by pankhuri bhutani
photo courtesy of nrvs lvrs
Going by the name NRVS LVRS (pronounced Nervous Lovers), Andrew Gomez and Bevin Fernandez are one of the upcoming duos in the industry. With more than 7,500 monthly listeners on their Spotify channel, NRVS LVRS recently released their highly awaited new EP Cult Lite along with their new single, “Little Cults.”
During this heavy time of crisis, this husband-wife duo is using their platform not only to showcase their talents but also to help those effected in this global pandemic. They have decided to donate 50% of all of their Bandcamp digital sales to No Kid Hungry for the duration of the current COVID-19 crisis.
To talk about their music journey and their recent track, “Little Cults,” Andrew and Bevin took out some of their time for an interview with Unclear!
Hello! Thank you for joining us at Unclear Magazine! Kindly tell us something about yourselves.
Andrew: “We’re a married couple living, working, and making music in San Francisco. Our interests include cooking, modular synthesis, photography, and whatever else helps us avoid the feeling that an inevitable and inescapable creeping doom is right behind us.”
When was the moment you decided to start your journey as a music duo? How did the name NRVS LVRS come into existence?
Bevin: “I don’t remember a singular moment, but sometime in 2014 after dating for seven years, we realized we should be making music together, so we started this group as sort of an art project to see what we could create together. We’ve always been a band interested in videos and visuals, and the name NRVS LVRS, which was in a list of band names Andrew found in one of his notebooks, had an appealing visual strength and symmetry to us.”
What were the challenges that you both faced during this journey and how did you cope up with them?
Andrew: “Just the act of making art today is a challenge. Most of us who do it have to work day jobs, so when things get hard, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. With live shows being shut down for the foreseeable future, it’s even harder for musical acts now. It feels silly complaining about any live show at this point in time, but we did a tour in Europe back in 2017, and we had a rough show in front of a packed house somewhere in Germany. Basically, the sound engineer got drunk and mistakenly muted half of our outputs, so the sound was terrible. Afterwards, we packed up, went back to the hotel, and were just really down on ourselves. You can work incredibly hard and prepare but still have it all come undone by one person. It’s a scary feeling when you have 10 other shows ahead of you. But we talked it out, realized that you can’t trip over what you can’t control, got over it, and had some great shows on that tour. The great thing about having a supportive partner is you realize nothing is really that big of a deal, and you can get through anything as long as you stick together.”
Out of all the tracks you both have created, which one is your favorite?
Andrew: “This changes every day, but today it’s ‘Yr Pretty House.’ I feel like Bevin really nailed the lyrics and captured an anger we both had been feeling for a while.”
If you could choose one word to describe your music, what might it be?
Andrew: “Good — ‘cause music ultimately can be broken down into two genres, good and bad. And we’re just trying to make good music.”
What are the things that you put into your mind before creating your music?
Bevin: “If we’re working on music, then we’re usually reading a lot, too. reading is probably the single most important thing we do to jumpstart our creativity. Crafting a good book has a lot of similarities with crafting a good song, as both are essentially the art of getting an audience emotionally involved in your storytelling. But books are a bottomless well of inspiration for us. After that, it’s best to not have anything in our minds, no expectations or concrete plans. Create first, and then edit later. It seems like our best stuff comes out when we’re barely paying attention.”
You have recently released your new EP, Cult Lite. Congratulations on that! What was the creative process like with the EP?
Andrew: “We had a lot of unfinished song ideas before we went to work with Eric Palmquist down in LA. Usually, we have a lot of finished songs before going to record, but this was exciting as Eric pushed us away from the more finished ideas and asked us to work on ideas that were often nothing more than a bassline and a vague vocal melody. We wrote 90% of the EP over the period of a week. It taught us that we can create good ideas out of thin air, and ultimately, we learned to trust ourselves and our instincts more.”
Did you face any challenges during the process of making the EP?
Andrew: “Oddly enough, this might be the easiest record for us to write. As I said above, we were writing quickly, and it immediately became apparent from the sounds and the lyrics that we were writing a cynical pop record, or our version of one.”
Lastly, is there any message that you would like to give to your fans from around the world?
Bevin: “Wear a mask and be excellent to each other.”