GIFT is a New York quintet made up of vocalist/guitarist TJ Freda, multi-instrumentalists Jessica Gurewitz and Justin Hrabovsky, drummer Gabe Camarano, and bassist Kallan Campbell. Freda assembled the band right before the pandemic, and he ended up crafting most of their debut album, 2022’s Momentary Presence, alone in his Brooklyn apartment. Now signed to venerated independent label Captured Tracks, GIFT worked more collaboratively for their next album; Hrabovsky – who previously engineered at Asheville’s while Gurewitz wrote a host of lyrics. The resulting record, Illuminator, is sweeping and restlessly dreamy; as expansive as their debut but more committed to condensing structure and feeling, injecting its classic alt-rock touchstones with electronic and modern pop sensibilities. Luckily, hooks come as easily for GIFT as mesmerizing textures and spacey arrangements. When it all blends together, it’s no wonder time flies by so fast. Yet Illuminator keeps you engaged, warping and evolving as it moves along.
We caught up with GIFT’s TJ Freda for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about the process behind Illuminator, signing to Captured Tracks, the theme of light, and more.
You’ve called Illuminator your “psych-rock tribute to UK rave culture in the ‘90s.” I take it that your first European tour had quite an impact on you.
Most of us had maybe been to Europe when we were younger, but this was our first time being really ingrained. We were there for a month and a half, playing shows every day and really getting to know the people around. In the US, the way the music market works is so different. Growing up, The Verve to me was ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ and nothing else. But then you go to the UK and Europe, and people are like, “No, the Verve is so much more than that.” It just was cool to see the attention given to the bands we love. We were going around Bristol, and everyone’s like, “Oh yeah, Massive Attack used to practice right over there.” It was cool hearing about our favorite bands and seeing how guitar-driven music has stayed around there. And then, thinking about the acid rave scene with Andrew Weatherall – he was a huge touchstone for us on this record with all those remixes, the Primal Scream stuff, William Orbit, all those people. Unless you’re really into music, those aren’t really things you hear in the States, whereas most of these, like, older dads were coming to our shows and chopping our ears off about Andrew Weatherall. And the kids were going to drum and bass shows when we were there.
I’m curious how that went from something you thought was cool to a question of how you could bring it into the world GIFT.
We started DJing a lot in New York. There’s an influx of this “indie sleaze revival,” which I don’t even know if that’s really a wave that’s happening, but that’s what the press loves to talk about in New York right now. Everyone’s a DJ in New York. We kind of got swept into it, but that’s not really our scene as much. We’re just doing our own thing here, but we did start DJing because our friends were asking us. It was cool because I’ve always been extremely into electronic music; it’s been a huge part of my life since I was a kid. It was always guitar music and electronic music for me. I used to make a lot of electronic music when I was younger, but they were so separate. On the last record, Momentary Presence, it got a little closer because we were using synths and maybe some drum machines, but this one really fused together the electronic elements that I bring in, where we’re using – you see all the synths behind me. I have a bunch of these sequencers that we’re using. I think we all just gravitated towards that style, wanting to explore different things.
We’ve never really wanted to be pinned down by a genre for GIFT. When we did our debut album, we realized we could do whatever we wanted because nothing would seem too out of the ordinary. We don’t want to be pinned into, like, shoegaze-y or something like that. We actually don’t like the term shoegaze to describe us that much. I love shoegaze bands, but I feel like we’re probably the worst example of a shoegaze band in terms of what proper shoegaze is. We just have a lot of sounds going on, I guess.
Did signing to Captured Tracks shift the conversation at all in terms of what you wanted the band to represent? What effect did it have?
It had a huge effect. When we met them, I remember telling them, “I’m sure if you look through your demos right now, you’ll find my 15-year-old music project in there somewhere.” [laughs] I’ve loved the label forever, and I’ve loved so many bands on there, DIIV and Beach Fossils when they were on there for a couple of singles, Wild Nothing, Juan Wauters. I grew up in Boston, and when all this was happening, New York was the neighboring city I was looking at being like, “Whoa, this is happening. This is really cool.” And Captured Tracks was definitely at the center of a moment in New York, which is a really hard thing to have – a big moment in New York – because it seems like there’s so much going on. But they were having a huge moment with the DIY scene, and I remember visiting and seeing that stuff and being really excited by it.
