Neptune’s Core, “Pivot”
Neptune’s Core was one of Chicago’s best rock groups to begin with. But the two sets of sisters tell me virtually, while seated on a beige living room couch in one of their families’ homes, that their newfound sound is such a pivot for them that they considered changing the band’s name to Pivot.
Instead of changing the band’s name, they named what is being marketed as their debut full-length album “Pivot.” While their original fans are likely to love this new music, it’s also likely to draw in many converts. “Pivot” is produced and mixed by Scott Tallarida at Trigger Chicago, co-owned by Scott and his wife, Julie. Tallarida also produced “Where we’ve been, Where we go from here,” the 2024 debut album from fellow Chicagoan up-and-comers Friko. Given where Friko went from there, playing an attention-grabbing slot at Lollapalooza in Grant Park that year, I can’t help but hope that this “Pivot” will ignite a similar spotlight on Neptune’s Core.
Lead guitarist and vocalist Jackie Cywinski says the conversations that led to the album’s title were “really about rebranding. We were talking with labels, building out a team, making music that felt more like ourselves. We had been talking about how this would be a ‘pivot’ for the band, and… since this is such a pivot, what should we name the album?” She continues that when the album was finished, it set “in stone that this is a new sound for us; this is how we want to be presented; this is our new image.”
Bassist and backing vocalist Hannah Richter originated the idea of calling this new sound a “pivot.” The band was originally going to call the record “Cut My Garden Bare,” after one of the songs they recorded. “As much as I love that song,” Hannah recounts that “I don’t think it’s the star track. It’s an excellent song, but there are others like ‘Lemon Car,’ ‘Easel’ and ‘Arc,’ which are the three singles.” The latest single, released July 21, is “Arc.” Hannah doubted if the band should build around the name “Cut My Garden Bare”: “I was thinking of band names, because I was maybe interested in changing the band name, and I thought ‘Pivot’ kind of sounded cool.” Of course, they discovered in that process that there are plenty of other acts called Pivot, not to mention Chicago’s Pivot Gang.
Why did the quartet retain the gravitational pull to Neptune’s Core, aside from their monopoly on the moniker? Lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Sofie Richter says “it’s largely part of our identity, and it has a nice ring to it. We’ve had the name for years at this point, and we’re just known as Neptune’s Core in Chicago. It’s hard as a small band to change your name when every person who knows you counts.”
“Personally, there was an era where I was almost embarrassed of the name,” Jackie says, but then she realized that “there’s no point in being embarrassed… It’s an awesome name. We’ve solidified ourselves as Neptune’s Core, and as long as we embrace it, there’s absolutely nothing embarrassing about it.”
Neptune’s Core/Photo: Miles Kalchik
Drummer Kaitlin Cywinski says that when they formed, “there wasn’t really too much thought or meaning put behind it. When we came up with the name, we were just playing music in middle school, doing some open mics, and we needed a name. We were all captivated by space themes, and Neptune’s Core had a ring to it. It’s a gas planet, and it’s kind of hard to tell what the core even is. It turns out it’s one of the densest materials in the known universe, which is cool, but we didn’t know that at the time.” She continues that there’s “not too much meaning behind it, but I guess it can be kind of cool that we’re constantly discovering new parts of ourselves as a band—and that’s kind of reflected in the journey with our name.”
“We thought it was kind of empty or mysterious at first, but it turned out to be the exact opposite,” Sofie concludes.
It’s been three years since I last had the chance to speak with members of Neptune’s Core, and then only with the younger sisters Hannah Richter and Jackie Cywinski. Older sister Sofie Richter was in Spain studying marine biology, while older sister Kaitlin Cywinski was in Costa Rica at the time, describing her experience as “life-changing” and “beautiful.” “I really discovered my interest in environmental engineering, which is what I’m doing now,” she recalls, alluding to beginning her junior year at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign this fall.
Sofie is enrolled at McGill University in Montreal, entering her third year as well, studying English literature and “a bit of mathematics.” Jackie will be a first-year student at Syracuse, focusing on the music business. “I wanted to stick with something music-related, where my experience with Neptune’s Core could help,” she explains. “And then that could help me figure out the business side of Neptune’s Core too.”
