Header photo credit: Cynphoria
Annelle Staal was supposed to be on tour in 2020. Instead, like a lot of artists that year, her plans were forced to change. But in a more unique move, she migrated online and built an audience there instead. Five years and an international Twitch following later, Staal linked up with Frost School of Music alums Ben Youngblood and Aldo “X” Canals, two musicians who’d spent 2019 playing roughly a hundred shows together in another band before the pandemic quietly ended that chapter too.
As a collective, The Annelle Staal Trio doesn’t sound like they should work on paper. There’s a clarinet run through a Roland SP-404, a bassline with metal precision underneath something sweet and whimsical, and the soulful voice Staal has spent a decade refining. None of them is married to a specific vision, and that openness — to each other’s instincts, unexpected genre collisions, and the idea that space itself is the fourth member of the band — is exactly what makes their sweet indie pop sound land.
With a debut album in the works, there was no better time to dive into how they’ve grown over the past few years and where they plan to go from here.
What have y’all been listening to lately?
Annelle (vocals): Ben and I have been listening to this artist called Saga Faye. She has a really compelling 2000s nostalgia sound. Her drum beats are crunchy, and the production is whimsical and airy. Sometimes when people do the 2000s throwback, it feels verbatim, but this is original.
Ben (guitar): I love this artist from the UK, a duo called Mount Kimbie. A couple of years ago, they released this album called The Sunset Violent, and I’ve been revisiting it recently.
X (bass/clarinet): I’ve been listening to two things mainly. One is the soundtrack to a game I’ve really been enjoying called Hollow Knight: Silksong. The music is so emotive and cinematic. I draw a lot of inspiration from movie and video game soundtracks.
The other album on repeat has been Hymns in Dissonance by Whitechapel. It is diabolically heavy metal, but I’ve just been loving every second of it.
Ben: As you can see, our musical taste is quite wide. [laughs]
How do y’all negotiate the different instincts and sounds you’re drawn to when you’re writing and performing together?
Annelle: It’s so fluid, it feels like puzzle pieces. I don’t think any one of us is married to a specific vision. One of our strengths is that we’re very open to whatever someone else in the group hears. Like, I might want something to feel like a dance song, X will shred this metal bassline over something sweet and whimsical, and then Ben will tear the production in a direction we didn’t foresee. It comes together in a way that feels cohesive, like something you’ve heard before but also something you haven’t.
Ben: All three of us are producers in our own way. When we’re jamming, writing, or just playing together, our producer minds are all at play. There’s a level of openness, and we’re all very strong listeners. We really listen to what each other is doing and react in the moment. It’s not like X is asserting his metal bass playing, Annelle is asserting pop vocals, and I’m asserting rock guitar. All of our choices come from a place of deep listening. The influences come out more unconsciously, which is why it actually works so well. The negotiation is unspoken.
X: It feels very natural. I’ve been in musical situations where differences in taste and inspiration are a beautiful thing, but can be hard to combine into a unified vision. With Ben and Annelle, it really feels seamless. We all come into the creative space with an open mind, which makes it easy to let the creative flow do its thing.
You mentioned that you don’t have a drummer. How does that shape the dynamic?
Annelle: We were actually talking about this before the interview. The lack of a drummer puts us all in the position of thinking in a percussive way. No one person determines what happens with the percussion. Because we’re all producers, the percussion becomes more of a collaborative conversation and gives us greater control.
X: This one hits close to home for me. I’m a bass player first and foremost, and the connection between a bass player and a drummer is spiritual. There’s something powerful about driving the music together. Using electronic drums at first felt challenging because it didn’t feel the same as playing with a live drummer. But there has been a sense of liberation in feeling that we can control the rhythm.
In a full-band context — two guitars, bass, keys, drums — I always felt limited as a bass player, thrust into the role of a root thumper in a very narrow way. Here in this trio, I have found a level of freedom as a bass player that I’ve never experienced before.
Ben: I joke that there’s really a fourth member of the band, and that the fourth member is space. It can sometimes feel limiting not having a drummer, because there’s more responsibility on each member.
But I’ve found that if I lean into the idea that space is also present and is a member of the band, the strongest moments come when I just stop playing. That can feel scary in the moment, but it allows the spotlight to shine on what X is doing on bass or clarinet, or what Annelle is doing vocally. It almost makes my presence more impactful, allowing space to sometimes be the protagonist.
X: Just to piggyback off that: Ben has been turning me on recently to a lot of Indian classical music, and on my own, I’ve long been a fan of drone-style music and pagan music that relies on limited drones. What it does is create that sense of space Ben is talking about.
For Annelle, as a vocalist and creative force, it gives them total freedom. When a musical pad is created, the voice and melody up top can move around and do anything. Then what Ben and I do on the bottom can support and follow whatever direction it takes. It’s all about the freedom the three of us have when we combine our different musical influences.
For folks who are just learning about the trio, what is the narrative you’d want to share?
Annelle: They say this is a 10-year industry. You need to be in it for a solid 10 years before you see a major break. We’ve all individually experienced minor breaks along the way, but we’re coming into this group together after 10 years of respective experience apart, and at this point, it just feels like there’s rocket fuel behind us.
I’ve played with several band iterations before, and I’ve been streaming on Twitch for six years. In a classic grassroots musical story, someone starts in their hometown and then tours regionally, then nationally, then internationally. But when you work with the internet, you have the opportunity to be an international artist from the start. You’re connecting with people from all different backgrounds and interests. It’s made me very worldly in a way that just staying local couldn’t.
Ben: X and I met at the Frost School of Music, but we really developed our musical chemistry and friendship on the road when we were touring together in another band back in 2019. The pandemic kind of put an end to that. We played around a hundred shows together over the course of a year and really developed this awesome chemistry on stage. Then X moved to Raleigh a few years later, and we hadn’t played music together since that tour.
