Amidst the rush of festivalgoers entering the Northwell Health Jones Beach Theater and the stream of tropical EDM from a nearby stage, an honest and humble voice broke through on Sunday afternoon on a small stage at the Billboard Hot 100 Fest.
The indie-dream pop stylings of Brooklyn singer-songwriter Alyse Vellturo, better known as pronoun, felt like an oasis in the 90-degree sun on the heatseekers stage on this day. After her set, which music from her 2016 EP There’s no one new around you, she spoke candidly about her set.
“I was getting shocked by the microphone the whole time so I cried twice,” Vellturo, originally from Boston, said with a laugh. “But it’s always fun to play.”
The honesty is somewhat expected after listening to the rawness of Vellturo’s lyrics through pronoun. The soft-toned sonic style, pulling influence from artists like Japanese House and Julien, matches perfectly with the soft colors displayed everywhere from her EP cover all the way down to her hi-top vans and guitar. It all meshes perfectly with her in-depth and frontal lyrics about her love life, or lackthereof.
“I was an emo kid when I was younger, so I felt like there’s a lot of melodic guitar in there,” Vellturo said, speaking about her musical style. “I feel like it draws from a ton of influences.”
Labeling herself as indie-guitar-bedroom-pop, the word “bedroom” stands out as a starting point for Vellturo on her work with pronoun.
“I started working on the music and just made that my thing,” she said. “I started on my socials way before I figured anything out, so I’ll put something out there.”
“I was kind of drunk too, probably,” she added. “I thought it was funny.”
Although her start came out of a love lost, other songs, such as “Snowed in,” pull inspiration from Vellturo’s adventures in Tinder, she told the crowd before performing it in her set at the festival.
The arrival of the Trump administration was also in her mind while songwriting and in her social media accounts. Scrolling through her Twitter feed, she criticized the administration and has also called on other stars to do the same.
When asked about the thought about the possibility of Trump being impeached, she thought Vice President Pence as the next president could possibly be worse.
“I think Trump’s an idiot – I think Pence is evil,” said Vellturo. “I don’t think Trump can get anything done, Pence might be able to. Right now it’s just checks and balances and he’s not really able to do much of the ridiculous things he wants to do, but I find it scary of thinking what that can bring.”
Beyond her own musical work with pronoun, Vellturo also has a past of managing other artists and now runs her own label, Sleep Well Records.
The experience of doing so has been awesome as she said.
“It’s just moving a lot quicker than I thought it was going to,” she said.
