The Seed: Missoula’s Chloe Gendrow Administers “Antidotes”

Missoula-based, pop singer-songwriter, Chloe Gendrow, is set to release her new EP “Antidotes” on June 11th. This is her first EP and the followup to her previous two albums 22 Below (2019) and Glow (2017). We recently caught up with Chloe and she told us more about the EP.

Writing & Production

“I wrote all the songs, and produced ‘this is what hell is like’ (stripped) and ‘you ruined bon iver for me’. I helped produce the other four, with my friend Nick Anthony who’s based out of Philly at the moment. I would send him a few stems, give him a skeleton of the basic structure I was aiming for, and then we would jump on Skype for hours at a time to hash things out. He’s insanely talented and we have yet to meet in real life; but I feel really lucky to get to work with him.”

Theme

“I was never planning to go with any sort of theme for this project, but I think it eventually just picked itself. When everything for the project started getting pieced together, I realized that I had unintentionally woven in the idea of being on this constant search to cure a sadness I hadn’t felt before, and took a really candid route in terms of writing songs about healing & navigating the loss of something that meant a lot to me.

I guess in the same vein, it sort of earned its name “Antidotes”.  There’s nothing really complex about it though, because I’m learning that no matter how it decides to arrive, loss is somewhat of a predictable part of just being human. And healing, as everyone likes to say, isn’t linear and also takes on a lot of different forms, depending on who you are.

So I ultimately didn’t have the energy to turn this into some hyperbolic concept album. With this project I kind of just wanted to get back to what I know best and that’s just songwriting in its simplest form. It’s easy for that to get lost in translation amidst the layers of synths & samples, and I think it’s been a good reminder that depending on the kind of story I want to tell, I can do it effectively without a lot of noise.

Sometimes it just takes a single riff and that’s more than enough to convey something. For a lot of these songs, I would just pick up my mic and start freestyling into it, so a lot of what you’re hearing is sometimes the first and only cut. But I think it was a good way for me to be honest with myself instead of dealing with the self inflicted torture of consciously sticking to a narrative.”

Inspiration

“I am starting to find a lot of inspiration in the mundane. I used to feel like I constantly needed to be in motion in order to function, and I was inherently on the hunt for inspiration. In the pursuit of that, I’ve come to understand that “inspiration” can be found in some of the stillest, quietest corners of life. Obviously this is nothing new, I think I’m just late to the game… but it’s usually the small stuff that tends to get overlooked that leads to the greatest source of it.

I think naturally, as far as writing inspiration goes, it’s easy to cling to those more monumental, groundbreaking things that happen in life because in the moment, they feel so big and generally just take up a lot of mental real estate. But now, I feel like sinking my teeth into the stuff that feels big is an easy way to miss out on the small, innate things that happen every day, that tend to be more wholly profound sources of inspiration & are actually worth exploring.” 

You can follow Chloe Gendrow on Instagram, Facebook and listen to the new EP on all major streaming platforms here.