FROM MARCH 2020 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX

Moscow Apartment met in band camp at 13. Now 17, the duo has landed a recording contract and has a new record dropping in May. In the kitchen and onstage, their chemistry is clear

Pascale Pidilla and Brighid Fry, both 17 and better known as the band Moscow Apartment, are preparing lunch. In the Pidilla family home, west of Roncesvalles, Pascale is marinating cubed chicken breast with hoisin sauce while Brighid cuts the broccoli.

I have recently binged HBO’s Euphoria to prep for this, the first interview with teenagers of my journalistic career.

“I can make a very good grilled cheese,” Brighid tells me as she cuts, piling the uniform spears on her cutting board.

“It’s Jamie Oliver’s recipe,” says Pascale.

Brighid protests. “It is not! His has a cheese crown and mine doesn’t.” She turns to me and explains, “I watched that cheese video like three years ago. It’s not the same! I like a nice marble rye and some Dubliner cheese...”

As Brighid talks, she catches her bandmate scraping the seeds out of a chili pepper. “Weak.”

“I’m so weak, it’s embarrassing,” admits Pascale, busted with the denuded pepper. She shakes her head. “I’m half-Filipino.”

“And I’m completely white,” adds Brighid.

Pascale points out that Brighid had to bring over her own cayenne pepper today for the stir fry.

“Because you don’t have any spicy spices in your house!” Brighid exclaims. They laugh and keep prepping.

Pascale is the taller of the two, with dark blunt-cut hair tucked behind her ears. She ponders two bottles: “Sesame or PC Stir Fry oil?”

Brighid is shorter, with red hair. They are as attuned to each other as only best friends in high school can be. They are clearly not siblings; sisters at this age rarely get along so well. Pascale mentions that they are a tiny bit hungover from a house party the night before. “We really don’t drink. We’re both teenagers and we’re both on antidepressants but we definitely go to a party school.”

“We made a band in middle school,” Brighid says. They bonded at Girls Rock, a camp that aims to empower girls through music. “We didn’t know what the fuck we were doing. Thirteen-year-olds are very different from 17-year-olds.” Once they started singing their own songs together, they decided to enter the CBC Searchlight contest. “We needed a name so we spent an afternoon coming up with a whole bunch of names. Brighid had a photography book where we saw ‘Moscow Apartment’ and it sounded cool.”

“We’ve kind of been winging it since then,” says Pascale. For “winging it” they have accomplished more than many musicians twice their age. They have a $100K recording contract with Slaight Music, are putting the finishing touches on their EP and are looking for a female producer for their next album. They’ve played throughout Canada, in Boston and across New York State.

Last year, Moscow Apartment released “Annie,” a song about anorexia. The forthcoming album, due out in May and tentatively titled Better Daughter, will have a single called “New Girl,” about sexual assault. While they consider themselves activists, they prefer to let their actions, like canvassing for Jagmeet Singh in the recent election or playing a show at the climate strike last fall, do the talking.

On a recent tour they pulled out of a show scheduled for a theatre screening Unplanned, a film with a pro-life agenda. “As soon as we heard they were playing it, we cancelled. There was no way,” says Pascale.

Another time they were asked to perform with a well-known artist who they knew had made homophobic comments in the past. Although this was presented to them as a great opportunity, they turned it down.

“We’re not straight; we played at Pride,” explains Pascale. “You can’t just go play Pride and then turn your back on the whole movement.”

“I really look up to Jane Fonda,” says Brighid. “She’s been political for her entire career.”

“Tanya Tagaq is really sick too,” adds Pascale. “Honestly, everyone that we like is also an activist. I find it hard to like someone if they won’t take a stance on something.”

Brighid remembers seeing Tagaq perform with July Talk at the Secret Path Concert, a benefit for the Chanie Wenjack Fund, at Roy Thomson Hall. “It was amazing, I was crying the entire show. I was there with my grandpa and he was like, ‘Are you okay?’”

