Humanity is at the core of The Sophs, the Los Angeles-based six-piece band whose debut album, ‘GOLDSTAR,’ is a collection of brazen songs that tackle mental health, vices and the need for affirmation in an unforgiving world.
This central element is the impetus behind frontman Ethan Ramon’s lyricism, as he parses through his most complex emotions while shining a light on his darkest thoughts. Is the prospect of displaying such wide-ranging emotions daunting at all? “On a musical level, I have some reasonable anxiety about being critiqued and perceived,” Ramon admits. “You know, people slapping a ‘[blank] out of 10’ next to it. I feel like for any reasonable person, that’s a daunting thing. But personally, I don’t have any qualms with everybody reading my diary.” I suggest that there may be a beauty in being scared, for the sake of one’s art. “I feel like the scariness is what makes it beautiful,” Ramon responds.
The Sophs — Ramon, Sam Yuh (keyboards), Austin Parker Jones (electric guitar), Seth Smades (acoustic guitar), Cole Bobbitt (bass) and Devin Russ (drums) — began writing together in 2021, with the former four members all meeting in their native Phoenix, Arizona, and following each other to Los Angeles, where they met Bobbitt and Russ between 2023 and 2024. From Ramon’s perspective, his bandmates refine him and his visions for The Sophs which, while meticulously curated to the point of having a self-described “brand Bible” drafted for ‘GOLDSTAR,’ harnesses the energy of varied soundscapes.
“The disparity in the music, the wide range of genres that we span — that’s all kind of from me,” Ramon explains. “I feel like I wake up one day and feel like a completely different type of person than I did the day before.” This eclecticism comes to fruition on ‘GOLDSTAR,’ an album that opens with notes of theatrical marionettes dancing in ‘THE DOG DIES IN THE END,’ followed by Latin guitars that hum across the title track, the steady build of guitar-fueled rage on their debut single ‘SWEAT,’ a haunting spoken-word monologue on ‘A SYMPATHETIC PERSON’ and more.
To debut with an album as unpredictable as ‘GOLDSTAR’ is a formidable feat, and to do so with lyrics that hear Ramon turn the lens on both himself and others with an unwavering glare, shows an act of defiance. Ramon did, after all, cold-email Rough Trade Records’ founder Geoff Travis with a demo-reel. There is a necessity to The Sophs’ music, a need to be heard and a compulsion to display an admirable (if not shocking) candour. As Ramon describes, of ‘GOLDSTAR,’ “I’m not really being provocative. I’m just being human in a way that I feel a lot of people are uncomfortable with.”
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How does playing live inform your writing process for The Sophs? For instance, do you start writing with the intention of how it’s going to sound live, as opposed to in the studio?
Being a six piece [band] on-stage, rather than limiting ourselves in the studio — making sure to only track one guitar because we’ll only be playing one guitar on stage, or so on and so forth — I think it actually does the opposite; it makes us more ambitious, craftier and want to pull more off in the studio that we can’t on-stage, just so we can play variations of the songs on stage and mix things up.
Did you all come from your own respective backgrounds, whether that was as solo musicians, in different bands, etc.? What was it about each other that compelled you to form as a six-piece band?
I think one of the cool parts about us is that we all come from such different musical backgrounds. For example, Sam, our keyboardist, went to opera school for three out of four years, and then dropped out and joined the band. Some of us come from the heavier side of music; others [come] from [the] electronic, production side. I think we’re all drawn to each other because we’re all smart enough musicians to know when another musician is smart, regardless of personal taste, and we all like being around other smart people, so it worked out […] I always like to say that the one band that we can agree on is The Sophs, which I feel is [the] best-case scenario because it allows for so many different perspectives and insights.
Do you play any instruments, too?
I played the drums for over 10 years growing up. But, I was never that good at singing and playing the drums. I always wanted to use my hands too much when I sang. And Devin, our drummer, is just such a better drummer than I was and am.
Did you then picture yourself ever fronting a band, considering that you were a drummer for so long?
I think so. It’s hard for me to tap into what exactly I was thinking growing up. I feel like I really just kind of did and didn’t think. I always liked attention, I guess, [and] being the one to stand up there and do the “thing,” I think as a medium of control of people’s attention. I always liked singing, too, even when I was drumming. So, I guess it was never too far out of the realms of possibility.
Was there a “vision” or “identity” that you wanted to hone into when you first began writing, or was there just the sheer excitement at creating something new?
I think we really based it around the album that we were working on, because ‘GOLDSTAR’ was done before we had ever signed to Rough Trade, sent any emails, anything like that. I, along with our creative director, Eric — who I’ve also known since high school; he moved out to LA around the same time as me — built an aesthetic world around ‘GOLDSTAR’, [and] less so The Sophs. The Sophs kind of chameleons to whatever era of music that they’re in, you know? And ‘GOLDSTAR’ was it, for us.
