“Nice to meet you,” I say to Benee. The backstage hallway is narrow, and I don’t know what else to do with my arms, so I extend them and say, “Do you do hugs?”
We’re at Philadelphia’s Brooklyn Bowl. We pass by security and staff, carrying trays of wings and curly fries, finding a small office with a spinny chair and a folding one. She takes the former, and I, the latter. We try to get comfortable, but in a room the size of a closet, we don’t have much of a choice.
Aside from the rain, Philadelphia has treated Benee and her team well. Their day off included East Coast Italian food, though she can’t quite remember what she ordered as well as some time to decompress with Fortnite and her Nintendo Switch. We briefly touch on the Academy Awards and the “pursuit of being great.”
“I’m glad Michael B. Jordan got that,” she tells me, commenting on his Best Actor win. She continues, “I just hate when people get too cocky.”
Cocky doesn’t seem to be in Benee’s vernacular, as her music is quite the opposite. Bright and bold (see: “Sadboii” or “Green Honda”), and honest (refer to: “Heaven” or “Wishful Thinking”), come to mind, but never cocky. Relating back to her own work and her own success, she tells me more about Ur an Angel I’m Just Particles, her latest album. “I’m not like, ‘This is great so everyone should listen to it,’” she says with a laugh. “I’m just really proud of it. And whoever it connects with.” She mentions her quirky and devoted fans connecting over deeply personal tracks, like “Heaven” and grins when she says “If I could be your blanket, I’m doing my job right.”
“A weighted blanket,” I offer.
“I will be your weighted blanket,” she smiles.
Following the release of Ur an Angel I’m Just Particles, Benee embarked on a tour across the United States. No stranger to North America, there’s still a culture shock. “Creatives absorb everything around them,” she says. “And LA is just so different.” Sort of like a sponge, being surrounded by creativity breeds the same creativity used in crafting her sophomore album. I ask her about how her environment shapes her sound, with sonic influences from the New Zealand scene. “I think that I found myself thinking a lot about home and the music and what the New Zealand sound to me was. What I found comfort in.”
Using her move from New Zealand to LA as inspiration, she describes the experience as deeply existential. Home shapes the sonics; LA shapes everything else. The shift from small pond to vast ocean was both disorienting and necessary, pushing her to grow as both a person and a musician. Her drummer Felix, she jokes, was the Dory to her Nemo, just two small fish in a big sea.
“Whether it resonates with as many people or not, I think that it’s definitely gotten a lot better,” she tells me about her music evolution. And though proud of her older work, she’s more interested in what comes next.
“I wish people would stop asking me to make music like my old music.” She says. “There’s this pressure. Like audiences feel entitled. And I get it. I’ve felt that way too. But we’re artists. We evolve.”
In a space barely big enough for the both of us, evolving feels simple and natural. Benee is not trying to be who she was before, she is only interested in who she is becoming. She shrugs. “It’s all a form of expression. Every decision I make is artistic. Expect the unexpected.”
Listen to Ur an Angel I’m Just Particles here and keep up with Benee below.
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