When Allison Faris moved to Portland from Colorado in 2008, she wasted no time establishing a new identity in her new town. That identity was tied closely to her psych-pop band Grandparents.
“I basically met all the dudes [in the band] really quickly, and then we lived together and made the band together,” Faris says. “It had really been my everything the entire time that I lived here. I hadn’t really experienced being Allison in Portland without also being in Grandparents.”
In the fall of 2015, Grandparents came to an end. Faris saw the breakup coming, but it was still painful, and it still set her adrift. “I really experienced an identity crisis,” she said. “Like, who am I here and what am I doing? At the worst time of the year to feel sad, too.”