Portland indie rock band Glitterfox is influenced by a lot of things when it comes to creating music. But what takes the top spot? “Feelings,” lead singer Solange Igoa said. “I have a lot of feelings, so that definitely comes into play. I’m dramatic.”
Portland band Glitterfox performed a session at Green Anchors in September 2024.
Stephani Gordon / OPB
Igoa and their partner, guitarist Andrea Walker, feel a special connection to Portland’s Green Anchors, a former industrial site-turned-arts compound just north of the St Johns Bridge in Portland.
The couple was married there and hosts an annual music festival, “Glitterfest,” at the site. With bassist Eric Stalker and drummer Blaine Heinonen, the band has headlined shows at iconic Portland venues like Mississippi Studios but has also performed at festivals including Project Pabst, Oregon Country Fair in Eugene and Sisters Folk Festival in Sisters.
The band is currently working towards a summer 2025 release of their debut full-length album, produced by The Decemberists’ Chris Funk. The artists gave OPB a sneak peek into what audiences can expect during a music session filmed at Portland’s Green Anchors in September 2024. The set list included singles such as “Portland” and “TV,” as well as an unreleased song titled “Passenger.”
After the performance, the band took OPB’s Lisa Wood through their songwriting process and how the city of Portland has influenced their sound.
Below are excerpts from the interview, edited for clarity and length.
Lisa Wood: I hear you’re working on an album for 2025. Can you tell us about the songs?
Andrea Walker: Yeah, we are... We’re gonna wrap up tracking by February. About the songs — I really want the album to have a very cohesive look. So the goal is to get all songs that are from a very recent time, like the last year or two.
They’re very much like a Portland indie rock sound, but with a lot of other influences, like ‘90s grunge. There’s moments of disco, there’s a very nostalgic eighties feel, but all just kind of hanging together under this one sound that is Glitterfox.
Wood: About when in 2025 can we expect the record?
Walker: I think summer 2025 is a very reasonable goal. We got a really good start on it last week (in September 2024). You know, there’s a ton of songs that are written, so we’re in really, really good shape for summer 2025.
Wood: How do you know when you have a really good song?
Walker: I think you know when it’s not there because you’ll just keep chewing on it. And I’ll just have this feeling that I can do better. Maybe in the moment when I write something, I might be really excited. I’ll be like, “You guys, I got it!” But then I’ll listen to it two, three days later and I’ll be like, “It’s not the thing.”
But when you just have the thing, there’s a moment when I’m like, “I can’t do any better.” Like this vibes. Then you’ll listen to it three days later and you’ll still love it. You’ll listen to it a week later, you still love it.
You know, when you have something so good, it stands the test of time. When you keep coming back to it, you just keep feeling like, “Ah, that’s it. That’s it.”
Wood: When you know, you know.
Eric Stalker: Like writing for yourself, you know? I mean, that’s the most important thing, writing something that you want to hear and that you love.
Walker: Good point. You have to love the songs because we go on tour. We were on tour half of this spring and summer, and you’re playing the same songs. You might play the same set list from show to show, so you have to love the songs. You don’t want a line to be like, “Man, I could have written- that lyric is kind of funky.“ Or like, “That riff is funky.” You wanna love every bit of it so that you love playing it. You wanna play it thousands of times and never get tired of it.
Wood: Why Portland? Why the Northwest?
Solange Igoa: Andrea and I used to live in a van. So every time we’d come here, we’d hang out at this spot (Green Anchors) a lot. It feels like home here specifically. We got married here. This is where we have our festival. Every time we’d come back to Portland, we’d stay a little bit longer. And so it just started to feel like home.
Walker: I love Portland. Portland has an amazing music scene. We’ve grown so much. Solange and I moved here in 2018, which is the same time Eric moved here. And Blaine, you got here what year?
Blaine Heinonen: 2014.
Walker: Yeah. And it’s just like musically, we’ve grown so much from living in Portland. It has such a thriving, incredible music scene. So I really feel like musically, we’ve just really thrived here and I’m gonna stay. I’m staying, I’m not going anywhere. I love it here.
Wood: What is it like being in a relationship and in a band together?
Igoa: Hard.
Walker: There were times when it was the relationship keeping the band together and there were times when it was the band keeping the relationship together.
Igoa: A cheat code for staying together a long time. That and therapy.
Walker: We’ve been together for literally 12 years. We got married five years ago. It’s kind of incredible, honestly, to share the most important thing in my existence with the person that’s my best friend and the person that I’m the most connected to.
And you asked about the songs earlier: the songs are so personal. For me, I only write about what is going on in my life. What big things are happening in my life? What am I thinking about? What am I feeling about?
And I don’t feel like there’s any person in the world that could sing a song that I wrote besides Solange. It feels really natural to write a song and then have Solange sing it, because a lot of times, it’s about something that we went through together. So that’s really beautiful sharing that.
Igoa: There’s a couple songs that I was singing at first through gritted teeth. That was the old days though.
Walker: There were a couple of years where every song was like, “I don’t like you.” But now, we’re back to love songs. It was like love songs. Then things-are-very-challenging songs. And now, we’re back to love songs.