What are you into outside of music that maybe informs your approach to the band, or your artistry in general?
Socialising really does it for me. I like going to bars, alone and with my friends. But, sometimes alone as well, not even with the intention of writing or doing anything, but just people-watching. Especially in cities like Los Angeles, [which] can inform your art a lot. Talking to people, especially at dive bars, picking up on their mannerisms [and] things that they say that are unique to them, or give some sort of clues [as] to where they came from. I feel like it’s all just human connection with me. I don’t really have any hobbies, per se, outside of music. [laughs] But I like going to bars a lot, and I like hanging out with a lot of people that I know, and people that I don’t.
That’s interesting, considering how a lot of ‘GOLDSTAR’, as you said, ended up being very personal, I’d imagine that the characters that you encounter when you’re out sort of weave their way into the stories that you write, too.
Yeah, I think my overarching conclusion through doing all of this was that I see myself in every person that I talk to, at least to some small degree […] There’s no better way to get to the bottom of somebody than through their vices, which is why I tend to go to bars and talk to people when they’re a little bit drunk and stuff like that, because you really kind of see who people are. And what I found is that we’re all not really that different from each other, even down to our worst parts and most intrusive thoughts. So, when I’m writing from the perspective [and] these places that I’m not always proud of, or that sometimes take things to extremes, I really don’t anticipate offending anybody; I really am not trying to, because I think that everybody thinks these things, at least in some way.
Have you always had that curiosity, since you were a kid?
I think in ways that weren’t fully realised. I always kind of wanted something from everybody that I met, but I could never really materialise it, or think of what it was, exactly. I would just talk to every adult that I could, for as long as I could, especially when I was really young. I was really precocious in that way and I always felt like I wanted something from them, but I could never really figure out what that “something” was. But, I feel like the older I’ve gotten, especially recently and with creative outlets like The Sophs, I’ve been able to put my finger on that “something,” you know?
What do you think that something is, then?
I think humanity. Even [with] people that I don’t necessarily like or get along with, I want to keep at them until I see something human in them.
When it comes to writing from, as you said, those “worst parts of yourself,” is The Sophs a space to exorcise those parts of yourself that you see in other people? How do you find a balance between vulnerability, while keeping some cards close to your chest?
For me, I think it’s important to hold no balance. I don’t think I keep any cards close to my chest. But, I also feel like that can operate as a defence mechanism too, because by exposing yourself to the world like that, you eliminate people’s need to try and expose you […] I don’t really hold any cards close to my chest, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not insecure, or not performative, or something […] Exposing myself like this is just another method of keeping my guard up, in a weird, kind of twisted way.
Thinking about how the rest of the band set your lyrics to song: from your perspective, how did that communication play out while writing and recording ‘GOLDSTAR’?
I wrote all the lyrics on ‘GOLDSTAR’ and for a lot of the songs, I wrote the melodic top lines, as well, like the vocal melodies throughout the whole song, just on voice memo. Then, I did a few of them with Sam and we took those to the rest of the band […] as a finished skeleton of a song, and they expanded it from there.
Has your approach to writing and recording changed over the course of making ‘GOLDSTAR’, if at all?
Before starting the album, I think I was a little obsessed with being provocative, or something. I felt like I had to kind of lean on being provocative as a crutch, because I was insecure in my ability to hold my own, as a person who wrote good, normal songs. I feel like I shook that insecurity over the course of making ‘GOLDSTAR’, and I don’t really have to rely on being a “shock jockey” or something like that. I’m confident enough in my capability to just write and perform, regardless of if I’m offending anybody’s sensibilities. I can make a nice, normal and sweet song now; everything doesn’t have to be enormous, insane or eclectic.
Did that come from learning from your bandmates? Or, was that more of a personal reckoning that you went through?
I think it was more just learning by doing. Being tossed into performing live, taking it seriously and keeping on singing and writing professionally in the context of The Sophs, just doing it over and over and over again, I woke up one day and I realised, “Wow, I can actually just do this. I don’t have to think about it and try.”
I loved the sentiments in ‘BLITZED AGAIN’, with the references to Frida Kahlo and Marina Abramović and how they made art in spite of heartbreak, and then with you feeling like you maybe don’t have it in you to do the same. Is this a constant for you – looking to art to make sense of your own emotions?
