It’s Thirsty Thursday at Coconut Club, but the laser pit hasn’t filled out yet. It’s 10:30pm, which is early for the club kids, who need time to warm up – or down shots – before hitting the dance floor.
Quentin Arispe’s dancing, though. After all, it’s his party.
The artist, who uses he/she/they pronouns, is preparing to drop So Below, their new solo EP. Everyone in the back room of the Colorado Street club has been personally invited to listen to the project, which he’s timed to hit Spotify right after the listening party. By the time he takes the mic to present the collection, it’s approximately 11:16pm, and the venue’s filled out.
“I wrote this in a really rough time in my life, but this project is about liberation,” Arispe says from the DJ booth, matching a big bleached Afro to a white cropped tank, white knee-high boots, and the tiniest black shorts possible. A chain-link belt holds the unzipped bottoms up, and a whale tail peeks out in the back.
“It’s about freedom. It’s about letting go. It’s about going through it and grieving and healing, but also being like, ‘Fuck it.’”
As Brat Summer transitions into Britpop Fall, so arrives As Above, So Below. Yes; the house-inspired EP, released in August, is only one part of Arispe’s latest solo venture. On Sept. 17, the Past Lives singer drops an indie rock-tinged second EP, As Above, creating together with its predecessor one full-length LP.
The record’s divergent sounds traverse the aftermath of a breakup, from the brutal first days you spend stuck in bed to the first nights you step out in the club, ready to reenter society. As for why he started with the ending? “I want people to have fun before I punch them in the throat.”
But seriously, “I really want people to know that as above, so below,” Arispe explains. “Don’t think that you can go through grief and just exit it by going out and partying … that you’re not gonna have to deal with the internal turmoil, and [not] have to cry in your house for three days straight. Don’t think you’re gonna be able to escape that just because you ran to the dance floor.
“But also,” they continue, “don’t think that just because you’re in your house for three days, for a month, emotional, that you’re not going to want to go out and go be free and get on the dance floor. I went through that, and I’m usually good at the feeling and emotional stuff, not really good at the ‘fuck it.’ And that’s why I wanted to lead with the ‘fuck it.’”
Embracing duality informs nearly everything the queer artist does, from the music she makes to the clothes she wears onstage. “I think we live in a society that is so – it has to be as above, or it has to be so below,” she says. “As an androgynous, dual being, it is my sole mission on this planet to show people that it is a lot more nuanced than that.”
A Capricorn Theatre Kid
Adopted at birth, Arispe, 26, grew up in Corpus Christi. Performing dominated their life; they acted for 10 years at the Harbor Playhouse Community Theatre and spent a few more taking opera lessons and doing competitive dance. “I thought either I was going to be on Broadway, or I was going to be an opera singer,” they recall.
In between live performances, Arispe, like many other precocious Zillennials, created a series of scripted YouTube videos – though “they’re all private now, you’ll never find them,” he says.
“I would play all the characters because I’m a Capricorn. I don’t trust that anybody’s gonna get anything done except me,” the artist continues. “I’m very overcontrolling.” Unsurprising, then, that he would record his first music at age 9.
Arispe’s late uncle owned the since-demolished Corpus recording studio Hacienda, and he allowed his nephew studio time in exchange for his help wrapping CDs in cellophane. When the young songwriter presented the producer with his creations, “He would be like, ‘The second verse is not strong enough.’ Or, ‘Where’s the hook?’” the artist recalls. “He treated me like I was the age I am today. He was so on me. But it was fun. I loved it.”
Those first recordings align with Arispe’s first solo musical discoveries. As a kid, her grandfather played so many classics – from Diana Ross, Donna Summer, and Earth, Wind & Fire to Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland – that she claims she didn’t even know modern music existed until he died. Left to her own devices, she began listening to alt-pop luminaries Lana Del Rey and Florence + the Machine, and indie-folk songwriters like Grace Potter and Sufjan Stevens.
