Emerging from the DIY music scene in New Jersey, Pollyanna are an absolute force to be reckoned with. The four-piece consists of Jill Beckett (vocals/guitar), Daniel McCool (drums), Brandon Bolton (bass) and Jack Rose (guitar) and blends loud rock, pop and punk to foster their razor-sharp, rage-filled musical identity.
From a strikingly impactful debut album in 2022 to national tours with artists such as Waterparks and Plain White T’s, Pollyanna has never fit neatly inside any boxes. They’ve instead sought to craft their own and make it known that they are always going to loudly and unapologetically be themselves.
Their forthcoming second album, Weirdo, adopts this idea from a compellingly bold and raw perspective. The record captures the essence of coming to terms with everything that makes you different and embracing every ounce of who you are, just as Pollyanna always has. As they get ready to unleash the chaos and catharsis of Weirdo later this week, you just might want to give in and join them in the fun.
Melodic Magazine sat down with the band to discuss the ways that Weirdo was influenced by their personal experiences, DIY roots, queer identities and more.
Your sophomore album Weirdo arrives on Oct. 24. Congratulations on that! How would you guys compare the process of creating this record to your debut Slime?
Jill: It was very different in so many different ways. There were a lot more struggles and a lot more doubts and overthinking. We were thinking a lot more carefully because it was our second time doing a whole record. The circumstances were different. We had toured a bunch of times at that point and really during the process of when we started writing the record, we were all also on tour.
We really started writing Slime right after quarantine. The pacing was a lot different. I think the biggest thing going into [Weirdo] was we had like almost 30 songs that we narrowed down to 14 tracks. With Slime we had 13 and we narrowed down to 12.
What are some of the themes and inspirations behind Weirdo that played a role in making the album?
Daniel: Purgatory.
Jill: Personal growth. As someone who grew up as the black sheep of the family and the outcast in the school, the experience of being against the grain your whole life and feeling like a weirdo and that you don’t belong anywhere. Just kind of trying to find a way to exist in the world so you don’t feel alone in that way of existing.
I wanted to take a second to talk about the album artwork because it is insanely sick. Where did the idea for the visual come from and how does that tie into the album?
Daniel: We were actually sitting in this exact room and I was just kind of like drawing on a whiteboard. I ended up drawing a delicious, tasty-looking two-dimensional cake with a graphic eyeball that sat on top. I was just doing it for a merch design or something. This was early on in the songwriting process, but the rest of the band was like, “Hold on, this is cool. This could be something.” And I was like, “No guys. Let’s not do an eyeball for the artwork.”
Brandon: We were all like “Nope, Dan. It’s your idea and we’re doing it.”
Daniel: We ended up sourcing the eyeball itself from an artist on Etsy who builds them with the retinal cord and the eyeball. Our buddy Connor Meany, who has been helping us creatively direct the visual side of this record, liked the idea of incorporating the eyeball. Connor helped us bring it to life. He built a set in his house with that yellow background and he got the lighting all right, built one of those storage racks to go over the background and we bought a chain to wrap the retinal cord around and dangled it from that shelving above that background. And that’s how we got that image. The laser obviously came in post, but the eyeball itself was made by an artist and the set was built by us and Connor.
Jack: I thought the laser was real. I remember shooting laser beams across the room and I just thought that was wicked. I couldn’t believe Connor was able to make that happen.
Jill: I really fought for the chain to be part of it because for a long time during the writing process, there’s a lot of lyrics in the record that give a metaphor for chains and being chained up in your own purgatory. I really wanted the eyeball to have some sort of chain dangling or something like that so that’s where that came from. Then Mads Schubert did the font for Weirdo, which is really cool. They also did the vinyl, which I’m super in love with.
Daniel: The symbolism accompanying the concept of the chain with the eyeball is very graphic and very raw almost, which is what the record is. The eyeball is the perception or symbolism of the art of being perceived in a grotesque or weird way.
Jill: I’ve always seen an eye for some odd reason as self-improvement and self-growth or growing pains. It feels like seeing yourself and having to look more within yourself when you don’t have so many distractions around and what it’s like to experience that. So I think the eye made sense for a lot of the themes throughout the record.
Awesome! It’s so sick. I love when album covers are really creative like that, so really cool job on that.
Daniel: Thank you! I really fought that concept at first too, like “can we please not go with the eyeball?” There’s so much eyeball in media nowadays, but I think with the way we went about it by building the set and formatting the visual to what the songs are, it worked out. It’s a really cool piece of art that we’re all proud of.
I also want to bring some attention to one of the most recent singles from the record, “Boygirl,” which speaks about not conforming to traditional gender roles and is an anthem for trans joy. What does this song mean to you both as artists and as supporters/individuals who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community?
Jill: I’ve had the idea for the song for years, but it was actually really hard for me because when I thought about writing about my gender and writing about what it’s like to not understand which binary you swing more towards, it was just really difficult for me to find the words for a really long time.
I love the word “boygirl” because it really makes sense to how I’m perceived in the world and how I guess I perceive myself. I do feel like when I lean one way towards a more masculine part of me with my gender, there’s parts of my femininity that I miss and vice versa. The message of “Boygirl” is saying it’s okay to not know exactly what it is that you are. Gender is such a complex thing. It’s also like, we made it up, you know? So I think that the message behind “Boygirl” is just saying like, it’s okay to not fall under a label.
For me, it’s also like a “fuck you” to people that are not going to understand that or really are not going to respect that. It’s a “fuck you” for people that are just constantly going to try to fit someone into a standard or a mold. This is going a little bit deeper within it, but even within the LGBTQ community. There are so many people that feel like you need to commit to one thing. There’s trans medicists that believe that you need to fully medically transition to be trans, which is such fucking bullshit. The whole point of what being non-binary and gender queer is, is that you don’t have to be a certain way.
