Stumbling into Sophie Truax’s world feels like walking into a garden of bright flowers. Some are soft, some are strange, some have thorns, and none quite look like anything you’ve seen before. It’s curious and wonderfully odd, but one thing is for sure, everything has been grown with an incredible amount of love and care.
When you first discover Sophie, you’re immediately drawn to how her creative world is entirely hers. Her puppets are funny and charming, but they aren’t just there for the sake of being funny or cute because they hold pieces of her. Feelings that might be awkward to say out loud, strange little parts of herself, things that are easier to look at when you’ve turned them into a tiny felt character.
That same honesty runs through her new EP, Can’t Split a Worm. Across six songs, Sophie moves through heartbreak, self-doubt, insecurity and all those wonderfully uncomfortable feelings that come with being a person. But she never seems interested in making them heavier than they need to be. There is humour in there, colour, warmth, and a sense that maybe you don’t have to be embarrassed by every messy part of yourself.
That’s probably what I found most interesting when I spoke to her—Sophie has never really been interested in picking one thing and sticking to it. She grew up painting, sculpting, collaging and making whatever happened to catch her attention, even if that meant getting obsessed with something for two weeks and then never touching it again.
“I have always done a million different craft things,” she tells me. Growing up, her school projects were full of mixed media, cut-outs and pop-ups, often made alongside her mother. For a long time, though, she felt like she was supposed to choose one thing and focus on it.
“I’d take on screen printing for two weeks and then I would never screen print again,” she laughs. “But now the job kind of makes it so I’m holding on to all of these things.”
Listening to Sophie talk about her work, you can hear how much she loves creating everything and anything. There’s no sense that she’s trying to force all of these different interests into one neat category. She just makes what she wants to make, and the music, puppets, costumes, sets and everything else have found their way into the same little world.
Ahead of her biggest North American headline tour yet, where she’ll bring her colourful universe to the stage and invite fans to create their own puppets alongside her, I spoke with Sophie about embracing every corner of her creativity, the relationship between her music and handmade characters, finding comfort in play, and what happens when you stop trying to make yourself fit into just one box.
Alana (CULT MACHINE): How does it feel now that the record is out?
Sophie Truax: I’m really excited. I’ve been like sitting on it for so long and now I get to like… I’m spending all my time like planning the show out and like what it’s going to be in relation to all that, so I’m excited.
A: Are you doing anything to prepare for the tour?
S: I’m doing a lot of things. I feel like there’s a million things to do all the time because I’m like, I’m writing the show. We’re making basically like 400 puppet kit pieces. We’re doing a meet and greet before the show where you make your own puppet. That and then rehearsal stuff. There’s a million different things floating around.
A: What are you most excited for, for this tour?
S: I’m trying to build a whole storyline and I think we’re bringing a puppeteer on tour. We did that last time, but this time I think the puppet’s gonna have a voice and be like mic’d up as like a fully existing character in the show, so I’m really excited about that.
A: Will it also be kind of a puppet theatre show?
S: It’ll be kind of a mix of things. I’m writing like a whole narrative thing. All the songs will have a little story along with it. I’m excited.
A: You’ve built this amazing, really specific universe where like music, puppetry, costume, sculpture, filmmaking, theater–everything all exists together.
When you’re creating something, where does the idea usually begin?
S: Oh, I think it’s different every time. I never know how I’m gonna have the idea, what it’s gonna look like.
I just had one this morning and I felt like I looked crazy because I have like six sticky notes spread out with all my notes and I’m writing faster and the pen’s running out of ink, so like all of the notes look like I’m losing my mind.
But I think for a really long time, the ideas always started like with the song first for me. And now I think the more that I kind of expand and like to try all of these different mediums on, it kind of pops up.
It’s kind of like whack-a-mole, where it could come up anywhere and I’m just like, “Oh, oh!”
A: How much of your creative process is planned out and how much comes from following a strange idea and seeing it where it takes you?
S: I feel like my best ideas are the ones that kind of feel like a random glimpse of something that I have to chase. But I do think that a lot of the times, the more that I sit down and try to plan something out and dedicate myself to that… it invites a lot more of those little pops of ideas, which is fun.
I think what’s interesting, too, is like turning all of my passions into like what I do, just like on a day-to-day job basis, too.
A: For this EP, how long did the entire process take?
S: Probably the oldest song on the EP, I think, is three years old.
But a lot of the concentrated “Oh, I’m making this project specifically,” has probably been the last year and a half, two years.
A: It must be so cool to see a project that you’ve started out so long ago.
S: It’s really cool. A lot of my artist friends will be like, “Oh, it took me so long to put this out that it feels like a past version of this point.”
But I think that it’s kind of sweet because I feel like I’m scrapbooking as I go. So it’s kind of like I’m looking through everything and being like, “Oh, that was me.” It’s fun.
A: Do you have any favorite personal songs from Can’t Split A Worm?
