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ASHER WHITE
8 Tips for Catastrophe Living (Joyful Noise Recordings)
Add date: 9.16.2025
Release date: 9.12.2025
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The Statue of Liberty is so hyperreal, so over-replicated in insurance ads and postage stamps and on the Vegas strip, that if you ever happen to be looking at her in real life, you won't see her at all. There she is on the cover of 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living, the new album by Asher White, in pieces but not destroyed -- in progress, being built, not yet complete. Scaffolding cages her body. Her torch is on the ground, her head somewhere out of frame. She's still in France. It's an old photo in faded sepia, but you can imagine her skin still gleaming: bare copper, no patina. Before she was a symbol, she was metal, and living, sweating people riveted her together.
What's full catastrophe living? It's the title of a self-help book whose subtitle is "Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness.” The book instructs the reader in mindfulness techniques to ameliorate personal turmoil. The first chapter is called “You Have Only Moments to Live,” which sounds more like a threat than a stress-reducing strategy. Why eight tips? “The idea of tips for catastrophe is really funny to me,” says White. “No matter what’s happening historically, people will forever be self-medicating and coping in small, menial ways.”
Asher White was born in Evanston, Illinois, in the second month of the 21st century. When she was in middle school, she started attending DIY noise shows throughout Chicago -- "my first real obsession," she says, and one whose spirit has stuck with her. She started making music of her own and uploaded her first recordings to Bandcamp while in high school. 8 Tips is her 16th LP overall and first since signing to Joyful Noise. She recorded it in Providence, Rhode Island, in late 2023 and early 2024, right before she moved to New York. "My last year living in Providence was like a private residency, artistically and academically," White says. "And then it was corrosive emotionally: very lonely. That allowed me to write more ornate, conceptually complex songs, but they're imbued with a more reckless and untamed emotional chaos."
Like White's previous album Home Constellation Study, 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living darts and weaves among boldly varied musical styles. Doom metal splits open into bossa nova; psychedelic rock and power pop flip into industrial techno. The record's quick turns and vivid contrasts reflect White's cultural voraciousness. A writer, painter, and sculptor as well as a musician, she gathers materials constantly, always digging for new ideas in every possible form. "It’s forever collage, forever assemblage," she says of her music. "To me, it has more to do with J Dilla, L.A. beat, and musique concrète than pop songwriting."
Each song emerges from its composite parts in the studio: White doesn't draft or demo before recording, but builds out her pieces sculpturally, sound by sound. With 8 Tips, she stretched her ideas further toward their natural extremes, rather than sanding them down at the end as she'd done in the past. "This is the first record where I was interested in more exploded and textural songcraft," she notes. "It’s truly experimental in that it’s actually borne of experiments. Usually, I do the experiments and then I throw most of it away. This is the first time I’ve felt audacious enough to leave it all in."
Bookended by scenes of peaceful domesticity at the home White shared with her roommates in Providence, 8 Tips soon flares into character studies of ill-tempered, unlikable women at various stages of personal crisis. These songs are written from the perspective of disillusioned women approaching the end of their middle age, who maybe have failed sexual relationships with their husbands. "I'm using avatars. It’s like a strange cast of characters who refract some sense of idleness and despondency. I was writing about women who I’m worried about becoming, or women who I identify with in some abstract way, and then trying to run them through as many different historical circumstances as possible."
The books, movies, and albums that White was taking in while recording 8 Tips percolate throughout the album. The films of Claire Denis, the novels of Clarice Lispector, and the memoirs of Eve Babitz all funnel into White's reflection of 21st century disaster capitalism. People have survived catastrophe before: the work they made of the ruins around them can offer tools to parse our own contemporary collapse.
"There have been so many end times," White says. "People were writing self-help tips, and people were partying. Hannah Arendt was partying, presumably, with the homies. I think about that a lot. There have been many other apocalypses, and there will always be apocalypses, and the people who are even imminently implicated in those apocalypses have historically also been able to create art and find ."
Opener "The sink thank you" spins through the album's entire textural palette in stereo. Guitar and piano chords sway beneath hand claps, sleigh bells, and cash registers in an open, gradually populating field of sound. Immediately, we’re dropped into an autobiographical scene: White’s biking to her minimum wage bookstore job in Providence. It’s raining, she’s alone, she’s hungover, she’s feeling old at 24, and she’s slowly figuring out what it means to enter adulthood.
