Review Fix Exclusive: Sharptooth’s Lauren Kashan Talks Clever Girl And More

Review Fix chats with Sharptooth’s Lauren Kashan, who discusses their new record, Clever Girl, via Pure Noise Records, detailing the creative process behind it, as well as their goals for the future.

Review Fix: How did the band get together?

Lauren Kashan: Lance started the band way back in like 2012, but the current lineup and sound didn’t come to fruition until I joined back in December of 2014. Lance and Keith asked me to join, our bassist Phil officially joined back in April of 2015, and our drummer, Conor joined in April 2017. We knew we wanted to do something heavy, aggressive, and from a femme perspective, and that’s what has spawned all the songs we’ve written since.

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Kashan: Lance is an extremely prolific musician, and is writing constantly, so there’s basically an endless influx of instrumental material coming down the pipe for us. Lance will send me instrumental demos of full song concepts, and I take them and mess around with them lyrically/conceptually. Some songs take a day lyrically, some take months. That’s also usually when we make any structural changes as well. Then we bring the song to the rest of the band, and everyone else makes changes and additions to make each song their own. Then we start playing it out at shows.

Review Fix: What’s your standout song on the album? How was it written?

Kashan: I honestly don’t think there is one, because there’s so many heavy-hitter songs with such intense concepts. It’s hard to pinpoint anyone, especially because each song is going to mean something special to different people, depending on their experience. Plus Sharptooth is a band that has a ton of musical variety and diversity between every single song. You’re not getting an album where everything sounds the same at all. So honestly, that answer is up to the listener. It’s whichever song impacts them the most, hits them the hardest, makes them feel represented, or heard, or uncomfortable, or empowered.

Review Fix: What did you learn from this album? How do you think it’ll affect your next album?

Kashan: I learned about the importance of just being honest. I think what makes Clever Girl great is that none of us really went into it being like “we’re gonna write this socio-political record”, we just wrote songs that said what we needed to say when we needed to say it. And it then became apparent that the things that I felt I needed to say, were things that other people needed to hear. The whole record is about speaking and living your truth, so I’m just going to keep doing that for the next record as well.

Review Fix: What are your goals for 2018?

Kashan: Lots of touring, nationally and internationally, and writing a second record.

Review Fix: How would you describe your sound to someone who’s never heard you?

Kashan: Co-ed mad-as-shit socio-political thrashy melodic hardcore.

Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?

Kashan: That’s really not up to me to dictate, but my hope is that it helps people feel empowered, and represented, and encouraged to live their truth and fight for what they think is right.

Review Fix: How are your live shows different from your studio work?

Kashan: Our live shows are extremely intense physically and emotionally, and pretty chaotic. I think if I started climbing tables in the studio like I do at our shows, the record producer would be pretty pissed.

Review Fix: Why is this new album special?

Kashan: Cause it’s our first, and it’s honest, and it pulls no punches.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Kashan: More music. More ridiculous shows. More tours. More empowerment of the right people and more pissing off the people who need to get their jimmies rustled.

Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?

Kashan: If everyone on this planet had a little more empathy, and made an effort to seek to understand each other, the world would be a better place. I scream because there’s no other way for me to be heard. When we listen more, people need to scream a whole lot less. Let’s make that happen.

Photo by James Harper

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13819 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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