The first track off the fourth album from SoCal tenderpunk act Illuminati Hotties serves as a confession of sorts. Riding a poppy guitar riff into a chorus that demands a singalong, the lyrics belie the upbeat sonics of “Can’t Be Still” as Sarah Tudzin addresses the realities of never slowing down: “I triple-book my Saturdays/But I pretend/My program keeps me from freaking.”
It’s a banger of an opener and a song emblematic of everything Tudzin has accomplished over the past five years, during which she’s worked as a musician by night and a prominent engineer and producer by day. Bursting onto the scene in 2019 with a hastily made (but utterly brilliant) “decoy” album released amid a dispute with her former label, Tudzin’s output under the Illuminati Hotties moniker had been on the back burner recently, in the wake of ever-growing demand for her services behind the dials.
That tends to happen when you win a Grammy for one of the year’s most buzzed about albums, as Tudzin did last year for her contributions to the The Record by supergroup boygenius. But other recent life events—the loss of mother to cancer, an elopement with partner Maddie Ross—compelled Tudzin to decamp to Joshua Tree for a few days of unplugged inspiration dedicated to the project that’s all hers.
“I think allowing myself to spend time exclusively on the Hotties record was helpful no matter where I would have decided to do it,” Tudzin said. “It was important to just get away from my desk and my daily life.”
The result is Power, an album forged in both grief and joy. Released in August, the record represents Tudzin’s most personal work to date. From the sweet sentiments of new love at the heart of the breezy “Sleeping In” to the waves of distortion Tudzin and guest Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz layer into shredder “What’s the Fuzz,” the songs shine even brighter thanks to a thoughtful sequencing series. Power is an emotional rollercoaster you’ll want to ride again and again.
Luckily, Bay Area fans won’t have to wait long to hear these songs as Illuminati Hotties is set to play San Francisco’s Chapel on Sat/28. In a Zoom call from her home in Los Angeles, Tudzin told 48hills how the songs of Power came together, gave a Bay Area studio a shoutout, and reflected on her Grammy win.
48HILLS You’ve been very generous to the Bay Area. Starting with the show you played in 2019 at Starline Social Club, you’ve played the Fox supporting Julien Baker, at the Regency supporting the Linda Lindas, and headlined shows at the Chapel and August Hall. Thanks for making us never have to wait long to see you again!
SARAH TUDZIN Luckily, I’m in LA, so it’s not too hard to get up there, and it’s a great city. I feel like I always have fun when I’m up there.
48HILLS How did you get yourself in the headspace to cover topics like the loss of your mother and your new relationship in song? I know you worked on a crop of the tracks for Power somewhere in Joshua Tree, where many beautiful albums find their spark. Did that setting reflect what you came away with?
SARAH TUDZIN Being out there gave me the time to focus on some ideas that I’d had simmering, and to think of a few new ideas that I hadn’t quite gotten to yet. When I’m at home, there are so many things—like, I work from home, so there are obviously just regular household things that are easy to get distracted by. And then on top of that, music production and engineering is my day job, so there’s always something I can procrastinate with, whether it’s someone asking for stems, or a writing session with someone else—there’s like, a million things I could be doing at all times. Going out of town to somewhere that was close, but that had little else to offer other than vast nature and a little place that I rented gave me the mental freedom to dig in on some songs where [otherwise] I simply wasn’t giving myself the time.
48HILLS You’ve discussed how the guts of your songs often get shaped into their final form in the studio. Given this material is the most personal stuff you’ve written to date, how did it feel to share it with the other folks in the Illuminati Hotties’ inner circle?
SARAH TUDZIN In some ways, I’m so used to doing all of this myself, but on last record, I brought in collaborators, at least on the instrumental side, to play stuff and help me solidify some parts. But that said, there were more cooks in the kitchen, on the writing side even, and on production side, this time. It was a little bit of an exercise in letting go and just letting people contribute. It’s so easy for me to want to be in control of everything and to micro-manage every piece of the puzzle that ends up on the record. When someone else is contributing production—especially in the case of [John] Congleton—I just let him do his thing: make some big changes, mute some stuff, decide that we were only using a room mic or something. It was an exercise in letting go.
48HILLS I spoke to Sadie Dupuis when Haunted Painting came out and she talked about the ways the two of you worked to incorporate the sounds of specific places into her songs. I know it’s not every day that you find yourself in proximity to Elliott Smith’s old microwave, but is that something you continue to factor into your work?
SARAH TUDZIN Sadie and I are both nuts about gear, so I think that there’s an element where, when I hop into a studio that’s not my own, the reason I’m doing that is to make use, perhaps, of some specific instruments that I know only that space has. Or it’s rooms that I feel could add to a drum sound or add another dimension to something that I can’t get by just pumping a guitar out of my amp in my little home studio. That’s the most valuable piece of what a large-format studio can offer to me: access to sound choices that you don’t have when you’re working from home. With Sadie’s records [that I worked on]—both the Sad13 record and the Speedy Ortiz record [2023’s Rabbit Rabbit] that I co-produced—a lot of it was about being somewhere else, you know?