The stir fry ingredients are going into the pan. “Oh no!” yelps Pascale. She forgot to start with the oil. “Keep stirring,” encourages Brighid.

Pascale stirs. “Put the stir in the stir fry,” she says. “That’s how Lizzo puts the sing in single.”

Brighid turns to me and says, “I have a three-year-old brother and he’s obsessed with Lizzo. Which is bad ’cause she swears a lot.”

They continue cooking and chatting, occasionally breaking into conversational song. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Brighid trills as she turns broccoli in the pan. She’s like an effervescent Drew Barrymore, wise beyond her years, while Pascale has the slouch of tall girls everywhere, a perpetual Charlotte Gainsbourg pose. She smiles. “Just dump it all in, Brighid.”

I ask them what bands they are listening to, whose songwriting inspires them. I can barely keep up as the names are thrown at me: Fat White Family, Big Thief, Post Animal, Snotty Nose Rez Kids, Kinnie Starr, A Tribe Called Red, Laura Marling, Iskwe, Lorde, Buffy Saint Marie (“a queen, a legend”). “We love Wolf Saga,” Brighid says. “We shared a bill with him a few times and have been talking about collaborating.”

Pascale lets the dog out – Casey, the golden retriever goes bounding into the backyard – then returns to the stove to check on the progress. “Find a fat piece of chicken,” she instructs. “We’ll cut it and see if it’s cooked all the way through.” Once it is deemed finished she dishes up rice from the steamer and tops it with the hoisin-sauced stir fry.

After first bites the friends turn to each other. “You think this is as good as the one we made in the summer?” Pascale asks.

Brighid shakes her head. “No, but only because we didn’t use oyster sauce.”

Pascale nods, agreeing.

The dining area is anchored by a large oak table, and we sit down around it. A 100-year-old hutch jammed with china and family photos is tucked behind us. A wooden bowl of clementines sits by the sink.

The stir fry is very good, even without oyster sauce. Crisp broccoli and tender hoisin-glazed chicken on fluffy white rice. Winter sun shines through the windows and the golden retriever lies at our feet. This is nowhere near the drug-addled glitter-makeup shitshow Euphoria had prepared me for.

Brighid and Pascale are finishing high school this year and looking forward to the freedom that will bring, both for their band (they want to tour more in the U.S. and eventually Europe) and for their futures. Brighid is considering school, maybe film at Tisch. At the mention of the NYU arts college, Pascale puts on an affected voice: “I go to Tisch. The city is my campus.” This cracks them both up. Pascale wants to move to Montreal and get a naked cat. “I’ve really wanted one for a long time.”

Neither wants to be tied down to any one path. “Honestly, I know whatever happens is not gonna be what I think it is,” Pascale says.

“When we started this band, never in my wildest dreams did I think we would get to this point,” she explains. “I thought we’d play two gigs at TRANZAC and that would be it. But now we’re here and it’s been three years.”

They look at each other, eyes wide. “Three years doesn’t sound that long,” Brighid tells me. “It feels long to us, though, because we haven’t lived that long.”

“Our parents are really smart people,” Pascale says. “They’re just like, ‘Yeah, you can make your own EP, yeah you can be a band. Yeah you can be rock stars. Of course you can.’” Pascale looks at Brighid, who is nodding in agreement. “It’s always been, like, a boundless life.”

Moscow Apartment’s forgiving chicken stir fry

Serves 4

ingredients

• 3 tbsp hoisin sauce

• 1 chili pepper, seeds removed, minced

• 1 garlic clove, minced

• cooking oil, enough to coat the pan for each batch of frying

• 1 head broccoli, chopped

• 1 red bell pepper, cut into bite-sized pieces

• 1 package snow peas (whole)

• 3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed

method

Mix hoisin, chili and garlic into chicken and let marinate one hour. Heat pan, add oil and stir fry vegetables in batches until cooked. Set aside in bowl. Sauté the chicken until done. Pieces should be golden around the edges and firm. To test, cut into larger piece and check for doneness. Once cooked, combine everything in bowl, stir well and serve over steamed rice.

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