GOODTWIN is the sonic brainchild of Augusta “Gus” Alexander, an artist who didn’t venture into the world of music creation until adulthood. Now, it’s almost as if she’s making up for lost time, having released a steady flow of music since the band’s inception. Their latest single, “Fool,” came out Nov. 14, and it’s thoughtfully crafted to encapsulate the intense feeling of anxiety and what it takes to let it all go.

Recently, Gus answered a few of my questions about the single, her processes and the band’s current activity.

YY: GOODTWIN’s sound is described as blending soul, funk and classic rock with a contemporary indie feel. How do the influences you grew up on — specifically the music of the ’60s and ’70s — manifest in the band’s songwriting and arrangement today, especially when cultivating something “evergreen?”

GA: I think we make songs that young people can relate to, but so can their parents. We fit in the current music landscape, but could’ve also existed in the past. We want the lyrics to hit, as well as the beat, the instrumentation. To me, that’s very much alive in the music of the ’60s and ’70s – Pink Floyd, Blind Faith, Soft Machine, so many interesting sounds happening! But we bring multiple influences to our songwriting. A couple of our original band members are also heavily influenced by artists like Connan Mockasin and even jazz and free jazz artists like Django Reinhardt and Sonny Simmons. And that’s present in the sound we create.

You describe yourself as a “late bloomer,” whose shift into songwriting and collaboration happened in adulthood during the pandemic. How did this unique timing influence the band’s initial creative focus, particularly the lyrical thread surrounding time and its fleeting nature, while ensuring you stay focused on “the present moment?”

I spent most of my 20s in a high-stakes job where I didn’t prioritize art very much. I always sang and learned how to play songs, but I rarely wrote my own and kept things mostly to myself. Luckily, my longtime boss encouraged me to explore music more deeply, so I finally took a songwriting class, maybe weeks before the pandemic hit. That was just enough to make me think that songwriting was something I could actually do.

During the pandemic, I was in a little ‘pod’ with my boyfriend and one of my best friends, both of whom are strong musicians, and we all had similar tastes. So we started making stuff. And playing around. And that’s what eventually became GOODTWIN. Our lyrics surrounding time being fleeting are likely the result of writing a lot during the pandemic. That was also a time when I lost a beloved friend to an overdose. So there’s a lot of him – me processing losing him in the lyrics as well. I’m one of those people who are constantly reminded of how temporary things are. My brain just goes there. I know a lot of people’s minds go there. It’s a big part of life.

“Fool” transforms anxious self-doubt into a “joyfully freeing” release. Since the track is inspired by experiences with performance anxiety, what did the songwriting process for figuring out those emotions look like for you, and how does that translate to what your audience takes away?

I’m still very much figuring it out. But it felt good to write a song with simple lyrics that were directly about this worry a lot of us experience, and one that will often creep up on me after performing. This is often an unnecessary fear that we’re making a fool of ourselves. And to plant it into a dancey tune also felt right, so there’s an opportunity to sort of dance it away. The lyrics are anxious, but the music is boppy and fun. My hope is that people who hear it can recognize that anxious part of themselves in it and embrace the levity that the song tries to encourage. Hopefully, it helps people let go and breathe a bit easier.

I read that your sound is loosely inspired by contemporaries like Her’s and Men I Trust, with lyricism reminiscent of Sade. How do you approach balancing those distinct influences to create a sound that is all your own?

Those inspirations are more things that we realize after writing. In the attempt to analyze our sound, we’ve realized that we have a similar vibe to Men I Trust. And Sade is more representative of our emotionally resonant aspects and our inclusion of saxophone. In the case of the band, Her’s. Her’s is one of our favorites, and we were listening to them a lot in 2019 and 2020.

We have an unreleased song called “Boys of Her’s” that we wrote as an ode to them. We were discovering their music, and the fact that they died so tragically. And we wrote a song where parts of the melody are heavily inspired by their single “Harvey.” Our opening lyrics are, “Poor Harvey, he’s got no friends to play with anymore. And Pierce Brosnan, whatever happened to his form…those boys of Hers.”

The band Her’s sometimes had a cardboard cutout of Pierce Brosnan with them - so we added that as a kind of easter egg. They were also an early inspiration for us because the first iteration of our band was just a singer, guitarist, and bassist with a drum machine. And we really loved the way that they were able to create such a full and interesting sound with a similar setup.