Carmen Villain: ‘Model-turned-musician is such a cliche’

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Carmen Villain stood in lower Manhattan, one block away from the Twin Towers, and watched the world fall apart.

“It was crazy,” says the Norwegian musician, whose work fuses jazz, electronica and wee-hours ennui. “It was insane. It [the collapse of the World Trade Center] was quite nearby. I had to run. We didn’t have an apartment for a week. Luckily our building stayed standing. I was lucky out of all the people that were there.”

Villain is today an acclaimed composer, who brings her viscerally empathic new album, Only Love From Now On, to Dublin for a show on Friday, October 28th. In 2001, though, she was a 17-year-old model on a grand adventure in New York. Even at the time, she knew September 11th had altered history. But only in the years since, she notes, has the true significance of the events she witnessed become clear. The war on terror and everything that followed can be traced to 2001

“The incident itself was of course very traumatic for everyone there — and for everyone around the world,” says Villain over Zoom from her home in Oslo. “And also with the consequences — lots of illegal wars. It’s just mind-boggling. And the lines from there to what is going on today. It’s exhausting to think about.”

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The PR that went out: it was in the press release. So it was unavoidable that people would write about it. And of course, there’s lazy journalism

Yet if September 11th marked a point of no return for New York, it also impacted deeply on Villain and her trajectory in life. Her first instinct was to go home to Norway, to her family. But her modelling agency insisted she keep working, even as the city around her bled and burned. She knew then this business was not for her.

“With fashion, of course there’s a value. But for me, being a model, it doesn’t feel you are serving anything of importance in any way. So after a while, it felt very repetitive. Whereas I can really effect the arts part of what I do. With modelling I was a vessel for them [the fashion industry].”

Still, if she was done with modelling, modelling was not done with her. In 2005 she moved to London, where she had a daughter, and started writing songs. But as she prepared to release her debut album, Sleeper, she was surprised to hear her publicity team suggest it be marketed as the work of an “ex-model”. She was speechless: what did one thing have to do with the other? If anything “ex-model” was unhelpful — a phrase which, for better or worse, suggests a dilettante-like quality.

“I was making music. It had nothing to do with what my other job was. So I never really saw the similarities. The PR that went out: it was there [in the press release]. So it was unavoidable that people would write about it. And of course, there’s lazy journalism.”

She shrugs. “I guess that’s how it is. It took a while for it to go from merely a “model-turned-musician”, which is such a cliche and really lazy. They don’t have anything to do with each other. My experience of that life had nothing to do with what my records were about — those personal experiences on other levels.”

Those personal experiences are front and centre of Only Love From Now On, the extraordinary LP she released last March. In contrast to the shoegazy acoustic pop she put out early in her career, it is entirely instrumental, with contributions from jazz trumpeter Arve Henriksen and flautist Johanna Scheie Orellana.

How can we help each other in a very big dark world? How can we cope with what can essentially feel like the downfall of everything?

It has been quietly acclaimed, too: Bandcamp praised the project as “spare and spooky”; the New York Times heralded Villain and her blending of “nature recordings, instruments, samples and programming to create tracks that feel both enveloping and open”.

“It was definitely influenced by the pandemic,” she says. “I thought a lot about how lucky I was to be in Norway because it wasn’t as hard. They were extremely strict [with lockdowns], to be fair. And people really follow rules here. But I was feeling fortunate to have a place to live, somewhere safe to isolate. I was healthy through most of it. Eventually, all of us got Covid at some point.”

Villain’s real name is Carmen Maria Hillestad. She was born in Michigan in 1983 but grew up in Oslo, where she was raised by her Mexican mother and Norwegian father. It was a heady cultural inheritance — a fire and ice blend of Latin ebullience and Nordic reserve.

“The shouty Mexican moms. The loud, dark Mexican humour. They’re clichés. There’s some truth. The Norwegians have a different way of doing doings. The Norwegians have to be quite drunk before they start behaving like Mexicans.”

If her life in fashion was a story of a glamorous ascent from obscurity, her musical journey has been a tale of steady progress and slowly-growing acclaim. Not that she hasn’t had setbacks. Villain has suffered with her mental health (for reasons she’d understandably prefer to not go into). Several years ago, she seriously considered giving up music.

“I don’t know if I can tie this struggle part to the actual music, to be honest. It was more a period of my life that was difficult. It was a mental health issue. Of course, there is this cliche of a struggling artist — which is a really dangerous trope to push. I think it’s getting better now [in terms of people no longer associating depression or trauma with valid art]. There’s more awareness around mental health, which is great. For me, it’s important to be clear that it was almost impossible to create anything that felt good — everything was difficult.”

She has emerged from those shadows. And With Only Love From Now On Villain has made a record that will bring succour to anyone who has lived through testing times. Using loops, samples and ghostly grooves, Villain creates soundscapes variously brooding and soothing. In totality, the album is hugely comforting — pop music as a soulful balm

“While I was making it, it felt like the world was crumbling in a way. Although I guess the world can always feel like it’s crumbling. It’s actually much worse now, I would say.

Pausing, she leans in towards the Zoom camera. “What I learned was that it is better to quieten down and focus on the people closest to you. Rather than freaking out and feeling hopeless.

“Or trying to do anything to impact on the big scale of the world. I’m quite cynical but it was maybe about trying to put a little hope into the micro-perspective of our lives. How can we help each other in a very big dark world? How can we cope with what can essentially feel like the downfall of everything?”

Carmen Villain plays Unitarian Church Dublin, on Friday, October 28th