I met Annelle when they were posting about looking for musicians, and the two of us started playing together in early 2023. We did duo shows, started streaming together, and had these visions of playing with a band.
Then X came into the picture while we were producing our record, Going Up!. It just happened so naturally. We had these songs and were like, “We really need a bass on some of these.” And I knew exactly who to call. X came in and in one day laid down all of his parts, most in the first or second take. It was clear there was chemistry as a trio from that. We started getting together to jam, exploring what our sound was freely, and it grew organically from there.
We both use Roland SP-404s — I use mine more as a drum machine, and X uses his more for ambient sounds. We joke that we have dueling 404s in the band. The first time we all got together and jammed, we ended up writing our song “Passenger Princess” on the spot, start to finish, exactly as we perform it now. Annelle improvised vocals, and it just came out of us. That kind of thing can happen when there’s such amazing chemistry in a group.
Annelle: Because we’re such great friends! If we’re not working, we’re on that Druid lifestyle. [laughs] Going out to the river, being one with nature. I would say 70% of the time we spend together as a band is just hanging out. And then when we do go to make music, there’s not a bunch of rehearsal required because it just naturally comes out. A lot of our prep is more like setting the vibe; if we’re good with each other and we’ve had a great day, we get into the studio and it just flows.
As you’re working on the debut project, how does a day in the studio actually work? Do you play different roles, or take turns?
Ben: Something I want to say first is that, as effortlessly as it can flow, that’s not always the case either. We had our first week-long studio shut-in last month, and parts of it really did flow. But you do run into musical obstacles, and you can feel like you’re banging your head against the wall. You try 10 things, and none of them work.
Something we do really well is give very honest, constructive feedback about what each other is putting forward. We’re not afraid to say, “Can you try it differently? Can you visualize this while you’re playing it?” We’re scientists, too. We’re willing to workshop everything. Being in the studio and ending up with something you love requires getting frustrated and being willing to say, “The last three hours, we can’t use that. Let’s start over.”
Annelle: There’s no space for egos in the studio. One of my strengths and weaknesses is how direct I am, but the good news is that it creates space for everyone to be direct. When we’re in the studio, we’re craftsmen working together on a sculpture. If we can put egos aside and it just becomes about the sculpture, not how I feel about my contribution to it, that makes for better art.
X: One of my greatest strengths is that I play all of these different instruments. I’ve grown up listening to and being challenged to play multiple styles of music, and I’ve had the opportunity to grow. I grew up playing clarinet in middle and high school band, then put that aside to play bass. And here I am now, however many years later, playing clarinet again. I just bought the electronic pickup for it, so there are going to be some cool new things happening.
One of the days in the studio, I didn’t think a particular song we were working on needed a clarinet. But Ben and Annelle said, “Hey X, why don’t you go in there with the clarinet and try something on this?” We hooked the clarinet up to the 404, and while I was playing, Annelle was giving me directions on how to enter the headspace. Ben was handling the effects and manipulating what was coming out of the 404. The three of us created this one part together, and it was such an amazing experience. I let out all of these frustrations and emotions about the time I hadn’t been playing clarinet — the time I felt like I’d missed out on. And then this amazing opportunity presented itself to bring that aspect of my musicality back out again.
Though one of my weaknesses is that because I play all these instruments, I can hyper-focus and think, “No, no, this idea, you guys don’t get it, this is the greatest thing ever.” But they have a great way of saying, “Hey, maybe we should try something else.” And that’s when I know I need to rethink it.
Annelle: Our studio allows us to track everything at once, so we have a vocal booth, and Ben and X play in the same room. We get the form down, and then we start throwing paint at the wall. I feel like I need to uncover all the stones to know which ideas underneath I want to keep.
Art is a process of elimination to me. I want to know the fewest elements possible to make a work stand out. We mix along the way to get the purest form of the song.
Image credit: Cynphoria
What about Raleigh and the North Carolina music community stands out the most to you? And who are some local artists you’d want to shout out?
Annelle: This area feels like the true Wild West to me. The South, specifically. A lot of people are breaking out and expressing themselves because of the environment. I think the sociopolitical climate is causing a lot of artists to crop up. In other areas of the country that are known for their scenes, it’s just a big pool of people. Here, there are many really bright lights shining through because there’s space.
We have several local Raleigh artists that we really love. A rap artist we love goes by 3AM Sound, just an amazing human. Sasha, a really cool dance-indie artist. Aarik Duncan. And they’re not local to Raleigh, but Wednesday the band is really awesome.
Ben: On a higher level, Sylvan Esso is really important to me, having come out of and being based in North Carolina. They’ve really led the way in a lot of respects — their record label Psychic Hotline, just being a beacon in the local scene, showing that you can be from North Carolina and be a global artist.
Annelle: Also shout out to Negative Feedback, who we actually connected with through Blank Tapes. They just dropped a project I thought was really cool and compelling. To me, they represent this wave coming through the North Carolina scene.
X: The Hourglass Kids are making some killer reggae music. Shout out to ¡Tumbao!, that’s some great booty-shaking music. Also Donnie Deneil and his project Duck.
Ben: And Whoop, the band! The lead singer Fallon is an acquaintance of mine, and her band is a really awesome punk-funk rock group.
Any final things you want to share with people who are interested in your music and your community?
Annelle: For anybody who finds our music or our vibe compelling, we have a really active, thriving community. One of the places we gather is Discord, and you can also watch us on Twitch.
We are currently booking live shows into the summer and fall, and our debut album is in production. We’re appearing in some Raleigh-based festivals this summer that we’re not allowed to announce yet, but we’ll be able to party together shortly. In the meantime, you can connect with us online on Twitch, Discord, or YouTube.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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