Sophie Hiroko is a Duluthian, born and bred.
“The first house I lived in was off the grid, but when I was three we moved to Park Point, so I grew up on the shore of Lake Superior, quite literally,” she says.
So how is the 23-year-old singer-songwriter adjusting to life in Minneapolis, where she moved in August? Pretty well, it turns out.
“There’s so much inspiration,” she says of her new home. She’s childhood friends with Emma Jeanne of Sallyforth, and her roommate is fellow musician Anni XO. “They’re teaching me a lot about the scene.”
Part of the appeal of Minneapolis for Hiroko is its cultural heritage. “I can feel the greats that have come before,” says Hiroko, who's in a phase where she's reading the same books (Kerouac's The Subterraneans, a Rimbaud collection) that once inspired Bob Dylan.
You wouldn’t necessarily pick up on that influence from To the Core, the five-song EP Hiroko released this summer, which is steeped in a much different tradition: '90s alt-rock. A stanza like “I am a pile of ashes/I am your father's glasses/Your mother's lashes/Your partner's passions” has more “a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido” in it than any Dylanesque qualities.
That stanza also typifies Hiroko's verbally infatuated style of writing. The song it springs from, “Ashes,” does alt right. The guitars are heavy but the rhythms are nimble, and the track is carried by the bright voice of a singer who says she listens to Charly Bliss on repeat every fall.
A dreamer and adventurer, Hiroko may head out to New York City at some point, as at least one Minnesotan from up north she admires did early in his career. “My number one draw is the music history,” she says. “Patti Smith is one of my biggest life inspirations.” It was through Patti, she explains, that she was drawn to Dylan.
A month before Hiroko headed south for Minneapolis, she opened for Trampled by Turtles in Duluth. She earned that support slot as part of the Palomino Grant, an award that TbT hands out to Duluth area musicians each year. She also got $7,000, which certainly helped with the move.
“The veil is very thin up there,” Hiroko says of Duluth. "I drew my creativity from the lake."
A bigger city does have its advantages though, such as “a more diverse pool of musicians.” Her first reaction on moving to Minneapolis: “Oh my gosh, there’s young people.”
But while Minneapolis does have lakes, Hiroko still misses the lake. “Last weekend I was in my room, it was 11 p.m., and I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I gotta be back to the lake,” she recalls. So she hopped in her car and headed north.
You can take the girl outta Duluth…
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