There is little chance of finding a band more enigmatic than Celine Neon. The duo — composed of Emily Nejad and Maggie Kubley, with production by Will Kubley — excites offstage as much as it does onstage. Although Nejad and Maggie Kubley met nearly 10 years ago and worked in a variety of different bands together, Celine Neon marks the first time in which the two completely fortified their spectacular, theatrical vision.
The road to the current iteration of Celine Neon — all bright lights and outrageous costumes, and seriously addictive yet grimy and gritty pop music — was not a straight one. Nejad grew up in Evansville, Ind., and the Kubleys hail from Plymouth, Ind.
Both towns are considerably smaller than the bombastic music the band creates, but it might have taken such humble origins to enable the duo to achieve its current status.
Nejad and Kubley met at Ball State University, where the two were theater majors. Their theater circles and the program itself proved limiting. “I think a lot of years in school and immediately outside of school was trying to unlearn everything I learned in college in terms of performance,” Nejad said. She and Kubley quickly bonded over their desire to create and perform music on their own terms.
“I wasn’t seeing other people getting out the four-track and (making music),” said Kubley. “I wasn’t seeing other people learning how to record their own music or learning how to play with gear or anything.”
Their past musical projects were ultimately unfulfilling, however. “I think that, in a lot of ways, the intensity was being diluted by a lot of other peoples’ input,” Nejad said. “Those highly concentrated emotions got watered down.”
Kubley especially felt too tied to the idea of the type of music she should be playing rather than the music she wanted to make. “We were making music that, I’ll just personally say, I didn’t really like it,” said Kubley. She credits an ex for finally pushing her to follow the aesthetic ideas she always envisioned for her music. “Sometimes you need somebody to (make you) listen to yourself and say, ‘Yo! Why don’t you just do what you want? Why are you saying, ‘I wish this was my music?’ You can make that,'” she added.
The two set off on their own. “It’s always been me and Maggie, with a variable amount of dudes. And most recently, we were like, let’s just do you and I,” Nejad said. Kubley reached out to her younger brother Will, a producer and musician in the band Passafire. Kubley and Nejad simply wanted to make electronic music, but they weren’t familiar with the necessary gear and instruments they needed. Will took the songs they had already created and elevated them.
“We got those tracks back and we both thought, ‘Oh my God! This is it!'” Kubley added.
Celine Neon is the fourth band for Nejad and Kubley, and despite their numerous music pursuits in the past, they know that this is the right project for them as musicians and as friends.
There is something infectious you feel when meeting them that clearly translates to their music. Kubley described Nejad as “practically my sister.” Throughout the interview, the two finished each other’s sentences and told stories about their vision and their personal life as if they were two parts of the same whole.
That strong bond fuels their music. “Getcha Good,” one of the band’s most recent singles, is two minutes of intricate, hyperlayered and fast-paced energy. Other songs like “DEPRESH” and “Bleach” are slower, but still compelling and one-of-a-kind. The music sounds influenced by the past (there is fire in the vocals similar to a ’90s R&B and pop act like Janet Jackson or En Vogue) but the sharp production feels like it’s pulled from the future.
Onstage, this mix of style and energy creates a can’t-miss spectacle. “We’re especially, onstage, intensely everything,” Nejad said. “Intensely aggressive, intensely emotional, intensional empathetic and intensely loving.”
Kubley quickly agreed, interjecting with her own assessment of their performances and group sound. “We make pop music, but it’s deeply, deeply connected to our heart and soul,” she said. “It does what music is supposed to do, which is really put into the world the things you can’t hold and feel.”
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When: 9 p.m. Sunday
Where: The Burlington, 3425 W. Fullerton Ave.
Tickets: $7 (21+), 773-384-3243 or theburlingtonbar.com
