With her forthcoming self-titled album, “AVEC” (release date January 24th), AVEC – aka Miriam Hufnagl – proves that true success lies not in filling concert halls, but in honest, handcrafted songs. The singer-songwriter has a lot to talk about – sheep, songwriting, self-care, about the old-school Super 8 aesthetic, inspiring train trips, and her own personal plant care day. She also shares her thoughts on working through loss, the many facets of love, and her inner conflict about being on stage. The album? As diverse as a well-chosen house plant collection – and just as authentic!
A few years ago, you said you didn’t want to move to the city. Now you live in Vienna’s 14th District, close to the city limits. What do you like about it?
AVEC: I wanted to find a compromise between “still green” and “not quite covered in concrete”. It’s cooler to live a little further out. I travel home to Upper Austria frequently, so it’s a good balance here.
Are you a family person?
AVEC: Oh, yes; family has a very, very important place in my life.
There are a lot of sheep on the album cover! Are they part of the family?
AVEC: Unfortunately not! they belong to a neighbor. But if they were ever up for adoption, I’d take them! I do have a plan to have a little farm someday with a couple of miniature sheep as lawn mowers.
Instead of music, or at the same time?
AVEC: At the same time! I hope it works out that I’m still making music when I’m old.
Why did you want sheep on the album cover?
AVEC: That was on my bucket list: a photo shoot and an album cover with sheep – they’re my favorite animals. I looked all over Austria and wrote a lot of farmers looking for the right one. Two answered, and one of them – Josef Eisl – has his sheep farm on the Wolfgangsee [in Upper Austria]. He immediately wrote back and said he’d even make the sheep pretty for the photo shoot, and I was immediately sold! I had never had a shoot with animals before. You have to be very patient; it takes a lot of time. But when the sheep gradually warmed up and started coming to me, it was just the best day of my life! They were as relaxed and trusting as if they did it every day.
Who shot the photos?
AVEC: Christoph Hofbauer. We worked together on my first EP and my first three albums.
For 29, you’ve amassed a pretty impressive discography. How did you do it?
AVEC: SometimesI ask myself that! I just started really early. I began writing at the age of 11 and started my first project in 2014, then I released the first EP in 2015; it happened very quickly. Andi [Andreas Häuserer], my best friend and producer, and I wanted to do everything DIY, before getting management or a label. Boy, did we ever dive into the deep end of the pool…now I’m 29, and I’ve made my fourth album. It feels unreal, but also extremely cool – especially now, with my own label. I feel like I’ve arrived, but I’m nowhere near “old”.
“These days, more is in my hands.”
Have you abandoned the image you had ten years ago?
AVEC: Not that much. I have gotten older – you hear it in the music, and you see it when you look at me – and the music has changed. But everything that happened back then had its place. I don’t feel like a completely different person. I’m still authentic and still have my feet on the ground; I’ve just got more skills now, and I know what I want musically. These days, more is in my hands. It was a very natural process.
Your new album bears the same name as your project, AVEC. Is that connected to your feeling of having arrived?
AVEC: It seemed right to make this album self-titled, and it definitely has to do with having arrived. It may sound like a cliché, but with my own label, I feel like it’s 100% me. It’s a nice feeling, to have done everything with my own hands.
That’s the second time you’ve mentioned having things in your hands – what does “handcraft” in music mean to you?
AVEC: The entire songwriting and production process. Handcrafted, to me, means that you really do it yourself. A lot of people think you can just scribble down a song, but it’s hard work! I made the entire album together with Andi. It was an intense process. We’ve known each other for 15 years, and if we hadn’t been so close, this album would have destroyed our friendship. It was a lot, but it was also a cool opportunity to get to know one another even better.
Are there specific experiences that influenced this album?
AVEC: There are a lot of them; that’s why the album is so diverse. We had only released one EP since 2020; a lot of time has passed since the last album – and a lot happened in that time. Professionally, with my family, and personally. The album is a way of dealing with the last five years. It’s about love, both in relationships and in the family. It’s about sadness and loss. It’s about people who hurt me, a way of confronting them. But about my inner life, as well: what does love mean to me? For example on “Misconception of Love”. There’s a lot of me in there, and it was a great journey, opening it all up like a book to see what happened in the last few years.
What does love mean to you?
AVEC: That’s a really tough question. If I knew, I wouldn’t write so much about it. Love is incredibly complex for me. It can be the most wonderful feeling in the world, but it can also hurt so much. It’s a two-edged sword. Love is essential – not just for me, for humanity. It gives meaning to life. But because love is so many things, you can hardly define it in a single sentence. That’s why it’s still such a fascinating mystery to me, especially in terms of songwriting.
Would you put love in categories?
AVEC: I do feel like love feels different, depending on the person. When I think of my mother, the most important person in my life, it’s a love that feels endless, that will never change. The love I have for my band, on the other hand, is totally different. I love them, but it doesn’t have the same depth as my love for my mother.
Does that have something to do with unconditionality?
AVEC: Definitely. Love for particular people or groups is often tied to your relationship with them.
Because the love for specific people or groups often depends on the relationship existing in the moment.
AVEC: Exactly! The love for a friend is a beautiful form of love, for example. But my relationship to my mother will never change, because she’ll always be my mother. That’s why the love for family is something very special.
“When you love someone unconditionally in a romantic relationship, you can get lost in it quickly.”
Particularly with love of family, people often speak of unconditional love.
AVEC: Romantic love can be unconditional too, but it often feels wrong. When you love someone unconditionally in a romantic relationship, you can get lost in it quickly. That’s a problem to me – you’re supposed to remain an independent person. When you give yourself up completely, it gets toxic pretty quickly.