Hannah, the youngest of the sisters, is starting her senior year of high school, and looking ahead, is considering a major in political science. She lists her current “top three choices” for college as McGill, the University of Wisconsin in Madison or the University of Washington in Seattle.
I promise the band I wouldn’t harp on their age, given I know they’re sick of being asked about it. But knowing the above four points in their educational matriculation helps explain why their new album releases August 7, while the record-release show won’t happen until December 29. That’s when they’re all free during their respective winter breaks.
While the finite nature of time and space limit our discussion, the band walks me through some of my favorite moments on “Pivot” beginning with the three singles released to date. I begin by asking who selected the particular songs to be singles, and why they were chosen.
Jackie says the four band members selected the singles, explaining that “we wanted songs that were catchy and would hook an audience with this new sound, but also songs with a message that carried through what we want the album to say. ‘Lemon Car,’ ‘Easel’ and ‘Arc’ do a really good job of that.” They weren’t hesitant about soliciting recommendations, though, especially when the songs perk up fresh ears. “When you’re writing the songs, it’s hard to hear them from an outsider’s perspective. We have our own feelings about them and have heard them so many times. So hearing from outsiders what would catch their ear, what would make them interested in the larger record, was very helpful. We asked a lot of family and friends, management, PR, our whole team, and ended up on those three songs.”
Kaitlin adds that she finds it interesting that each of those three songs came from different recording sessions. She adds that “when we started out, it wasn’t really a full plan to make a record and release it—we were recording songs to have in case we wanted to release them. There was no established plan yet. As we kept going back into the studio, we got a fuller picture of how we wanted to present these songs. It’s really cool that each single just happened to come from a different recording session, and I think it shows that our new sound throughout the record is consistent in how we’ve been crafting the songs melodically, emotionally and lyrically.”
While Illinois is one of many states with a lemon law, it’s hard to dissect the meaning of the first single “Lemon Car” without getting hooked by this screwy earworm. Infectious to the max, the chorus is liable to drill into a listener’s head for days. While the band says that running a lemonade stand (plus “fantastic lemon cookies”) outside Thalia Hall was a gimmick their management dreamt up, Sofie says it “was totally a hit.”
She continues that she thought it was the “perfect way” to begin their appearance opening for Twin Peaks midway through their sold out seven-night reunion residency in May—”a whimsical start,” she calls it, for a night she describes as “incredible,” saying it “only got better” from there. Regrettably, I miss the opportunity to ask them about one of the genres their promo people are putting them in—“Lemon Rock,” but I’m pretty sure that’s just a joke anyway.
Neptune’s Core/Photo: Braeden Long
Although born from a misunderstanding of a painter’s tools, Sofie says that the lyrics of the second single “Easel” is a metaphor for “when you’re performing, you think it’s about the finished, perfect product. But the real beauty and magic isn’t about the perfection you’re putting out there—it’s the honesty from you. It’s the whole picture. Not just the beautiful painting you’re looking at, but what’s holding it up. There’s more behind the scenes, and the imperfections can be the true beauty.”
On their most recent single, “Arc,” the quartet begin with a pulsing, rudimentary guitar rhythm, then swiftly builds up using Neptune’s Core’s vocal harmonies, led by Sofie’s powerful and characteristically dramatic alto and backed with subtle sing-along parts, counter-melodies and running dialogues between the lead and backing vocals. After a frenzied series of screams, Kaitlin’s drums pummel “Arc” into submission, and all that can be heard is an eardrum buzz.
I don’t disagree when Jackie says that “Arc” starts like a roller coaster. “You know when you’re going up to the big drop and you hear that chugging from the tracks? That’s what it sounds like. It builds suspense, and then it just launches you into a very intense, emotionally driven but melodic song. The guitars are dirtier than usual, but there’s also a lot of fun melodies. And there’s this back-and-forth dynamic.” Both guitarists are “giving it everything. It’s full of energy and dynamics.” She says it’s one of her favorites on “Pivot.”
