FM4 Soundpark is a web-platform, community, and radio show for Austrian musicians. Every month, one act is selected to be highlighted both online and on air. COUSINES LIKE SHIT are the FM4 Soundpark Act in December.
Blood is thicker than water and sometimes helps us to get the best band formations: At least this is true for Cousines like Shit from Vienna. Why Greece, New York City and The Velvet Underground are important for this band – that’s what the two cousins Hannah and Laura Breitfuß explain to us in an FM4 interview.
There are many of them in the pop world: family bands that were more than just successful: the Jackson Five, Bee Gees, the Kelly Family, Haim or the Kings of Leon. In the case of the FM4 Soundpark Act in December, the degree of kinship was also a decisive reason for making music together. Behind Cousines like Shit are Hannah and Laura Breitfuß from Salzburg. And yes, they really are cousins. “Being in a band with your cousin is the best!” reveal Hannah Breitfuß and Laura Breitfuß in an FM4 interview. “There are only advantages.”
With a total of four tracks, the EP “Young and Online” was released on September 30, 2022, via Seayou Records. In 2023, the debut album of Cousines like Shit should then follow.
“We sound like sandpaper in seawater.”
It all started on a family vacation in Greece in 2016, when they wrote their first song with the sea in front of them. But Cousines like Shit didn’t get really serious with the band on the Mediterranean, but rather on the other side of the big pond: “We actually started our career in New York. We thought that this city would be a great stepping stone for new bands. That’s why we wrote to various venues, sent out about 20 e-mails, and then agreed that if something came back from a location, we’d book a flight!”
Of course, one could dismiss this initial enthusiasm as naivety. But it worked out anyway and so Cousines like Shit play one of their first concerts in Brooklyn, New York City. There they also meet new music friends, such as Madison Velding-Vandam, who has since become the band’s producer. “We met so many people back then who were important to us, especially for how things have progressed for us, and for the way we make music.” This extended circle of friends also includes the New York punk-pop band Bodega, with whom Cousines like Shit get along brilliantly, and not just musically.
The first gig in NYC was a few years ago. Since then, gigs in Chicago and Beijing have been added, as well as concerts in Salzburg and Vienna, their home of choice. Not only the list of places they have traveled and played in has grown. The band has also grown. Now, Cousines like Shit performs mostly as a foursome, with Hannah Breitfuß on vocals, Laura Breitfuß on guitar and vocals, Anna Sophie Adelt on drums, and Lisa Weinberger on bass. As a quartet, the musicians have also returned to the iconic venue in the Big Apple this fall to present their first EP to U.S. audiences.
“Young and Online” is the name of the mini record that was recently released via Seayou Records and is a first taste of the Cousins’ clever repertoire: English chanting and clever word jokes, a bit of critique of the system, but still packaged in lightness. For example, the track “Over Night”, which made it to the top of the
FM4 charts and was created just over night, as Hannah Breitfuß tells: “I woke up in the middle of the night with a passage of text in my head and just wrote it down on a piece of paper.” A short time later, the two met in the rehearsal room, and together they turned the first lines into a finished song. Sometimes, though, the songwriting process is much more systematic, with the pair using creative writing tricks like the cut-up method 2.0, when they let their smartphones and autocorrect control which word gets to go into the song next.
Avant Trash is what Cousines like Shit call this mixture of intuitive songwriting, experimentalism, and lo-fi aesthetics. They copied this musical approach from another duo: “When we started the project, we were particularly impressed by the Moldy Peaches, because they have a bit of a ‘just do it’ mentality. That’s cool when you don’t take yourself, or anyone, too seriously. That also made us less shy at the time to start something of our own.”
The Moldy Peaches, also an almost unjustly forgotten troupe of good people around Kimya Dawson and Adam Green, who became indie heroines in the noughties at the latest with the “Juno” soundtrack. Just this week, the anti-folk band announced that after a 20-year break, they will finally be back on stage together next year. Among other things at the Primavera Sound in Barcelona. Maybe Cousines like Shit will go to Catalonia soon – as the next band trip, so to speak, at least for research purposes.
Sound-wise, Cousines like Shit are sometimes even compared to Nico or The Velvet Underground. A great compliment and even bigger shoes to fill. However, Cousines like Shit are now ready to take the next step after years of playing live. Therefore, after the current EP, the debut album should be released next year. “We just waited for a good moment, but without consciously planning it. It just kind of had to mature. We as a band have had to mature. And now the moment is here where we feel: Okay, we’re ready!”
Michaela Pichler
Translated from the German original by Itta Francesca Ivellio-Vellin.