Making her third album as Locate S,1, Wicked Jaw, Christina Schneider was working some things out.

Growing up in upstate New York, Schneider had dreamt of being a rock star, but the realities of contemporary music-making had been far less romantic. Recording —and serving as her own producer for the first time— during the pandemic, Schneider found herself in a reflective, therapeutic place.

"In the past it has been really hard for me to take criticism," Schneider says, in conversation with Anthony Carew on The International Pop Underground.

"It's hard to be a musician because you're really in the spotlight. And if you're an indie musician with not a huge following, not a lot of people know about you, you don't really get the accolades that make it worth having that spotlight on you. You really have to just do it for the music itself."

From her 2016 solo LP Violence Etcetera through three albums (2018's Healing Contest, 2020's Personalia, and Wicked Jaw) as Locate S,1, Schneider's music has been an odd, slightly wonky riff on classic pop music.

"I love songwriting, and I love writing a song that has some surprises in it," she offers. "I love bad singers and weird guitar takes."

"I have kind of a weird meter in my head. Something that sounds really balanced, time-wise, to me, I'll play it for someone else and they'll say 'what is going on with the time signature in this?' or 'you dropped a beat there'.

"A lot of times I don't really notice that I'm doing it, so it is partly unintentional. But then sometimes if I write a song and it sounds too much like an actual song that is normal, I'll be like: 'Where can I take out a beat? Where can I put in something weird?'"

Feature image: Ebru Yildiz