Franxie Wrote the Feeling Years Before She Had the Words for It
Punk Head: “Stone” took almost ten years to leave the vault. What finally made you stop keeping it to yourself?
franxie: I think I finally got tired of waiting until I felt ready enough to release it. I’ve learnt that being ready is sometimes just a decision, and at some point I realised I didn’t need to keep protecting it from being imperfect. I’m also at a point now where I’m going back through older songs, finishing them properly and letting them exist outside of me.
Punk Head: You wrote this song before you fully understood what you were writing about. Do you trust the version of yourself who wrote it more now, or do you understand her differently?
franxie: Probably both. I trust her more because she clearly knew something was wrong before I had the language for it, but I also understand her with a lot more context now. At the time I thought I was just writing about feeling anxious, stuck and heavy. I tend to understand my own writing more clearly in hindsight. It’s a bit like standing back from a painting: once I have some distance from it, I can see the whole picture better.
Punk Head: There is something quite radical about making a song called “Stone” and then deciding the answer isn't to carry the stone better, but to put it down. When did that shift happen for you?
franxie: Much later than when I wrote it! I would say recently, actually. I think for a long time I treated strength as being able to keep carrying everything, no matter how heavy it got. Over the last few years I’ve had to unlearn that a bit. Sometimes letting go, changing your mind or admitting something is too heavy is actually the stronger choice.
It’s funny you mention putting the stone down, because I recently drew up a little animation for my Spotify Canvas of my hand picking up a stone and then putting it back down. I originally just needed a visual for some promo, but I think I accidentally summed up the whole song.
Punk Head: You deliberately kept mistakes and timing imperfections from the original live take. What does a mistake communicate that a perfectly edited performance can't?
franxie: It tells you that a person was actually there. There’s a tension and vulnerability in that original take that I couldn’t recreate once I started trying to make it “better”. I lost a lot of the feeling every time I tried to redo it. There are definitely little bits in the recording I’d still love to fix, but I think they belong to the imperfectness of the track now. Sometimes fixing every rough edge also removes the thing that made you feel something in the first place.
Punk Head: As a producer, you're presumably becoming better at controlling a recording. Has getting better at production also taught you when to leave something alone?
franxie: Definitely. Learning production initially made me want to fix everything because suddenly I knew how. Now I’m learning that having the ability to change something doesn’t always mean I should. A big part of producing for me now is figuring out what the song actually needs, rather than adding or correcting things just because I can.
Punk Head: If “Stone” is the first door into this next chapter, what do you hope people understand about Franxie by the time they've walked through the rest of it?
franxie: That I’m not trying to make everything neat. I want the music to feel honest, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes soft and sometimes messy. I’m still figuring out exactly what Franxie sounds like, but I think that curiosity is part of it.
There are still a few older ballads I want to finally let out into the world, so people might have to sit with me in my feelings for a little longer before we get to some of the more fun stuff. But that’s part of this next chapter too: clearing out the songs I’ve been carrying for years while making space to experiment, play and see where the project goes next.
