Interview Brigitte Calls Me Baby: “Sure, being famous sounds nice, but how do you achieve permanence?”

“I would stay up late at night and watch the encore channels, and I thought her movies were compelling,” he says, explaining the origins of the pen-pal correspondence from which the band (completed by guitarists Jack Fluegel and David Rosendahl, bassist Devin Wessels, and drummer Jeremy Benshish) took their name. “But she was also just such a star, and it made me gravitate to her.” He pauses, giving a small smile: “I mean, I had a bit of a crush on her too – that was part of it.”

Zooming in from across the pond sporting sunglasses, subtly quiffed hair, and a warm Texan drawl, Wes has an understated yet pervasive sense of temporal ambiguity about him – as if he’d be equally at home on the jukebox of a ‘50s diner as he would swinging a bunch of gladioli in ‘80s Manchester (or indeed working as a musician on a modern film set, as he did in 2022 for Baz Luhrmann’s recent Elvis biopic). It’s a timelessness that also imbues Brigitte Calls Me Baby’s output and, specifically, their forthcoming debut album ‘The Future Is Our Way Out’: a project influenced by notions of memory, nostalgia, and time’s unstoppable march onward.

“I wanna die in your four car garage / Turn out the lights and then send in the entourage / Tell them all it’s okay, I made my big escape,” Wes croons over the Johnny Marr jangle of LP centrepiece ‘I Wanna Die In The Suburbs’. Later, he sings of being united with a lover in the afterlife (‘You Are Only Made Of Dreams’), his distinctive vocals propelled along by a chugging, Strokes-esque guitar line. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been hyper-aware of the passing of time,” he says. “I don’t know why that specifically resonates with me. It freaks me out, and I’ve got a fear of missing out as well as a fear of dying.”

There is, perhaps more than most other bands, a truly symbiotic relationship between Brigitte Calls Me Baby’s linguistic and sonic world – a product, he explains, of “music that is influenced by both contemporary and past things” being “the perfect vessel to communicate that fear”. “Music,” he continues, “like other art, is an opportunity to create a moment in time that lasts forever. Yeah, sure, being famous sounds nice, but how do you achieve permanence? The desired result is having something that can speak for you after you can’t speak anymore, you know?” He sighs slightly, and smiles. “I know we’ll never get there.”

‘The Future Is Our Way Out’, then, is his way of preserving particular feelings as immutable sonic vignettes, bottling transient moments in a way that recalls the best of coming-of-age media: The Perks Of Being A Wallflower’s tunnel scene; The Breakfast Club’s end credits; his teenage favourite lyricist Alex Turner’s evocative turn of phrase. Though he’s hopeful that time will temper his existentialism, right now Wes still feels “that there’s so much left to do, and so much I want to do. And I always think about the flip side of that – maybe more than I should.”

Regardless of what’s to come, with Brigitte Calls Me Baby Wes has in many ways already fulfilled his ambition of creating something enduring. Architecting moments of connection throughout the band’s live shows, it’s a reciprocal relationship that’s every bit as real as a physical record. “You give and they receive, and they give and you receive,” he says simply. “And because of that, you get this energy back that fills this void in your life.”

‘The Future Is Our Way Out’ is out today via ATO Records.

Tags: Features, Interviews, Brigitte Calls Me Baby, From The Magazine, July/​August 2024