Omaha, Nebraska’s Bad Self Portraits will perform at Kirby’s Beer Store Wednesday, September 17. The show is part of a brief regional run the group is undertaking to celebrate the release of its debut album, “I Think I’m Going To Hell,” which features lyrics that touch on a range of topics including grief, familial discord and religious trauma.
The record is also part of the Buy Before You Stream initiative which encourages music lovers to purchase music in physical format before they engage with the material on digital streaming platforms. The initiative allows artists a better chance at profiting from their creative work while also offering fans a physical artifact that won’t be inexplicable absent one day from a streaming platform.
“I Think I’m Going To Hell” is presently out in physical form and will hit streaming platforms later in September.
Bad Self Portraits bassist and vocalist Ingrid Howell recently spoke about the album’s lyrical themes and the decision to make a full-length release at this point in the band’s career.
The following interview has been edited for length and for clarity.
What made this the right time to make an album instead of an EP?
We did an EP called “Fear of Missing Out” [2022] and finally had a four-piece band. Cole Kempcke came into the band and we really found a groove. The writing became easier. He writes all day, every day so we had more material to work with. We kept coming up with songs and said, “If we want to be able to do tours and we want to play bigger shows and play longer sets where we can actually be a supporting band or headline, we’re going to need a longer setlist.”
There are some heavy lyrical themes on this album. Can you talk about those, at least for the songs that you wrote?
My style is very open and honest and the opposite of subtle. I find it very therapeutic to write through things because sometimes it makes me think about the harder topics in my life. It’s more about life is beautiful because we have those hard moments and then we have really soft moments and beautiful things. I find it therapeutic. When I don’t want to stay stuck in the feelings I have about really tough situations I tend to write about them a lot and think about them from other peoples’ perspectives. This album in particular, I feel like I really got into the nitty gritty of that.
It’s also about acknowledging that even if you haven’t made it all the way through some things yet you’re moving through them. “I moved 10 feet. I still have 15 feet to go but 10 feet’s not a small deal.”
No, it’s not a small deal. This record’s main theme is, “What do we do in the moments after the initial capital T or lowercase t trauma has happened?” We’re not in the thick of it but we either have some PTSD about it or some complex PTSD about it. How do we live after that? The song “Windowsill” is about [the question], “Will I get back who I was after this thing?” It’s likely that I won’t get back who I was but I also have gained a lot more as a person. That song is about someone passing and it’s hard to think about, “I wish I had back the person I was before I lost you.” That’s very complicated. I want this person back and general but then I think, “God, am I so selfish? Yeah, it sucks that this person died but I want myself back.” That’s hard to sit with. I feel like writing about those things makes them a little less hard to sit with. I do get people who will come up to me and say, “I felt similarly and now I don’t feel so alone for feeling those not as pretty feelings.”
Grief is so fascinating. There’s a difference when you lose someone suddenly or when you lose them slowly. I had a friend who got up one day, had a heart attack and that was it. No warning. In the years since, I’ve found different ways to remember him and to acknowledge his passing. I think if there had been a prolonged illness and there had been time to say goodbye, it would be different.
Grief is so interesting because there are these five stages. They’re not chronological, they all happen at once, you sit one with one longer than others at some times. It can be all consuming and yet comforting. It was very strange going through that whole process and I wanted people to feel the way that they’re feeling is valid.
You also deal with religious trauma on the album. There was something familiar about it. “Oh my God, I didn’t say my prayers. Did I kill my grandma?”
[Laughs.] Which is ironic because my grandma is the one who taught me how to pray! I called her my mor mor because I’m very Swedish. I would go stay at my grandparents’ house for a week in the summer and I think my siblings did the same. We each had a week or two with them. I was so afraid of going to hell that my mor mor would say, “Well, we’ll just say this prayer and we’re good to go.” I’d say, “I don’t think much has changed.” I was such an OCD baby undiagnosed that I prayed it every night for a really long time.
Religious trauma comes in all shapes and sizes and it’s not always the classic ones we think about. The record is called “I Think I’m Going To Hell” and the title track is mainly about how being undiagnosed neurodivergent growing up, I took a lot of things very literally that were said to me at church and the main message I took from church a lot of times was that God loves you so, so much. More than you can imagine but you should fear him and he’s going to let really mean things happen to you but that’s OK because he loves you so much. It really set me up to allow other adults treat me that way. They can do whatever they want, even if they don’t show me that they do, I’m being told that they love me so much so that they get away with doing awful things. It fueled that religious trauma of giving that green flag to red flag behavior.
Oh sure. It can be the same thing just in the home. I had to be very quiet as a child because my dad was resting because he mainly worked nights. It was a case of, “Dad works hard because he loves you and wants to provide for you,” but I had to spend a lot of time essentially being invisible.
My dad was a youth pastor and he was for 28 years or and it was very hard to share him. I thought, “Christianity is taking my dad away from me. He’s being a good dad to other peoples’ kids and he’s being a good friend to other people at the church. He’s being a good pastor to other people. But he’s missing my birthday a lot because he’s on a trip with other kids.” I felt so selfish because I wanted to take someone’s spiritual guide away because I wanted my dad around for my birthday or summer vacation.
There was anger in the household that almost always came from my mother and it was always, “I love you and that’s why I’m doing this.” That doesn’t make sense. It was very confusing. The song “All Bark No Bite” is a very factual thing about my birth mother. She just happens to be my mother but I am separate from her and although I happened to be born to her and she treated me this way does not mean that I deserved it and it doesn’t mean that I was doing anything as a child to deserve that treatment. There’s so much that I unpacked with this record and, like we talked about earlier, it’s not done yet. I’m still figuring it out. But I can make music in the meantime.
You now have this album, there’s a physical thing that represents your art but there’s also a physical thing that listeners can hold onto. For me, as a young music fan especially that was important because certain records were like friends. I could come home and my friend would be there waiting for me.
Kelly Clarkson. Any song that was like, “Spread my wings, learn how to fly.” I feel like Andy Dwyer on “Parcs and Rec” when he says, “I put those lyrics in every song!” That was me as a kid. “Are we spreading our wings and learning how to fly? I want to do that! Are we getting out of this city? Because that’s important!” Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway” [made me say], “Yes! We’re doing it!” That was so therapeutic. I would spend hours in my room just singing every song. I was so deeply connected to all of them. They were my jams.
