Eight years ago, a teenaged Chloe Moriondo was uploading ukulele-backed cover songs on YouTube, performing sweet renditions of her favorite songs by Twenty One Pilots, My Chemical Romance, and classics like “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You.” But everyone grows up, and every artist begins to narrow in on their creative identities at a different pace; for Moriondo, who uses she/they pronouns, her biggest statement arrived last year with Blood Bunny, a fully-formed sophomore effort that showcased their emo instincts with indie balladry and pop rock gems.
Come Friday, October 7th — nearly 18 months after the release of Blood Bunny — Moriondo will unleash their third album, the exuberant SUCKERPUNCH. Perhaps the biggest left turn is Moriondo’s embracing of one style: hyperpop. Crystalline vocals are almost entirely filtered through autotune, songs cave in on themselves to form glitchy, gargantuan drops; their music is now more in conversation with late 2000s pop and hip-hop than ever before. If you thought Moriondo sounded supremely confident on Blood Bunny, get ready for them to up the ante, test their limits, and bring a brash, occasionally foolish sensibility to their songwriting.
Of course, Moriondo’s bombastic SUCKERPUNCH turn is not even a “rebrand” — it’s a testament to artists in our modern music climate being unshackled by the typical constraints of the industry. In a different time, Moriondo’s artistic identity may have been up to the people selling her records, but now, she’s allowed to explore genres and styles at whatever pace and cadence she chooses. Even Moriondo’s label, Public Consumption/Fueled By Ramen — the latter of which is known primarily for pop-punk bands like All Time Low and Twenty One Pilots — has shifted its strategy, encouraging cross-pollination between genres and embracing artists with a more internet-centric, alternative pop style.
So it’s fitting that Moriondo dials up the volume and chaos levels for her third record, and the resulting tracks are some of her most gripping to date. Lead single “Fruity” is as sugary as its namesake, but she juxtaposes her autotuned crooning with a turbo charged beat and gang vocals that make a line like “super cutie/ fresh and fruity” seem intimidating. “Hotel For Clowns” is an eerie, borderline unhinged horror song that plays on the slasher iconography of Blood Bunny and dials it up to 12. And album highlight “Celebrity,” which serves as one of SUCKERPUNCH‘s tender centers, shows Moriondo grappling with the reality of fame over a dreamy anti-drop.
Many of these songs call to mind the spirit of Kesha, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry, while also channeling 100 gecs’ absurd, hyper-saturated hip-hop beats and Ashnikko’s colorful braggadocio. But Moriondo maintains that SUCKERPUNCH is meant to be a conglomeration of sounds: “There’s a lot of one-off songs that were just on the radio that I listened to growing up, and they all kind of mixed together to make this crazy, weird, alien pop album.”
And though it’s a bit of a change from Moriondo’s usual fare, they’re confident that their fans will still be enthusiastic about the new direction. “People change,” Moriondo tells Consequence, “and I think a lot of the people in my audience have grown with me.”
Ahead of the release of SUCKERPUNCH, Consequence sat down with Moriondo to discuss her new sonic direction, a busy 2022 on the road, and what might come next for one of the most exciting young pop artists around. Read the full Q&A below.
You’re a couple weeks away from SUCKERPUNCH‘s release, which feels like it could be a bit of a game changer for you. How are you feeling about the release?
It is incredibly different. I’m really like definitely entering the thick of “album rollout zone” and I’ve been working on this for a while now. It still feels really relevant to me, to what I want to put out there, and the visuals that I really like, and I’m honestly really buzzing and super excited to show people the live performances of the songs, to show people the songs in general, and for people to take it and see different things when listening to it. I am really, really excited. And hopefully other people will like it as well.
SUCKERPUNCH showcases a kind of brash style of pop with a lot of late-2000s influences. What were some of the inspirations behind the album’s overall sound?
Okay, first of all, thank you. I’m so glad you heard it. I don’t know how much you’ve heard of the actual influences on the album, but I love the word brash, I’m obsessed with it. I think it should be used more in a positive way, especially toward pop music. I was listening to so much nostalgic pop, and so much new pop that was definitely very nostalgic sounding for me or very nostalgic-feeling for me during this album. I was listening to a lot of old Britney [Spears], a lot of old Kesha, some old Black Eyed Peas, some old Katy Perry, but also some new artists that I was listening to.
A lot of food house, which is gupi and Fraxion, they’re incredible. I was listening to Underscores a lot, to Ashnikko a lot, to Charli XCX, who’s been part of this whole “new pop” rise since the beginning. But there were so many one-off songs that were just on the radio that I listened to growing up, and they all kind of mixed together to make this crazy, weird, alien pop album that I hope people really, really love, and maybe hear some parts that I intentionally wanted to infuse in there.
