Tristen Sifts Through Social Ills on Sneaker Waves

Tristen doesn’t have time for your cryptic emojis. The Nashville songwriter, performer and instrumentalist rarely gets a break from her packed schedule — which, in addition to her own solo work, includes writing and performing with many other artists — so you believe her when she sings about being tired of decoding the meaning of a smiley face in her new song “Psychic Vampire.”

It’s one of several standout tracks on her thoroughly excellent new album, Sneaker Waves. Her third album and a follow-up to 2013’s CAVES, Sneaker Waves expands on the synth-pop sensibilities of its predecessor to provide a cinematic context for her singular voice.

Though Sneaker Waves comes four years after Tristen’s sophomore effort, several of the album’s 12 tracks have been gestating for much longer, taking shape as she toured as part of Jenny Lewis’ backing band and contributed to other projects, including fellow locals Steelism’s new album ism. Working with her husband and producer Buddy Hughen in their home studio, Tristen had both the time and the freedom to craft an album.

“We went in, I want to say, August of 2014 with 30 songs,” Tristen tells the Scene. She spent much of 2015 on the road, she explains, both playing her own material and backing Lewis, and she wrote more songs in her off time. “Towards the end of this last year, we picked the ones we felt were shaping up nicely, and then I wrote a couple of songs to close out the record.”

Sneaker Waves, then, is the work of an artist who never stops working. For Tristen, that comes naturally. “I’m always writing songs,” she says with a laugh. “I can sit down and write a song anytime I want. It’s not hard for me to do that.”

In conversation, she’s thoughtful and bursting with ideas, as excited to talk about tracking drums as she is about children’s unhealthy obsessions with electronic devices. (“What is the desire for human beings to have technology like that?”) It quickly becomes apparent that Tristen’s constant work also comes from a deep love for both art and its powers to elucidate the mysteries and miseries of modern life.

Feeling despondent after the election of Donald Trump, Tristen took a couple of days to record “In Winter Blues,” which she released as a digital single, with proceeds donated to humanitarian organization International Rescue Committee. “I was putting this album out, and then the election happened, and I was like, ‘Oh no, this is not what I want to talk about right now!’ ” she says. “It’s hard because it takes so long to put out records.”

And though many of Sneaker Waves’ tracks were written during what now feels like a simpler time in American politics, Tristen sees the album’s themes as premonitions of what, in her words, have become current “cultural sicknesses.” She’s a talented musician, but she could also have a decent side hustle as a social scientist, should she choose: Issues like our fraught relationship with social media caught her writerly eye and crystallized into pop-song-sized diagnoses of contemporary ailments.

“I don’t want to talk about politicians,” she explains. “I want to talk about cultural sickness. This is just a manifestation of cultural sickness, the election we had, the fact that politicians can trick the working poor into voting for someone who isn’t representing their interests. The fact that we’re susceptible to that means we’re weak in some way.”

While Sneaker Waves’ tracks may not name-check any political parties, they perfectly capture the politics of everyday life, of navigating the social landscape and all its emoji-laced landmines. On “Glass Jar,” which features Lewis on harmonies, Tristen sings about being treated the way a kid treats a trapped insect, like someone is tapping on her container to see how she’ll react. Closing track “Clandestine” is a symphonic account of the “ravers of the surveillance era” and a critique of willingly allowing yourself to be distracted. “Psychic Vampire” is a timely snapshot of modern life and the difficulties it poses to self-care.

“I had that line, ‘I’m tired of decoding your cryptic emojis,’ and I thought it would be a good lyric,” Tristen says of “Psychic Vampire.” “Everything’s been done before, everything’s been written. You see that when you look up your song titles on Spotify and see five other songs with the same title. The only thing you have that sets you apart is your perspective and the time that you live in, so I’ve always lived by the mantra of being a reporter for my time.”

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