Kaitlin describes the recording process for “Arc” as challenging and distinct from their usual writing process, and Jackie, Sofie and Hannah all agree. “We put it together mostly in the studio,” Kaitlin recounts. “Sofie brought the root and the seed of the song in, and we built on it there.” Although coming up with the drum part live during the recording was challenging, “I loved it for that song, because there are so many moving parts. It feels dynamic and explosive. We would do a take, listen back, and I’d be like, wait, I don’t like that drum part, and try something else.
“That’s not something I typically do,” she says. “I usually play what feels best based on instinct. But having this different perspective allowed for really intentional drum parts. I even play a really simple straight beat through one part of the song, because we were going to flesh it out with guitars and synths in the recording. ‘Arc’ was a really special song,” she concludes, “because we were writing with the intention to record and not just going by how it feels in the moment.”
“Something else that was special,” Sofie says, was that “[the song] took us so long to mix, because we were constantly butting heads with [their producer] Scott. We just had different ideas for the vision. So ‘Arc’ is probably my favorite on the album, because we did eventually figure it out and it worked out so beautifully. I can’t imagine it sounding any different.”
Kaitlin says about the way that “Arc” ends: “It was the eighth take of officially doing it after we’d decided what it was going to be. And the ending is so intense for the drums. I was like, I physically cannot do another take, even though I don’t even know if this is the right one.” All four of them concluded that “that’s going to have to be it,” as she describes it. If you listen for those drums at the conclusion, I’m sure you’ll pick up on those emotions too.
Following that, “Tethered” begins deceptively, as if a welcome reprieve from the previous cut, Sofie throwing her pearls into the ring to be considered the next Janis Joplin. Then the song climbs a dramatic mountain to vocal heights of screamo passion that could only be echoed from the canyons of Courtney Love’s nightmares.
Sofie says the song begins “Tethered” a capella because “I wrote the song mostly a capella,” just sitting on her bed. She describes writing the song as “a very casual moment, though I was obviously distressed. I was writing as I went and using a voice memo to remember the melody.” She goes on to say that she “wanted the vocals to speak for themselves. It’s a very vocal-heavy song and the vocals are layered with emotion, so giving them that introduction felt right. It’s a rare thing. I don’t think we do that in many other songs. And it’s always great to mix up the way you start a song.”
Neptune’s Core/Photo: Miles Kalchik
“Pivot” concludes with yet another pivot: a quiet acoustic song called “Skeleton” that lead guitarist and vocalist Jackie wrote and sings lead on. I wanted to know why the choice was made to end the album with that one.
“That’s the only song on the record that I wrote,” Jackie recounts. “It felt very stripped down, intimate and raw, which was something we knew we wanted to include on the album, and it just made sense that it was the last one. We start the album with something that’s just harmonies and a little bit quieter [“Mind Blinker”], so we wanted to bookend it with ‘Skeleton,’ which starts a little melancholic and eerie, and talks about anything you could be going through: disassociation, family, loss, all the hard things everyone has to face in life. But it ends on a very positive note. I think it ties the album together. You’ll go through all this stuff we laid out in the album very transparently and emotionally, and then it ends with a more motivational tone, which felt quite fitting.”
Having heard the record end to end—spoiler alert: it’s all good—I interject at one point in our conversation to ask if they agree with my preliminary assessment: that “Pivot” finds Neptune’s Core delivering their musical skills with a newfound ferocity.
Thankfully, Sofie says I’m “spot on.” She argues that Neptune’s Core has “become more comfortable experimenting, and I think this relates a lot to our performance. We’ll just be more ferocious on stage. We really rock out up there. We look to each other and lift each other up.”
Jackie calls it being “more intentional with what we’re making, and I feel like that’s translated into a level of intensity. We’re being so particular about the parts we’re creating that we want to give them everything we have. In the past we obviously gave everything we could, but as we’ve matured, there’s more to give, and that really translates into the music.”
Kaitlin says it’s “a sense of confidence that’s developed both in our individual playing and among the four of us—not just playing live, but also in the studio. Just getting our bearings, understanding how to get a certain sound. Having the confidence to even communicate a certain sound or feeling we want to convey in the studio has helped build that intensity.”