Talking formative influences with Arispe is like dishing on a fandom message board. As their laundry list of faves gets longer (and my interview subject gets more comfortable), they begin to rely on a sort of stan shorthand. Song titles tumble out of their mouth with little explanation; it’s implied that the impact of each release is obvious.
We touch on Rihanna. “Birthday Cake?”
And Sia. “Breathe Me?” “Little Black Sandals?”
And, believe it or not, Sara Bareilles, apparently the singer’s “queen of all queens.”
“Little Voice, Kaleidoscope Heart, The Blessed Unrest, Amidst the Chaos,” he says, trading songs for albums. “I feel like she has scored my life. Every time she comes out with an album, it’s exactly where I’m at, and she meets me there somehow.”
The artist adds in a few more visionaries – Erykah Badu, Amy Winehouse, Tina Turner – for good measure, then summarizes what types of musicians inspired her. “Honestly, women, and predominantly women that were pissed the fuck off,” she says. “When you’re in that pressure cooker, that’s where I think greatness comes from.”
Growing up queer in South Texas meant Arispe spent most of their life in that pressure cooker. They never came out officially, but explain, “I’ve always been so androgynous, people thought I was a girl anyway.
“I feel like people told me my queerness before I told myself it,” he continues. “Everybody already projected their confusion on me from birth.”
The first time this caused a real problem was in sixth grade, when a man made a hullabaloo upon seeing a long-haired Arispe in the men’s public bathroom. “[He] made such a long thing about it,” she recalls. “The next day, I shaved my head. I was like, ‘I don’t want to deal with that. I’m a kid.’ It was painful. It hurt. And I felt, also, in danger,” she continues. “Talk about bathroom safety.”
Citing his busy schedule as a child actor, Arispe says he didn’t make his own assessment of his gender or sexual identity until his teenage years. “Up until around [age] 18, I was just a template for whatever show I was in. I did 46 shows in my career as a theatre kid,” he explains. “Whatever the character was, I needed to be able to jump into it immediately … I barely could dye my hair, let alone figure out my visual identity.”
Now, Arispe calls their androgyny a blessing. “It’s so cool that I can be a different gender today, if I want to,” they say. “That’s crazy. I’m so grateful.”
From Quentin to Neptune
Arispe moved to Austin on a whim at 18, but she was lost, aimless, and doing little more than singing Fleetwood Mac and Amy Winehouse covers at Kick Butt Coffee. After retreating to Corpus, he met the producers Kinderr and El Dusty – both contributors to As Above, So Below – and began releasing music for the first time.
Kicked off by an Uber-sponsored performance outside of Austin City Limits Festival in 2018, Arispe’s second stab at the city fared better. The Past Lives initially came together to support Arispe during that set, but over the next few years became a collaborative unit. By the end of 2021, the sextet – featuring guitarists Gabriel Borg and Nicholas Vallejo, drummer Mateo Vallejo, bassist Moira McCulloch, and keyboardist Jake Smith – officially debuted their groovy, glammy originals during an electric set opening for Nané at Empire Control Room.
“We killed it,” Arispe remembers. “I don’t say that about my work a lot, but we killed it.”
That gig set off a whirlwind next year. As the singer recounts: “We got five South by Southwest shows that 2022. We got ACL that 2022. And we didn’t even have a single.”
Without a recording catalog to fall back on, Arispe says, “I had to really make every show in 2022 matter.” Taking a page from Beyoncé’s pre-Coachella playbook, she quit smoking, quit drinking, and went vegan.
Mateo Vallejo confirms his bandmate’s ambition. “Quentin, without a doubt, is such a creative, nonstop [person], in anything that they do,” he says. “It could be something as simple as making an Instagram video with an iPhone, and they always dive headfirst.”
That determination was important, Vallejo says, to prove the band worthy of their newfound success. “You can have the honeymoon phase, and you can be a fun, cutesy, hot girl [or] hot boy on the block that everyone wants to date. But how do you establish permanence? And how do you show everyone that, no, it’s not just a fling?” he asks. “I’m here to stay. I’m here to be taken seriously.”
