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Photos by Blossom Berkofsky
From childhood friends ascending from Greenwich House Music School to Paris, France, Fashion Week, to recording contracts, Beau’s story sounds scripted. Atypical on the surface, Heather Goldin and Emma Jenney are simply New Yorkers with a penchant for writing songs. Beau is an outlet for their collective creativity, but never scripted. Songs, albums, and performances follow their internal compasses, alternating style, approach, and intention, mirroring the rhythm of the city and this thing called life.
Eleven years past their formal introduction to the music world, Beau is no longer improvising in Washington Square Park. In 2025, they confidently released an EP titled “Recorded In the East Village, NYC,” four tracks that retell the Beau story with a minimalist approach and the depth of experience. Melodic, versatile, and wise, the 2026 iteration of Beau tends to follow their own timeline and impulses, when they do arise, not algorithms or external pressure. I spoke with singer/songwriter Heather Goldin about the Beau’s evolution, journey, and their unspoken third member, New York City.
ANTHONY PAPPALARDO: I wanted to start by talking about Beau’s “Recorded In the East Village, NYC” EP. Because so much of our experience with music is digital now, it’s really nice to have something connected to a real place.
HEATHER GOLDIN: I definitely feel like we—as in all of us who've made music in the last 20 years— are in a moment where we're seeing the transition. And it's a grieving time in a way, where you’re grieving the manual way of doing things in general. Robots are writing, engineering, and producing music right now, and it feels so unnecessary. It feels like a funeral for what we’ve known for so long and for what that process (of making music) is. I love being in the studio and laying down our ideas and just capturing what's already organically there.
That really comes through in the songs. It feels like pure documentation.
Yeah, we made that EP very fast. It was a last-minute idea that Michael (Pontecorvo), who runs our label Immortal Records, suggested. We had just released our sophomore album, Girl Cried Wolf, and he was just like, “Let’s keep the ball rolling and show people who you really are.”
That EP is who we are–not overly produced and raw. My bandmate Emma (Jenney) should really be here to speak to that, because she’s fully the brains in terms of executing recording and making sure she gets the take fucking right. She's a master at recording to a metronome. It’s taken a lot of patience and growing through it, but it was sort of nice to have a deadline, because normally we don’t. But also, having no deadline can be unproductive.
I was listening to an old interview with Robert Pollard (Guided By Voices) recently, where he joked (paraphrasing), “It’s a miracle rock and roll ever happened because most musicians sleep until 2 p.m. I write my best shit in the morning.” Are you a morning person when it comes to writing?
I really need to take time before I get into writing. Usually something has to happen—something major and heartbreaking. Life things. Every day you go through life knowing something crazy is going to happen. I’m so grateful when things are chill, but when things do happen, I live in those moments and get devastatingly inspired. I’ll bring something to Emma or vice versa and we’ll make the other person cry through a song… that’s when you know it’s good. But there’s not really a time when that happens, at least not in the morning. It’s usually the dark of night after a few glasses of wine and a few annoying interactions with people. Once you get home, you’re like, “Goddamn, I gotta do something good right now.” [laughs]
That’s also very unique to New York, because everyone is on top of each other, and you’re processing everything all day. No one’s allowed to have their own emotions because you’re sharing this weird collective energy all day.
No, literally. And you're not allowed to be like, "God, I'm having a hard day!’ because someone’s going to look at you and be like “Yeah? You’re having a hard day?” Every single person here is struggling and hustling and losing their minds and trying to put on a smile and pretend like everything's good. I’m also a bartender and I really get the nitty-gritty of all that… people coming in after whatever they’ve been through and wanting to talk about it or not. You learn a lot about people that way and about New York.
God bless you. You’re one of New York’s true therapists.
Exactly, I totally realized that recently. I was like, "Wow, I have a higher calling here.”
There’s always this romanticism of the “starving artist,” but I don’t think people realize how much people give up to pursue their art, especially musicians now. People forget that for a period of time, the industry wasn’t focused on anything but digital. Even with a vinyl resurgence, physical sales aren’t a real revenue stream. What’s left? Merch and performances?
