On Freak Slug’s eclectic debut album, I Blow Out Big Candles, Manchester-based songwriter and musician Xenia Genovese captures her free-spirited personality and the quintessential twenty-something experience in her brilliantly chaotic and energetic material. In showing all sides of her charismatic and fun-loving essence, Genovese–self-taught in her musical expression–dances between several styles from claustrophobic nocturnal dance-fused beats, dream-pop, lo-fi guitar melodies and denser grunge-inflected arrangements tied together by her infectious performance and proficiency in crafting a lasting hook-filled chorus. The variety of style and texture employed throughout Freak Slug’s music perhaps reflects her sensibilities as a visual artist in how she approaches a blank canvas with a completely unfiltered and unrestrained hand. I Blow Out Big Candles is a striking introductory statement from Genovese, one that invites audiences into Freak Slug’s world and takes them on an unforgettable adventure filled with drunken nights out, fleeting romantic encounters and allowing herself to embrace all emotions and experiences in the moment fully.

Surrounded by her paintings adorning the walls of her Manchester-based living room, Xenia Genovese spoke to Northern Transmissions, via Zoom, about playing shows in America for the first time, finding her voice in music and always looking forward to the future of Freak Slug.

NT: Hey Xenya, your debut Freak Slug album has been out for a little while and you’ve been playing some shows. How has it been seeing people respond to I Blow Out Big Candles?

Freak Slug: Yeah, it’s been great. The American tour went really well, people were singing along to it. It’s been so much fun.

NT: They were your first shows in the U.S. last December? How did they differ from UK audiences?

Freak Slug: Yeah, it was really good because most of my fans are over in the States, to be honest. It’s how it’s always been, so it was a long time getting to play shows in America. It went down really well and they really loved it. It was great, better than expected. Well, to be honest, I wasn’t really expecting anything. I never really expect much!

NT: The album is so eclectic with all of the different styles and moods you create from start to finish. Can you tell me about the process of making it and what were some of the learning curves you met during the experience?

Freak Slug: Yeah, interesting learning curves. I don’t know about learning curves, but I feel like I keep getting better and better at making music. It’s a good question because at the moment I’m always thinking about new stuff. I’m always two steps ahead. That album was just fun. It was my first album so I was just figuring out things for the first time in terms of making a bigger body of work. I’m very ADHD so I get very bored quite easily so I want to make music that people can’t get bored of. That’s why the album is so mental, but I’m cool with that. An album doesn’t have to be anything in particular, I can make an album whatever the fuck I want it to be. I’m genuinely comfortable with the chaos.

NT: It has so much personality and seems like a perfect snapshot of you at this point in your life and I can absolutely imagine that people listening to it will see themselves in these songs in a very authentic way.

Freak Slug: Yeah, I always just go for it in the moment. I don’t really hold myself back. If I have an argument with someone, I’ll be writing about that within half an hour. I’m very, very active. If I’m feeling anger, I love to channel that shit. Anger is one of my favorite emotions to channel creatively because anger is creation, fire is creation. I work with that fire energy and it always does me well.

NT: You mention getting bored easily and moving on to the next thing. Does that mean that you have a number of songs that you’ve started and maybe gotten fed-up or frustrated with and have put them to one side to revisit at a later date?

Freak Slug: I always finish songs. Going forward with the next album, I’m really honing a sound. It’s going to be amazing. That’s going to be a new experience for me which I’m so excited about. I’m already writing the next album and the next EP is already done. I’m writing albums in this living room right now. But if I do put a song aside, I try to think that if it’s a very good song and it sounds like it will stand the test of time and it can fit somewhere in an album if it’s very good and it works then I’ll go with it. I don’t lose many songs, but it’s okay if you do as well because that’s part of creation because not everything you make is going to work in a way that it needs to for its intended purpose. I’m completely cool with that. It’s all part of growth and creative growth and it’s an experiment nonetheless. That can help get you to some work that will be successful.