When I moved here, that moment had definitely passed. Captured Tracks was still killing it, but all the DIY venues were gone. When we finalized the signing, I was really excited because I felt like Captured Tracks hadn’t had a New York band in a long time, and they were so New York-centric. At one point, probably every band on their roster that was doing really well was in New York, they were all playing together and touring together. And I think we’re actually the only active young New York band on the label right now. There’s Juan Wauters, but he’s been on there for a while. The Lemon Twigs too, they’re from Long Island. But we were stoked because we’re in New York, this is a New York label, and it feels like we’re kind of carrying the torch in a way. It gave us a bunch of fire to make the album really good. We were going to make it good, but it gave us this confidence, being on this independent New York record label where you get the chance to make a record – multiple records.
Since making Momentary Presence, you’ve created a dedicated space for your bandmates. Going into Illuminator, what did you discover about your dynamic as a group as a result of that shift?
When I started GIFT, it was inherently my project, and Momentary Presence was very much me. When it came time to record Illuminator, everyone seemed a lot more invested and really wanted to be a part of it. The previous album was during COVID and it was a little hard and I didn’t want to wait for anyone, so I took the reins. But this time, I was getting really inspired by the way I individually collaborated with everyone. We weren’t going to our practice space and messing with the songs all together. I was poking people in very specific ways where I knew their strengths would be.
For example, Justin, who plays synth and guitar, is a master engineer and knows so much more about outboard gear than I do. So we worked a lot on production together, he was there every step of the way during the mixing and mastering process. Jessica is really keen on lyrics, and she’s great. She helped me decipher things and we wrote a lot of the lyrics together on this one. Gabe was helping with drums – I play drums, but I’m not the best drummer, and he just elevated it rhythmically. And Kallan was helping a lot with song structure. I don’t even know if there was a time, besides when we were recording drums, when we were all together working on this because it felt like I could get so much more focused when everyone was coming into the studio and doing what they do best. I definitely surrendered a bit of control, which was good for me because I ended up having a lot more fun than just stressing myself out the whole time. The songs flew by so much quicker just because I had another person to be like, “Is that good?”
When you bring a song as inward-looking as ‘Water in My Lungs’ to the table, how do you feel like it transforms in a communal or live context?
We’ve only played ‘Water in My Lungs’ live once, so we haven’t really had a chance to do it more. But we’re definitely going to be playing it in Europe, and I’m curious to see how it translates because it sounds really good live, the way we’ve been practicing it. I’ve definitely listened to it, like, walking around the city, and started getting really emotional because it brings me back to a time that wasn’t amazing. I don’t feel like I get super emotional live because there’s so much going on, and it doesn’t hit as hard. I think it’s a lot easier for me to be moved by recorded music than live music. Live music is more of a general feeling, where I’m not really listening to lyrics as much. There’s so much going on – I’m looking at the drummer, looking at the bass player. But I’m interested to see how people react to it. I think it’s going to be more of an energy thing. Usually, our live sets are big and loud, and that’s a moment that brings you back down for a second, so I’m curious to see if people will ride with us back down.
I have such a hard time remembering lyrics live, which is my one downfall. I’ll never miss a note on guitar, but lyrically, I’m two steps ahead of what I’m singing every single time, trying so hard to remember the words because my brain just does not remember lyrics. I kind of go into this mode of, I’m there just singing lyrics but not really feeling them, so I’m interested to see how it translates.
How about turning a demo into a recorded track? How do you go about retaining that feeling?
When I’m writing music, it’s about capturing a feeling, and sometimes it’s really hard to get back to that feeling. If you pick it up a month later, your chemical makeup in your body and brain has changed, and you’re just a different person. I usually try so hard when I have that feeling while recording a demo to finish as much as I can in that moment because I know it’s going to be hard to get back into it.
This time around, my friend Ricky, who mixes our records, gave me all this gear because he was like, “If you want to try to keep demo-recorded material in the final mix, you need to get a better preamp.” I did a super upgrade of my studio, so a lot of the takes – like, ‘Glow’, is pretty much all the original guitar parts, I don’t think I changed anything from the second I sat down to record that song. ‘Water in My Lungs’ is similar too – I don’t even know if the guitar part changed at all. You can try so hard to rework that magic, but there’s just something in the timbre or the energy you’re playing at that moment that’s so hard to go back to.