“Thinking about the studio progression specifically with vocals,” Sofie shares, “I used to just go into the vocal booth and sing it straight through, and being on key was all that mattered.” She may be downplaying her vocal talent a little bit there, evident on the band’s earlier recordings. Based on the songs on “Pivot,” Sofie Richter should be given her own Richter scale.
“But now we’ll be in the studio,” she continues, “and Scott will be back there like: ‘No, give it more, give it less, be decisive with it—that’s the story you’re trying to tell with your emotion.'” It’s clear that, as Sofie says, “a lot of thought went into this. We really put everything into these songs.”
When I spoke to Hannah and Jackie three years ago, they said that Neptune’s Core’s communication dynamic between all four members bordered on the telepathic. Now that the senior half of the band is attending college outside of Chicago, has that connection been lost?
Sofie says that just the opposite has proven true. Their connections are now “stronger than ever,” she responds, and growing more “powerful with each year” that passes. “The distance is an obstacle,” she acknowledges, but she says it’s “amazing” to decide “to keep overcoming the distance.” This “means we really care about this band and about each other, and there’s nothing we’d rather do.”
Jackie, the younger Cywinski, who begins her college experience this fall, adds that “distance ‘makes the heart grow fonder’ in this situation. The distance has made us appreciate our time together more—we’re very productive and make the most of it. When we’re in the studio for two weeks, and we know that’s our only time together for the next few months, we’re able to turn out five, ten songs, record them all and make the most of it, because it’s what we love to do together.”
When the four members of Neptune’s Core “are together, even if it’s rare,” Sophie supplements, “it feels like we have so much pent-up creative energy that it all just comes spilling out. We’d get together and suddenly have four songs written in a day in the studio. And the songs didn’t feel rushed or too similar; they were each distinct, each important on their own. I feel like we have a certain amount of creative energy and it doesn’t really change whether we’re together or not. And I think that’s also a testament to the close relationship we have with each other. It’s kind of a sisterhood. The distance has been hard on and off, but we’ve managed.”
Does it take time to get back in the groove? Is there a learning curve when they reconvene in a rehearsal or studio space?
Kaitlin, the elder Cywinski, responds that “there’s not really a learning curve. We’re constantly growing and evolving as people and musicians. But when we’re together, no matter where we are on our own personal journeys since the last time we saw each other, we gel really quickly. Even over the distance, we’re always keeping each other updated on life and communicating. It never feels awkward. If someone’s having an off day, we can understand and balance each other out. There’s a really nice constant flow.”
Jackie says it’s like “the sister thing. When you’ve had an argument with your siblings or been away from them for a while, you see them and snap right back into normal conversation. That’s how we are with our creative process.”
“A benefit of the sisterhood we have is that it creates a healthy space for any sort of argument,” Sofie adds. “We communicate effectively and don’t take things too personally. There’s no grudge. That’s the benefit of being sisters, because sisters are going to have arguments. That’s just what humans do. But nothing is pent up. I always feel like I can say what’s on my mind. I feel very comfortable around these people.”
And, Kaitlin says, “if it’s a more serious issue—like some sort of lack of communication happening over the distance—that’s something we can talk through in a thoughtful, well-communicated manner.”
There was nothing wrong with Neptune’s Core before their “Pivot,” but with this new album, this sisterhood has revealed a new depth to their sound. There’s a multidimensional and sophisticated approach to their songwriting and sonic delivery that rewards repeated listens, and at times even astounds these ears. Crank “Pivot” up on your speakers, or hear the hidden subtleties through your headphones—either effort will yield results worth celebrating and sharing. The new effort elicits the early excitement and energy of discovering PJ Harvey and Sleater-Kinney in my mind. That is not something I would have said about Neptune’s Core before hearing “Pivot.”
Hear Neptune’s Core together again, with their pivoting musical approach, when the album “Pivot” is released via Shuga Records on Friday, August 7. See them play live at their record release show on Tuesday, December 29 at Lincoln Hall.
The band will also be performing at the Edgewater Music Festival on Sunday, August 30.
“Pivot” will receive a pink-and-white marbled vinyl limited-edition release exclusively via Rough Trade on Friday, October 2, and the band will be performing at the Rough Trade store at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan in New York City on Friday, October 9.