S: I think my favorite one is probably “jackshit.” I think that that’s like the truest heart of how I write.
I think a lot of the EP is me trying to step into this bigger version of myself. And while that’s really fun, I think a lot of the time, I don’t know if it’s just being in my 20s or what it is, but it ebbs and flows so much. My sureness of everything.
I feel like I love how much “jackshit” feels like the core of everything to me.
A: Yeah, I feel like across the EP, there’s this tension between wanting to be honest and wanting to make that honesty feel also fun to experience. Is that balance something you consciously think about when you’re writing?
S: Oh, for sure.
I think a lot of the things that lead me to writing fun songs are not fun experiences. So I’m kind of like, if I have to live through it, if I have to deal with it, at least I’m going to find a way to be enjoyable for me and hopefully other people also.
A lot of my older stuff kind of sits in the sadness a little bit more, which I think can be good.
But then I was really thinking about it and I’m imagining myself performing all of these. And I’m going, “Maybe I can switch it up a little and have some fun humor.” I cope with humor a lot.
A: What song are you most excited to perform?
S: Maybe “You Won’t!” I think it’ll be really fun.
I try to build in little background vocals that can be sung by the puppets or easy singable things.
So I think the fun thing about doing the make-a-puppet-with-me before the show is that there’s at least like 20 puppets that I’ve made with people in the audience.
A: You know how people sometimes hold up lightsticks or flashlights.. People can hold up puppets at your show!
S: Exactly. People come with their puppets so I try to build in little things where people feel like they can also kind of perform with their puppet.
A: Also in the music video, behind you is the puppet band which is so cute. I was wondering if you could name that band, what would it be called?
S: Oh, we’ve been trying to figure this out for a long time! I think that right now we’re calling them the Felts.
There was a brief period of time where I was writing a TV show pilot with all the puppets with my friend Isabel. And we were going to call it Feltz and Forgot.
And it kind of reminds me of, there’s this band that I grew up really loving called Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s. And I was like, ah, Sophie and the Feltz and Forgot is kind of cute!
A: It does sound like a TV Show!
Do you ever start making something without knowing what it means yet and only understand what you were trying to express once you finished it?
S: Yeah. Sometimes it takes years for me to figure it out too. Like that’s the cool thing about the puppets is a lot of the time I don’t really know.
Sometimes I’ll sketch them out. Sometimes I don’t sketch them out and I’m just making them and they kind of appear. I write a lot of songs where at the time I’m like, I think I know what this means, but it doesn’t feel entirely like I fully understand it yet.
And then a couple of years later, something will happen to me and I’ll go, oh, that’s the song. I was just early to that. Sometimes I worry about the “writing it into existence” thing. I’m not a super spiritual person, but a lot of the art I make, it feels like this intangible thing I can’t pin down.
So it feels like that a little bit.
A: Especially since you work with such tactile materials, like felt, fabric, thread, costumes, and physical sets. What does physically making something with your hands give you that working digitally just doesn’t?
S: I think being able to truly hold something. I think that a lot of the things that I make digitally, like even when I’m writing scripts, or like if I’ve tried to digitally draw things.. I eventually want to turn it into something I can hold and see. I just think there’s something so satisfying about bringing something into existence.
I think especially with AI and everything happening with that right now. It’s so much more important to me to make things that can’t be made in that vein, if that makes sense.
With all the arts and everything, there’s a certain amount of stuff they try and recreate, but to create something that I’m holding in my hands is such a unique human experience that I love.
A: So much of what surrounds us online is or can be produced instantly now.
S: It’s scary.
A: To plainly say it, it also sucks.
Your work asks people to slow down and physically make something. So what do you think gets lost when the process of making disappears?
S: I think there’s so much that you figure out about yourself and the thing that you’re making while you’re crafting it. Like a lot of the time, it’s even less about the end result and it’s more about the experience of doing it.
I think when you lose the experience, you lose a lot of one, the attachment to the thing that you end up making in the same way that everything I go through in my life makes me who I am.
I think it’s a similar thing with art where when you cut out all of those things, it just becomes so much more of a hollow and end product. So I think slowing down and really making stuff just keeps the integrity of the special thing that you’ve made. And what makes it special is everything that’s gone into it.
A: There’s also an intimacy to seeing the seams, stitches and little imperfections in something handmade. Do you think imperfection has become more meaningful to you as more of our creative lives become digitalized and generated?
S: Yeah, definitely.
I’m definitely a perfectionist and I grew up feeling like everything I made had to be perfect and spotless in order for it to be considered good.
And I think the more that I’ve gotten into making things, especially mediums where I’m not an expert in, the more that the things that I love about what I create are the little imperfections. There are signs that they’re made by me and then I feel more connected to them and that.
I also really always gravitate to things that look a little bit fucked up.
A: It’s a little funky, that’s what makes it fun!
