Getting to know New Constellations: An interview with Harlee Case and Josh Smith

Harlee and Josh, this is your first tour in Europe. Munich is the fifth concert. How has it been so far?

Harlee: It’s been amazing. The crowds have been great and it’s so cool being at the merch booth afterwards. People are just so sweet trying to express their gratitude even though sometimes there is a language barrier. I feel like people have just been really excited and happy that we’re here.

And it seems you’re having a lot of fun.

Harlee: Oh yeah, we’re having a blast.

What’s your favourite part of performing on stage?

Harlee: Getting to express your authentic feelings, have them received by people and getting to see them sing along with something that you created. That’s so validating and freeing. We all want to be loved and accepted, right? Having people come to your show and cheer you on feels so good.

Let’s go back to the beginning of New Constellations: You’ve known each other since you were teenagers and you even started making music together back then, right?

Harlee: Josh recorded one of my first songs that I wrote. We were 14 and 16.

At some point, your lives took you in completely different directions.

Harlee: We stayed friends throughout the whole time, but pursued our own musical ventures.

How did you end up in a band together around ten years ago?

Harlee: I put a post on my Instagram that I’m a vocalist and that I’m looking to be in a band. We were still hanging out at that point. Josh immediately called me and said: “I should be in that band. Take that post down.”

And then you just went ahead and got started?

Harlee: Yeah, it was really terrifying for me because I’d only really written by myself. I expressed to Josh how scared I was. He understood. So I just sent him a hundred voice memos of me just freestyling. Our first collaboration was very much Josh babying me and teaching me that it was a safe space for me to create with him. Sweet boy!

You both had “normal” jobs while pursuing music. I imagine starting a music career while working full-time can be quite challenging. How did you balance both?

Josh: Totally.

Harlee: I felt really blessed because I did own the company that I worked for. I was having fun with my job. Everyone was very lenient when, for example, I couldn’t be part of a project because of the music. Right before we we’re going all in with the band, I had my first time where my company wasn’t doing well. I had to work for one of our clients in their office, just running social media accounts. It was the first time in my adult life working in an office. In the end it felt so good to be like: “In a month, I’m going to be a rockstar. No more office job for me.” (laughing)

It took you a year to decide on the name New Constellations. How did you eventually come up with it?

Josh: We brainstormed a lot of different stuff. Some good…

Harlee: … some terrible (laughing).

Josh: I always liked bands that had “new” in it, like New Order, New Radicals. I just always thought that was cool. Harlee is really into space. So I was thinking of space words and “constellations” sounded nice.

What does the name mean to you?

Josh: There wasn’t really a meaning at the start. We just liked how it sounded. Over the years we’ve heard different meanings. Constellations are so unfathomably old. The idea of there being a new one is interesting, as is that they only exist from our perspective on Earth. If we were to go to different places in the universe there would be different constellations. It would be the same stars still but you’re looking at it from a different angle.

I really like that. It reminds me of life, too — two people can look at the same thing, but see it from completely different perspectives.

 Josh: Yeah, exactly.

 Your debut album is titeled It Comes In Waves. It suggests movement, change and different phases. How did the title come about?

 Harlee: I was driving to shoot our album cover. I was at the ocean when I added that title to our list. I feel like Josh and I both have said and heard this phrase for a long time. Both of us had been through a pretty hard last few years. It’s a constant reminder that life can get bad, but it’s going to get better at some point and everything is fleeting. There are highs and lows, it goes back and forth. I feel that this concept really kept coming up throughout the album. When we went through the final list we both said, “This is the one.”

And what was the process of creating the album like?

Josh: We’ve written a lot of these songs over the years. We had been playing some of them live for a while. We worked those out, allowed them to change and evolve. We wrote a few of the songs in the studio, one even only the day before we recorded it. So it’s interesting to have that mix of songs.

Harlee: Yeah, it was really cool to piece it together. With Believe Again, for example, we had a completely different concept and a different idea of what the song was supposed to be about. When I started thinking about this being our first album and like something that was important for like our story, we rewrote the lyrics. This album is the first package deal of our story and also what has been the story since we started this band.

Hot Blooded is one of the songs on the album, but it was originally released in 2021. What was it like to watch the song grow and gain more and more attention over the years?

Harlee: We are so lucky because of this really organic, slow build. I think that’s the truth of a really good song. It’s not because of a viral moment, it’s not because it had a key spot on, for example, a commercial that everyone saw. People keep sharing it. I feel grateful because we keep getting pushes and people are truly resonating. It’s sick.

What’s next for you after this tour?

Harlee: After that we hopefully get a couple of months off. We don’t have anything planned yet touring-wise and it would be nice to enjoy the holiday season, hang out with friends and family and then get to spend some time writing for the second album.

I read that you’ve already written about 600 songs.

Josh: There are so many people asking this question. And it’s not true. We have no idea where that comes from.

Oh wow.

Harlee: I mean, we definitely have a couple hundred, I’d say. But 600 songs is unfathomable.

Well, I guess we’ve cleared that up! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.

Interview and Photography: Michelle Brey