"Beers with my name on them" segues from diaristic vignette into 8 Tips' conceptual core. It begins in first person, in the kitchen at home, then out among Providence's warehouse techno parties: White picks up a 12-pack of Modelo and heads to a rave. "This is an experience that I’m having, but it’s dropped into someone else’s life," she says. The intro's guitar-driven power pop caves beneath barrelling industrial techno: a phase shift as abrupt as stepping off a city street into a cavernous room where the sub-bass makes your fingernails vibrate.
The bright, airy piano lines of "Why I Bought the House" belie an unsavory narrative of gentrification and real estate value extraction as the album shifts gears into pure fiction. "It's written from the perspective of a girlboss whose girlboss mindset has begun to rot and is just starting to look like conquest,” says White. “Her dreams of flipping houses, of assimilating into a neighborhood in the city, are becoming dubious and condescending." White's gentle voice sharpens into a sneer: "You must think I'm from a photograph," she sings. Beneath the image there's only decay, but her avatar keeps her whitened teeth gritted into a smile all the same.
With "Cobalt Room: Good Work / Silver Saab," White cycles through dramatic, propulsive contrasts among disparate sounds. She intersperses sludge metal with Brazilian Tropicália rhythms; bare guitars kick up into smooth, twinkling jazz, which then erupts right back into power pop. "It’s the sequential sum of what I was listening to at the time," notes White. "I was interested in pulling every idea to its extreme. Because it’s just me recording, and I’m not asking anything from anyone, I can pursue the most whimsical, outrageous aspects of the music. What would be the funniest or most cartoonish place to take this? And how can I make that rewarding still?"
8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living wrenches open the idea of apocalypse -- an abrupt, totalizing disaster rained down on uncomplicated innocents -- and peers inside at its bursting, devastated particulars. Apocalypse is slow. It's uneven. Some people survive it. Some don't. Nations falter and so do individual people, clinging fast to their old, dilapidated self-preservation strategies. What saved you in the past might destroy you in the future. Flip it around, shake yourself loose, ruin the person you've known yourself to be, and you might get the chance to become something else.
"I was interested in making something that sounds like a self-help book, but it’s actually about self-destruction," says White. "In full catastrophe living, you just have to do a bunch of whippets. This album is mostly about doing whippets. I’m not even kidding."
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Official Website
Spotify
Tidal
TikTok
YouTube
The Statue of Liberty is so hyperreal, so over-replicated in insurance ads and postage stamps and on the Vegas strip, that if you ever happen to be looking at her in real life, you won't see her at all. There she is on the cover of 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living, the new album by Asher White, in pieces but not destroyed -- in progress, being built, not yet complete. Scaffolding cages her body. Her torch is on the ground, her head somewhere out of frame. She's still in France. It's an old photo in faded sepia, but you can imagine her skin still gleaming: bare copper, no patina. Before she was a symbol, she was metal, and living, sweating people riveted her together.
What's full catastrophe living? It's the title of a self-help book whose subtitle is "Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness.” The book instructs the reader in mindfulness techniques to ameliorate personal turmoil. The first chapter is called “You Have Only Moments to Live,” which sounds more like a threat than a stress-reducing strategy. Why eight tips? “The idea of tips for catastrophe is really funny to me,” says White. “No matter what’s happening historically, people will forever be self-medicating and coping in small, menial ways.”
Asher White was born in Evanston, Illinois, in the second month of the 21st century. When she was in middle school, she started attending DIY noise shows throughout Chicago -- "my first real obsession," she says, and one whose spirit has stuck with her. She started making music of her own and uploaded her first recordings to Bandcamp while in high school. 8 Tips is her 16th LP overall and first since signing to Joyful Noise. She recorded it in Providence, Rhode Island, in late 2023 and early 2024, right before she moved to New York. "My last year living in Providence was like a private residency, artistically and academically," White says. "And then it was corrosive emotionally: very lonely. That allowed me to write more ornate, conceptually complex songs, but they're imbued with a more reckless and untamed emotional chaos."
Like White's previous album Home Constellation Study, 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living darts and weaves among boldly varied musical styles. Doom metal splits open into bossa nova; psychedelic rock and power pop flip into industrial techno. The record's quick turns and vivid contrasts reflect White's cultural voraciousness. A writer, painter, and sculptor as well as a musician, she gathers materials constantly, always digging for new ideas in every possible form. "It’s forever collage, forever assemblage," she says of her music. "To me, it has more to do with J Dilla, L.A. beat, and musique concrète than pop songwriting."
