Sarah Barthel didn’t just put her life on hold for Phantogram. She left it in storage.
“I had a whole unit in Brooklyn packed with my stuff for years,” she says. “I didn’t have a place to live. I didn’t have a life.”
Four years after the band’s last record, which was wrapped in the trauma of Sarah’s sister’s suicide, Phantogram’s Ceremony isn’t exactly a party. But it might be the closest they’ve come to one. It’s a document of two people who got crushed under the weight of grief, success, and relentless touring—and then clawed their way back up with synths, beats, and whatever spiritual clarity you can find in a rented house in Joshua Tree.
“We forgot how to live,” Josh Carter admits. “It was all Phantogram. That was the baby. But it cost us.”
They recorded Ceremony on Sarah’s property, far from the “clinical” studio settings they’d grown tired of. “We were on our own clock again,” Josh says. “Just like when we started. It felt right.”
“Also,” Sarah adds, “we remembered what it’s like to have dinner with friends and wash the dishes. Novel concept.”
The album opens with “Dear God,” a beat-heavy invocation that sounds like a hymn for people who’ve stopped believing in anything but Wi-Fi and meds. “It’s kind of a prayer,” Sarah says. “To whoever. Whatever. Just asking for strength.”
Josh chimes in: “I made that beat 15 years ago. We almost forgot about it. Sometimes we just leave these ideas sitting in a folder until the right lyric or existential crisis comes along.”
There’s a sense of perspective now—a cautious wisdom that only comes from surviving a spiral and realizing you were never that special to begin with. “It’s easy to self-medicate,” Sarah says. “Especially on tour, when everyone’s praising you, and you’re just… dying inside.”
“I mean,” she adds, “touring is great. But it’s also a bubble. A really weird, slightly toxic bubble where the star of the show also has to do their own laundry.”
They don’t love spelling out their lyrics. “Not a puzzle, exactly,” Josh says. “More like a paint-by-number. We want listeners to fill in their own colors.”
Except on “Into Happiness,” where they got a little help from Billy Corgan. Yes, that Billy Corgan.
“He came to our studio in Laurel Canyon,” Josh says. “Worked on a few things. But mostly, he helped us nail the bridge on that one. He’s intense—but smart. Like, mastermind smart.”
Sarah was nervous. “Siamese Dream is one of my favorite albums of all time,” she says. “So yeah. A little intimidating.”
But on the other end of the generational see-saw? Billie Eilish. The Gen Z oracle has name-dropped Phantogram as an influence and even covered their music.
“It’s wild,” Sarah says. “A pop star who you’d think would be more in the Britney lane is actually looking at us like, you helped shape my sound? That’s nuts. And amazing.”
Even ten years out, their debut Eyelid Movies still holds up. “It doesn’t sound dated,” Josh says. “We were always trying to make music that didn’t fit a trend. Hopefully, in 2030, Ceremony will still feel like that too.”
If Ceremony has a message, it’s that you don’t have to burn out to make good art. You can stop. You can get a little quiet. You can go to therapy. You can even wash the damn dishes.
And you can come back. Maybe not as the same person—but maybe as someone who can finally breathe.
“You have to take care of your mental health,” Sarah says. “Or you’ve got nothing.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
