Finn Wolfhard is 22, which in Hollywood years is basically retirement age for child actors. So naturally he’s already reinvented himself as a frontman with a new solo album called Happy Birthday. “I was gonna just hide behind another band name,” he shrugs. “Then I just thought, okay, well, it’s a personal record, so I should just do it under my own name. Makes it more authentic, I guess.”
Finn is promoting this album while also doing press for Hell of a Summer, the film he co-wrote and co-directed. And The Legend of Ochi is in there too. “So right now, I’m sort of promoting one and a half things or two things,” he says, like a man who’s been media-trained since puberty. “It’s been unbelievably busy but good.”
He set himself the highly questionable challenge of writing 50 songs in a year. “Ninety percent of it was really bad,” he admits. “But 10% of it ended up being really cool.” Some made it into The Aubreys. Some just felt too close to the bone to be anyone else’s. “They were sort of about coming of age, going to another chapter in your life,” he says. “So I thought, screw it, it’ll just be me.”
Don’t expect one vibe the whole way through. “I didn’t want every song to be one genre all the way through,” Finn says. “I wanted to try my hand at different kinds of songs.” So there’s scrappy garage rock, four-track cassette tape experiments pitched up to make him sound like a ghost of his former self, and “catchy sort of pop rock songs” that namecheck early Ben Lee and Ben Kweller. Not to mention Daniel Johnston and Elliott Smith. “Noise Addict is amazing,” he says, nerding out. “All the four-track stuff.”
Is it therapy? “Yeah and no,” he laughs. “A lot of it is subconscious. I’ll write the song and realize, oh, it was about that. Sometimes writing lyrics ups your mood and your mental health. So I’d say yeah, it’s therapy.”
The kid who started writing from other people’s perspectives is still a fan of slipping on another skin. “It’s hard to be vulnerable and personal with songwriting,” he says. “That’s probably why I’m an actor. You get to air out this character’s dirty laundry instead of your own.”
But Finn is old enough to feel nostalgic about getting bathed by his mom — and self-aware enough to know how weird that sounds. “‘Crown’ is about that nostalgia,” he says. “You know, you get bathed and your parents put a cup of water on your head. Looking back, that’s such a luxury.”
On tour this summer, he’ll test out this “grown-up version of garage rock” between his other jobs. And when in doubt, there’s always Joe Keery to text. “Joe’s a huge reason why I got into indie rock,” Finn says. “He’s someone I ask for advice all the time. He’s a great guy to have.”
Kids these days. They grow up so fast — but they keep the cassette decks rolling.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the video below.