I think so, but I think there’s a common misconception among artists that you make your best art when you’re at your lowest point. [While] writing ‘BLITZED AGAIN’ — which was actually one of the oldest songs on the record — I was at what, at the time, I considered to be my lowest point, post-heartbreak. The only thing I could think about was how spiteful I was of other great artists and their ability to make something beautiful out of pain, because I was feeling pain and I had no desire to make anything beautiful. I just wanted to sit on the couch and drink, and that was it.
In my weird, narcissistic thought-processing, the only thing that would make me feel better [was telling] myself, “They just must not have felt heartbreak to the same degree that I did. It must not have been as bad for them as it was for me.” I was using that thought to comfort myself and to justify not being able to make anything, and then I started to put a little distance between me and my rock bottom. I started to think to myself how funny that was, that I was thinking that — and that I still thought it, to a degree. I was like, “Man, you fucking dick. This is insane.” I was like, OK, it’s still technically a song about heartbreak and interpreting pain, but in this kind of strange, left-of-center way, that was still really honest to me, but wasn’t just your cookie cutter, love lost song.
‘DEATH IN THE FAMILY’ is one that, from the start, amplifies this sense of dread and confusion — and it’s those intrusive thoughts coming in again, blurring between reality and fiction. You’ve said that it’s among the most personal songs you’ve written — what compelled you to write this one, in particular, and what did you hope to communicate most?
I didn’t really sit down and write it. That was the one song, at least that I can remember, that I wrote all of the lyrics and the entire melody just myself, on voice memo. Then, I took it to the band as an already finished song, as an acapella, basically. That one came from weird paranoia of things that didn’t even really exist, but I always felt like I was in danger of being subjected to. I wasn’t even really being perceived at that time; not even close to how I am now, and probably not even close to how I will be in the future. But I was so uncomfortable: going out to bars, I thought that people were watching me; and that every move that I would make would be judged, online and in person. I was really paranoid of some sort of shadowy “other” that was watching my every move and judging me based on it.
Because I go back around in a loop and I find ways to comfort myself — and usually, my methods of comforting myself are where these really fucked up thoughts come into play — my catharsis for this paranoia was thinking, “Oh, I need something really bad to happen to me in a really public way. That way, when people see me and perceive me, they won’t judge me; all they’ll feel is sympathy. I’ll just be this, like, ‘poor boy,’ rather than somebody who has to take accountability for any actions.” And I didn’t even know what actions I had to take accountability for! I couldn’t even think of any, but I was still so terrified.
I learned that they have a word for that, and it’s “OCD,” nowadays. But at the time, I was like, “Okay, somebody close to me needs to die. That way, I can do a big sympathy display and then, people will see me out in public and they won’t be judging me so harshly. They’ll just think, oh, he’s grieving.” In the same way, with ‘BLITZED AGAIN,’ I took a step back and was like, “That’s really fucked up that I thought that. I need to write about that.”
Did writing the song help you in any way?
Yeah, I think it did. I think also talking about the song, too, helped me out a lot. Hearing from people that this was not such an uncommon experience was really the catalyst for my journey of finding humanity in random people.
Can you walk me through ‘A SYMPATHETIC PERSON’? Did it begin as a spoken-word?
When I first moved to Los Angeles, I lived in a really bad area of Boyle Heights for two years and I worked at an ice cream shop in Little Tokyo for the first six months that I moved there, which is nicer, but if you cross the bridge towards Boyle Heights… it gets really seedy and stuff. I’d work these night shifts from 5-11pm and I would do the half-hour walk home over the bridge. [In the song], I talk about there being this snake under my chin, and that is a weird analogy for fear. ‘Cause I felt myself walking over that bridge towards the Boyle Heights house, and I felt as if my fear that I had was kind of protecting me, in that moment, making me extra cautious and alert, and have decorum, navigating through those areas.
Conversely, at the end of the song, the other spoken-word, I’m lying there in, by contrast, a very objectively safe place; I’m in bed, under a quilt that my grandmother knitted, [with] a cup of tea. The snake under my chin, the fear, it still exists. So, on one hand it protects me; on the other hand, it suffocates me because it’s there when the world is dangerous, but it also turns safe places into dangerous moments, by nature, so you can’t really pick and choose your fear, when it comes into play like that.
‘They Told Me Jump, I Said How High’ gave me the vision of someone kind of stumbling through life, being detached while having these recurring visions of death and self sabotage. Is this song following “you” or a version of “you”? Is it calling back to the so-called “worst part of yourself” that you’re reckoning with?
That one is really my most “LA” song, to me. I say this a lot when I critique LA: as a transplant, I only have authority to critique what I know, which are other transplants, right? And that’s where a lot of your celebrity-adjacent parties and “music industry people” [come in]; they’re all transplants. So, everything I say about LA is transplant-on-transplant violence; I have no place to critique any of the cultural enclaves, which are massive out here, that people always neglect.
