Bands from p 24 racking up well over 1 million streams of the album and almost 85,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, and taking the stage at Tempe’s Innings Festival in February. But despite being practically the text- book definition of a star on the rise, she doesn’t see herself as such. “It’s just very surreal and I don’t feel like my feelings about who I am and where I’m at in my career have changed at all,” Sprague said. “I still feel like a 15-year-old navigating through these really insane dream experiences, so it doesn’t really feel real. I still have a hard time accepting that this is actually happening and I get to do all this stuff. Even the press conference, standing between Jimmy Eat World and The Maine — I don’t know how that happens. That’s crazy. I always have been a little bit of a nervous person performing and doing this kind of stuff, and the stakes keep getting higher and higher and I’m just trying to like breathe.” In between breaths, Sprague found time this summer to head to Seattle for three weeks to record her second album, one that promises to be noticeably different from maybe i will see you at the end of the world. The songs on that album were somewhat pensive and written before COVID-19; the new album contains tracks that, though written during the pandemic, are “definitely a lot more fun,” she said. The album is “loud and crazy — it’s still Neil Schwartz Photography angsty, but in a different way. I wrote a lot of the songs in 2020 and 2021, and there was so much actual horrible stuff going on that I kind of had to fight my normal song- writing instincts of being sad all the time. I needed an outlet to escape the sad. So it’s definitely a lot more personal, introspec- tive, and a lot of writing about other people, which is something I haven’t really Sydney Sprague performs at Innings Festival in February 2022. done too much before, just to distract myself from the horrors of reality,” Sprague explained. Even though her songs talk about romantic struggles, insecurities, and the unfortunate state of the world, Sprague said songwriting is her favorite part of the creative process. Songwriting “is where it all starts, just being alone with the guitar in my room playing around. I think that’s where my primary joy from music comes from. But playing the live shows is a very close second, especially with a band. It’s just the best time,” she said. The October 28 show will be another great time for Sprague, she said. When Jimmy Eat World and The Maine reached out to ask her to be on the bill, “how could I ever say no to that? It’s a crazy lineup. Being first of five is kind of crazy for a non- festival show, so I’m super-stoked to see how it goes.” Though she can’t reveal some of the surprises in store, she said that she’ll play some songs from the new album. Besides the Jimmy Eat World show, Sprague and her band will go on tour for a bit in November with Movements, and later in December, with The Front Bottoms. And between the two, she’s performing at the inaugural Zona Music Festival in downtown Phoenix on the first weekend in December. And moreover, she’ll DJ for the first time at Emo Night, one of the festival’s afterparties. But even though she’s never spun records, like everything else coming down the pike for the artist, she’s taking it in stride. “I’ve never DJ’ed. I’m very familiar with emo music, though, so I feel like my playlist is going to be lit,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my hands, but I’ll figure it out when I get there.” 26 OCT 20TH–OCT 26TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
