Camp Cope’s Georgia Maq and Kelly Hellmrich are under their respective covers, blankets pulled to their chins. It’s a Wednesday morning in the depths of Melbourne summer, and hovering above the singer-guitarist and bassist on Zoom is drummer Sarah Thompson, calling from the office of local label and shop Poison City Records, where she works. The trio’s familial dynamic is on clear and ready display—Thompson, 37, the requisite big sister (who everyone calls “Thomo”); Maq, 27, the mischievous jokester; Hellmrich, 29, the calm equilibrium—and the incessant joking abounds. They recently convened IRL for the first time in months, or as Thompson puts it: “We got to hang out and be idiots.” Even now, the trio playfully rag on one another while expressing abiding love in fell swoops. It’s not so dissimilar from the heart and critique that power many Camp Cope songs.
Since forming in 2015, Camp Cope have moved by their own rules, calling out music industry sexism from festival stages and in their songs. Their 2018 breakthrough, How to Socialise & Make Friends, was refreshingly singular in its fusion of honest feminist lyrics with the brashness and vigor of emo, and a folk singer’s eye for detail. “The Opener” took every sexist suggestion that’d been levied at them as a band—“It’s another man telling us we can’t fill up the room/It’s another man telling us to book a smaller venue”—and rhymed them into an anthem of fever-pitched resolve and collective transcendence. In the direct wake of #MeToo, songs like “The Face of God” described the sexual entitlement of a man refusing to accept that no means no; others narrated the experiences of self-reliant women riding bikes, splitting town, leaving a man to sleep alone. How to Socialise became a feminist punk clarion call.
“I want to have an impact on peoples’ lives in a meaningful way that makes them feel powerful, and I want how we make people feel to define us,” Maq says. “Camp Cope is in defiance of everyone who’s tried to bring us down, and it’s like: Well, you can’t, because we have each other, and we’re a mountain together.”
These themes—power, resolve—emerge often in our conversations about the trio’s forthcoming third album Running With the Hurricane, but the songwriting approaches them from new vantages. Produced by Anna Laverty (Courtney Barnett, Stella Donnelly) with additional production by Maq, the music is gentler and twangier, exploring heartbreak, depression, jealousy, and growth. It’s still propelled by corporeal feelings of perseverance and self-determined triumph that are synonymous with Camp Cope—still a balm for anyone who’s been underestimated or undermined.
“This album is empowering in a way that’s different from how How to Socialise was empowering,” Maq says. “We’re so multidimensional, and I love to show that. There’s a lot of power in being soft.” Many of her lyrics evoke the sex-positive candor of indie-rock forebears like Liz Phair, though Maq herself cites the influence of contemporary country, pop, and rap. “I finally embraced Taylor Swift rather than some cool underground band no one’s heard of,” she says.
The shift in sound and attitude also had a self-preserving purpose. Maq said she found it increasingly challenging to constantly replay some of How to Socialise’s traumatic subject matter, which became the focus of much of the discourse around the band. “Every time I sing ‘The Opener,’ I get angry,” she says. “How to Socialise was the place that I held for anger. I’m still angry at a lot of things in the world, but my anger doesn’t own me or control me anymore.”
A band-wide feeling of exhaustion spurred a move towards a more hopeful sound, music that Hellmrich calls “reaching towards some sort of light,” or “picking yourself up and out.” “I still feel like they were extremely necessary albums for us,” Hellmrich says of How to Socialise and 2016’s gale-force Camp Cope. “I’m proud to have played a part in conversations that were happening with social movements during that time.”
Their everyday lives also changed significantly. Maq became a nurse to help vaccinate Melbourne, which she counts among the best decisions of her life. Hellmrich moved back to Sydney and, finding herself burnt out on her work as an early childhood educator, got a new job in music merchandising. As a band already well attuned to mass inequalities in the world, which the past two years have exacerbated, the reality of the pandemic recalibrated their relationship to making art. “It’s great to be able to make music, but at the end of the day, there are more important things in the world,” Thompson said. “That probably changed our perspective going into this record. We felt more relaxed, like, If no one likes this album, who cares? We’re vaccinated and we’re alive.”
About an hour into our conversation, Hellmrich and Thompson hop off Zoom to begin work, while Maq—off for the day—chatted a bit longer. At home with her cats Spatula and Adidas, Maq says she tries to not dominate interviews, and emphasizes the equal importance of all three Camp Cope members. But she and her bandmates all acknowledge that she does write the lyrics, that the music is largely shaped to her vision. The updates to Camp Cope’s calmer sound seem manifest in her presence as well: in her blunt openness, in the unique humor with which she constantly punctuates her vulnerability, and especially in the strength of her convictions.
“At this point, I feel like the older songs don’t really serve me in a positive way—I was in my early 20s and in such a bad place, and I just want to get past it,” Maq says, processing Camp Cope’s growth. “I love playing the new songs because it’s like, well, we’re past it. We’re in a new era.”
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Georgia Maq: I felt like I needed to meet the moment because I was registered. I was like, I’m able to help so I need to help. It’s given me a lot of confidence. What I’m doing is a good thing, and I know that for sure. I feel like I’m actively contributing to society. It’s nice to feel like you’re living for others. Being a nurse in the pandemic helped me cope with it, because I was like: I’m helping us get out of this. I’m playing my part.
Subconsciously, I think I write music to counterbalance the world around me. With this album, sonically, I wanted to match the music that I listen to in times when I need comfort. And that is a lot of country music and softer things. I consumed a lot of guilty-pleasure kind of art in lockdown, and the album was definitely influenced by me listening to pop music. I loved Gaslighter by the Chicks. I love Jason Isbell and Taylor Swift. There’s a juxtaposition between this album thematically and sonically, and then reality. It’s a very romantic and heartful album despite the world being horrible and grim and doomed. We’re just trying to manifest.
