We caught up with the newly L.A.-based artist at End of the Road to talk writing process and touring in Europe.

One of our highlights of this year’s End of the Road was catching Prewn as part of the European leg of her tour for latest album ‘System’. The project of Izzy Hagerup, Prewn’s music growls as lo-fi guitars guide songs which incorporate a range of influences from folk melody to indi rock crescendos. It is her lyrics in particular which seem to speak to the present moment, instinctively interweaving personal introspection with critiques of the dynamics of late capitalist society and the creative industries within it. Following her set on the Garden stage last month, we caught up with Prewn to discuss her writing process, touring experiences and a recent move to L.A. from her home on the East Coast.

How do you find touring in the UK compared to the US? You have a different backing band for Europe shows, right?

Prewn: It’s a bit fluid, especially this round. The last tour the bassist and the guitarist were expecting a child – she was seven months pregnant and did a month-long tour with zero breaks! She just had her baby like two days ago, so I’ve got a different band right now. Little less time to prepare – I made this a bit more chaotic than it needs to be! But it’s been really fun and really cool to watch. It’s beautiful to see how people interpret the music and bring their own little thing to it. I’m learning a lot about the music and myself.

Does working under a stage name establish some separation between yourself and the project?

P: [Starting out] there was a lot of, like, ‘What does it mean to have it be my name or a different name?’ I kind of wanted it to be not my name necessarily and to keep it open. Like, I have a little bit of, ‘These are my babies!’ But I also don’t want to be limited to, ‘It’s the Izzy show’. I just want to keep it open and I do wanna collaborate with other people.

You have mentioned elsewhere about the influence that writing on cello has had on some of your music. How do you find writing across different instruments?

P: For the most part I usually put cello on after, like usually guitar is the base of it. But ‘System’ was a cool outlier. I did the first take on cello and then I threw it away and made a whole version with guitar. And then my friend was like, ‘Uh-uh, I like the cello one, you have to do that one!’ And I’m really glad I went with it. I wanna explore that more, [depending] what instrument you start each song with, it’s gonna be a different animal.

What does cello bring out compared with other instruments?

P: It kind of limits you in a way because you can’t just do chords and strum. I also don’t know how to play it as well as guitar, I have muscle memory from learning it growing up but I don’t totally know what I’m doing. Which is a cool freedom in some ways but also can be a bit limiting. I honestly haven’t written that many songs just on cello. But even when I’ve used like a midi keyboard or something – like ‘Cavity’… that only would have come alive through that [process].

Is there any particular instrument or style guiding your writing right now?

P: Whatever room I’m in I’m like ‘What do we have?’ And you’ve got to pick it up and see, like, ‘Are you gonna let me in?’ It’s kinda out of my hands. It’s cool to be travelling and I’m just borrowing people’s studios when I can… and I’m like, ‘What am I going to use today?’ I feel like my whole process with music is, like, as much as I wish I could control anything about it, that doesn’t work. I just have to put myself there – and make myself stay there – and then if I do eventually something happens.

You moved to L.A. recently, how has that influenced your work?

P: I moved there a year ago but haven’t been there much. I think I was there for like two weeks in the last six months. But it’s really nice, I’ve been doing sessions with different people and that is really new to me and cool and vulnerable. I’ve just been making things with different people and sometimes it’s like, ‘That’s a keeper’, and even if it’s not it’s like, the next day I go and write a song because the adrenalin and the vulnerability pulls something out. I’ve shied away from opening myself up to writing with other people because it’s hard to access the same level of creativity. But I’m working on it, it’s a muscle.

I read once that you sometimes like to go out of your way to do something just for the experience, perhaps with a view to it becoming a song. Is that still something you do?

P: I’ve been really living life with the motto of like, ‘Everything you fear: Do it.’ For the sake of music on some level but also for the sake of being a human and growing and finding yourself. I’m like, if I don’t put myself in the position to be forced to learn that, I’ll just hang out in bed. So I’m like, ‘I’m going to put myself in a situation that I don’t know if I can handle’ – and you get through it.

I haven’t had much time to write with touring so much right now but when I have I know that learning and growing is happening. Even though you always come back to yourself and, like, you get older but you’re gonna carry all your shit the whole way through. And maybe the whole point is really befriending whatever is in there.