The Depths #1 - Celeste Taucher of Talker Talks About Her New Album, Her Love of Collaboration, and Intense Friendships (EXCERPT)

Doing something different here - this is a series called The Depths, where we get into actual emotional conversations. Unlike my main series, there’s a lot to say that is, in fact, deep. The participants do not have to be queer; they just need a story to tell. Below is an excerpt; the full thing will be available for paid subscribers only for the first few days, so make sure you're subscribed for that!

Of everyone I’ve ever interviewed, nobody has lived to their name like Talker. Celeste Taucher was a ball of energy, ready to overshare at a moment’s notice. On her new album I’m Telling You The Truth, that’s distilled into sharp, expertly written pop punk; in an interview, it’s allowed to sprawl out.  A former touring member of pop group Frenship who went to UMiami for songwriting, Taucher released EPs for several years (including the atmospheric In Awe of Insignificance) before working on her debut album with several different producers. 

Mostly mixed by Collin Pastore (Lucy Dacus and Illuminati Hotties), the result is incredibly polished pop rock; if you also cheered when Alex Lahey covered Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated”, this is the album for you. 

As a fellow twentysomething, I related to her song of the same name, but what really got me was her energetic advance single “Old Enough.” Almost as soon as I came out, I got thrown into the fire with a series of intense friendships with other women that often bordered on homoeroticism but always fell short, and Talker articulates that enmeshment as well as anyone.

As far as I can tell, many relationships — friendship, partnerships, even interviewer and subject — are about how far you can dive in and not drown. The interview below is an exercise in this on my end, and it was a joy to conduct. We talk about much more than this so make sure you're subscribed when the full interview drops!

Did you know this was going to be both a breakup album and a gay-awakening one when you started writing?

It's funny, there's so much growth and personal discovery and personal change that I experienced on this record. The first song, I think it was In Memory of My Feelings, which is the intro song. My friend Dan Sadan, who produced In Awe of Insignificance with me and used to play in Frenship with me, moved to Ojai during the Pandemic, which is a gorgeous little hippie mountain town, except everybody from LA goes there, so it's just annoying LA people [laughs]. But he moved there speaking of, and I was like “I need to get out for a weekend and make music.” And I was just feeling really frustrated. After you finish a project that is so creatively fulfilling and feels very you, you’re like how am I ever going to make something good? How am I ever going to make something that feels like me? What am I supposed to do to push myself artistically? Because I don't want to make the same thing I've been making forever.

I didn't really know what that was going to be, but I did really love it, and it felt very cathartic. I mean, I remember just feeling really overwhelmed with emotion as we were putting those pieces together, but I knew I wanted to make an album eventually. I didn't know it was going to be a breakup album. Not all of the songs are about breakups, but it is a breakup album. When I wrote “In Memory of My Feelings”, I was very much still in a relationship for basically most of that year still. I wrote that song over the course of a couple trips up to Ojai in January, February of 2022. That fall, the relationship fell apart. I mean, it's funny because I fucking hate the thing of , oh, well, at least you can write good music about it after. I'll find other things to write about. I have other problems that make me sad that I'll write about!

Old Enough is a very charged friendship-breakup song!

I didn’t expect some gay bop moments because I also was figuring all of that out for myself. I wrote “Easygoing” after the breakup - 

Sorry to interrupt, but we don't have to go into everything if you don't want to. The last thing I want is to accidentally stress you out.

I'm pretty much an open book. It's funny because the album is called I'm Telling You the Truth, and I'm all honest now, so outside of things that make me or other people uncomfortable, I'm going to tell everybody everything. It’s too exhausting to not. 

My ex had moved to Switzerland - spoiler alert, that did not work out for us, - but I wrote Easygoing. On that trip where I was visiting him, basically came out as being bi to him, which we had talked about a little bit, but it wasn't a definitive yes, I have figured that out about myself. It created this spiral of what does this mean? What does this mean for my relationship? What does this mean for my life? What do I want? Our relationship was falling apart because he lived in Switzerland.

But I got into such an anxiety spiral that I was like, I've ruined everything. I wrote “Easygoing” literally three days later when I went to Nashville. Even though it's not really about that specifically, that song came out of me coming out and then having a meltdown [over the breakup]. With all the songs, I was discovering my identity throughout the writing of those songs. And most of them were written either during or a little before I was really out to people that I knew, or even to myself.

“Old Enough” didn’t come from a specifically queer experience, but when I listen to it and write it I’m like yeah, no shit, I have all of these complex relationships and dynamics with all of my close friends because I get into these just really weird blurred lines situations.

I feel that if you are queer, what is going to inform everything you do and every interaction you have, whether you're queer, or whether you're even in love with the person.