We think about this kind of thing around Christmastime a lot, don’t we?
AVEC: Absolutely. I know people who have lost a parent, and that changes things completely. When I spend Christmas with my mother and my sister, I’m so thankful to have that time with them. A lot of people don’t. Christmas definitely makes you think about those things.
To come back to the titles: was “Misconception of Love” a difficult song to write?
AVEC: No, actually. That song has been around for a while, and it became clear pretty quickly. “Real Love” was emotionally tougher, for example, because I was confronting a toxic relationship. Sometimes I get stuck in situations like that, and it takes me a long time to find the courage to say something. “Silently” was difficult, too; it’s about sadness and loss. That song is the story of my uncle, who died in 2020. It’s always an emotional challenge to write about things like that.
Is it hard for you to expose personal feelings like those on stage?
AVEC: Basically, I believe time heals. That’s why songwriting and playing things live again and again is a process of dealing with them. It’s heavy every time, but that’s exactly what gets communicated to the audience, and a lot of people can identify with it. It’s a nice give-and-take.
It seems like you play a lot with contrasts. How important is that weighing of light and darkness?
AVEC: I used to say a lot of things indirectly, to preserve a sort of mystique. It was important to me, because I wasn’t ready to talk openly about a lot of things. I was younger, and I had just started therapy. Now I’m at a point where I don’t want to disguise or hide anything anymore; I want to confront everything directly. I still like playing with contrasts, though, like pairing a sad lyric with an up-tempo instrumentation. I like it when people have to listen to the song a couple of times in order to understand what it’s actually about. But everything is much more direct now – I don’t want to hide anymore!
What’s your experience like as a female musician with that directness?
AVEC: It’s not always easy in the music business. I definitely feel like female artists get asked about their private lives much more often. I’ve stopped answering questions like that; it’s nobody else’s business and it has nothing to do with my music. Maybe we women are just so used to it that we’ve come to expect it.
Why do you think that sort of thing is still so common in the industry?
AVEC: Not to be mean, but maybe because a lot of men in the music business aren’t self-aware enough and don’t deal with issues like that a lot. But that’s a problem with men in general.
You’re very successful in what you do. What does success mean to you?
AVEC: To me, success is having people come to my concerts and listen to my music. Basically, that’s it. It also depends on why someone starts [making music] in the first place. Music was initially only a hobby for me – I actually wanted to study medicine; I’m not the kind of person who craves attention. But now I go on stage, and although that wasn’t my thing, I’ve come to like it; what I get back from the audience is fulfilling. It was a hard road, so it’s hard for me to define success exactly.
“I don’t need big concert halls; I’m happy playing relaxed concerts.”
How has your view of success changed since becoming a professional musician?
AVEC: Since I have my own label, I have to make sure we stay afloat financially. I make my living from music, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t partially about that. If I didn’t earn any money, I couldn’t maintain the project. But I didn’t start making music to get rich and famous. You have to look at it from various perspectives. I also don’t think you have to become “successful” in your 20s or else it’s all over; a lot can happen. I’m almost 30 and I’ve made a name for myself, but I’m not extremely famous. I don’t need big concert halls; I’m happy playing relaxed concerts. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a songwriter. That’s it.
What’s it like to be onstage when it wasn’t originally your goal at all?
AVEC: Being onstage is great. The hours beforehand are always a battle: me against my body… as soon as I’m onstage everything’s okay, because I like playing my songs. But it’s not easy, and I’m always glad when the concert’s over, because my body can relax. I enjoy performing while I’m doing it, but part of me is always tense. Those are the two parts of me that are always at odds: part of me enjoys it; the other wants to hide. But I think a lot of people feel that way, and I’m not alone with it. I accept it for the sake of the outcome.
Can you think of one particularly magic moment onstage?
AVEC: We played this year in OKH in Vöcklabruck, where I grew up; that was a great feeling. We played “Granny” for the first time in a long while, and during the part where the audience sings the chorus, my heart really overflowed.
What inspires your songwriting?
AVEC: Music doesn’t really do it, actually. Of course, I’ve got my favorite artists, and I admire good songwriting. But I like going to museums and exhibitions as well; that inspires me visually a lot. Traveling, too, being in the car or on a train, does something to me. I listen to a lot more podcasts than I do music; it’s a good way to balance it out. Nature’s a great source of inspiration as well, particularly in spring and fall. I love those seasons, though they’re getting shorter and shorter.
What gave you the idea to film your videos on Super 8?
AVEC: I like taking analog photos myself, and I wanted to have that analog vibe. We shot the album cover on analog film as well. Veronika Sterrer, who plays in my band, films on Super 8, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to make them with her. It’s so cool that she does that; I have a lot of respect for her – and I was more comfortable shooting with her than I’ve ever been on a video shoot. I don’t like being the center of attention, so it was important to me to have a team I’m comfortable with. With Veronika, it was perfect. The last video before the album is coming in January.
That nostalgic aesthetic is very present at the moment. What does it mean to you?
AVEC: To me, it’s less about the nostalgia than it is about the character of analog photography and film. I just love it; it’s aesthetically so beautiful. Of course you’ve got endless filters when you’re working digitally, but that’s something different. With people spending so much time on Instagram and TikTok, I find it cool to see something imperfect, something grainy.
Is there an issue or a project besides music that you’re into right now?
AVEC: I really love painting, but I only do it for myself, at home, and that’s how it’s going to stay. Also, I’m a total plant mom. My apartment is full of plants, and I love them! Once a week is plant care day; that’s my kind of me time. I listen to podcasts and see what my plants need.
Thank you for your time!
AVEC: Thank you!
Ania Gleich
Translated from the German original by Philip Yaeger.