perceive as weaknesses. Do you think that’s the case?
Lily: I think it’s just being honest. The past four years have been hands down, the worst years of my life, so difficult, so much loss, so much rejection, and you really can’t control a lot about where your life goes sometimes. I think the pandemic was a huge lesson about that. So, I think just accepting where you are is the key. At least it has been the key for me getting what I want. And we’ve always maintained a pretty good level of gratitude. But I feel like as things are changing, it’s just like you can get bogged down so easily by your bad feelings and your weak feelings. And it’s just like for what? Because it’s not like it’s your fault. Everybody’s just trying to do the best they can in life.
On some of the songs, the band finds ways to break the tension of serious topics with humor, such as the song “Windowless Bedroom,” which is about finding humor in the uncertainty and inevitable disappointments of life. Why is it important to have that element in certain songs?
Madeleine: Just similarly to what Lily said is that you can feel bogged down by these horrible feelings, but for what you’re only adding to the misery. Finding humor in these situations is so important. You have to be able to see the humor in these things and the silliness in these things because otherwise it’s really difficult to get through them. And also, to just remember that everybody is struggling in some way with their own issues, and that’s okay, we’re all in this together. Nobody really knows what they’re doing. And I know that’s such a cliche statement, but it is very true. And so that’s the beauty of music making and art making, is that you can process these really difficult emotions and alchemize them into something new and just try to find the beauty and the humor in those things.
What are you most looking forward to in the year ahead?
Madeleine: I’m looking forward to playing the show next month. Indianapolis, Chicago, Davenport, Milwaukee. I feel like we have a really nice time in the Midwest. It’s probably going to be a little bit colder, especially Milwaukee, around the time we’re going to be there next month. I think it’ll be really fun. We haven’t played in a number of years in those markets, so yeah, I’m really looking forward to that.
And then we’re also excited to continue writing and maybe start working on our next record. I mean, one thing at a time. We definitely want to spend a lot of time on Nite Swim because it certainly deserves it. But yeah, we can’t help ourselves but look to the future and start writing more new songs.
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
