Every creature is designed to take to metamorphosis naturally. Like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, a former tadpole entering its final stage of life as a frog, or even a teenager going through puberty, change is inevitable. Yet, human beings appear to be the only species resistant to change. Even the most open-minded and lenient individuals struggle to find ways to let go of the parts of their brains where they still hold on to that stubbornness.
On their latest album Frog Era, the self-described “silly queer emo punk band” Ok Cuddle (formerly known as Uncle Pizza) proclaims that “the only change is the permanent, and the only permanent thing is change.” Coming to a place of acceptance with life changes that stem from grief, trauma, and the ecstasy of new beginnings is baked into the gold standard of emo. From the beer-soaked emotionally-charged thrashers of Joyce Manor to the knife-twisting agony in early Hotelier records, there’s a certain catharsis to having a soundtrack for confronting the fact that nothing will ever be permanent in our lives.
Frog Era achieves this in spades, with frontwoman Nicole Harwayne musing on all the ways her life has changed from the day she was born up to the way she copes with difficult life circumstances today, and how the acceptance of change can be liberating. Fuzzy static noise, conversational interludes, experimental sound effects (including ribbits), and jazzy breakdowns paint the album’s run-time in a sea of vibrant colors, making for a catchy and raucous emotional journey for the listener.
A Grrrl’s Two Sound Cents sat down with Ok Cuddle to discuss what prompted their name change, making a giant splash with their latest album ‘Frog Era,’ and what’s next for their promising journey as a young and fresh band in Brooklyn.
How did you all come into each other’s orbit?
Nicole: I know Cam from college. Cam was one of the first friends I made there. He switched schools, I dropped out, and we ended up moving to New York together. Then we met Juan and O.B. on Vampr, which is basically the musician Tinder.
Cam: When me and Nicole moved in together, the band was pretty much just us making music in our bedrooms, and then we started playing at a couple of open mics. Nicole played bass in my other band Survey Monkey for a bit. And then we needed to find a drummer, so that’s when we recruited Juan and O.B. The first couple of gigs feel like forever ago, and they were so awkward and potentially awful (except for O.B. of course). We played this one place called The Delancey…
Nicole: You can put this on the record: I DO NOT like that place.
Cam: Yeah, they make you pay like $200 up front, and you’re lucky if you even make enough of it back.
Nicole: Yeah, I don’t think we broke even that night.
What spawned the most recent album you put out?
Nicole: There are two albums that I made by myself [before I transitioned] and was trying to make a different genre of music, which makes those projects kind of complicated for me. I feel like a problem I was having was that the ideas were cool and the execution wasn’t doing it justice. Cam and I used to live in Portland and I don’t feel like I quite had a place in that scene.
So with the latest album, Frog Era, I felt like I was making something people would like that was also true to the band’s idiosyncratic weirdness. It was also spurned by the big cross-country drive I took to get to New York. I fell back in love with guitar music and realized that is what I’m good at. So, I felt I might as well lean into it. We rented a little studio during the summer where people were coming in and out, and I aimed to make these songs really special. I always felt like I had something worth saying, and it just felt really hard to pull that out of myself alone. Some people can do that, but I’m not one of those people.
And do you believe you achieved that?
Nicole: Yeah, I really do. And people like it! But I couldn’t have done it without the band.
Cam: One of the highlights was definitely the release show at Purgatory.
Nicole: Yeah, that was definitely an all-time life achievement. It was the first time we sold out a show. It wasn’t the first time people moshed or sang along, but it was the first inkling I got that this could happen at every show. And I was honestly shocked to have a full house responding to something I created like that. It was really special.
[Our album release show] was definitely an all-time life achievement. It was the first time we sold out a show. It wasn’t the first time people moshed or sang along, but it was the first inkling I got that this could happen at every show.
– Nicole Harwayne (Ok Cuddle)
I definitely picked up on a heavy folk sound in the current iteration of your work. Was that reflected in your influences, or is it just by happenstance that it sounds like that?
