With her debut LP, ExWife’s frontwoman, Ria, throws open the windows on a decade’s worth of songwriting shaped by chaos, rebirth, and a hunger for the unvarnished truth. In this candid interview, Ria traces the arc from whispered phone demos—recorded amidst the daily reality of motherhood—to the raw, live-wire performances that define ExWife’s sound. The conversation explores the band’s commitment to authenticity in an era where perfection is polished and feeling often fades. Ria opens up about how personal upheaval, from religious restrictions to post-divorce liberation, set the stage for ExWife’s distinct voice, while also weighing in on the pitfalls of contemporary songwriting and the pulse of playing live around the Pacific Northwest. For those ready to step outside the formulaic, this is a debut—and a story—worth your full attention.
Welcome to A&R Factory, Ria – and congratulations on the release of Blow. It’s a pleasure to have you here to talk about ExWife’s debut and everything that brought it to life.
It is our pleasure to share the new record! Thank you for having us, Amelia.
Ten years is a long time to hold onto songs before releasing them into the world—how did your relationship with the material shift during that time, and what made now feel like the right moment to let Blow out?
The songs had a wild metamorphosis over these ten years. They started out as phone recordings while I was taking care of my at-the-time 2 and 3-year-old toddlers. In a lot of those early recordings, you can actually hear them singing along or asking for more crackers. But it was during the most chaotic time of my life that I felt compelled to write the majority of these songs. The band developed the sound above and beyond what I would have been able to do by myself. I enjoy bedroom recordings, but I was born to play rock and roll. The wait to release this music has been so long; most of the hangups have been around life just happening.
You’ve mentioned that Blow was recorded almost completely live—what does capturing that kind of immediacy in the studio mean to you, and how does it affect your relationship with the songs when you take them to the stage?
For our band, it was important to be able to bring what we had made in the studio onto a live stage. This album really has very minimal overdubs, and even some of the vocals are from the live takes we did, which I feel amazing and proud about. More and more we are hearing recordings that are manipulated, comped, over-processed, and in my opinion, stray from the real thing. We’ve introduced AI into the field, and I think we are doing ourselves a disservice in the pursuit of a “perfect” album or single. I always want to strive to make our music sound like what it is – the sonic truth. Playing live is one of my favorite things in the world. Orchestrating an experience with these songs we have made is an unbelievable feeling.
There’s clearly an emotional arc running through the 14 tracks on the record—can you talk us through the themes that tie it together and what you hope listeners take from the full record experience?
The arc I hear within the album is one of loneliness, frustration, and rebirth, but that is my interpretation. Our music is out in the world now, and I have no intention of trying to control the narrative of it. What someone feels while listening to our music is their experience alone. My entire life was wrapped up in these songs, and for me they have been a facilitator for healing and joy. I sincerely hope others might be affected in a similar way.
Starting the band during a turning point in your relationship must have given the project a very personal core. How much of that original emotional foundation remains present in ExWife today?
ExWife will always be deeply personal for me. My bandmates are still some of the people I spend the most of my time with.
The comparisons to artists like The Breeders and PJ Harvey are undoubtedly flattering, but you’ve said that you weren’t actively trying to sound like any era or artist. What were you chasing sonically and emotionally when shaping ExWife’s sound?
I grew up religious and was not allowed to listen to a lot of modern or classic rock, and still into my late 20s, had never listened to an AC/DC song or anything remotely heavy and dirty. After my divorce, I was free to listen to anything I wanted to, and I was always drawn to rock and roll. Any flavor, any year, I just adore rock music. This was something super new and exciting. I had started to pick up the electric guitar, and it felt like a beautiful marriage. Heavy beefy tone with the sometimes saccharine, sometimes sexy lyrics that I had been writing. The band never sat down together and said, ‘we should sound like this’, the magic just happened when we played together. We all come from different backgrounds with different musical tastes, and I think our combination sounds pretty delicious.
You’ve been open about how modern music often feels oversimplified to you. What do you think has been lost in contemporary songwriting, and what standards do you personally hold your lyrics and compositions to?
Modern music has become more and more simplified over the years. They’ve done studies on this, and we use fewer words, limited vocabulary, sing less about love and more about pain, and even use more generic chord structure in our songs today. They say people want easy listening, but I’m not convinced this is actually what we want as individuals, but more as a society. Contemporary songwriting has become extraordinarily blunt and repetitive. For me, a good song has the ability to be vague but still evoke an emotional reaction from the lyrics. When I write songs, I am putting on different people and then viewing it from their perspective. It’s all about play and how we can shape a story within the song that is important to me.
Gigging around the Pacific Northwest, what has stood out to you most about the live reception to your songs, and how have those shows shaped your vision for what ExWife can become?
Gigging can be very up and down. The venues are still recovering from the pandemic, and crowd attendance can be very unpredictable. I love playing live, and it’s my hope that we will be playing bigger shows down the road. Plans to add lighting and other little touches are in the works. A lot of artists are chasing Spotify metrics, but to me, those don’t hold a candle to having a packed venue and getting to experience playing our music with a real-time reaction and response. My favorite show memory is probably playing Wild West, and the barback was standing against the back wall, absolutely locking into the groove. It’s those little moments I would play over and over again for.
With this powerful debut now available, what’s next for ExWife creatively—and what do you feel this record has set in motion for you going forward?
We are just getting started. More music is in the works, and it is my intention to release another album very soon. Tits up, and let’s rock.
–
Stream ExWife on Spotify now, and connect with the artist via Instagram and TikTok.
Interview by Amelia Vandergast
