Biography

The closer you are to someone, the crueler you can treat them, but if they love you, they’re inclined to forgive you. Lily Konigsberg and Nate Amos forgive each other now, but they were in a bad way when they recorded CRY MFER — which is not to say their debut album is some kind of sonic bum out. CRY MFER proves you can still make pop music while spiraling, as evidenced by the existence of “Breathe You,” a bop all about fucking Nate constructed while “high as shit in my room making fun of Justin Bieber,” the vocals of which Lily tracked while “blindly sad” and “genuinely devastated.” They’re best friends now, and they were best friends when they recorded CRY MFER last year, but they didn’t know that yet. CRY MFER is the sound of two people figuring out what they mean to one another “in the midst of,” quoth Nate, “a bunch of other chaos,” up to and including being drunk as skunks; when listening to the album, Nate can “smell” the aforementioned chaos. “Thank God we’re not those people [anymore],” Lily, with the clarity of newfound sobriety, marvels. When not using the other party as an emotional punching bag, Nate and Lily used one another as a creative filter and sounding board — pushing, prodding and challenging themselves to “mess with different sounds,” harkening to, Nate says, “songwriting duos who seem to have their own language that other people don’t quite understand.” CRY MFER APRIL 2022