When Daffo takes the stage at Club Soda in Montreal on November 14th, opening for Wednesday, they’ll be experiencing a full-circle moment that few emerging artists get to savour. “I think the coolest thing about it is that I will be playing for an audience I have been a part of before,” says Gabi Gamberg, the LA-based artist behind the Daffo moniker. “I’ve been in the mosh pit at a couple Wednesday shows, it’s going to be really cool to be the one on stage opening this time.” The pairing makes perfect sense: both acts traffic in unflinching emotional honesty, though Daffo‘s approach leans into a more intimate, frenetic energy. “Also, I’m stoked to get to hear Wednesday play every night. ‘Bleeds’ is turning out to be my favourite new record of the year.”
That same enthusiasm for craft is evident throughout Gamberg’s debut album, Where the Earth Bends, released via Concord Records. Working with legendary producer Rob Schnapf, whose résumé includes Elliott Smith, Beck, and Cat Power, could have been intimidating for a 21-year-old. And it was, at least initially. “I was definitely nervous on the first day. We had a couple of people I didn’t know coming in to play on some songs. Plus I had only met Rob once,” Gamberg admits. “But when it came down to it, recording and playing together, I remembered, ‘This is one of the only things I actually know how to do.’ I became comfortable once the music started happening. And it was so fun.”
The collaboration at Mant Sounds Studio proved to be exactly what the songs needed. “Rob has this way of really supporting a song, really giving it just what it needs, and not too much more,” Gamberg explains. “Even though he was the one producing, it still felt like they were still ‘my songs’ just coming to life. He is really brilliant and so great to work with, I’ve come to love him very much.” That approach, bolstered by engineer Matt Schuessler and drummer Josh Adams (Devendra Banhart, Jon Batiste), allowed Where the Earth Bends to maintain its raw emotional core while achieving a fuller, more naturalistic sound.
The album opens with “Get a Life,” a track born from an unlikely place: a meditation retreat in upstate New York. There’s a dark irony in writing a song about struggling with presence while surrounded by people dedicated to exactly that practice. “Oh man, I was just pissed at myself,” Gamberg recalls. “I hadn’t written a song in months, and I was really frustrated at myself for that. And then it was just so quiet and peaceful, it made room for so much junk to come up in my mind, which is frustrating when you are trying to clear your mind. But I realized that was the point, a big reason why I wasn’t writing songs was that I wasn’t fully experiencing my life or my emotions. I was suppressing things, not making room for them.”
That revelation unlocked something crucial for Gamberg, who has been open about living with OCD. Songs like “Habit” and “When I’m In Hell” explore intrusive thoughts and self-perception with a visceral honesty that can be uncomfortable to witness, but that discomfort is precisely what makes them powerful. When asked how they know when they’ve captured those feelings accurately, Gamberg pauses. “Hmm, that’s a tough question. I think when I really have to force something, sometimes it just feels soulless. And the funny thing is my OCD often gets in the way of writing songs. So I guess I just really have to tap into the way I’m feeling and not think too hard about it, but that can be really hard because once you try, it doesn’t work.”
The answer lies in intuition rather than analysis. “I know I’ve captured a feeling accurately when it just feels good to write. There’s a release. It’s all wrong when it doesn’t feel good to write. When you are just chipping away at something relentlessly, it’s like you are looking at it the wrong way.”
Gamberg’s journey from Philadelphia suburbs to Concord Records began in the DIY trenches. Growing up, they cut their teeth at venues like Serendipity Café in New Jersey, playing countless basement and backyard shows as a teenager. Now, signed to a major indie label and booked at festivals like Pitchfork Paris, the challenge becomes maintaining that intimate energy in larger rooms. “I really try to carry the energy of a small room with me when I play a big room. Big venues can kind of suck away some of the camaraderie and togetherness that a small show has,” Gamberg says. “So at the same time, I guess I kind of have to let go of that togetherness. Or really, I have to transform the way I think about it a bit. I don’t know everyone at the show anymore, but we can all know each other in the way we tap into the same feeling together. Like, I might not know their names, but we all know what the song feels like. And we can live in that. If that makes sense.”
Perhaps the most emotionally complex moment on Where the Earth Bends is “Unveiling,” which deals with family, grief, and Gamberg’s cousin’s stillborn daughter Adalie. It’s an incredibly vulnerable subject to share publicly, but Gamberg felt compelled to include it. “I don’t know, I guess I just thought maybe it could help someone to hear. Like maybe it transforms grief a little. It becomes less of a dark thing and more of a hand reaching out to hold you.”
That willingness to excavate painful experiences extends to Gamberg’s educational choices as well. After enrolling at NYU’s prestigious Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, they left after just one year to tour with Sir Chloe. “I mean, I probably would’ve learned a bit more about recording, and that would’ve been cool. But no, I was never meant to stay,” they reflect. “I think I would’ve left regardless of the tour offer to be honest. It was too expensive. And I couldn’t handle living in New York. I just don’t do well with school. Never have.”
Musically, Daffo‘s sound is defined by unconventional guitar tunings inspired by Joni Mitchell and Elliott Smith. Rather than planning these tunings deliberately, Gamberg approaches them intuitively. “I usually just tune my guitar in a way that feels good in the moment. It can unlock some really cool chords I wouldn’t otherwise know how to play, and therefore unlock a new feeling and a new direction for a song to go in,” they explain. “I’m always just guided by what chords or melody feels good to me in that moment. Sometimes it’s a C and a G, and sometimes it’s some weird chords I don’t know.”
That intuitive approach extends to Gamberg’s complicated relationship with social media. After going viral on TikTok with their second-ever post, a bedroom performance of “The Experiment,” they’ve struggled with the platform’s demands for constant content and self-commodification. “I’m not sure. I think I’m still learning how much I can share without hurting myself,” Gamberg admits. “I really want to be honest and be myself, but it can be really hard with so many eyes on me. And also being yourself isn’t always the most marketable thing. Like, my life isn’t all that interesting. I spend a lot of time doing absolutely nothing in between tours. Sometimes I feel pressure to pretend things are more glamorous and cool than they are. The trouble is, the artist and the person are just the same. When I separate them, things become cheaper and inauthentic. So yeah, I’m still figuring that part out.”
At 21, with a debut album that required excavating deeply painful experiences, Gamberg is already thinking about sustainability and evolution. When asked about their relationship with songwriting at 30, they confess to not having imagined that far ahead. “I really hope songwriting becomes something more than survival. I have this horrible thought sometimes that I need to be experiencing pain to write a good song, and ‘What will happen if that goes away?’ My relationship with songwriting is currently shifting. I’m trying to relearn how to approach it with some joy.”
The honesty is refreshing, if sobering. “I think songwriting will always be a part of who I am. I don’t know that I’ll still have an audience when I’m 30, but I can only hope the songwriting just keeps getting better. Or that it at least keeps feeling good to me. I hope I learn to put less pressure on it all. It’s really hard not to when it’s your livelihood.”
For now, Daffo is focused on the immediate future: bringing Where the Earth Bends to audiences across North America, transforming those basement show energies into something that can fill larger venues, and continuing to write songs that reach out like a hand through the darkness. If the past is any indication, Gamberg will keep finding beauty in discomfort, one brutally honest song at a time.
Daffo plays Club Soda tonight!