Nicole: I think it’s a little bit of both. O.B. and Cam both have folk projects outside of Ok Cuddle. I do have a deep love for a lot of folk music as well. I do a lot of writing on acoustic guitar, so it’s that sort of vibe.
Cam: It also makes sense, cause when you’re playing with a band, you’re either going to be playing acoustic or electric, but in our case, all of the writing is acoustic. So that breeds a lot of the sappy folkiness.
Absolutely. I believe you really know you have a good song when you can strip it down to acoustic and it’ll still hold up.
Nicole: For sure, and that’s been a major part of my writing process as of late. Having a good song is what matters.
What are the key differences between here and the Pacific Northwest?
Nicole: There are definitely more people here and a lot more queer people, which isn’t to say there weren’t enough queer people in Portland, there are a lot of them. But they weren’t coming to my shows. And it’s felt really good to be embraced by my community in the way that I have here. And everything’s closer on the east coast. There’s a scene in Jersey, there’s a scene in DC, there’s a scene in PA… There are so many key players who know each other in all of those places, and it feels like we’re contributing to that in a substantial way, which is nice.
Juan: Yeah, I can’t speak to the Portland/New York difference, but New York seems more tight-knit, because it’s the sort of place where most other musicians I know have service jobs, they take the train and the bus everywhere, and everyone knows about all the cool places. I’m always surprised to see how diverse the crowds of people who come out to our shows are.
What prompted the name change? Do you see a shift happening in your artistic direction along with it?
Nicole: Yeah, I think so. The main thing that prompted it is the fact that I’m trans. I didn’t know that when I came up with the name Uncle Pizza, and it feels weird now. People will walk up to me and call me “Uncle Pizza” and I’m just like, “That’s not correct.” I also think being in a band, it makes sense not to have the name default to a singular person. I want everybody’s voices to be represented, not just mine. If I’d been smarter, I would have changed the name before we released Frog Era, but whatever.
What are some of your favorite bands you wish you could play a show with?
Juan: I don’t know. Locally, the vibe is more that we won’t hear of a lot of the bands we get booked with, but then we’ll become instant fans after playing with them.
Nicole: Honestly, I just want to play on bigger stages. I want to tour the whole country, travel the world, and play to different kinds of people. I don’t even care who it’s with. If we’re talking about my favorite music outside New York, I really would love to play a show with glass beach. I really wanna play with Weatherday, and this other group we’ve become friends with called mellow core from Japan, who are really sick. There’s also a whole skramz thing happening in California now, so I would love to play a show with some of those bands. And I also wanna play with the big names, let us open for Mitski or something like that. I’m aiming high.
And I love our local besties as well. I love Crush Fund, I love [Pop Music Fever Dream], I love Spare Feelings, eevie echoes, Anita Velveeta… There are too many to name. Honestly, you could pick any name out of a hat in the 5th wave emo scene, and whatever that band is doing is sick as fuck. It’s only a matter of time before larger audiences catch on.
What are you most excited about for this new era you’re stepping into?
Juan: Definitely getting more immersed in the creative collaboration between us. When I first joined the band, we recorded a whole project immediately, so I was thrown into the deep end. As we get more comfortable and vulnerable with one another, I believe it’s definitely going to affect future projects in a really sick way.
Nicole: O.B., what are you excited for?
O.B.: I’m really stoked to have a more unified vision for what’s next. Nicole has a lot of creative visual ideas for Ok Cuddle. We’re all gonna have little outfits, and I’m genuinely excited to be part of a force — something really recognizable and singular. That’s where I’m at.
Nicole: This is basically me revealing what a giant nerd I am, but the last project was basically a water and grass type Pokémon, and this new project is more of an electric psychic type Pokémon. My biggest goal for the next year is to really throw people for a loop, where they won’t expect what’s coming next.
O.B.: Yeah, but also for people to be like “Wow, this is absolutely the best version of anything this band has ever done.”
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