Daffo on Where the Earth Bends and writing discomforting love songs

For Los Angeles-based Daffo, coming of age meant realizing the dreams you fantasized for so long about don’t quite match up to reality. After dropping out of New York University in 2023 to follow their dreams of being a musician, Gabi Gamberg was forced to grapple with their difficult relationship to touring, creating art amid burnout, and navigating the joy and terror of falling in and out of love. Gamberg documents their journey, bruises, cuts, and all, on their debut album, Where the Earth Bends, an indie folk collection that doesn’t shy from the discomforting horrors of growing up.

Now at 21, having relocated to L.A. after feeling suffocated by the overwhelming nature of New York City — “You really do just take for granted the ability to get in your car and listen to music and just breathe” — Gamberg is carefully trying to rebuild a home that feels softer and kinder than the city in which they spent the last of their teenage years. In November, Gamberg will open for North Carolina alt-rockers Wednesday for their fall East Coast headline tour — a match made in heaven. Both projects fully embrace the uglier sides of the lived experience, the gristly, guttural realities that make life worth living, and turn them into moments of connection. “When I’m struggling the most on tour, I just remember that maybe one person in the crowd had a good experience hearing one of my songs and it made their night better,” they say.

The FADER caught up with Gamberg to talk about the new record, the bittersweet experience of growing up, and opening for Wednesday on their upcoming fall tour.

The FADER: There’s a lot on this record about feeling disillusioned about following a premeditated life track and then realizing you don’t have to subscribe to the conventional conveyor belt. Can you talk a little about the headspace you were in?

Gabi Gamberg: The first song on the record that I wrote was “Unveiling.” I had just dropped out of school, it was my first year of being a full-time musician. I was really struggling to figure out what my life was like without that kind of structure. I found that even though I had gotten everything that I wanted, I was still depressed and having these really difficult emotions. In a way, that kind of made it worse, because you have to undo this idea in your head that if you have this one dream of, for example, becoming a musician and getting a record deal going on tour, these are external factors that aren’t necessarily going to fix what’s bothering you on the inside.

I was dealing with a lot of grief. I didn’t want to be in school, but I was grieving the structure of it and the easy friendships and the direction. I felt like, even though I had figured out what I was doing, I kind of lost my direction. There’s a lot of different emotions that come out in this record. It all kind of seems to fit in, because I just was not doing well.

I feel like it’s liberating to realize things like that, but it’s also hard to accept that the escapist dream you’ve been chasing isn’t as perfect as you thought.

It was all part of the dream. I got offered my first tour, and I was like, “Yeah, fuck it.”
I also couldn’t afford to stay at school. I was at NYU, which is not an easy place to pay for.

I had this moment a little later when I was seeing a friend and they were saying that they were struggling. I was like, “Oh, it’s gonna be okay. It’s not about what you have going on in your life, it’s about how you take it day by day and how you become present.” And they said, “Easy for you to say.” I was like, Wow. That’s tough. That is a tough thing to hear. I have everything I’ve ever wanted. How do I justify not feeling good at all?

Do you feel better now that you’re not in New York?

Yes and no. I’m still struggling with what my life looks like when I’m not on tour and not recording. I’ve been struggling to write recently, because I feel like I don’t have much of a life out here. You wouldn’t think that’s a problem. All you ever want when you’re busy is to not be busy. And then when you’re not busy, you’re like, “What the fuck do I do with myself?”

It’s a very privileged problem to have, but the black and white of touring and then not touring is so extreme. I love playing shows.
I love playing with my friends. I don’t like touring. I really wish I did. I’m trying to learn how to like it ’cause I don’t have any other skills. I have no other way to make money.


Tell me about recording with Elliot Smith’s longtime producer, Rob Schnapf.

I went on my first tour with Sir Chloe and when I was in L.A. I met Rob, the producer. I was blown away by what he’s worked on. I didn’t think he was going to want to work with me because when I first met him I’d thrown up in the bathroom of his studio. I played him some songs on a guitar that Elliott Smith had played and I was like, “This is kind of both the best and worst experience of my life.” After tour I went out and we did three songs, and it was so fucking fun.

I love that you lean into visceral discomfort with your lyrics. Romantic love is always depicted as something ugly and grotesque, like on “Bad Dog” where you sing, “I lap up the puddle that you wept, a hound.” Can you tell me about that?

I fell in love with someone that I could not be with. I was already in a relationship, and I developed a sort of obsession. It really was creating problems for my mental health. I was really obsessed in a way that was fucked up. I would be on tour and be thinking about them all the time. A dog is a very easy metaphor for me.

I love the deconstruction of the dog as a metaphor, not just in terms of romantic subjugation, but also the banalities of life like in “Go Fetch.”

“Go Fetch” is another metaphor for the repetitiveness of life and this routine of doing the same thing over and over again. Waking up, feeding yourself, going to school, doing what people expect of you, being exhausted, going to bed, doing it over and over again. And you’re feeling the monotony of life and feeling like you’re just playing fetch. What is the point?

Do you like writing love songs?

I write a lot about my pain more than anything, and it’s tough for me to write a positive song. That one also draws on the intensity of emotion and the visceral feeling of being in love and the situations that I’m in that aren’t typical. They’re not like, “I love your eyes. I love this about you.”
I very, very, rarely write a love song. And when I do, it’s usually about what’s wrong in the relationship.

Your songwriting shares a lot of qualities with Karly [from Wednesday]. How did Karly get in touch about having you open for their tour?

Wednesday is one of my favourite bands. She got my number somehow. I got a text one day, and it was like, “Hey, this is Karly.
I found your song ‘Absence’ on YouTube. Love your songwriting.” It was very casual.
I flipped my shit. I texted, like, everyone I know. I didn’t know if anything was going to come from her text. A couple months later, I got the offer to open for them on tour. When “Elderberry Wine” came out, I was just so excited that I got to text her and be like, this song is incredible. Stuff like this makes everything worth it.