I love Gillian Welch so much.
Her line “I want to do right, but not right now” really resonates with me. I want to do right, but not right now, because right now I’m being a bad bitch. That’s where I’m at.
It was a song that my dad co-wrote with his band member, and I didn’t like the song but I liked the title. It spoke to me. Life is a fucking hurricane, and we’re just running with it. Instead of being swept up in it, instead of being knocked over, we’re matching that power and that energy. I feel like that’s Camp Cope. We are running with the hurricane. It’s a visual song for me. It feels like crawling out of a really dark place and just embracing 2022 chaotic energy.
But yeah, I stole the title from my dad’s song. What’s he gonna do, sue me? He can’t. He’s dead. And I’d get all the money anyway.
My dad was weird. He would never tell you if he was proud of you or not, and I think that fucked me up in my teenage years. But I feel like I’m always subconsciously searching for connection with my dad through music. I’ve got such daddy issues, oh my god.
He influenced me with ideas. He was a very political person. He was going against conventional wisdom and was very anti-capitalist, anti-conservative.
I had a little iPod Shuffle, and my dad would put music on it for me, like the Beatles and shit, but he also would put Bill Hicks stand-up on it when I was 11—which is normal. I think that’s had one of the biggest influences on me. Bill Hicks is dark and probably quite problematic now, but I loved him. I’ve got a tattoo of Bill Hicks and this book of his writing, Love All the People, which is very critical of God and capitalism and America. You should go on YouTube and have a look at some Bill Hicks shit because maybe you’ll understand me a bit more.
Pleaser is like the bridge between How to Socialise and Hurricane. I don’t want a punky sound or a poppy sound, I want to create a sound that’s a mixture of every single thing that I love.
I feel like this is what my voice is meant to sound like. With the first albums, I was trying to sound like somebody else. I wanted that scratchiness. I listened to a lot of Hop Along and I really wanted that graceful scream. It ended up just killing my voice because that’s not what my body is meant to sound like. My body is meant to sound like this. It’s such a bad feeling when you can’t speak, when you’ve lost your voice, and I just never want to do that again, so I take very good care with my voice. I sing really safely now.
I listen to a lot of Ariana Grande, Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, and Megan Thee Stallion, and I love how they sing so explicitly and so unashamedly about sex and pleasure. I find it incredibly empowering. It’s really important to speak about female pleasure. And girls wanting to fuck and stuff. I love listening to women singing about that.
I know that I’m going to be embarrassed about the line “giving strangers head.” That’s why it’s sung quietly in the song. I’m embarrassed, but I’m trying not to be. Because there’s nothing wrong with giving strangers head. And there’s nothing wrong with taking care of your sexual health.
Going to the gym. I love lifting weights. I love feeling strong. To me that’s really empowering: I’m gonna lift something heavy and put it down, and it’s gonna completely change my perspective on life.
Absolutely. I love my body. I don’t hate it anymore. I’m not trying to hide it anymore. I’m very confident. I just don’t give a fuck.
That’s a Wicca Phase song. I got it years before [our 2018 collaboration, “Stress”]. I love everything Adam has ever done. The song “Icebreaker” resonated with me because I feel like that’s who I am: I break the ice.
So many. Really dumb ones, really nice ones. I got a Mac Miller tattoo; it’s an alarm clock that says “good” because of his album GO:OD AM. I love Mac Miller so much. You have to listen to the album The Divine Feminine. It’s all about how amazing women are. He understood that.
Yeah, heaps. People get tattoos of me. I’m on someone’s arm. I’m on someone else’s arm. It’s always amazing when someone’s connected with the band that much.
It’s the best, and it was so spontaneous. The line right before that goes, “It’s another man telling us we’re missing a frequency,” and someone actually said to Kelly, “You should stop playing bass, and get on the electric guitar, and get a real bass player to fill in that ‘missing’ frequency.’” And I was like: Fuck this, you fucking show ’em, Kelly.
It’s about me supporting my best friend and my band member and showing how much I back her. It’s about women bringing each other up. And how we’re stronger together.
That has a lot to do with isolation and being closed off to the world. I’m a firm believer in second chances and that people can change. For the most part, I like to believe that someone can do something and learn from it and change. That’s what the character of a person is. It’s the arrogance of not changing that’s a problem.
I don’t think your mistakes define you. When you make a mistake, you feel like that defines you, and you are the sum of everything bad that you’ve ever done. And I just don’t want to believe that. I believe in forgiveness, and not holding onto things that don’t serve you.
Have you heard “Seventeen Going Under” by Sam Fender? There’s this great lyric that’s like, “That’s the thing with anger, it begs to stick around/So it can fleece you of your beauty/And leave you spent…” That resonated with me—I was like, fuck, holding onto anger really doesn’t do anything. Holding onto your mistakes won’t help you be a better person. I’ve seen it. I myself have changed. I’m constantly changing, and that’s a really good thing.
There’s a place for anger, but if you let it be a forever thing, then it eats away your soul and it doesn’t serve you. And what I’ve learned is that anger doesn’t serve me anymore. It makes me feel kind of shit. But then forgiveness is the best feeling in the fucking world. People have wronged me, and they don’t see it that way and they’re not sorry. I think there’s a lot of power in being like, “Well, even though you’re not sorry, I forgive you.” And that might piss them off, which I kind of love a little bit. But also, you’re the bigger person. I love being the bigger person. Because I’m petty as fuck.
I feel like when you write stuff, you begin to manifest it. Singing about wanting to be a better person doesn’t mean that you will be—being like, [singing] “I’m a good person” doesn’t make you a good person. But it’s the first step.