It’s interesting that so much of ‘Glow’ was there from the start. To me, it’s the most transcendent moment on the album, especially the way it flows in the tracklist.
Yeah, that was a crazy one to work on. I tried to fight it for so long with the flow, because it’s the one song on the record that meanders and kind of does its own thing. I really wanted it to have a chorus and a regular song structure, but one day I was like, “Why am I trying to fight this? It should just be what it needs to be.” And I’m stoked I did that because the album needs those weird, freak-out moments that just go off.
A lot of the album is about the fear of losing hold or slipping away, but there’s also a thrill attached to that feeling, and ‘Glow’ is a moment where you really lean into it. Was that ambiguity something you wanted to lay down musically – that fear being both terrifying and desirable, in a way?
Yeah. Structurally, we wanted to have rigid song structures with more choruses, and then the times where it deviates from that feel so much more impactful, like ‘Glow’, which is about letting yourself in the transcendental world of existentialism – just letting go. We were trying to contain ourselves a bit but also break out in certain moments. On the last record, every song was like seven minutes long with fifteen choruses, it was these insane odysseys the whole time. This time, we wanted to condense everything into more digestible bites and have each song move along quicker. We wanted to get out of the trance mindset and focus more on choruses and melody. But we can never not have those moments.
There’s a sense of optimism in a song like ‘Light Runner’, where you sing about being “mesmerized by the light.” The word “light” seems to hold different meanings throughout the album. Can you talk about what that multiplicity represents for you?
I feel like most of the songs deal with light or the abstract idea of light. I was having these sort of visual daydreams about chaos in terms of light streaks and realizing that, like, we blinked and a year went by. It’s a scary feeling. When you start a band, you blink and it’s all different. People are coming in and out of your life. There was a massive breakup that happened for me along the recording of this record, which was crazy – the person you knew becomes someone you don’t even know anything about. I feel like the two main themes for us were light and water, but light is either about speed or light as illumination, in terms of an aura or a vibe. We were really inspired by the way light interacts with life: it’s the fastest thing in the world, it’s the sun, it can be really psychedelic when it’s warped. It’s funny because ‘Light Runner’ feels, not like an outlier lyrically, but it’s definitely more of a pop song in terms of its feel-good nature. The rest of the album, I think if people really dig into the lyrics – which isn’t something I always do when I listen to music – there’s definitely some darkness that’s happening. A lot of the songs merge this optimism with this darkness.
It’s also interestingly tied to the album cover, which you’re credited for conceptualizing. What was the thinking behind it?
I knew I didn’t want it to be just one person. I knew it was going to be two people because so much of this album is about the intermingling of people, whether it’s platonic relationships, romantic relationships, or anything coming in and out of lives. It’s about the butterfly effect of, if this one thing didn’t happen, would these people have ever crossed paths? And when they cross paths, it’s like a chain reaction to something else. A big emphasis visually was on movement and motion. We loved the idea that it could be two people dancing or two people intermingling in a way, warping together. But the water aspect also plays into it; in many ways, it represents two people sinking to the bottom of a body of water, warped together and glowing
Given the themes of anxiety and transcendence on the album, I’m curious if you could share something that grounds you or keeps you present. It doesn’t have to be musical.
I feel like Momentary Presence was all about the meditation of life and actual meditation. And then Illuminator was about saying “fuck you” to trying to feel grounded and letting go. But since then, we’ve been touring so much and everything has been so crazy that I haven’t been doing a great job at grounding myself. But one thing that always helps is just – going on a walk is a lot more powerful than people think; actually moving and changing environments. But honestly, I think I’m still in my “fuck it” phase and just leaning into everything. I haven’t felt as anxious because it’s an experiment in surrendering control and fear of the future. We’re about to go on this crazy tour, and I’m excited to lean in even more. But there is one album that I absolutely love and that will no matter what calm me down. It’s by S.E. Rogie, a palm wine guitarist from Sierra Leone, and it’s called Dead Men Don’t Smoke Marijuana. That’s probably my most listened-to record every year.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
GIFT’s Illuminator is out August 23 via Captured Tracks.