The Past Lives recorded their debut EP, Purple Dreams, at 512 Studios – which Arispe discovered, in a strange twist of fate, houses the very piano he used to play as a kid at Hacienda. “I told Omar [Vallejo, the studio’s owner], ‘The second I get my first Grammy and I have money, I’m taking my piano back,’” he recalls.
Released in February, Purple Dreams offers an updated take on extravagant 1970s rock. There’s funky bass (“All Night”), jazzy grooves (“Baila”), and climactic guitar solos (“Purple Dream”). It’s soulful and, in its own way, as dance-inducing as So Below, but Arispe maintains hard stylistic lines between their collaborative and solo projects.
He would never wear something like his Coconut Club outfit on stage with the Past Lives, for instance; instead of shorts and a tank top, you’ll likely find him donning bell bottoms and a fur coat, with round sunglasses and a mullet to match.
That look’s been meticulously crafted to fit Neptune, the “harsh and abrasive” character he assumes when fronting the band. “I always felt, growing up, like I couldn’t be a rock star. Like I couldn’t [have] this male energy because I was so feminine,” Arispe explains. “I just loved the idea of taking a little bit of Mick Jagger, and then taking a little bit of James Brown and the Doors, and just culminating into one being.”
Performing as Neptune, kicking and screaming and sweating like some type of Prince-Robert Plant hybrid, Arispe revels in brazen rock showmanship. “But I was really missing what I feel I’m more [like], which is kind of soft and effeminate, and I wanted to explore that,” they say.
As Above, So Below
Returning to their proverbial “closet” in the midst of “an excruciatingly brutal time,” Arispe discovered another character: “the So Below girl.”
She hints at her depression in the EP’s third track, “Pokémon,” but the pull of the club, signaled with sultry piano and guitar and pulsing beats, wins out. In the end, the singer realizes, “I’m going through this thing, I have a problem, and I think that this music and this world can solve it.
“It was fun to get to make a pop song that was honest,” Arispe says of “Pokémon.” “I wasn’t talking about diamonds or Bugattis. I always felt like you gotta puff your ego up [in pop music].” Instead of posturing, she offers a “drunk stream of consciousness. You’re kind of all over the place, but you’re like, ‘Eh, fuck it, I’m with all my girls,’” she says. “There’s power in just going out with your girls, with [no] male energy in sight, and just being like, fuck it.”
Arispe wrote three of the cuts on So Below with fellow Corpus-based artist Kinderr, who she calls the A. G. Cook to her Charli XCX. Though the producer demurs (“It’s big shoes to fill”), he admits of their close friendship, “I think the sentiment is correct.”
“I’ve worked with so many artists in Corpus and even in L.A., and Quentin has always been someone who’s pushed me to learn more and do more,” Kinderr says. “I’m super grateful for him.”
The duo worked on the project across various marathon sessions. As Kinderr explains, “I come over, stay for a few days in Austin. We wake up, get coffee at the Meteor. I have four shots of espresso, no milk or anything. Quentin gets an oat milk lavender latte. Then we work until we can’t. Like 4 in the morning, 6 in the morning. And then we get food, and then we go to sleep, and then we just do that over and over for days, back to back, until everything is just done.”
Which is exactly what Arispe told me two weeks prior, when he met me at – you guessed it – the Meteor to chat, and he ordered – you guessed it again – an iced oat milk lavender latte. Before our conversation, the artist warned me that the two had been up until the wee hours of the morning finishing As Above, so he might not make for a great interview. Nearly two hours of tape later, that disclaimer proved unnecessary.
In separate interviews, both artists bring up the unexpected journey of “Kunt,” a So Below track whose delightfully unserious lyrics and deathly serious runway beat ensure it will land somewhere between “Vogue” and “Sissy That Walk” on a “Best Queer Anthems” list at some point in the future.
“I hated it [at first],” Arispe says of the song. “I was like, ‘I’m a singer-songwriter. I’m not gonna make a song called ‘Kunt.’”