But, speaking as a musician who is going to these parties with other musicians, “suits,” people like that, I really was like, “Wow, these people fucking suck.” Just brushing shoulders with them, seeing the way that they talked [and] moved, I really just kind of abhorred them and found them really shallow. But then, at the same time, I spent enough time around them and found myself starting to pick up their mannerisms in conversation, and I would talk to people the way that they talked to me. And it was kind of realising, “Wow, I suck.” [laughs] “Maybe I’m the worst guy in the room. Maybe we all are.”
I really wanted to turn a journalistic eye inward and blow up this little part of myself, this character, and write a song from that perspective [of someone] who is just the absolute worst person in Los Angeles. The song, it’s performative, there’s slacktivism, there’s apathy, there’s drinking […] It has this general apathy towards everything. Any iota of caring is only done so, so other people can see it, perceive it and think that you’re somebody who cares about something when, in reality, you don’t care about anything. That’s who I wanted to be to the fullest on that song.
It also seems like there’s that concept of being torn between two worlds that you’re alluding to; trying to retain who you are at your core & that authentic self, against what people are projecting, whether that’s towards you or of themselves.
Yeah, I think that the whole record is kind of a push and pull with that, but ultimately, I wanted the shallow end of the pool to kind of win? I wanted there to be a clear indicator that I, as a genuine person, have lost this battle over the course of the record. That’s why I ended it so abruptly and set up ‘I’M YOUR FIEND,’ which is the last song on the record, by saying, “Meanwhile, the radio’s playing,” [on ‘They Told Me Jump, I Said How High’], which is a great song, but it’s about nothing, you know? It’s really short, and I just didn’t want there to be any closure, just to drive home this point that any sort of sympathetic part of myself has lost the fight. No closure.
While it was intentional, was there a part of you that wanted to find closure, by the end of the album?
The album is a couple years old and […] at the time, I felt as though closure was kind of a lost cause for me, like, how I thought about myself really mirrored the freneticness of the record, and the lack of identity that it has. I wanted to keep the lack of identity on the record in tact because that’s what I was feeling. So, speaking as it’s own thing, ‘GOLDSTAR’, who I was [while] making ‘GOLDSTAR’ and immediately after, there was no closure to be found there. Since then, I’ve actually come quite a long way and the songs I write now are a bit different, sonically and thematically, and I’m really excited to share those with the world. But, there’s always a bit of a disparity with what you put out and […] the most accurate depiction of you.
What did the process of making ‘GOLDSTAR’ teach you that maybe led you to where you are today, as you said, now that you’ve learned and grown a lot?
I think it showed me what not to do. Not in the way of, “Don’t make songs like that,” because I’m really proud of the record and I think it’s a great time capsule for me. But, I think a headspace to be in when you’re writing a record, I don’t know if I’d ever put myself through that again.
Is it because it was a darker period for you, or was it just the content bringing about something else?
Darker maybe, but there was just a lack of control that I had over myself that I feel like I carried over to the album. Which I think ended up benefiting it, you know; like I said, it really is an accurate time capsule. But, I try to conduct my life and write from a place of a lot more control nowadays. […] I’d go over for a ‘GOLDSTAR’ session and it would be, like, two in the afternoon, […] and I’d be like, “Okay, do you have any liquor in the cabinet?” I’d just start drinking and be like, “Okay, we’ll do this and this and we’ll add this crazy thing on top of it.” And it’s cool for an album, but it’s just not a sustainable way to live. [Now], if I have a session, I won’t drink the night before, I’ll get eight hours of sleep […] Maybe that’s just growing up, you know? But, whatever it is, I’m glad to not be making music using that process anymore, with that little control.
Looking ahead to more live dates, how are you hoping that ‘GOLDSTAR’ continues on in a live setting?
We’ve toured the album pretty extensively, even back before we had [our first] three songs out, we were playing the whole album live. So, we have it down to a science and I’m really excited to have it out there and to have people coming to the show with knowledge of every song on the record already. […] I think there will be [a] much more symbiotic relationship between us and the audience in those shows.
With this official debut, what are you guys hoping that people take away from who The Sophs are, as a band?
I think I just want them to find some sort of humanness in the chaos of it all. Whatever they do with the music [and] however they interpret it, that’s totally up to them. But, I do hope that they at least recognise, if not their own humanity, then my humanity, as a person, in the music, and the band’s humanity. And, humanity in the sense of imperfection, eccentricities, lack of identity, insecurity, all of that chaos going into this record.
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‘GOLDSTAR’ is out now. Catch The Sophs at The 100 Club, London on April 22nd.
Words: Paulina Subia
Photo Credit: Eric Daniels
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