It's really true. I think that the problem is that we gave too much access to the industry and sort of signed off our rights without actually knowing what we were doing to do. As a result, there's been a loss of innocence. There are definitely no more paydays. I just got off the phone today with a royalty distribution company, chasing months and months of missing checks. I spent an hour with them figuring it out and at the end I was like, “Why did that have to take so long? Why don’t they take musicians seriously?”
It’s a loss of purity and honesty. I have a dream and hope that one day we’ll go back. I’m glad artists are finally talking about it openly. Finally saying “This sucks.” It’s impossible to make a living as an artist unless you’re an influencer today. If you don’t wanna be an influencer, you gotta hope for luck. There’s always playing shows, but even with that, I worry about what the audience is actually absorbing.
I worry about who the audience actually is. When we were first talking over email, the whole “Geese is a psy-op” thing was popping off. That really opened up a larger conversation, because influence operations or whatever are how a band gets promoted now. It’s a new form of publicity and it’s hard to fault a band for doing what it can to get noticed.
You bring up Geese; they’re from New York, one of my friends went to school with them, and they got really lucky with a good marketing team. There are so many bands like Geese, not to take anything away from them because Cameron (Winter) has an amazing voice–but so many bands want to be like them–they want to make honest, authentic music, and get there. But God, I’ve been working at this so long and then you see how easy it can be. It’s true, we don’t know who our audiences are anymore or if they even listen to music. Is it just about the image and looking cool? That’s not even a bad thing, but where’s the art? Where’s the appreciation for the music? I do think some podcasts are keeping the truth alive… it’s just weird times.
I get why people are skeptical of everything, because everything feels like a scam, not just music.
It’s so funny because when we toured the States about 10 years ago, we saw our followers on Instagram and our monthly listeners increase in a noticeable way. Our streams were skyrocketing; we weren’t making money, but we saw the numbers coming up. Then it was weird. Something happened. I don’t know what, but it all stopped. We were putting out music like crazy, playing shows, but people stopped being engaged. I’m convinced there’s a fucking bot controlling every platform and not allowing us to connect with followers. Why hasn’t this number changed in two years? Is this real? What the fuck is going on?
Everything is bots. Before we spoke, I went down the rabbit hole, reading articles about what gets throttled in algorithms and there’s a case to be made that streaming platforms have a gender bias.
Everything’s like that, right? As a woman, I feel like I have very little power beyond my sex appeal, you know? I definitely find that it’s harder. I’ve been offered things from men, and the only reason is what’s going on below their belts. It’s just a fucking man’s world, every which way you look. Even though there’s a huge group of people saying “Fuck that! Feminism! Rights for everyone!” We’re still at the very beginning of that journey. Girls would still rather go see a hot boy band than a hot girl band. We’ve got to start empowering each other.
I think what backs up what you said the most is the amount of pushback the right or conservatives give when anyone says a group of people deserves equal rights and treatment.
There always needs to be some type of challenge. That’s what a lot of the music we make is about: the why. Asking the questions, calling that person out, and asking why. Obviously, what would we have to write about if we didn’t have the other side to fight with? That’s why life is just constantly doing its thing.
And it’s doing it faster than ever. You’re smart to stay off line as much as possible.
I try to stay off it, but the one time I do go online, I see things I don’t want to fucking see. So it’s just balancing it out, but it will take a whole day out of me. I’ll literally need a whole day to recuperate from some shit. It’s not life. It really isn’t. We need to remember that there was a period when we weren’t doing this shit and it was fun to make YouTube videos, to put music online and share music with people. Record. Recording is always amazing. We’re caring too much about what other people think and what the world is saying and not going locally and trying to grow. I mean… I don’t really know what the solution is.
If we’re to believe what the “world” thinks, we’re fully invested in technology and AI, so why can’t it work for us? If our taxes pay for all this shit, give us a cut and leave us alone to make art.
100%. If AI could reverse the effect of climate change, that would be fucking amazing. Can’t we get there already? Why are we withholding this stuff? Oh yeah, capitalism. I do have this belief, though–and there’s no term for it–that you have to rise to the top to dismantle the old ways and the old systems. That’s why, as much as I hate politicians, I think, “Well, maybe you’re a double agent and trying to save the world.” But I do agree that it would be so helpful if we could put it (technology) towards real issues and not games and toys… things like that. We don’t need AI to be making music or art. Go save the world. It would be so great right now because it’s fucking 90 degrees in New York and it’s technically still spring. I battle my own beliefs about rising global temperatures, but… I’m sorry, man; I don’t want to live in an apocalypse because of someone else’s mistakes.
