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Occasionally, when Remi Wolf talks about her new album, Big Ideas, she lulls herself into autopilot, her body operating with no input from her brain. During a recent meeting, as she discusses studio logistics in her syrupy alto (“We worked at Electric Lady in New York, we worked at Conway in LA…”), she reaches across the table and snags a French fry off my plate.
“Do you want any ketchup?” I ask her.
Immediately, the spell is broken, leaving Wolf in a state of pure shock. She shrieks with laughter. “I’m sorry, I’m just, like, talking and eating your fries!” she says. “I was just…mind empty.”
There is a funny dissonance between 28-year-old Wolf’s cherubic face—with a halo of dark curls to match—and her tendency to pepper her sentences with “fucking” and “dude.” (She also has a wonderfully eclectic sense of style: for our lunch, she wears a long-sleeve tie-dyed shirt, a pearl choker with a large silver pendant, and mini platform Uggs.) It’s eminently likeable: Striding into the Hollywood diner where we sat down together, she’s greeted with a wide grin and a warm “Welcome back!” from our waitress. Wolf has turned this unassuming restaurant into her office recently, taking meetings with various label executives ahead of her album’s release on July 12. “I wish she was here for this interview,” she says of one waitress who, unprompted, told Wolf—and a table full of execs—about her handmade Lorena Bobbitt Rules! T-shirt. “She was like, ‘Do you guys want more coffee? Also, I made this shirt. She chopped off her boyfriend’s penis.’ And we were just like, ‘Cool.’”
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Photo: Ragan Henderson
Big Ideas continues Wolf’s strong track record of clear-as-a-bell vocals, funky production, and vibrant lyricism. While her first LP, Juno, was produced entirely in a bedroom at the height of COVID, Wolf jumped at the chance to record Big Ideas in hallowed studios like Electric Lady, whose rich history she hoped would bleed into the music. On the new album, she paints vivid scenes of coughing up frogs and spending a loved-up Halloween in Chicago over zany guitar riffs and synths. Also present are pronounced jazz and disco influences, dialed up to match the album’s energetic spirit.
One recurring theme in Wolf’s music is her fluid sexuality. Since her first EP, You’re a Dog! (2019), she has referred to both men and women as the subjects of her desire (and, often, frustration). “When I first entered the music industry, it was a fight to be seen,” she says. In the early years of her career, she admits that she was reluctant to be branded as an LGBTQ+ artist. “I’m just trying to be myself. I’m writing a lot about my literal life experiences,” she says. She worried that a label would not only push her into a box but force her to speak for more than just herself. “I have no authority on anything, really; on gender politics, on queer politics. I don’t have anything to say other than you do you, and I’m gonna do me.” In the five years since You’re a Dog!, however, she feels that attitudes toward sexuality—and queerness in particular—have shifted “to a place where it’s like, who gives a fuck?” she says. “We don’t have to make it a big deal—which I love.”
