In February, indie musician B.Miles headlined a show at Manhattan’s Mercury Lounge. It was her band’s first live performance in almost a year and a half.
I stood a few feet away from the stage during the sold-out show, mesmerized by the colored lights flashing in sync with the dreamy synth melody. B.Miles, the eponymous lead singer, wore a cropped button down and a tie. Her voice was sultry and warm, evoking the feeling of hazy underground clubs, incense and shared cigarettes. The turtlenecked synth player sneakily hit his vape between songs, so maybe the cigarettes aren’t too far off.
The moniker comes from B.Miles’ former university email, one of many gifts she received from the University of Miami’s music program. The other gifts: the bandmates she’s been performing alternative music with for almost a decade. Alongside B.Miles, the New York City based five-piece ensemble consists of Eric Nizgretzky (bass), Rob Seeley (lead guitar), Jackson Firlik (drums) and Matias Quarleri (guitar and synth).
A week after the concert, I chatted with B.Miles on Zoom, a meeting arranged via a shot-in-the-dark Instagram DM and a stroke of good luck. A week after that, her latest single, “The Year I Felt Cool,” was released, the first in a slew of musical projects planned for 2023. But that day, as she signed onto the Zoom call from her Clinton Hill apartment, it wasn’t B.Miles who I spoke to – it was Brenna.
How did B.Miles get started?
Eric Nizgretzky is my songwriting partner, and he’s also the bass player in the band. He and I met in this really small program at Miami. It was a singer-songwriter program. There were about five of us, and we had every single class together every single day. He lived above me in the dorms so we became really fast friends.
We started writing music together and then we decided, ‘You know, what if we did this for real and we actually wrote music together to be released?’ So we started writing seriously, we started playing shows, and we met Rob [Seeley] – who’s the lead guitarist of the band. Our first show ever in New York was actually at Mercury Lounge. I was still living in L.A., and I flew out to New York for the show and that’s when Jackson [Firlik] started playing with us.
That was in 2015, 2016, so we’ve been playing music together forever. And then Matias Quarleri – who was playing keys and synth at the show – we met maybe like five-ish years ago, maybe six. He produced a couple of B.Miles songs individually on the second EP [extended play] and then he and Jackson both co-produced the album in 2020.
Do you come from a musical family?
I do! Not professionally in any way, but my family is very musical. My dad is from London so he’s obsessed with the Beatles; it’s basically all we listened to in the house growing up. He also loves classical music, so I grew up going to a lot of classical concerts and operas and whatnot. My mom is a ballerina, so lots of different music in the house. When I went to high school, I was involved in the choirs and musical theater and all that kind of stuff. I have an older sister, and she was always the dancer of the family.
You went to the University of Miami, but you’re not from Florida, right?
No, I grew up in L.A. My mom is from there originally, and I moved to New York right after I graduated college. I met the whole band in college. We were all in music school together, and they were all from the East Coast – most of them from Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, so it was easy for them all to mosey on over to the city. It was either just me move over [to New York] or all of them move over to L.A., and it kind of just made the most sense for me to be the single one that had to move here. I’ve been here for about seven years.
In a previous interview, you mentioned working a day job to supplement being a musician. Is that still what you’re doing?
It’s still what I’m doing – it’s still what all of the band is doing. When we moved to New York after college, we all had to make this decision of what kind of job we were going to have to support ourselves while we were chasing music. My band and I all have separate nine to five jobs. There’s not as much flexibility but I know that at 5 p.m. I’m done and most music stuff happens at night, so it was kind of an easy decision for us to make. Every Monday through Friday we’re all doing our day jobs and then come 5 p.m., we all become our actual selves.
So the last time you guys performed live was over a year ago. Is there a particular reason for that?
We’ve been working on new music and the band produces the album. My drummer Jackson – his music name is “Great Barrier” – he’s kind of been the head production point for the B.Miles music over the last couple of years. He produced the last album as well. And it’s just a lot to have to prepare for a show and work on an [new music] at the same time.
So you released your first album during this period of not performing–
We released the first album during, like, peak COVID in October of 2020 and [live] music still wasn’t really a thing because we were locked inside. And, yes, the vaccines came out but everybody was still kind of iffy about doing things, so we kind of just immediately got back in the studio. We put out the album and then it was back to work. We got into this groove of writing these new songs and starting to demo them and everything, and it just kind of made sense to keep on keeping on with that route before jumping back into live.
And that was your debut album! What was it like not being able to perform it?
It was weird! I had always dreamed of what an album release show would be like. I’ve attended so many of them – release shows – over the last however many years I’ve lived here and so I had this idea in my head of what it would look like. And then when COVID hit we were already preparing to release the album in October. And we had this moment where we didn’t know if we should release it or not or if we should hold on. Eventually, we decided, ‘Let’s just release it. We don’t want to wait any longer. Who knows what’s going to happen with COVID – when things are going to be normal again?’
We did record a live show. There was just no audience. We have a full show – no stops from top to bottom – of the full album on YouTube. It’s called “Opening Night.” I’m happy that we have it because it is kind of a treasure piece that we definitely wouldn’t have if we had done a regular live show. But, yes, I was definitely hoping to do a normal live show for the album.
Your most popular song, “Salt,” is turning eight years old this year. How has your musical style and approach changed since then?
When we recorded the first three songs that B.Miles ever put out, with “Salt” being in there, we were working with a production duo called Noise Club. We were really trying to discover what the sound of B.Miles was. Something that I very much enjoy about the project of B.Miles is that we’ve continued to evolve and not just stay exactly in one type of sound. I feel like for “Salt” and for those early songs that were released, it was really about simplicity and sultriness and a hauntingness.
And I feel like in the last album that was released – the debut album – that album was meant to sound grittier and busier and harsher – more like a punch in the face. And I’d say what we’re currently working on is almost like a combination of both of those, with a lighter mood. I feel like the sound has definitely changed but we do keep certain elements throughout all of the releases. I feel like something we’ve always tried to stick to is this Western twang flair, just to bring some of my West Coast roots over to New York. That’s something we’ve always loved like that dirty cowboy sound.
After we release this new project, I’m interested to see what kind of sound we start thinking about moving forward and if we want to continue to keep that Western flair in there, here and there, or if that’s something that we’re like, ‘You know what, we did that for a while. Let’s move on to something else.’