The thing about finding yourself is there’s always another corner to turn. While recording, Cooper assumed production duties for the first time in her career, which enabled her to work bold new textures into each song. Together with co-producer Dan Molad (Lucius, JD McPherson), she wrung entirely new sounds out of her guitar with studio equipment she’d never tried before. For the album’s bristlingly optimistic title track, Cooper ran her guitar through a Kaoss pad synthesizer while Molad captured the sound by swinging a microphone around the room. They visited the War on Drugs’ studio to record feedback from Marshall amplifier stacks. Rather than focusing solely on composition and performance, Cooper took a sculptural and procedural approach to production. “Instead of writing my guitar parts note by note, I was experimenting on the spot,” she says. “It opened my mind up – and it felt really good.” Despite its boisterousness and verve, New Day was originally born in a quiet place. A longtime guitarist who found her first musical home in Nashville’s Americana scene, Cooper taught herself to play the piano during lockdown, opening up brand new creative channels outside her usual writing practices. She didn’t have to worry about disturbing her neighbors with an amplified electric guitar, and the process of learning an instrument while simultaneously writing on it unearthed an almost childlike sense of discovery. The piano proved to be a loyal friend during a profoundly alienating time. “It felt like someone I could lean on – like the piano was my voice when I couldn’t talk or sing,” says Cooper. As songs started to trickle out, Cooper flew back and forth to Los Angeles to record with Molad, who engineered her 2021 album Hot Sass. The first song they recorded together was the riotous new wave number “Boy Toy,” where Cooper fully ignites her confidence as an openly queer performer. “I wrote ‘Boy Toy’ the night before we went into the studio. It was totally random, not at all planned,” says Cooper. “I met up with my friend Caroline Kingsbury, and we were like, Let’s make a fun song that’s just super direct and sexy and big. It felt so powerful and free to start there.” Over time, Cooper built out the songs she had written and demoed in New York. Slow and sparse sketches became big, buoyant anthems. She looked to early Beck records for inspiration as she crafted New Day’s crisp, high-contrast sound. On the album’s lead single and title track, fuzz bass churns underneath twinkling synths and binaural backing vocals. Piano and strings take center stage on the swelling “IDFK,” one of many songs inflected by Lou Reed’s classic album Coney Island Baby, which Cooper played on repeat while living in Brooklyn. The bittersweet “Sorry (That I Love You)” conjures the extremesof a troubled relationship over warm, vintage-toned guitar and bass, while closer “Baby Steps” wraps the album on a hopeful note: “I’ve made mistakes / I’m only human / These baby steps / Lead me to you,” she sings at the love song’s sweetly irresistible hook. “I struggled so much while writing this record,” Cooper says. “I felt like I wasn’t allowed to come out – I was dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia. Celebrating my queerness and understanding who I am has been a long process. Every day is a new day of coming out to myself and to everyone around me. I’m very proud to be making music that feels honest to me and my experience.” No matter how many times you change, no matter how many hours you commit to improving yourself, each new phase in a life is still only a prelude to the next one. With New Day, Cooper captures the unfurling transformations that revealed her to herself – and leaves the door wide open for all the people she’s still yet to become.