Eventually, they decided to release the cut anyway – once they tweaked their delivery to sound sufficiently demure and mindful. “Because I’m an actor, and I feel like the best comedy is when the actor takes it seriously,” they explain. “If the actor believes it, and in their mind, this is not ridiculous, that is when you get great comedy and a great performance. So I was like, if we’re gonna make a song called ‘Kunt,’ [where] I’m gonna say ‘boy cunt, girl cunt, so cunt,’ I need to believe it, and it needs to sound crazy.”
Despite the song’s silliness, other tracks on So Below, Arispe insists, have more serious undertones. She wrote opener “Drunk,” for example, about queer sex workers like iconic gay liberation activist Marsha P. Johnson.
“It can’t get better than now. I feel so alive right now. In your car, I’m a star,” she says, quoting her own lyrics. “It’s about [how] in the morning, it’s done. You’ll forget me. So what? I’m your little princess, I’m your little star. I’m the fantasy. You can deny me all you want. You can kill us. You can do whatever you want. But at the end of the day, duality and androgyny and feminine energy is what makes the world go ’round.”
That conviction fuels Arispe’s excitement about releasing a house record in the heat of the genre’s mainstream Renaissance. “Queer Black people created house music. Beyoncé celebrates that. Charli has celebrated that … kind of,” the artist says. “But I actually am a queer Black person making house music. I feel like that is what separates me. And I am honored to get to do that, to get to put a stamp on it from the actual source.
“All your fave girls’ little ‘slay’ and ‘work’ and ‘yes, honey’ and ‘cunt’ – that is all from Black, queer people in the Eighties,” he continues. “It takes people like us to keep people reminded in this Brat Summer and in this Charli world, don’t forget where this is coming from and where the girls received all of this.”
At the same time, he offers another reminder: “Don’t think that I’m just cunt-cunt-cunt and bitch-bitch-bitch. I can be that, but I can also be vulnerable. I can also sing my ass off. I can also make you cry. I can also make you want to have sex with me.”
As they do – be vulnerable, at least – on As Above. Described as “if boygenius and Sufjan Stevens had a baby,” the softer side of the record, which Arispe wrote first, processes the artist’s breakup with a blend of acoustic confessionals and rollicking indie rock.
“I needed to get out all the bad, woo-woo, baby girl shit,” Arispe says of the collection. “It’s sad and emotional. There’s no Auto-Tune on my voice.” They play piano on the project, while Marshall Moon plays guitar, and Kinderr programs impressively live-sounding Logic drums. Its three main tracks, “Cover Girl,” “Chemical,” and “I’m Falling Again,” are punctuated by four interludes, each sampling audio of a different Arispe loved one discussing their experiences in love, loss, and grief.
In the Rooms
Arispe hasn’t won his Grammy yet, but he’s hit enough career milestones to offer advice, particularly to musicians unwilling to be defined by their sexuality.
“I am a musician first. I am an artist second. I am queer third. I think the more that we show people we are not different, we are not other, we are not un-understandable, and we’re not just who we fuck …” she says, trailing off. “It’s important to me that queer people understand that we should not have to create our own spaces. We should just be in spaces. And be in conversations. And be in Council. In the rooms. The way to get through is in.”
Speaking of rooms, over the summer, Arispe played at the Bitter End, the venerated Greenwich Village nightclub that’s been hallowed by everyone from Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder to Lady Gaga and Norah Jones. That Arispe achieved the milestone himself, not with Past Lives, might inspire questions about the future of the band, but the artist, assured and referential as ever, turns to musical history’s biggest acts to guarantee the group’s longevity.
“It’s the Fleetwood Mac of it all, and I’m Stevie Nicks,” they say. “It’s Alabama Shakes, and I’m Brittany Howard. Paramore, Hayley Williams. I do my own thing, but this band is always my band. Even if I have a different band for some of my solo work, these people will always be in my boat.”
Big shoes to fill, indeed. Yet all things considered, he’s not far off.
This article appears in September 20 • 2024 and September 13 • 2024.