It's been a really interesting time for me - I was in another relationship last year with a man where I knew, but I knew that I was Bi, and I said that upfront, and I was like, “I'm in a figuring my shit out phase, but I do really like you, and I don't want to not act on a connection…” it is such a weird dynamic, and that didn't work out either. So it's been an interesting time recently because I've been just reflecting a lot, and I saw your tweet [Hannah note: it’s an article now!] about “Good Luck, Babe” and the conversation about compulsory heteronormativity. It’s so in my zeitgeist right now, because once you start going down the rabbit hole as it just continues below you and you just keep falling further and further down of all of the just questioning. And I'm like, why have I always thought that I need to be in a relationship with a man, even if I was into women? Part of that is my parents' relationship, and I feel like little baby me wants to create a healed version of that. But it's interesting. What if I do actually like a person who is a guy, am I going to be like “I'm not going to date you”?

I do feel like things like that Masterdoc and the very concept of comphet are insufficient for women who like more than one gender.

It's really weird. My journal is very full right now because I'm trying to process, but it's good. I’m in a phase where I'm really allowing myself to reflect on that and really try to dig in. At the end of the day, regardless of who I'm with, regardless of what their gender is or who this person is or whatever, it's an opportunity for me to really dig in to my true identity as a person, as somebody who, I don't have a partner right now, but would love to again in the future, who am I as a partner? Who am I as a person? What is true to me regardless of that? Do I put on a certain identity or mask based on social expectations of how you act in a heterosexual relationship or in a [same-sex] relationship? There are these expectations, and at the end of the day, it's taking this shovel and being like, I'm going to dig all of that bullshit out, and who am I for me. I'm on that journey right now.

I do want to talk about writing Old Enough before knowing you’re queer, specifically some of the lines about sleepovers. It’s about an adult friendship, right?

Yeah.

So can you talk about writing it? “My mom should be here soon” and lines like that are a little bit childlike to me.

This song wasn't hard to write because it just flew out of me. But it was challenging to unpack what the point of it was and how I wanted it to come across, and also when I was editing it and refining it a little bit, it's just a complicated emotion, and it's very nuanced, not I hate this person. I'm in love with this person. 

To me it’s wanting to set a boundary, but also not wanting to set a boundary.

I wrote it before that whole coming out fiasco in Switzerland, but it was very shortly before I [figured it out]. And so the song itself is not about that, but I did  have these moments of knowing that and  reflecting and referencing certain things from my childhood. I had a childhood friend who we were very, very, very close, and we would have sleepovers and stuff or whatever, and I fully had a crush on her, and I looked back on it and I was… oh, these types of emotions. Those weren't like oh, everybody just feels that way with their friends.

I was referencing that a little bit in some of those more childish lines. In a lot of adult friendships, you don't get as close as you were when you were a kid in that same way of “come over, sleep over, come sit in my bed with me and watch funny videos for an hour.” And part of that is because we're all so busy and we have our lives and whatever, but it's less common. I do think that that is more common also that level of closeness and blurred boundaries in the queer community

And I think that there's a beauty to that because there's a childlike openness and connection where you're not afraid of… there just is less of that boundary. And so that was what some of that imagery and some of those lines were referring to is both that and me being also referencing this friendship that I had as a kid as well, even though it's about an adult friendship. 

But yeah, it's those intense friendships, they really do feel adolescent in certain ways because with your boundaries you almost have an opportunity to act a little bit more like your unfiltered self, which is a great thing a lot of the time, but sometimes obviously that can get a little out of hand. 

And then you throw romantic feelings into the mix with some friendships that are like that, and it's just fucking chaos. And so this song specifically, I just needed to set a boundary. I had one of those friendships that was just so close, and I do feel likeI opened myself up very deeply to people very quickly, and I make close friendships very easily. And it's a moment of being like, you need to make sure that you are not literally getting into this weird prefrontal-cortex-being-formed-obsession thing.

I think a lot about boundaries, especially when I’m talking with musicians. It’s easy to make that really weird.

That’s something I love about the queer community and my friends who are queer. When it's not unhealthy, it's beautiful, but yeah, totally. When you get too deep in it, it's like [ick noise]. The rabbit hole at the bottom, it just constantly drops out. You're just constantly falling further and further down.

Something I’ve learned over the years is that when you’re interviewing, you have to know when to close off the rabbit hole, if that makes sense. And that's a really complicated thing. Obviously I could talk about enmeshed queer relationships all day, but there has to be a limit.

Yeah. I think at the end of the day, especially as it relates to the song, it’s whatever the listener wants it to be,  because now when I listen to it, it applies to some other relationships in my life, especially since coming out. Like you said, it’s closing off the rabbit hole, but I think it's a moment in time for me that now I relate to on other levels as well.

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