Taylor Nice of 'Partition' on God, Sobriety and Punk
Earlier in the month, editor Caitlin Andrews had the exciting opportunity to conduct a remote interview with Partition’s lead singer and bassist, Taylor Nice. Nice, who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, originally founded the band in Minneapolis in 2018 following a handful of years spent developing the sound, and has since collaborated on several albums and EPs with long-time drummer Evan Thomas Blasing and more recent guitarist Levi Hash. Despite their consistent comparisons to a variety of artists including Hole, Nirvana and The Muffs, Partition represents a new era of post-punk and alternative sound following the turn of the millennium; the kind of glitter-and-blood-plastered revolution that’ll make you debate picking up a Crucifix and a bottle of Jack and hopping on a flight to their next ‘sweaty basement gig.’ Their most recent album, “Prodigal Gun,” was released back in January 2020.
When I first meet Taylor Nice, they’re sitting in a small room adorned with Partition posters, hand-drawn images and a short string of hastily adhered green cactus fairy lights. It’s not immediately clear if this place is a bedroom, an office space, or one distant corner of a recording suite, but one thing’s for certain: Nice is by far the most fascinating entity on the screen. Dressed to kill in a gold and black ‘Peacock Revolution’ style chain print shirt (à la Bowie’s Space Oddity era, shag haircut included) and further equipped with long dangling earrings and thickly applied burgundy lipstick, there’s no question that being a rock star is their calling in life: the roaring crowds, the heavy bass solos, the wild and impassioned facial expressions. They’re not the type of person you could see sitting behind a desk at 8:30AM, quietly filing paperwork and chatting with podgy, middle-aged men by the water cooler. It’s time for my first question.
Caitlin Andrews: Taylor! Good to see you. How have you been doing? How’s the pandemic been treating you?
Taylor Nice: “The pandemic turned my life around, honestly. We had planned a month-long tour of the East Coast, playing three nights in New York in April 2020, but of course, that didn’t happen. In January of 2020, we had our release show for the album and I’m very thankful we got to do that, because I had a lot of friends who just had to do online releases. My drummer and I moved back to my hometown of West Virginia in Appalachia during August, after having previously been based in Minneapolis. During my first day here, I met a really cool lady and now I’m the manager of her art gallery, so it’s been going well!”
CA: Your most recent album, ‘Prodigal Gun’ was released in 2020 and contains many unique elements, including a steadfast referencing to Catholic religious imagery. In the title track, ‘Prodigal Gun,’ you sing the lyrics, “I met the twelve apostles at the bar, they were pretty big rockstars. I will load my prodigal gun and stick it to my head.” You’re also seen in your most recent Instagram post covering a Crucifix in wet cigarette butts and then eating the mash. Is there a deeper meaning behind this religious reference, or is its intention simply to be contentious?
TN: “Definitely, it has a deeper meaning for me. My dad’s side of the family is actually Irish Catholic, and I’ve got daddy issues, for lack of a better word. I’ve got this, right here…” Nice says, quickly reaching out of frame and pulling a seemingly plaster-cast Statue of Mary figurine from some recess of their desk. The stark contrast of this sculpture in addition to their post-punk appearance and ironic ‘18+’ gig poster in the background makes it seem like it would be a fitting album cover itself. “I also feel like Catholic imagery is the original Pop Art,” they continue. “Those were the first symbols that were mass-produced in different genres of art, and I love that about it. I also love how stereotypically Catholic people are very uptight, but they’re wearing a naked dead dude on their chest.” I laugh for a moment, and wonder what the Pope would think. Maybe the ‘Second Coming’ is actually just the name of Jesus’ upcoming post-punk band.
CA: You’ve also previously mentioned that this reference to a ‘Prodigal Gun’ has tongue-in-cheek associations with your gender, with the title also being able to be read as, ‘Extravagant cock.’ In what ways do you think your non-binary gender identity as the frontperson of Partition has impacted your career within the music industry?
TN: “The negative aspect is that, a lot of the time, people want to have all-female lineups. It’s harder to brand yourself (though branding is gross in general). I think a lot of people might avoid the band, or doing articles about the band because of the pronoun thing; they’re scared to tackle it, so they just avoid it. On the positive side, I’ve met so many people who are like, ‘It’s so cool to see a non-binary person out there, doing their thing.’ I’ve also met a lot of other, super cool queer people by being out, and being myself. It’s a double-edged sword, but, I’d much rather be myself than be included.”