48HILLS In your work as an engineer and as a producer, have you spent any time at Oakland’s Tiny Telephone or Women’s Audio Mission here in SF?
SARAH TUDZIN I haven’t had the pleasure of being at Tiny Telephone yet, but I know quite a few engineers who have worked there or possibly still do. There’s a studio I love up in San Francisco called Different Fur, just to put a plug out there. Chad from Toro y Moi is a partner there, I think. He does a lot of his stuff there. My buddy Grace [Coleman] is now running that place. Women’s Audio Mission is another place I haven’t been to physically, but we’ve connected online.
48HILLS Speaking of that side of your career, now that you’ve been at it for a good bit, how does it feel to see some of the bands and artists you worked with enjoying such deserved success? Bands like Pom Pom Pom Squad, for example.
SARAH TUDZIN I love it. As a producer, my dream is to be a curator and to create a culture in music and in art that speaks to a wide variety of people, and a lot of that comes down to picking projects that I really believe in. Anytime I get to be a part of something like that, especially on the ground floor, it’s really rewarding to see where those records go and how those bands make their career playing the songs we worked on.
48HILLS As a timely aside, I would be remiss not to note that The Armed totally blew my mind by sharing that there was a code on the inside of the jacket of their vinyl that had the link to their new EP, which includes a song (“New! Christianity“) featuring your vocal talents. Did you know that was out there, waiting to be found?
SARAH TUDZIN I didn’t know they had put it in their last album as an Easter egg, but I deeply love that band. We opened for them a while ago in LA and I’ve become friends with them and been able to be a part of their records. I sang backgrounds on the last one, Perfect Saviors, as well as on some of this new stuff. Tony has become such a great friend. He made the music video for “Can’t Stand Still” along with his incredible crew. The Armed is like… just everything they do is so cool and so unique. I’m a major fan girl, so I was really, really blown away to be asked to open for them, and now I continue to be blown away that I’ve become friends with them. They’re all such great people.
48HILLS I’d also like to highlight how sharp the sequencing is on Power, especially late in the album. “You Are Not Who You Were” into “What’s the Fuzz” into “YSL” into “Power” is such a vibe, and one I recognize is no coincidence. How do you go about fitting those puzzle pieces together to create such a cohesive, varied listening experience?
SARAH TUDZIN I appreciate that. I definitely deliberated on the sequence of this album for a long time. I take a lot of things into account, including tempo and key and emotional lift versus, like, where do I want to leave people with a little relief? With that back half of the album, I feel like it starts to hit you over the head with the confusion that comes from managing emotion and sadness and mortality. Then it lands on “Power,” which to me, arrives as a bit of a relief. In some ways, “Power” is such a sad, devastating song to me, but in other ways, there’s a hopefulness to it that I feel relieves the songs leading up to it. Those songs in a row aren’t quite chronological, storyline-wise, I guess, but they do conjure this restlessness that’s almost unappetizing because you’re caught in too much too emotional overload.
48HILLS Tremendous kudos on your well-deserved Grammy win for your work with boygenius on The Record. If that represents the biggest external validation that you’ve received thus far, what are a few of the more internal, personal moments from your professional career that have felt to you like the emotional equivalent of winning a Grammy?
SARAH TUDZIN That’s a great question. The Grammy is so interesting. Obviously, it represents recognition from your peers and your colleagues, and obviously, being part of the boygenius record has such a career highlight so far been, for personal and professional reasons, but it’s important to note that winning a Grammy is not the end-all, be-all of your career or your personal accomplishments. I viewed it as a stepping stone toward continuing to be a lifer in this industry. As far as an emotional equivalent, I think going on tour and seeing how these songs affect people in real time is going to feel really good and really validating. When you put music out now, the internet is so weird with how it can chew up and spit out art that I basically spent the last two-and-a-half or three years thinking about this. I feel like everything moves so fast that you’re lucky if someone thinks about a song for more than a week sometimes. Going to play it live in front of people, I think that I’ll be able to internalize that people are appreciating this music and thinking about the art that went into it, and taking it beyond the machine of music access that we all participate in now.
48HILLS There’s something very different about standing in front of y’all and seeing you rip it up versus hitting play on a stream. That’s for sure.
SARAH TUDZIN That’s going to feel really good. I think it will solidify in my mind that I feel so proud of this record. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the sauce and “what is the point?” but I think the point is, when people come and sing the lyrics back to you. It reminds me that I did something that’s resonating with other people.
48HILLS You most definitely did. I am so excited to get to see you back at The Chapel in a few weeks. I’m also elated to see that Maddie is opening. What a great bill!
SARAH TUDZIN It’s going to be awesome. We’ve got Daffo on the bill too. I love their music deeply. And I’m obviously a Maddie Ross full-time fan.
ILLUMINATI HOTTIES play w/ Daffo, Maddie Ross, Sat/28. The Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF. Tickets and more info here.
