Sister Gemini – One Room Apartment
Today, Sister Gemini has shared her first single of the year, the stunning “One Room Apartment.” The alias of Los Angeles-based songwriter Remy Jean, Sister Gemini merges moody rock and poignant songwriting for a sound that feels effortlessly realized.
Originally conceived as a whispery acoustic demo, “One Room Apartment,” notably only her third single ever, crackles and sparks, building to a crunchy, syncopated chorus. The song “is about attempting to rely on external comforts to pull you out when you’re in a funk,” shares Remy, “I start by calling my friends but when they aren’t available, I turn to casual sex to try to numb the loneliness. I wrote this song during the pandemic, when the world really did feel as small as my apartment at times. It’s a pretty vulnerable song for how upbeat it sounds, I love that contrast.”
“It took me a while to find my groove, in terms of who I wanted to work with and who actually understood the sound that I was going for,” Remy says. “It definitely passed through a lot of hands.” She ultimately turned to Sam Plecker (Roger Waters, Father John Misty, Local Natives) as an engineer because he intrinsically grasped Remy’s vision for Sister Gemini. Much of Remy’s material came to life as assignments for a program called School of Song — an online masterclass taught by the likes of Phil Elverum (The Microphones, Mount Eerie) and Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes). Having a reason to write provided Remy a way to overcome struggles with meeting deadlines, and she suddenly found herself sitting on a batch of tracks she believed in.
Sister Gemini’s latest single, “One Room Apartment,” was initially sparked as a whispery acoustic demo. She enlisted percussionist Ellington Peet (Babehoven, Runnner), guitarist Yunus Iyriboz, and Plecker on bass to flesh the skeleton out as a live take. The recorded version is grungy and boisterous. Across two-and-a-half minutes, blocky electric guitar chords churn atop sizzly drums, which build to a crunchy, syncopated chorus. It culminates in Remy’s plunky guitar solo, underlined by toy piano.
With “One Room Apartment” in the world, Remy is increasingly starting to feel things fall into place for Sister Gemini. “Everything’s just kind of going all of a sudden,” she says with a smile. “I’m really busy with it, which is funny. I feel like I’m in a really intense soccer match and I need to go off to the side to throw up and then just run back in and keep going.” Coming into her own at a blossoming moment for the Los Angeles underground, Remy’s hard earned confidence has ushered Sister Gemini into a promising new era.
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