CA: Are you from a musical family? What first got you into music?
TN: “I’m not from an artistic family at all. That was one of the things I hated growing up very blue collar - just go to Church, go to work, whatever. I’ve always been obsessed with music, though. One of my earliest memories is my Grandma asking me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I said I wanted to be Elvis. From when I was little, they’d ask you questions about what you wanted to be and I said, ‘Rockstar,’ with an ‘R-O-backwards-K’ and a drawing of a star. I guess it’s just always been in me. The first time I really got to play an instrument was the saxophone in Band. I didn’t have confidence when I was in middle school and high school - it was kind of internal, but I thought only boys could play rock music.”
The concept of Taylor Nice, the post-punk front person who wears purple lipstick and children’s gymnastics kits to gigs feeling insecure seems like the punchline to a bad joke, but upon thinking a little closer, their adolescent tale reminds me of the childhood isolation of many of the ‘Greats’ involved in rock and punk music: Kurt Cobain, Elvis Presley, Patti Smith, Ozzy Osbourne… It seems like anyone who’s anyone came from rough beginnings. Nice continues: “I bought a bass my senior year of high school, and it was like my best friend. Even then, I wrote a lot of songs for Prodigal Gun my senior year of high school, like ‘Drugstore Anthem,’ and ‘Prodigal Gun,’ and I didn’t know if they were songs. When I joined a band in Richmond, Virginia, we practiced and we never had a show, so then I said, “I think I have songs,” and we played them, and then after that I just had more confidence in myself.”
CA: How do you feel being frequently compared to Hole’s lead singer, Courtney Love, and other similar artists?
TN: “I love Courtney Love, so I never have an issue with that. But, with Bikini Kill and Kathleen Hanna... I don’t hate Bikini Kill, but I haven’t taken as much of an influence from them. Sometimes, we’ve had some really random comparisons, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I feel like just because they see me as a girl and they don’t know a lot about music, so they say, ‘You remind me of that girl.’ I never get a Kurt Cobain reference, or a Mark Arm reference, or Nick Cave or anything like that; not to discount the women I’m inspired by, but the men are never mentioned.”
CA: If you had to pick one of your own lyrics that best encompasses who Partition is, which would it be?
TN: “When I say ‘I am the crack that continues to crumble and divide,’ (a lyric from ‘Figure it Out’ on the ‘Prodigal Gun’ album) that’s me talking about my ‘Type A’ personality and ‘Type B’ personality at the same time. I swear, I could be the President or a drug addict living on the side of the road, and my entire life is trying to find that middle ground. My mom achieves a lot, and we come from poverty, and she totally brought us out of that. My dad, they’re divorced, and he’s an alcoholic who’s done nothing with his life, so it’s kind of like I’m in the middle of these two larger concepts. In Partition, because we have soft things with hard words, I like to put two contrasting things right at the edges of themselves.”
CA: Sobriety also seems to be a large element in your creative process, especially in relation to your 2019 single, “Get Clean.” How has the transformation from addiction to recovery impacted your methods or motivations behind songwriting?
TN: “I used to love feeling like shit. I used to love being depressed, thinking, “Now I can write.” Of course, being depressed led me to drug use and all that other stuff, so I got clean in February of 2018. The band would have never happened if I didn’t get clean. At that point in my life, I was like, “This is my only self worth. I have to do this or I’m pointless,” which is not healthy, but it’s how I got sober in the beginning. Every song I’ve written for Partition was created before I moved to Minneapolis, besides one song on Prodigal Gun - ‘That Will Change.’ I actually wrote that in Minneapolis, so that was really the last Partition song. The songs I write now are for a solo project I envisioned... Do you know Nick Cave?” Nice asks directly, and I nod, while trying not to break into an off-key rendition of ‘Into My Arms.’
“It’s kind of like Nick Cave meets Frank Sinatra. I wanted it to be a big band, with me saying really depressing things in a really happy way. I think that reflects the disposition I’m in, where I’m still myself mentally, I’m just not wasting away anymore. I’m going on with life, but I still kind of hate everything. Getting clean has definitely changed my songwriting in that way. And what’s really cool about my songs, even though they’re older and I come back to them with the second album, some of them are even older than the songs on Prodigal Gun, but it’s almost a different genre. I had the seeds of things when I was younger, and when I’m coming back to the material now, I’m able to grow them out and let them bloom.”
