Some Questions with Nina Cates (vocals / rhythm guitar) of Burlington-based band Robber Robber
You’ve said you like ambiguity—has anyone ever interpreted one of your songs in a way that made you see it differently yourself?
Yeah- I feel like I write in a way where there’s a lot of room for interpretation. People ask if songs are about something and I feel like the answer is always yes.
Even if I didn’t intend it that way to begin with, once someone finds meaning in a song, that’s what it’s about.
How did the shift from Guy Ferrari to Robber Robber reshape your identity as a songwriter?
I feel like in the Guy Ferrari days it was a real kitchen sink approach- I still like some of those songs a whole lot but it was definitely less focused in a direction.
Robber Robber feels like we’re acting on what we learned from Guy Ferrari experiments. In a lot of ways it feels like a different band.
Were there any songs or ideas from your Guy Ferrari days that you carried over into Robber Robber—or did you feel the need to start completely fresh?
Absolutely! We still play a couple carry overs here and there when we want to mix it up- Robber Robber’s definitely more representative of where we’re at though.
Is there a song on the record that felt like it taught you something about your own tendencies—musical or personal?
Writing primarily from a 3rd party perspective even when it’s about myself was something that I didn’t really realize I did until I examined it after.
Much easier to be vulnerable that way which is something to be examined later on perhaps haha.
How does Burlington as a physical or emotional space show up in Wild Guess—if at all?
Definitely! There are themes of examining conflicts in my life in Burlington all throughout the record. The winters are long and can be brutal in Burlington and I think that can lend to being more introspective and it’s when I tend to write more lyrics.
In “Dial Tone,” there’s a jittery, off-kilter energy—did the arrangement evolve from a jam, or was that tension always intentional?
I don’t think that one came from a jam. Just Zack and I screwing around in a basement over Christmas break from school. I think that one started with guitar and drums and then we built off of it but few of the songs start in the same way as each other
Urian Hackney’s engineering has a punk legacy—how did his approach shape the way this record feels sonically?
We thought a lot about which songs we felt would suit his energetic, punk studio approach. You can definitely hear it on How we ball and Dial Tone. He’s great at suggesting tones and letting us layer tons of stuff and I think those songs benefited a lot from his approach! It was nice to have that contrast with Benny’s approach which felt a bit more experimental for some of the songs we wanted to get a little wavier on like Sea or War. Very glad we got to work with both of them and so lucky to have both of them local! Burlington’s very lucky in that regard
You’ve said you write from a third-party perspective—have you ever surprised yourself by how much personal truth slipped in anyway?
All the time! I’m still realizing the ways in which the songs ring true to myself. I mentioned it a little bit before but I think positioning it like that makes it easier to talk about myself and switch between subjects but there’s always a through line that sometimes isn’t obvious to me until long after the song is written.
Do any lines from Wild Guess feel like they came from somewhere subconscious or dreamlike, rather than something you deliberately wrote?
Tons of them- I feel like songwriting is a pretty magical headspace you have to get in. Some of my friends like Lily Seabird can sit down and write a song front to back in one go which I think is nothing short of magic. I am not that way, I feel like I have to charge away at tons of lyrical ideas until I have something I instinctively feel good about and by then the meaning I started with might’ve become something very different but just as true.