I noticed that “Celebrity,” the tenth song on the album, is one of the first songs on SUCKERPUNCH where we actually hear you play guitar — a big contrast from Blood Bunny. Was that intentional?
I think it was intentional, for sure. I was kind of, frankly, bored. I didn’t want to make a song that sounded like a Blood Bunny song, or a Rabbit Hearted song, or an acoustic song, or a cover that I would do. I was getting really, really bored and feeling like I was kind of bursting at the seams, and I don’t want to ever encourage the people that listen to me to stick with something just because they feel like they should. I know that kind of sounds corny, but no matter what you do, people are going to tell if you’re being a little bit false. And people were gonna be able to tell if I was bored by making something that sounded exactly like Blood Bunny 2.0, as much as I love the album, and I’m gonna keep traces of that in my live performances and in my albums for a really long time, because I wrote it.
I didn’t want to make something the same, so I think we incorporated guitar in a really fun and interesting way. I might be hallucinating this just because we play it differently live, but I think the first time guitar comes in is in “Hell Hounds,” but I might be wrong. “Knockout” might have some weird electric shit, I don’t know. I’m really influenced because we just had a bunch of rehearsals for the SUCKERPUNCH show. So I’ve played like all of these songs live, and some of them are very different, but in a really cool way.
Going back to “Celebrity,” that song in particular is very illuminating and personal. How did it come together?
It took me a long time to warm up to it, to be honest, it was a really long process of making that song. I made it at first in a session with Teddy Geiger. I love her. Everything she does is perfect. But getting the second verse took a really long time for me and I really wanted to, I wanted to make it like the sad, little sister of “Popstar” who also wants to be in the limelight. And I wanted it to be kind of like “radio pop,” but also very much still me and weird and kind of whispery at times. And eventually I really warmed up to it and I feel like it’s very much one of my “I want to be famous, here’s how I feel about it” songs.
There’s so many weird facets to what “fame” is. There are some people who have already told me that I am [famous], relative to other people. And I guess that’s kind of true. I’m kind of learning what that’s about and why I like it and why I want to be this pop star character, at least for this album and for these live shows. And how I’m feeling now visually and with my aesthetic. But that’s kind of what I wanted “Celebrity” to encapsulate.
What was the transition like from putting out Blood Bunny last year, touring the record a ton, and then immediately getting started on this new album?
Honestly, it’s crazy, because they overlapped a lot. I feel like I started making SUCKERPUNCH about a year and some change ago. It was kind of a scattered process, because I’m all over the place and I was touring Blood Bunny and I was like rescheduling these shows because of COVID, and COVID was happening, so I made a lot of this album during COVID and then after it, I suppose. But it was definitely something I was really excited about. I kind of burst with this weird, crazy energy to just release something once I have it and I really like it.
And I know that’s not how it works, that’s normally not how you’re supposed to do things, and I like to space things out and give people time to absorb my music and really love it and live with it and to be able to tour it before I release something new. But I’m always really excited to just dive in headfirst and show people what I want to make next and hope that they love it, because people change and I think a lot of the people in my audience have grown with me.
You worked with some really talented and accomplished songwriters and producers on this album, including Teddy Geiger, David Pramik, and Oscar Scheller. What do you feel they brought to SUCKERPUNCH?
They are so important to me, all the people you just listed. I love Teddy Geiger so much, I was introduced to her for during the SUCKERPUNCH session era of my life. She’s a legend and I love her, everything that she did on this album was incredible and crucial, and some of my favorite songs were by her. And then David Pramik made a huge chunk of this album, a very, very large chunk of this album. And I really trust him with a lot of my work and a lot of visions that I have for my songs, because he’s very much hands-on, but also hands-off about certain things. I worked with him for, “I Want To Be With You,” he’s been with me for a very long time. “I Want To Be With You” was one of my first sessions ever so it was really nice to have someone really familiar with me. I really trust him a lot. Those two are really great.
And then Oscar Scheller, oh my God, he’s incredible. I met him through SUCKERPUNCH. And I was obsessed with him, I’m obsessed with his voice and his music. The stuff he does with Ashnikko is incredible, obviously. And we ended up doing a song together, like, I hopped on one of his songs, and it was really, really fun. It was a song I really liked that he just accidentally AirDropped to me in an Uber. And now it’s out and it’s really good. It’s called “Hard Being Alive,” it’s a great, fun depression song. I love Oscar with everything in me, he’s incredible. The people who produced and wrote the songs with me are very, very, very important to me. And I’m really proud to call them friends.
