On Friday mornings I go to the new releases page on Tidal and wade through the new music released each week. I’ll check out records from artists I know, but what I really enjoy is finding new music from an artist I’m not familiar with that resonates with me. On the last day of February 2025, the very last album listed in my new releases feed was Nona Invie’s Self-soothing. From the first track, “Forget My Name,” I was drawn into the album, and it has been in constant rotation for me since. My friend, John Radin, used the term “agnostic gospel pop” in describing the Brian Eno and David Byrne album, Everything that Happens will Happen Today, and Self-soothing has that same feeling to me. Uplifting and positive, but also a bit introspective and searching. At times it reminds me of “Don’t Give Up,” the Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel duet on So, but in other places it has an almost Angelo Badalamenti/Twin Peaks vibe going. The consistent thread is Invie’s beautiful vocals and harmonies, along with her piano and synth playing. The entire record is great, but the second track “Last of Our Shadow” really stands out. It starts off a bit quiet and sparse in the verse, but the chorus is huge with a beautiful melodic payoff, yet it’s not loud or overblown. Not many people can pull off a chorus like this.
Self-soothing is a remarkably fully-formed debut album, the first under Invie’s name, but a little bit of digging reveals some of her previous projects and influences. From 2011 through 2017 she led the Anonymous Choir, a woman’s choir from Minneapolis that recorded primarily covers of songs by artists like Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and the Stax catalog. Next, her 2017 project, IN/VIA hinted at the keyboard driven, atmospheric pop songs on Self-soothing.
I reached out to Nona to find out more about the record and how it came to be, and she explained a bit about how the songs were written, and the process that her and producer Andrew Broder took while making the record.
"I had written a few of these songs almost ten years ago and recorded them as an IN/VIA tape, an EP of sorts. I had always intended to rework them and make a full-length version, but I guess I was busy with life and other projects, and it took the lockdown during Covid to give me the time I needed to focus on these and bring them closer to the versions you hear on Self-soothing. This record is very personal, and I had a lot of these ideas/melodies churning inside me for quite some time before they made it out to the piano. In the past, I would write songs in a day and be done with it, never revising or looking back. For these songs I spent a lot of time with them. Sitting with them and being in relation with them.
We recorded the record over 2023 and 2024. This was my first time collaborating with someone in the producer role, and it was fun to watch my little demos and voice memos evolve into the lush and expansive songs they became under Andrew Broder’s care. He was very considerate of me and the tracks, and at the same time challenged my idea of the kinds of songs I thought I was capable of creating. He encouraged me to dig deeper on lyrics and vocal performances while tracking. I’m not a perfectionist at all.
The intro melody for ‘Called a Fool’ is a good example. I have an early voice memo from December 12, 2022, that has that beginning line and a completely different verse/chorus after. I meditated on that melody almost daily for six months before it turned into ‘Called a Fool.’ There was no rush; no pressure to create anything in any timeframe. Each song got the time and care it needed.
Historically, I have written and recorded songs quickly without editing or working them over too much. It was good for me, as an artist, to spend more time on these songs and give them the attention they deserved. I also can't stress enough all the work, care, and actual magic Andrew poured into the record. He did so much to create the atmosphere for these songs to exist in, and they certainly wouldn't be what they are without him.”
Andrew chimes in, “I would describe the recording process as a ‘quiet’ one. I was already familiar with a few of these songs, having heard and loved earlier versions Nona had made, so approaching them felt un-daunting, almost like they were mixing themselves as they were being tracked. We didn't run into too many roadblocks, or, ‘What do we do here?’ moments. There was a trust and an ease that comes partially from knowing each other for a long time, but also the songs felt so intact that my job was easy, making things sparkle and embracing it.
We recorded mostly at my home studio in Minneapolis, working in Ableton Live. Most of the drum programming and effects are in the box, but I did use a Roland JUNO-106 a lot as well as a secret-weapon rack synth from the ‘90s to give it that X-Files energy. We also had an excellent tracking session with Cole Pulice playing saxophone parts at Nat Harvie's studio in North Minneapolis, and we tracked all of Nona's vocals with the legendary Tom Herbers at his studio in Saint Paul. MN. All the string parts I wrote and arranged on MIDI and we sent them off to our trusted players, Emily Elkin and Alex Guy, to self-record. Cole Davis played and self-recorded all his [bass] parts at his studio in Brooklyn."
Nona adds, “We tracked all of the piano on a grand at Creation Studio in Minneapolis, and ‘For Now’ uses a Sequential Prophet 5 synth for the last part of the song, when it has a little arpeggiated electro pop moment. Greg Fox also adds cymbal textures on ‘Love is Like That’.”
Andrew also mixed the record in Ableton, and had this to say on the process, “The mix process was pretty intertwined with the tracking process. Nona's songs are very spacious, and there wasn't too much added to the mix that ended up getting cut. I credit the songwriting a lot for that, as I didn't find myself searching for ways to add too much character via the mix because the vibe was intact already, everything there felt necessary and the engineering was very good. I will say the most important thing for me was to have the album feel wide and like an embrace. Early on, Nona said she didn't really want ‘beats’ which I agreed with, so it was a cool challenge to find ways to keep songs gently propulsive without leaning on overtly drum-like dynamics. I don't mix every project I work on, but the instrumentation of this one, and the closeness I had to the production made it a natural choice.”
Lastly, mastering was done by Alec Ness. Excellent work from all involved in the recording. The mutual respect that everybody involved had for each other’s work is apparent in this cohesive and soulful album. 
