two blinks, i love you is the project of Liverpool-based singer-songwriter Liam Brown, who was previously known for his work under the moniker pizzagirl. The phrase is a nod to a specific time and relationship in Brown’s life, and the songs he began releasing under the name would harbour the same earnest vulnerability. And like the name, their intimacy is often more important than the details around a particular feeling; two blinks, i love you songs can be blurry yet direct, aching yet vibrant. On his first EP, their bedroom folk quality reflected Brown’s solitary and unfiltered process. With ep2, though, he tracked the songs in a studio with engineer Sophie Ellis, remaining spontaneous while widening his indie rock palette, stunning in both its hushed and energic moments. Influenced by his trip to New York – how a big city can both make you feel both fantastically alive and aware of your smallness – the record starts out charmingly conversational, picks up the pace, and lands in a more exposed and cathartic place than you’d expect, even given the confessional style of songwriting. “When I look back on my life/ I’ll scrape that barrel dry/ Say things that make me cry,” he sings, like he hasn’t already started.
We caught up with two blinks, i love you for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about his upbringing, the origins of the project, making ep2, and more.
I wanted to start with the opening line from ‘Amends’: “We are surely made by where we’re from and what we know is true.” Do you mind talking about how this idea has become clearer to you over the years?
That line definitely sums up how I see my life and how I’ve been shaped by the people around me, where I grew up, and the core beliefs instilled in me by the people I love and who are important to me. You can’t really control that; you have people around you that, for better or for worse, shape who you are. For me, thankfully, I’ve had people who’ve shaped me for the better, so it’s a nod to that. Summing up a really big idea in a simple way helps me understand the world a bit better, because I’m trying to figure everything out. Even when I was 18, I thought I had the world figured out, and you quickly realize you don’t; every song or release is just me trying to figure the world out in as best way I can. That song is a bit broader in its idea and the way it feels, but I think it’s still quite simple so I can understand it.
Can you describe yourself as a teenager? Do you think the core of your personality has stayed the same?
I think the core version of me is definitely the same. I’m quite a bit daft and love making music, and that’s literally the person I was in school. My vision of the world was a bit different. I probably thought I felt or had figured everything I needed to do in my life, like, I’m only going to feel these feelings again. But you realize there’s countless feelings you encounter in your post-teen years. That’s the ignorance of being naïve at that time. Maybe the ball was quite blurry, and as I’ve grown up it’s getting sharper and sharper, and maybe one day it will be a clear image of who I am. It’s hard to figure that out from a day-to-day point of view, but music has always been a grounding force in my life. Regardless of what goes on around in my life, music is kind of a center, and that’s always been the case since I was in school.
What kinds of music shaped you in those years?
I liked loads of folk music, 2000s indie folk, anti-folk bands. The Moldy Peaches and the Shins and Bright Eyes. I liked a lot of stuff from films that I like; coming-of-age films always have really nice soundtracks. I always liked making music to fit with a visual. I was a big Smiths fan in my teenage years; I was definitely more inclined to sad, introverted music. I listen to sad music when I’m happy as well; for some reason that just always stood out to me as music that I connected with. It was mostly singer-songwriter stuff – Elliot Smith and Alex G as well. A lot of loners, probably, which makes a lot of sense, thinking about how I make music.
Where were you at in your musical journey when you started pizzagirl?
That feels like a different person to me. I think I was about 18 or 19 when I started that project, and the music I ended up putting out on the first EP for that project, I was about 16 or 17. There’s a lot of differences to how I feel now about music ,and what I like about music is so different from what I was making back then. That came as a big lesson about the industry, and I learned so much through that band about how to embrace the imperfections of what you’re doing, how you don’t really need a massive team of people. But when I was about 22 or 23, I was thinking I don’t really have anything to relate to with this band anymore. pizzagirl to me was just a fun project, and I could be a bit funny and meme-y online. But I wanted to make a bit more honest music, and I couldn’t really see myself turning 30 and being called pizzagirl.
Going into two blinks, i love you, was making more earnest music a natural transition?
Yeah, I think towards the latter part of that project, songs were creeping in that were a bit more earnest. There was no massive shift tonally for me; songwriting just felt more at home in this project. I knew what it was going to sound like before I made it because I was eager to do it. pizzagirl to me just represented something else, and I didn’t want to be associated with it. I’m not embarrassed or anything about it; you can’t really be embarrassed about anything to do with things that you did when you were younger. That’s what makes you write or become the person you are now. two blinks, for me, just feels really comfortable, and it’s a bit more, like, Liam rather than some zany online persona that is trying really hard to be funny – and failing, most of the time.
The name itself directly pulls you into that intimate songwriting space. I’m curious if there’s a kind of vulnerability even to the name of the project, for you, that’s different from writing an intimate song.
In terms of being vulnerable, it’s easier to be a persona and kind of deflect any authentic feelings. And that’s not really how I want to navigate my life. I don’t want to shy away from intimate and vulnerable topics in my life. With this project, I’m definitely a lot more heart-on-the-sleeve in the songwriting, and I like it. It’s a kind of confessional journal of how I feel in different parts of my life, and I’d rather people instantly connect with that feeling rather than try and figure out metaphors in a persona band that has nothing to do with my life. The name is super earnest, and the songs hopefully are as well. If I’m creating that intimate world, then hopefully people feel connected to the music and want to stick around and like what the world represents. It’s definitely a hard transition in terms of how people perceive you. They might think of you as kind of a tongue-in-cheek, jokey person online, and then you make this project, and it’s really weighty, sad subjects. But hopefully, the songwriting and the world that is created through that is something that people find attractive.
