Girlpool exists in the gray area.
When Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad met at Los Angeles DIY venue The Smell, they quickly hit it off talking about music (namely, their mutual love for Conor Oberst). The duo has since forged a creative process bound by the intimacies of female friendship, the results of which are inextricable.
"It's kind of always changing the way that we do it together, but what stays the same is working on stretching and exploring each other and ourselves together, which is a really powerful experience," Tucker, 19, said on the phone from New York. "It's really fun and special."
"I think that there's no expectation, from the onset when we begin it, of what it will be like. It kind of just naturally creates itself through conversation," Tividad, 20, added, on the phone from Philadelphia. "If you were to watch water flowing, it just kind of directs itself by nature."
Girlpool will perform at the Ottobar tonight with French Vanilla from Los Angeles and two Baltimore-based acts, Sitcom and Sun Club.
Tividad and Tucker were raised in Los Angeles by musically inclined parents. Despite playing in other bands when they met, they wanted to explore a different side to their work, together, after sharing ideas.
"We started jamming with each other," Tividad said. "There seemed to be musical chemistry or what have you."
The collaboration produced a unique style of folk-punk. Girlpool comprises electric guitar and bass, but no drums, and Tividad and Tucker sing bluntly, without affectation, sometimes in the round. They soon distinguished themselves in L.A.'s music scene, and released a self-titled EP in 2014. "Before the World Was Big," a debut full-length, followed last year.
Tividad and Tucker see the influence of their surroundings in their music, they said. (They are now long distance, with Tividad in Philadelphia and Tucker in New York. "Harmony and I prefer not to talk about where we live," Tucker said.) But similarly to the nature of their collaboration, it's often difficult to pinpoint a direct influence or idea.
"I think that place and environment is a huge part," Tucker said. "We soak in everything and it comes out in everything."
"If you consider the way you watch someone treat someone else on the subway … it's just all kind of fluidly affecting each other and coming out all the time," Tividad added.
Girlpool experiences a constant state of flux, and Tividad and Tucker rely on uncompromising honesty to keep their partnership strong.
"I think that change is just a constant state of life," Tucker said. "I think that our friendship has totally changed in every way and will continue to forever. It's a growing entity."
As the duo moves in new directions — they're working on new songs now, and are unsure when they'll be released — Tividad and Tucker said they focus on the contentment and optimism music-making creates.
"Harmony and I were excited that people were hearing our music, and it was a new feeling, which naturally feels like something new, so we were both pretty wide-eyed at that happening," Tucker said of Girlpool's early acclaim. "It felt really, really sweet that people were listening to what we were making. It was an exciting time."
"We talk about this a lot, about how important it is to hold onto feeling wide-eyed about being a person in general," she added. "Everything's pretty incredible."