Remy Jean came into music as a byproduct of teenage discomfort. After being shunned by the cheerleaders at her high school, the Bay Area native found herself taking up guitar and associating with outsiders in the music room. “At first I was like, ‘Oh my god, really? I’m going to hang out with these people?’ And then I was like, ‘Wait, these people are me,’” she fondly recollects. Embracing her genuine interests for the first time, Remy began gigging in a Misfits cover band and dreaming of a move to Southern California. Now out of college and based in Los Angeles, her act Sister Gemini merges moody rock and poignant songwriting. Remy thrives in her adopted homebase, harnessing energy from a circle of encouraging, talented peers.
Sister Gemini seems effortlessly realized. But the road to this breakthrough moment was winding. “It took me a while to find my groove, in terms of who I wanted to work with and who actually understood the sound that I was going for,” Remy says. “It definitely passed through a lot of hands.” She ultimately turned to Sam Plecker (Roger Waters, Father John Misty, Local Natives) as an engineer because he intrinsically grasped Remy’s vision for Sister Gemini. Much of Remy’s material came to life as assignments for a program called School of Song — an online masterclass taught by the likes of Phil Elverum (The Microphones, Mount Eerie) and Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes). Having a reason to write provided Remy a way to overcome struggles with meeting deadlines, and she suddenly found herself sitting on a batch of tracks she believed in.
Remy describes Sister Gemini’s sound as, “Heavy music for people who like soft music, and vice versa.” Her lyricism grapples with the concepts of forgiving oneself — coming to terms with the reality that, even though you sometimes hurt others, it doesn't make you a bad person. She often writes about mistakes, and isn’t afraid to paint herself as a malevolent character. “You’re always the villain in someone’s narrative,” she says. Remy is a self-described open book, and isn’t afraid of what people think after she’s put it all on the table. As an artist, she embodies the perspective of an older sibling, encouraging others to learn and grow from survivable missteps she’s successfully navigated.
Remy draws strong inspiration from indie institutions Mazzy Star, Juliana Hatfield, and Liz Phair, but she has an affinity for poppier sounds, too. One of the biggest and most earnest touchstones for Sister Gemini is alt-radio staple Marcy Playground, who repeatedly came up as a reference point in the studio. She also has a love of ska, bleaching her hair as a tribute to Gwen Stefani and touting an encyclopedic knowledge of Sublime lyrics. At once spunky and sun-soaked, Sister Gemini manages to play into the various sides of Remy’s taste.
Sister Gemini’s latest single, “One Room Apartment,” initially sparked as a whispery acoustic demo. She enlisted percussionist Ellington Peet (Babehoven, Runnner), guitarist Yunus Iyriboz, and Plecker on bass to flesh the skeleton out as a live take. The recorded version is grungy and boisterous. Across two-and-a-half minutes, blocky electric guitar chords churn atop sizzly drums, which build to a crunchy, syncopated chorus. It culminates in Remy’s plunky guitar solo, underlined by toy piano.
Remy’s calm, melodic vocals are occasionally enhanced by a strained twang. “One Room Apartment” pulls from memories of Covid lockdowns, when Remy moved to housing on an unfamiliar side of town. Casually dating on Hinge, she frequently invited strangers over to avoid confronting isolation in a lonely sprawl. Vulnerable and mischievous, “One Room Apartment” could be ripped from the soundtrack to some long-lost romantic comedy from the ‘90s.
With “One Room Apartment” in the world, Remy is increasingly starting to feel things fall into place for Sister Gemini. “Everything’s just kind of going all of a sudden,” she says with a smile. “I’m really busy with it, which is funny. I feel like I’m in a really intense soccer match and I need to go off to the side to throw up and then just run back in and keep going.” Coming into her own at a blossoming moment for the Los Angeles underground, Remy’s hard earned confidence has ushered Sister Gemini into a promising new era.
[Ted Davis]