I’ve been a fan of Love? said the Commander for a while, but somehow the fact that the duo is local to Philadelphia eluded me until just recently. Describing their music as “Slow burning cinematic emo that’ll make ya feel stuff,” Love? said the Commander has been making music since 2018, having released one album, six EPs, and several singles and played hundreds of live performances throughout the Northeast since then. They also love film and making videos so at the beginning of 2023, they began a monthly video series on YouTube called ‘Spaces,’ where they record songs live in unique or interesting settings (one highlight is an episode where Kate gets a tattoo whilst singing and playing piano).

One of the first things that caught my eye was the name of your act. Where did it come from, and what does Love? said the Commander mean to you? How does that name relate to your music as well?

Love? said the Commander is a line from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (page 220 of our edition). The Commander asks the main character Offred what the government overlooked about how things used to be, and she responds with Love, and the next line is Love? said the Commander – it looked so cool on the page and after a quick Google search we saw it was available and we knew it was just what we were looking for in a band name. With how quickly (and often negatively) our world is changing, it seems more important than ever to focus on what really matters in life, and love for our families, friends, and others is at the top of the list. 

Who are some of your musical influences?

Chris – I grew up listening to lots of classic rock so my main influences are guitarists like Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, Neil Young, Mark Knopfler, and Jeff Beck, but I also love contemporary players like Derek Trucks, Jack White, and Delicate Steve. 

Kate – I grew up listening to literally everything because of my dad. I’m obsessed with Peter Gabriel era Genesis (as well as his solo stuff), Yes, Joni Mitchell, Beethoven, Bowie, Radiohead, Duke Ellington, The National, Lou Reed, Adrianne Lenker, Tom Waits, Miles Davis and Mozart. I also have a super soft spot for opera, heavy metal, punk and post-hardcore.

Love? said the Commander is a duo. How did you get together? What do each of you bring to the project? 

We actually met on Craigslist back in the beginning of 2018. We both put out messages looking for musicians to play with and Chris responded to Kate (even though she was looking to put together an all-female band) and sent her a demo idea that she liked. We met for a beer to see if we’d get along, had a great conversation, and then started writing songs together almost immediately. We each bring lots of musical and song ideas to the project and Kate writes all of the lyrics. Oftentimes, one of us will send over an idea and then the next day we’ll get back a nearly-finished song – it’s really great how well we write together. 

Your forthcoming EP consists entirely of instrumental tracks. What was behind that decision? 

We love instrumentals (we’ve put out a few over the years) and we both lost important people in our lives recently so it felt appropriate to process our feelings by writing instrumentals specifically for those folks. 

The EP is called Dames, and each of the tracks is named for an important woman in your lives. Who are the women, and how have they influenced you?

‘Leslie’ is for Feist and is the only track written for someone who is still with us. We’re both huge Feist fans and Chris went to her 2023 show at The Fillmore in Philadelphia. He recorded her song ‘Love Who We Are Meant To’ with his voice memo app and then took two vocal notes from the song and turned them into a loop. We then wrote a song around that loop with acoustic guitar (in the same tuning as Feist’s song) and piano. We weren’t sure exactly what to do with the song at the time so we held onto it until we had the idea for ‘Dames.’ 

‘Roxy’ is for Kate’s great grandmother.

‘Joan’ is for Kate’s Nan. 

‘Anna’ is for both Chris and Kate’s grandmothers. We still cannot believe they shared the same name! We have a lot of really random things in common – something that we hold close to our hearts. It’s definitely one of the reasons we’ve been able to do this together for so long. 

The sounds of the places where you record factor into your music. Your EP In the Kitchen, for example, was recorded in Kate’s kitchen and features the ambient noises of her neighborhood, including cars, planes, birds, bugs, and people. Why are sounds like these important to you?

We love when it feels like you’re in the room with the musicians you’re listening to and so we’ve really embraced trying to do that on our recordings whenever we can. As DIY musicians, we’ve also accepted that sometimes there will be background noises on recordings and instead of letting that bother us, we’ve welcomed those ‘imperfections’ so that listeners will hopefully feel like they’re with us as we’re recording. A lot of music nowadays is hyper-produced but we prefer the other end of the spectrum where the focus is on getting a really solid performance with as few layers and parts as possible. 

Along similar lines, you have a monthly video series on YouTube called ‘Spaces,’ where you record songs live in unique or interesting settings. Do any of those settings stand out in your memory? What made it memorable, and how did the space contribute to the music you were making?

Chris – Filming ‘Spaces’ is always so fun, but one of my favorites was the episode called ‘Ruins’ that we shot in the Jersey Pine Barrens. We had to navigate around some dirt bikes and a snake, but it was such a great experience playing our instrumental ‘Autopilot’ in the middle of the woods amongst the graffiti-covered ruins. What’s so cool about all of these ‘Spaces’ videos is that they’re almost always recorded in a location where music is never performed so it adds an interesting layer to the whole process. 

Kate – I would have to say our ‘Tattoo Shop’ episode is hands down my favorite to date. I had so much fun getting some fresh ink and performing live at the same time. We ended up playing two tunes that day, one of them written about someone whom I absolutely adored and had just recently passed away suddenly. It was an epic therapy session for me and something I will never forget. (If anyone wants to know what I got that day, it’s Endless Mike’s pumpkin head from the Halloweenieepisode of The Adventures of Pete and Pete.)

What’s next for you?

Our big focus for this year is putting out as much cool art (music and videos) as we can, mostly on YouTube. We’re both big film nerds and would ultimately love to score films and tv shows so we want to focus on these skills as much as possible. 

And we’ll certainly also be releasing more new music!