EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Comfort Club Opens Up His Heart With Debut Record FOMO

Let’s get real here: Breaking up a relationship is soul-crushing. The healing process from being away from someone you still have feelings for takes time, and it’s never linear. You’re scared of pushing your most beloved memories away. Is it acceptable that we are afraid of embracing change by ourselves? We know that these thoughts are hard to grasp, and that’s why we think that we, as humans, need to grab onto those things and topics that help us not to feel completely alone. That’s how Comfort Club makes us feel! The indie artist has just released the best debut album ever! Its name is FOMO, which challenges the usual meaning of the acronym to Fear Of Moving On as he leads us through ten tracks that are beyond personal and poetic. Let’s get deeper into it!

FOMO is one of the most vulnerable indie albums you will ever hear. It’s like opening Colin’s (Comfort Club) diary. He gave us a 10-piece puzzle of his heart that is complete when listening to the project from top to bottom. He poured his entire being into every verse, and you can feel his passion and emotions in how he sings every track. The instrumentals centered around his guitar also add an extra special touch to this album. You can hear Colin’s string notes throughout FOMO as his fellow companions adapt to making each song unique in their own way. He made these songs his safe shelter to allow himself to heal his break-up wounds. We’re so proud of Colin for creating this amazing album and for making us feel like his music understands what we’re going through.

“so am i an optimist?
cause i never thought to quit
i loved you to pieces
but couldn’t complete them
so maybe someone else should try”

Lyrics from ‘Try’ by Comfort Club

After checking out FOMO, we couldn’t help but want to talk to Colin about his songwriting process and his other DIY ventures, including his Fear Of Moving On Tour. Luckily for us, we got to chat with him about all that and more! He is such a ray of sunshine, and he truly embraces his “Comfort Club” artistic name. We can’t wait for you to discover more about him!

Hello, Colin, welcome to The Honey POP! We’re so excited to chat with you about your debut album! First of all, we want to know how you feel about this incredible release!
Thank you so much for having me. I love The Honey POP! I feel so many emotions surrounding this album–––many of which I’ve never felt before in my life. It’s an overwhelming amount of gratitude and acceptance to know that I’m putting an album out and people are going to listen. I spent so much of my life just wanting to be heard, and it’s incredibly validating to feel heard. I feel like I really found myself and my sound as an artist through this album process. We’re definitely not in the most album-conducive era of the music industry right now, but making an album is something I’ve always wanted to do.

Behind The Scenes: The Creation Of FOMO

FOMO has allowed you to pour all your emotions into the tracks. How cathartic was it to work on this album while you were healing from heartbreak?
This album pulled so many emotions out of me, and it’s very cool to, in some ways, be setting them free with this album. Cathartic is almost not giving the album enough credit for what it did for me. I think this album was as instrumental in me getting through my first heartbreak as going to therapy was. It almost served as a 24/7, all-access therapy session with myself. I spend a lot of time in my head spiraling, so music has always been a tool for me to cope with that, and it really saved the day for this heartbreak.

After listening to this album, we felt like every song fits so well with one another! How was the process of creating the setlist in this order?
Thank you! That’s such a cool compliment. I thought picking the order was going to be a significantly harder process, but it was actually not even much of a decision. The songs kind of fell into place. I knew I wanted to open with ‘Two Kids In A Trench Coat,’ and then ‘Sleep Fine’ just naturally came after it. I originally had written ‘Try’ to be the last song of the album but that was before ‘Fear Of Moving On’ (the song) existed. Once I had ‘Fear Of Moving On,’ it wasn’t even a question that the album was going to end with it. I also tried to come at it like a listener. I love it when albums feel like a complete thought rather than a mixtape. So many of my favorite albums have a flow to them. That was super important to me. 

We have noticed that FOMO includes some lyrics that associate loneliness with overthinking and having trouble sleeping. What made you want to write about this association?
Going through a breakup involves a lot of losing sleep––or at least it did for me. I think overthinking definitely leads to undersleeping, and that cycle just perpetuates. So much of my songwriting comes from my subconscious, so it makes sense that being exhausted (mentally and physically) seeped into the lyrics of the album. 

THP’s FOMO Favorites

The outros of this album are phenomenal! We would love to know your thought process when adding the final touches to your tracks!
Oh, that’s so nice! This may be a stretch, but I think part of adding outros to a lot of these songs was that I need to keep holding on. When I was writing this album, I was fully immersed in each song as I was making them. I don’t think I ever wanted the process of making them to be over. If there’s a little extra love in each song, it’s really just because I couldn’t fathom the thought of letting them go. I guess there is a throughline in the album, and it’s that.

‘What It Isn’t’ is our personal favorite track from this album! We can’t get enough of it, especially with its instrumental. It gives us chills! What’s your favorite thing about this specific track?
Woah, cool choice. Thank you! I think my favorite part of that song was landing on the lyrics “by the time that we start seeing other people / i hope that california’s fallen off the coast // cause the only way i ever pictured leaving was in pieces / refracting all the light you’ve ever shone.” I am beyond proud of the amount of heartbreak that I managed to convey. Songwriting for me usually involves trying to put as much emotional anguish per square inch as I can, and I think I nailed that in this song. Also super proud that I managed to fit the word “refract” into a song.

Comfort Club: A Jack Of All Trades!

We’ve also seen that you’re a big music fan and love to curate playlists with other artists. We would love to get an insight into how you get together with other creatives to build these fun lists!
I thought that was such a fun idea. I’m sure I didn’t invent it by any means, but I feel like I found a unique way to fit that into my album rollout. I connected with some artist friends who I felt like had great taste in music and would have cool insights about the songs. I asked them to curate a playlist around the emotion and lyricism of the song. I thought it was a cool way to have a different perspective on the songs, and I also think it’s cool to give other artists a chance to show who they’re fans of. I don’t think we get to do that often enough as artists, and I think it’s something we should make an effort to do more often.

Your full DIY tour is coming to an end! We are very amazed with how these shows came to fruition. What piece of advice would you give yourself if you could go back to the tour’s planning stage?
I would give myself advice that I kinda think I already took, but I would just validate myself on this: the point of touring is to have fun. The shows are an absolute blast, but from my experience, touring is all about the time in between shows. I got less sleep than I’ve ever got in my life but rarely felt tired. I had so much fun in hours that I normally would be fast asleep. A reminder that I desperately needed was that music is supposed to be fun. I typically get so caught up in making everything as efficient and strategic as possible that I sometimes lose sight of the main objective. Learning to let go and just have fun has been the best lesson from this tour.

We can’t wait to enjoy and share FOMO with everyone! What’s one main takeaway you want your listeners to get from this album?
I just really hope this album can find the people who need it. I’ve been saying that this is the album I would’ve loved to listen to when I was going through my breakup. I thought I was the only person who had ever felt heartbreak like this, but as I started releasing the songs, I learned that things that felt super specific to me were actually super universal. Knowing that, I hope that people who feel alone or abandoned when going through a breakup feel seen by this album. Breakups can be the most isolating feeling, but music will carry you through it. I hope this album helps.

Are you loving FOMO as much as we are? Have we made you a Comfort Club stan? Let us know in the comments below, or tell us over on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

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