Meet Spill Tab, the bedroom pop guitarist creating soundtracks for “going absolutely feral and indulging in my vices”
For Spill Tab, aka LA-based guitarist, songwriter and producer Claire Chicha, expressing the entire scope of herself through her lo-fi music is as natural as breathing. “I write in French and English, I want to represent my full identity within my music and singing in both, feels like the best way to do that,” Chica explains.
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The cultural touchstones that she can draw on for this identity are as broad as they are diverse. The child of a French-Algerian composer father and Korean pianist mother, Chica was exposed to jazz and classical music while spending time at her parents’ post-production studio in between moves across the world.
This globetrotting experience meant she lived in Bangkok and Paris before landing in the States, pursuing studies at New York University and a creative career rooted in California throughout the majority of her adolescence.
Early on in her childhood, Chicha picked up guitar while developing a distinctive sound blending raw-edged sonic masterpieces with anthemic choruses. It’s a sound that is heavily influenced by the place she now calls home, though she still clearly has the desire to see and experience even more of the world.
“Los Angeles has to be my favorite because most of my favorite people are here, but I would love to live in Paris or Seoul one day. As a kid, the moving wasn’t really my choice, but as an adult, each move was in search of finding the right city for what I was looking for at that specific time.”
Spill The Tea
Chica’s initial foray into the music industry was on the other side of the fence, as an A&R intern, but began releasing her layered, lo-fi bedroom pop under the Spill Tab monicker shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic.
She gained traction over the weird period that followed, releasing a trio of EP’s (Oatmilk, Bonnie and Klepto) over the following three years that included interesting and eye-catching collaborations with the likes of Metronomy, Matilda Mann, Gus Dapperton, and Tommy Genesis.
Audiences started to catch on to Spill Tab in a big way when Chica was one of the openers on Sabrina Carpenter’s Emails I Can’t Send tour in 2023, but now finally 27-year-old is ready to release her first full-length album, Angie.
The record is a fitting summation of Chica’s growth as an artist, as evidenced by lead single Assis.
Spill Tab. Image: Jade Sadler
“The production feels like the stitching between a 50s Italian film soundtrack and psychedelic rock,” Chica explains of the track. “The song is about watching someone you love pull away from you in slow motion. You try to reconcile the beautiful, tender moments with the bitter ones, because ultimately you want no one else.”
Angie is released on French label Because Music, and reflects a desire on Chica’s part to explore more of the European music scene in the coming years. If the timeless depth of her musical expression across the albums 12 tracks are anything to go by, she’ll find plenty of new inspiration there – to go alongside her catchy basslines and sick guitar hooks.
Glitchy and free-spirited opener Pink Lemonade typifies this breadth of interest. Co-produced with apob [producer Aaron Paul O’Brien] alongside Mikey Freedom Hart [Taylor Swift, Empress Of] it sees Spill Tab entering the world of hyperpop followed by a drop into a completely different transition with its distorted guitar providing some turbulence through her musical flight with a smooth landing on the rest of the album.
“That and Angie were the first two songs that made me feel like I finally wanted to make a full-length project,” Chica explains. “They both cradle different sides of the middle on the spectrum of organic to electronic which I really love. Creating more songs that fit in this world was the most exciting thing to me. If Pink Lemonade and Angie are grandma and grandpa, the rest of the album tracks are all the nieces and nephews.”
Classical Gas
As she put the album together, the influence of Bon Iver and Fleetwood Mac also saw Chica taking new inspiration in a much more traditional type of guitar – the nylon-string. It’s become a key plank to her sound.
“I feel like as of recent I’ve been really enjoying playing nylon,” she enthuses. “I love tuning all the strings to different places and experimenting, I love the idea that when I pick up that guitar again, it’s in a completely different tuning, and it’s almost like I don’t know how to play it anymore. It opens up a whole new world.”
“I picked up the guitar when I was 12 and learned my favorite Paramore and Coldplay songs by looking up the tabs online, and I think this independence and autonomy made me love it all the more. I started writing songs around that time as well”
Another song that showcases Chica’s love of an euphoric guitar solo is the track, De Guerre a headbanging and genre-bending kaleidoscope into a messy night out.
“De Guerre is my personal soundtrack to a chaotic night out on the town,” she explains. “Dancing, sweating, going absolutely feral, indulging in my vices, ignoring every consequence, and just being in my body. Mikey Freedom Heart played many of the riffy loud guitar parts, and Apob processed the shit out of it to make it sound like the glorious thing it is now.”
Visual Language
But Angie is about more than just the audio – the album also sports an interesting cover from artist Alex Rizik, which features hidden ‘Easter eggs’ tied to the album’s songs.
“Not only is [Rizk] an incredible painter with such a unique eye, but I felt so listened to and supported by her throughout the whole process of us collaborating on how we wanted the final forms to feel,” Chica says. “The album cover art is meant to feel busy and crazy and hectic, but also focused and present.”
Grief was a major theme in the album, reflecting on those we lose that may still be alive or have passed – an innate sense of what is to come when a chapter with someone closes. The album was made while Chica processed loss during various eras of her life.
“I found love then lost it, then found it again in friendships and relationships alike…I find myself referencing the body a lot, I think because I carry most of my emotions in my gut and my jaw,” she explains. “But in general, I love writing about the corporal sensations of love and loss, so that is a pattern I find that occurs often in this project.”
For Chica, dawn is a special time of the day that helps her focus on the mixed emotions that grief can bring – it’s a song that informs one of the albums standouts, Morning Dew.
“That’s the oldest song on the album, it’s also the most tender to me,” she admits. “I wrote it about missing someone that’s passed on, and those moments really early in the mornings when it’s cold and wet outside, and you think of them and wonder when the next time it is that you’ll meet again.”
This spring, Spill Tab heads across the ocean to tour the UK and Europe, but the grief and loss that has affected her hometown is still close to her thoughts, as a result, she’s suggesting that fans support her by considering a donation to the LA Fire Department Foundation, which you can find at the link here.
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