NT: You lived in Barcelona before returning to Manchester. You also lived in London and, talking about being in America at the end of last year, I’m curious to hear about how all of those different places and creative scenes informed your relationship with music and creativity because you’re also a visual artist.

Freak Slug: London is where I started; that’s where I really opened up to the visual scene and the art scene. I was mostly surrounded by visual artists even though I was always making music in my bedroom at night. I was around so many talented painters and video makers and performance artists. It’s hard not to be inspired. I’m really influenced by the energy of cities. Obviously, London is quite reserved and sometimes it’s hard to get authenticity from people you meet on the street unless you know them. Which is difficult because I’m from Manchester where everything is very chill and real.

Barcelona inspired me, in a different way. When you move away somewhere alone or you travel alone, you don’t know many people. That gave me the opportunity to be alone and figure out… Well, to be honest, I figured out that I wanted to do music more. It was in Barcelona that I really tried to make painting work but the stars were not aligning and I was so angry because I really wanted to be a painter. That’s when I gave music a chance and by the time I got home within the year things were moving very quickly with music. I decided to go with that flow and trust that.

NT: With that frustration from your painting career not taking off and turning to music, what were those initial weeks and months of focusing on music as your main creative outlet like and how were you feeling?

Freak Slug: It happened very naturally. Basically, what happened was I tried to do painting in Barcelona but it’s such a hard place to make a career in general, let alone if you don’t speak Catalan. It’s a very challenging place to earn a decent living, I was so poor there. I released a song whilst I was there; I produced it and mastered it in my bedroom and it did well. That gave me the incentive to keep going and do more. I came back to Manchester and started collaborating with an artist called Niquo and then we made some songs and they blew-up. I didn’t really understand the magnitude of what that meant at the time because it was so like but then I was like ‘Shit, okay, maybe I’ll give music a go!’. It was kind of like that and I was like ‘Am I really doing this? Am I doing music now?’ It took me a really long time to believe it. Even now it’s so funny. It’s so funny what spirit has had in store for me this whole time. I could never have imagined it to be such a shocker. I didn’t expect this!

NT: How different is your mode of self-expression and general processing of experiences in your visual art and music?

Freak Slug: It satisfies me more making music. It really satiates my emotions. When I make music and listen to it after it therapizes me more than a therapist could do. I really see everything that I feel and I get to feel my emotions again and again, which is something that I struggle to do in day to day life. I’m a Capricorn which means that I’m very work-oriented. I basically don’t feel a lot so when I listen to my music that actually gives me the opportunity to sit there with my feelings and actually realize the depths of my emotions and the story I’ve lived and things like that.

One of my best friends is an amazing painter and she gets what I get from music with her paintings. Clearly, this is my mode of communication, at least for now.

NT: Across the album, you exist within so many different genres and eras. “Hello” made me think of Elizabeth Fraser’s (Cocteau Twins) distinctive vocal stylings.

Freak Slug: Yeah, that ended-up being such a dreamy one. I love that song. That’s one of the best ones to play live, as well. I love the dreamy shoegaze stuff. That’s where I can really drown myself in feeling. I love that fucking drama so much. I don’t necessarily want to recreate it too much. It’s been and done. I don’t want to always be recreating the old dramas, but that is one of my favorite fucking sounds ever.

NT: Finally, you’ve released your debut album, you’ve had an American tour and you mentioned earlier that you already have the next EP ready and the next album is in the works. What are some of the goals for Freak Slug in 2025?

Freak Slug: It’s an interesting one. I don’t necessarily have goals like that, you see. I don’t think that way. I guess for me the goals are to figure out this next EP properly; the set order and I need to master everything. To be honest, I want to get that out of the way and I’m already like ‘I don’t really want to do that anymore!’. I just want to write this next fucking album l because I already know what the sound is going to be for Freak Slug. I’ve got it down and my goal is writing this album in my living room. I’m writing all the songs acoustically so that when I take them to the producer, the song is ready. My thing is just writing on the acoustic with the candles on at night. The moon evokes more things, doesn’t it?

order I Blow Out Big Candles by Freak Slug HERE
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