LOS ANGELES, CA- The thing I’ve always loved about the Frampton sisters is their candidness when it comes to approaching their music.
Sisters Meg and Dia Frampton have been playing and making music for over a decade. In the early heyday of Warped Tour and pop-punk, Meg & Dia were right on the scene in the mid-2000s, signed to indie to major record labels (Doghouse to Warner Bros.), having stints on national television shows (The Voice), to their eventual hiatus.
Meg & Dia dropped their first album in eight years, happysad, in 2019, signaling their rebirth and reunion as sisters, musically and emotionally.
Since then, the sisters have been releasing a string of singles that feels a lot rawer, stripped down, and authentic to the root of who they always have been, apart from their grand heavily-produced records whose songwriting still stays true.
As “sisters of the desert,” as they like to call themselves, that imagery of the desert is just what their new singles have felt like. The year’s earlier releases of the acoustic-ridden “Break Me In” is beautiful and humble, like sitting on a front porch as the sisters sing you a lullaby as they reflect on their life lived. “Something In The Water” feels almost canyon-like, with Dia’s signature breathy vocals accompanied with electric guitars and thundering drops and riffs. In today’s new release of “Hotel Room,” the sisters reflect on the many hotel rooms they’ve lived in, literally and figuratively.
In an exclusive interview with Forbes contributor Steve Batin, Dia reveals, “The song’s more about feeling at home when you’re not literally at home. And what is home? It’s the person, a place, a thing.”
In the video, directed by Jonathan Chou, we see the sisters along with their band of friends strolling around the city, inhabiting different spaces, on city streets and rooftops, laced in a lazy sunset haze.
“All this running and you get no sleep
I’ve got a struggle in my chest that the time ain’t free”
The lyrics “All this running and you get no sleep” especially resonate with me. They capture the feeling of forever being on the go. A wanderer. A seeker. Endlessly chasing after something you don’t even know but you enjoy the thrill of it all. (I could just be projecting, but that’s what it feels like.)
“Our main focus there was having some beautiful vignettes of different relationships; our relationships with ourselves, mine and Dia’s relationship as sisters and as artists that work together,” Meg adds. “Then we have our friend group and you can tell we don’t know how they all tie in together but they’re here enjoying this day, enjoying the sunset, enjoying their lives, and how can we find home within all those different relationships?”
Dia continues: “People always kind of assume we’re in Salt Lake or Park City, but we grew up 20 minutes from the Arizona border so a lot of that imagery feels like home to us. And there was something beautiful about kind of touring and traveling or being with this person and making a home in a hotel room … I feel like there is that bitter-sweet feeling to the song of ‘We’re here and now. I don’t know where it will be a few months from now, but this is what it is at the moment.’ And there’s always something bittersweet about taking in something that might unravel.”
“It’s felt more like moments in time of really connecting with somebody and then disbanding, which I like about the song.” – Dia Frampton
“I have this need to prove to people that I’m a really cool person, and so whenever I’m doing any kind of art, I always try to make it look like. ‘Oh, we’re dark and hip and so in tune with ourselves and even sexual or whatever,'” Meg adds. “I try to put out that persona. And this video strips all of that away, and it’s just me and Dia being cute, and honestly, that’s how we are. We are just these women who just came from Utah and made music together. And it’s actually very simple. They’re just singing and they like petering around the world and singing with people, and they have all sorts of adventures with boys and friends and playing live shows, and we’re just cute and it’s just a good time.”
If that description didn’t fit the sisters any better, I don’t know what will.
Follow Meg & Dia on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify.*********************
Artist: Meg & Dia Writers: Meg Frampton, Dia Frampton, Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji Produced by Don Mitchell, Chris Campbell, Auyon Mukharji Mixed/Master: Mason Levy Directed by Jonathan Chou