Back to what you said about “double agents,” I love that, but then I immediately worry about some politician using a “change” message to get elected, then they pull a John Fetterman or whatever. That being said, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for New Yorkers to feel a little joy that Zohran (Mamdani) is running their city.
Absolutely. I think he’s a great example of this sort of double-agent thing. I keep trying to get his attention. This is why I have to stay off social media. I know all it takes is one funny comment from anyone, big or small, to be like “Uhh, that gets to me,” and then you have their attention. But yeah, Zohran’s much closer to the people than fucking Donald Trump and he definitely smokes weed, so that’s cool.
He was a SoundCloud rapper.
Exactly, he knows what’s up. I appreciate him for sure. I don’t know a lot about his politics, but I know I’m not supporting a fascist, and that’s fine by me. But yeah, it feels like you can relax a little bit. Obviously, he can’t control what happens every day in this goddamn place–it’s insane here. That’s what he’s dealing with. I went to high school with some kids whose parents were in New York government back in the day, and we would get stoned out of our minds in class. We were the worst kids; meanwhile, their parents are running the fucking city. They made the most anti-government kids possible. It’s an inevitable thing. If Zohran ends up having kids and they go to school here, there’s going to be like every fucking kid in New York City. We’re like, “Fuck the police, fuck the government,” but also “What up? You got me?”
It’s a catch-22. There is a way through, but it’s a secret and I know the way.
I can’t think of a better ending to an interview ever than with that, but I do have one more question. You’ve been playing and recording music with Emma for so long. How has your relationship with art changed over that time?
I used to not be able to go a day without writing or singing a song. I’m in a love-hate relationship with it now. I’ll never hate making music, but I told people leading into this feeling—which is actually a deeper feeling of emotion for the music than it is a separation—that I was retiring. Guys, that’s it. I’m fucking retiring and people were like, “No! That makes me so depressed to hear.” I was like, “No, you don’t understand; I need to preserve whatever I have left. There’s a lot in there.” I saw it as an evolution, but everybody else saw that as death. I think you come to appreciate things more–the work you’ve done in the past and it helps you think about what you’re doing next.
What’s amazing is that once you make a certain kind of music, there’s an infinite amount of music just waiting to be created from your brain. When you realize those possibilities, there isn’t really a rush to make things. I actually think it’s not good to try to create every day, like it’s a need. You know, take it when it comes and don’t put so much pressure on to finish something. When we’re younger, that’s all we want. We have to keep going every single day. You could call slowing down “laziness,” but I like to call it meditative. I really do create based on experience and if I’m not out there living, I don’t have anything to write. I can’t make stuff up.
It’s interesting how that changes. One thing I feel less strange about is that I don’t feel as embarrassed as I used to when I start singing songs and performing. It used to feel like getting naked in front of someone. Now I’m like, “Oh, this is really nice for them and it’s nice for me.” It’s not so weird anymore. It’s a spiritual thing.
Art is a gift and part of it is the anxiety of seeing how people will react to receiving it. I think as you make more things, that wears off and the focus becomes the creative process and less about how it’s interpreted.
Exactly. Do people like it? Great. If not, they missed it. Our last album, Girl Cried Wolf, was like that. We were like just banging out songs because there was like a lot going on in our lives at the time. There was a period where I think Emma and I got very lost in the idea of like writing the perfect pop song. We became total nerds and addicted and obsessed with this idea and our musical style totally changed. It was great and it’s fun and it’s nice for a lot of people. But it was so different from the first album that I was wondering, “Was this authentically us? Was it forced? Were we selling out all of these things?”
I don’t feel that way now. Now I know we worked really fucking hard and tried to get to the core–to find the meaning. I still think very strongly that melody is more powerful than lyrics. Even though I do hate when lyrics are stupid, the pressure to write good lyrics shouldn’t be as intense as it is sometimes. It’s really about the song, the melody, the bond.
Maybe that’s why people get so into jazz. They don’t have to be disappointed by lyrics. [laughs]
Oh, definitely. They don’t need all that extra rigamarole. No, it’s all unnecessary; that’s why they have poets and authors. [laughs]