The song is so important and it really resonates with a lot of people. How did you end up collaborating with NOAHFINNCE on “Boygirl”?
Jill: We’ve been friends for a minute now. He messaged us on TikTok in 2022 before I even knew who he was. I’ve heard of him and stuff, but he just really liked Slime. We stayed in touch since and I knew I wanted another queer trans artist to feature on the song, especially because I wanted a fresh perspective. I didn’t want it to just be about my experience. I wanted it to be about everyone’s experience.
I hit Noah up and he listened to the demo, and was like, “I’m so fucking down!” I think that for his perspective, it’s definitely like a “fuck you” to transphobes. A lot of my friends came out in high school as trans. Noah was a fucking icon posting content about being trans when it was a lot harder to find and come across. He’s such an inspiration to so many trans people for sharing his story and just creating YouTube videos. I just think he’s so special in the community, especially as a music artist.
I’m really, really grateful that he was able to be on the song because he is a binary trans man, but the context behind the words is like, “I don’t give a fuck how you see me. This is who I am.”
What is your favorite song on the album and why?
Daniel: My favorite song on the record is “Good Enough.” I feel like that one hits home big for me in all aspects of the song, the flow of it, the content and just the general vibe. There’s some really good core Pollyanna roots that come through in that song. It’s one of those ones that I hear and get a little more emotional than usual.
Jill: I wanna say that “Purgatory” and “Weirdo” are my favorite as a whole because “Purgatory” is technically an interlude into “Weirdo.” But if I’m going to choose one track, it’s gonna be “Weirdo.”
That is the one song off the record where I zone out. I forget that it’s us playing and I’m like, “yo, this song is awesome!” It very much feels like turning a new leaf. It feels like you are at rock bottom and there is nowhere else to go, so you have to fucking do something. It’s like getting away from the worst situation and driving in your car across the country. You don’t know where you’re going, but you’re out of where you were because you’re breaking the cycle. “Weirdo” is really about breaking the cycle and beginning a new chapter while trying to break out of the purgatory that you’re stuck in.
You’re just sick and tired of it, you know? There’s negative parts to it and I wrote it when I was in a very negative place, but overall, I believe that the song is very positive. It’s like I’m tired of it and something needs to change.
Jack: I gotta be a little selfish and pick “Nonstop Disco” for my favorite song. I like that we chose to be so bold, slow and heavy and wear a different outfit sonically. It’s kind of the oddball on the record. It’s dreary and miserable sounding, and that’s my taste. I like the “blegh.” We’ve had that riff and that idea kicking around for a really long time so to finally see it exist is just really cool to me.
Brandon: I’m still kind of shocked that it made the record because that song took a while to finish writing, but I’m so glad it’s on the record.
Jack: Yeah! We had 30 or so demos and I was like, “This one’s totally not gonna make it.” It ended up making it on there and it’s like, “Oh, they let us do that!”
Brandon: I would say mine is probably “Die Slow.” I think that has a fun vibe to it and matches the classic Pollyanna sound, which is Dan and Jill with my flavor.
How do you think growing from the DIY music scene in New Jersey has shaped you guys as a band?
Brandon: The best answer for that is our live show. Recorded music can be kind of subjective, but for our live shows, we perform our hearts out. Even if you don’t like us, you could still admit that we’re trying.
Jill: I love that we came from this scene. The four of us united in 2019, but all of us came from this DIY mentality since middle and high school. Dan and I started to play together as a band in eighth grade. So we all came from this mentality of playing as many shows as possible and giving your all on stage.
Jersey has so much history with emo and alternative music and having just such cool and diverse artists. There’s some type of air that Jersey has with grinding and hustling. Dan and I for a long time would literally go to different shows of bands that we liked and felt like were similar to Pollyanna and would burn CDs and give them out. We would run the lines. I see that with other New Jersey local musicians too and I think it’s awesome.
Daniel: It is a big, very diverse scene. There’s a lot of different kinds of alternative and DIY music that you see, and I feel like we all come from different pockets that there’s plenty of overlap. By the time we were all jamming together, we had so many mutuals even though we hadn’t really known each other. There are a lot of great peers in the scene and a lot of good examples on what not to do, as well. Coming from those different areas of the Jersey scene, we were able to put together some form of drive to excel and bloom out of it.
I feel like another big thing about the scene and where we come from, there were almost, at one point, too many venues in New Jersey to choose from. In the last decade since we’ve been plunged into this scene, there’s been such limited options and it keeps getting more and more narrow.
I think there’s some beauty in the fact that a lot of other kinds of places are popping up to continue it even though these small clubs or venues for DIY-sized crowds aren’t really existent anymore, like breweries or record stores, for instance. I feel like there’s been a big decline in accessibility in terms of venues throughout the state, and also at the same time an emergence of a lot of DIY spaces.
How would you describe Pollyanna to someone who’s never heard of you before?
Jack: Pollyanna sounds like Nirvana playing Paramore songs drunk at a gay bar.
Jill: There’s a really great sentence that Jack also wrote that is “The band gleefully showcases everything from a pissed-off, ready-to-burn-the-world-down fury of guitars to dancing while celebrating queer love and trans pride amongst exploring orchestral moments of self-doubt and self-loathing. Pollyanna articulates the journey of trading hatred for joy.” I fuck with that.
Weirdo arrives this Friday, Oct. 24 via I Surrender Records. Pre-order/pre-save the album here.
Keep up with Pollyanna: Instagram // X // Spotify // YouTube // Apple Music // Website