CA: On Instagram, you have recently publicly supported Southside Harm Reduction, a South Minneapolis organisation who promote harm reduction principles in relation to drug use. Do you consider yourself an activist, and do you believe the government is meeting enough goals in relation to the drugs-related public health crisis?
TN: “I’m an activist mentally, but unfortunately I do not do enough. I wish I was physically doing things. When I moved back to Appalachia, the opioid epidemic is so bad here in this poverty-stricken area of the South, so I really wanted to get more involved in that. I was applying for jobs to be a drug counsellor, but then I got this other job, and I believe in the idea that everything happens for a reason. It actually bums me out when I think about it. I’ve done fundraisers, and I’m proud of those, and I’m really thankful to the people who bought T-Shirts to raise money for Southside Harm Reduction…”
“...Our government is definitely not doing enough. It’s pretty disgusting to me, when I think about how America’s pharmaceutical industry in general is based on profit and creating diseases that weren’t even there before, like opioid addiction - not that opioid addiction wasn’t there, but in the ‘90s, Oxycontin and similar didn’t even exist. It’s obviously much more of a money-driven thing than a health-driven thing, and that’s really what’s caused a lot of trauma from the opioid epidemic. I’ve lost a lot of people that I love.”
CA: Early in 2020, you stated that your favourite performed gig was in an ‘ex strip club / ex bowling alley.’ Has any gig beaten this so far, and what would be your dream destination to play a set?
TN: “I would say the coolest gig we’ve played was our release show, because it was at this venue in Minneapolis called the 7th St Entry and Nirvana had played there before. I wouldn’t be a musician without Nirvana - when I heard them in the seventh grade, something unlocked in me. It was really special to play on the same stage as them. My dream venue? I really want to play the Roman Colosseum, that would be cool.” Given that Nice’s dream of becoming Elvis has more-or-less come true (with a little more eyeshadow and fewer tassles) it’s not unreasonable to predict a manifested Ancient Roman tour coming soon.
CA: In relation to live gigs, what’s your favourite track to perform?
TN: “I guess it depends. I’ll go with ‘Get Clean,’ because honestly it’s the easiest to play, so I get to dance more.”
CA: There have been a few teasers on your social media about ‘upcoming news’ for a little while now. What can we look forward to from Partition in 2022 and beyond?
TN: “An album and a tour are happening in 2022. Absolutely. My goal was to have a single out by the end of 2021, but that year just kept tunneling by. The album is a really summer / spring kind of album to me, so I will definitely have at least two singles out by April, because April is when I plan on having our tour. I’m excited, I’m really proud of this album because I felt like my last album was more lyrically thick than it was with my bass playing; in this, my bass playing is what I consider complicated. I’m really excited to show that I’ve got that in me. And all the fun outfits!"
CA: In sum, is there anything about you personally or Partition’s ethos that you think our readers should know? Where can we find you?
TN: “Fuck the Police, Black Lives Matter, and Trans Lives Matter. You can find us on Instagram @partition.band, Bandcamp.com and Facebook. I’ll add to the ethos one of my favourite quotes from Nietszche - this second album is really inspired by Nietszche, it’s going to be on our next T-shirts…‘The queer distance between fools and corpses.’ That’s a really good book I recommend to people, at least the first half. The second isn’t as good.”
And with that, our time for an interview comes to an end. Underneath the glitter and the blood and the punk-rock sensibilities of Partition, an interesting and sensitive creative remains; an idealist caught somewhere in between the glitz of a rock-and-roll lifestyle and the trauma of a difficult, Appalachian working class background. Wherever Taylor Nice lays their creative magic, something unique will blossom, and I for one, can’t wait to see what happens next.
Periphery Magazine thanks Taylor Nice for their contribution, and wishes them luck with their upcoming releases! You can find Partition on social media and streaming platforms here:
Instagram: @partition.band
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2KM7sdMLkFiR5MPmwT6y2S
Twitter: https://twitter.com/partition_band
Bandcamp: partition.bandcamp.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PartitionUSA/