About us

We are composers Alaina Ferris and Matt Schlatter, a musical indie-folk duo based in Brooklyn. Our songs highlight poetic lyricism, delicate harmonies, and instrumental arrangements — guitar, piano, cello, harp, and our two voices. Our project is essentially our friendship manifest – we’ve been meeting once a week for over 10 years to talk about life, compose, and just hang out. Our songs are extensions of our conversations: what we’re reading, thinking, and how we’re feeling. The music is a natural result of what feels like a simple (but, for us, profound) friendship and practice — an artistry in the quotidian, or magic in the everyday.

In a little house

Our debut EP, In a little house, was recorded at Restoration Sound in Bushwick, mixed by Restoration Sounds’s owner Lorenzo Wolff, and mastered by Charles van Kirk. We wanted the EP to feel like a live performance — intimate, sincere, and imperfect. Each song was recorded in a single take in the same room. Afterward, our guest artists layered their tracks. The album is about a failed relationship that still manages to hold onto the timelessness of the love that initially formed it. For us, the record represents the confusion, darkness, and jubilance that one goes through in their struggle to find themselves in the context of a committed partnership. 

The opening song of the album is a cover of Leon Russell’s original, A Song for You. Simple Life and Water on Rock feature Brent Arnold (cello). Seagull features Brent Arnold (cello) and Lacy Rose (voice). Unknown Lands features Lacy Rose (voice), and Colin Fullerton (guitar). The Way I See It features the voices of Melody Allegra Berger, Mare Berger, J.D. Mollison, and Lacy Rose, while Lorenzo Woolf plays the shruti box at the end of the song.

Our artwork is by Charlotte de Mezamat and our album photos are by Noel Woodford.

How we met

We officially formed Physical Kids in 2015. The two of us met in Brooklyn, New York after both moving to the city in 2010 to start our own bands. We became fast friends and began to meet every week to compose, chat, and practice for the joy of it, which eventually led to the formation of this project. We got our name from Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, which we read together (we’re both fantasy geeks) – the book features a band of young mages with the ability to bend light and physical matter. We also loved how the title speaks to Patti Smith’s Just Kids – like Patti Smith, we’re operating in the New York tradition of poetry and music – and it resonates with our major themes – human vs. nature, urban vs. rural, mind vs. body, young vs. old, fact vs. fiction, science vs. magic.

Alaina came from a background in creative writing and now composes for choirs and opera in New York City, and Matt has been producing music and collaborating with artists such as Loren Berí and Mother Juniper, as well as releasing music under his solo project, io & Titan. Our music shows the influence of contemporary poetry, folk, classical, and jazz – we both went to college conservatory programs and have played instruments our entire lives. We grew up listening to Billie Holiday, Elizabeth Cotten, Woodie Guthrie, Simon and Garfunkle, Tori Amos, Bob Dylan, Elliot Smith, The Shins, Led Zeppelin, Gwen Stefani, meanwhile practicing Chopin, Mozart, Schubert, Miles Davis and Nina Simone. Our greatest musical influences are our friends and musical peers in Brooklyn.