Each song emerges from its composite parts in the studio: White doesn't draft or demo before recording, but builds out her pieces sculpturally, sound by sound. With 8 Tips, she stretched her ideas further toward their natural extremes, rather than sanding them down at the end as she'd done in the past. "This is the first record where I was interested in more exploded and textural songcraft," she notes. "It’s truly experimental in that it’s actually borne of experiments. Usually, I do the experiments and then I throw most of it away. This is the first time I’ve felt audacious enough to leave it all in."
Bookended by scenes of peaceful domesticity at the home White shared with her roommates in Providence, 8 Tips soon flares into character studies of ill-tempered, unlikable women at various stages of personal crisis. These songs are written from the perspective of disillusioned women approaching the end of their middle age, who maybe have failed sexual relationships with their husbands. "I'm using avatars. It’s like a strange cast of characters who refract some sense of idleness and despondency. I was writing about women who I’m worried about becoming, or women who I identify with in some abstract way, and then trying to run them through as many different historical circumstances as possible."
The books, movies, and albums that White was taking in while recording 8 Tips percolate throughout the album. The films of Claire Denis, the novels of Clarice Lispector, and the memoirs of Eve Babitz all funnel into White's reflection of 21st century disaster capitalism. People have survived catastrophe before: the work they made of the ruins around them can offer tools to parse our own contemporary collapse.
"There have been so many end times," White says. "People were writing self-help tips, and people were partying. Hannah Arendt was partying, presumably, with the homies. I think about that a lot. There have been many other apocalypses, and there will always be apocalypses, and the people who are even imminently implicated in those apocalypses have historically also been able to create art and find ."
Opener "The sink thank you" spins through the album's entire textural palette in stereo. Guitar and piano chords sway beneath hand claps, sleigh bells, and cash registers in an open, gradually populating field of sound. Immediately, we’re dropped into an autobiographical scene: White’s biking to her minimum wage bookstore job in Providence. It’s raining, she’s alone, she’s hungover, she’s feeling old at 24, and she’s slowly figuring out what it means to enter adulthood.
"Beers with my name on them" segues from diaristic vignette into 8 Tips' conceptual core. It begins in first person, in the kitchen at home, then out among Providence's warehouse techno parties: White picks up a 12-pack of Modelo and heads to a rave. "This is an experience that I’m having, but it’s dropped into someone else’s life," she says. The intro's guitar-driven power pop caves beneath barrelling industrial techno: a phase shift as abrupt as stepping off a city street into a cavernous room where the sub-bass makes your fingernails vibrate.
The bright, airy piano lines of "Why I Bought the House" belie an unsavory narrative of gentrification and real estate value extraction as the album shifts gears into pure fiction. "It's written from the perspective of a girlboss whose girlboss mindset has begun to rot and is just starting to look like conquest,” says White. “Her dreams of flipping houses, of assimilating into a neighborhood in the city, are becoming dubious and condescending." White's gentle voice sharpens into a sneer: "You must think I'm from a photograph," she sings. Beneath the image there's only decay, but her avatar keeps her whitened teeth gritted into a smile all the same.
With "Cobalt Room: Good Work / Silver Saab," White cycles through dramatic, propulsive contrasts among disparate sounds. She intersperses sludge metal with Brazilian Tropicália rhythms; bare guitars kick up into smooth, twinkling jazz, which then erupts right back into power pop. "It’s the sequential sum of what I was listening to at the time," notes White. "I was interested in pulling every idea to its extreme. Because it’s just me recording, and I’m not asking anything from anyone, I can pursue the most whimsical, outrageous aspects of the music. What would be the funniest or most cartoonish place to take this? And how can I make that rewarding still?"
8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living wrenches open the idea of apocalypse -- an abrupt, totalizing disaster rained down on uncomplicated innocents -- and peers inside at its bursting, devastated particulars. Apocalypse is slow. It's uneven. Some people survive it. Some don't. Nations falter and so do individual people, clinging fast to their old, dilapidated self-preservation strategies. What saved you in the past might destroy you in the future. Flip it around, shake yourself loose, ruin the person you've known yourself to be, and you might get the chance to become something else.
"I was interested in making something that sounds like a self-help book, but it’s actually about self-destruction," says White. "In full catastrophe living, you just have to do a bunch of whippets. This album is mostly about doing whippets. I’m not even kidding."