When you were collecting songs for the second EP, how did they begin to differentiate themselves from ep1?
I think ep1 was a very bedroom, intimate, vulnerable project. I was so keen to make this band that everything poured out at that point. There’s something with this EP that I wanted to sonically move a bit up from. I still demo at home, and the way you hear them is kind of the way the demo sounded, just re-recorded and mixed better by my engineer, Sophie. I wanted to move it out of the bedroom and try to make it sound a bit larger and sonically a bit different. The music that I write, I think the way it sounds doesn’t really have to matter – it could be a big indie rock song, it could be an intimate folk song, it could be an electronic anthem or something. But I think the core of it is all that honesty in the lyrics. ep2 was a bit more ambitious in terms of how I was wanted to lean into these different sounds, a bit more direct as well. Maybe ep1 was, like, pastel colors, and ep2 is block solid colors – a bit more assured of itself.
What was your favourite part of the recording process?
Working with Sophie, who mixed the EP, was amazing. We really clicked in terms of our working relationship. She works super quick, and I work super quick. It was really nice to be in a new space and have someone who enjoyed the music telling you that they enjoyed it. Sometimes when you make music alone, you kind of have to trust that you like the songs. I was very anti-studio, anti-collaboration because I do music alone, so having someone there who I trusted and had a good time with was really important. That’s what made me feel really happy and excited about the EP – it wasn’t made in a bad vibe; it was made with love, with all my friends around. It was something that I’ll cherish forever, that feeling of working with your best friends and having people there around you who believe in you. Hopefully I can make music in the future that is in that way as well.
‘For Good’ is maybe the most direct and self-consciously vulnerable song on the EP. You’ve said that many of the songs were retrospectively written about loss, and there may be aspects of it that you didn’t realize at the time. How do you relate to that song now?
Yeah, that one in particular is very direct in its themes. It touches on the feeling of things being finite and the lack of permanence. The chorus of that song is definitely me going like, ” I’d rather not deal with these subjects.” It can get quite overwhelming at times to think about life’s big questions; it upsets me sometimes, and other times I’m not that affected by it. But it’s also dealing with grief and loss – even loss in real, living relationships with people and friends. I found that really hard to deal with sometimes, and I think that song is basically just saying, “Could you not say that right now?” It’s a seven-minute vent, really. The chorus happens so often that it’s almost like pleading, it’s kind of desperate. I remember when I was writing that and performing it, I wanted to have a big, loud, screaming ending to the chorus because it relates to the feelings of the song.
When you recorded the song, was it like you imagined? What feelings came out in that moment?
Yeah, it’s weird because all the genuine feelings are kind of made when I’m alone writing the song with a guitar, in this room or working elsewhere. When I took it to a studio, there’s a certain element of, I could never be as 100% genuine as I was when I was writing it initially. But having those moments in the song to really exert a lot of energy into the performance brought back the adrenaline of making the song initially. It’s interesting to kind of relive the feeling you had when you wrote it in a new way, and sometimes it brings out new feelings that you didn’t feel before. I kind of realized how sad that song was, particularly going back to it. I didn’t really think too much about the lyrics when I was writing it.
You mentioned you usually write alone in your room, and you told me earlier that you’re now moving. Do you think about whether songs are going to come out in the same way somewhere else?
It’s funny that you say that because when I moved out the first time from my family home, that was a massive thought in my head. I was like, “Am I not going to be able to write music in the same way anymore? I’ve only ever known writing music in this house.” I think moving places as often as I have has stopped that feeling. I think no matter where I am in the world, that’s something quite central to my life, that I’ll write in this specific voice. It doesn’t necessarily change the fact that you can write different types of songs in different types of places. Maybe some days when I don’t like this apartment, there might be some songs that come out that are a bit more sad and angry. But I don’t think that’s ever too far away – I could be on a beach in the Caribbean and probably still write some sad, angry folk tunes, probably. But I did think initially, “Is the whole charm of my music going to leave when I move out?” Thankfully, I haven’t felt that.
I read that you got into film scoring this year. What’s that been like?
That was a really mad, stressful time of my life, but very fun as well. It was a really weird story because the director for the film was at a pub in Liverpool at the time, and he was chatting with my bassist, who is Irish. They were just talking about music, and my bassist asked the director what music he was into, and he mentioned two blinks, i love you. He was like, “Oh, I play bass in his band.” Then he called me at like 2am, like, “I just met this director!” We got to talking, and he was like, “I’d love you to maybe tackle the score for it.” I think I was a bit naive; I was like, “Yeah, great, I’ll do that!” Then it ended up being quite intense because there were two different styles in the film: quite intense action and drama, and then these intimate coming-of-age moments. The latter is where I’m way more comfortable writing music, but the action side was a lot more technical and scientific. I think I nearly cried about four times, but it was amazing.
With two blinks, I can kind of make the rules and write whatever I want, but this was a lot more intense, focused work. I’m really looking forward to it coming out, and hopefully, people will like the sonic world that I made. There’s a scene where it’s the view of a screen and a girl is playing a cover song on YouTube, and it says “two blinks, i love you” on the video. I was watching it, and I was like, “I think my 15-year-old self would think that was really cool.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
two blinks, i love you’s ep2 is out November 22 via Heist or Hit.