When you’re making a puppet, are you thinking about how it will eventually exist alongside a song or do you let those characters exist independently first?
S: Sometimes it’s like a chicken or the egg thing for me. I feel like a lot of the times when I’m making a song, I immediately have a character in mind. And then sometimes I have a character and then it feels like there’s a song that goes with it.
I try to make the puppets feel like they’re little parts of me or little aspects of who I am or they embody my tendencies or certain feelings that I have. So I feel like it’s really easy for me to match it up with a lot of the songs that I make because I’m usually working through the same things for a lot of my life.
A: Have you ever made a puppet where it’s like, oh, this puppet looks exactly like how this song would physically look like?
S: Oh yeah, I think that… Hm, I’m looking back at all my puppets in the corner right now.
A: Are they all put in the corner?
S: There’s like a spread of them! I think what’s funny is a lot of the colors and the creative palettes that I have gravitated to as an adult are all the same as when I was a child. So I think for me, a lot of my music has colors associated with it.
I feel like all the puppets really match that. It matches that for me. I think about my little Teethy puppet, the one that has weird teeth and gums and stuff.
I think that that one feels a lot like the weirder stuff that I make, which I haven’t put out as much. My music can be fun and it can be this colorful pop thing, but also I think there’s a side of everything that I make that has a little creepiness to it.
And I think for the next project, I’m trying to bring that a little bit more forward.
A: Like a little puppet horror?
S: Yeah, it gets a little concerning, but in a fun way.. I’ve always loved when people pair nostalgic puppet stuff with horror.
A: It’d be such a cool concept to see come to life. Have you ever had any really unhinged puppet ideas?
S: Oh yeah, I’ve definitely had a lot of them. I think that one day it is my goal to have a really big workshop where I can make really large puppets. Making the tall puppet was definitely the closest I’ve gotten to the large scale stuff. But I’ve had a lot of puppet ideas that I want to be almost massive, art kind of style things.
There’s an incredible puppet group that I think is mainly based out of LA and they’re called Freak Nature Puppets. And they do these really crazy beautiful multi-person puppets, some of them look like they’re 20 feet tall.
They play a lot of festivals and do a lot of kinds of performance art. I don’t necessarily have the space in my little office to make them yet. So I think those have been my most kind of unhinged ideas.
A: Imagine coming home late at night and finding huge ones in the dark..
S: When I made the puppet of my ex, I’d have him on a little stand at night, and I hadn’t really… I had one other puppet, but I had never really had it out around my house as much.
So I’d come home in the night and it would be like I had this guy that I only dated for a minute and his puppet, staring back at me in the darkness. I was living alone at the time.
A: I’d put it in its own room and lock the door SHUT.. Create its own Annabelle cage thing.
S: It needs that! (laughs)
But I’m getting more comfortable with having my weird, creepy art around the house now. But at first it was concerning, for sure.
A: Are you also interested in the creepy aspect of the portrayal of dolls? I mean, obviously they’re not really puppets, but like with Annabelle.
S: I was a huge fan of The Conjuring franchise!
My dad and I used to watch those movies together, but I’ve always loved horror. I think I was a very anxious child, but for some reason I discovered in middle school that for some reason horror movies didn’t freak me out. Which is funny because now as I get older, they freak me out more.
I don’t know why.
A: I think maybe because we started living alone.
S: Yeah, exactly. Maybe it is that. Maybe it’s me making the dolls too.
I’m a huge fan of antique stuff so I have a lot of little weird figurines, but I try not to think about it too much. I think the more trinkets I collect in my adulthood that feel like they could be vaguely haunted, I just have to watch less of those movies or I’m going to lose my mind.
If I’m surrounding myself with that and then watching movies about all of that, I don’t think that would be a good combination.
A: Is there a character you’ve made that surprised you by becoming much more important to your role than you initially expected?
S: Oh, yeah, definitely the puppet of myself. I made the puppet of my ex, and I thought that that was going to kind of be the base of the world. And then I made the puppet of me just kind of to go with it and I could just do puppet stuff of me and him. But I didn’t expect Puppet Sophie to become kind of the whole thing, which I think is kind of sweet because I feel like for a long time in my art, I was trying to take the focus off of myself because it felt like I just didn’t want to think about myself and all of those things.
Making Puppet Sophie kind of forced me in a beautiful way to have to step into myself and make my art more centered on what I wanted, who I am and all those different things.
I’m really grateful for it.
A: With Can’t Split A Worm, did the visual world change the way you understood the songs themselves? Or did the songs give you the blueprint for the visual world?
S: They kind of came at the same time. The first song that we made for the project, besides the one from three years ago, was ‘Selfish’
I think at first I had just gotten off of the last tour that I did and I was all excited about it. I had seen that people seemed the most connected to the pop-iest songs. So I was like, “I’m going to make a song where everyone can dance and it feels like an old Katy Perry record or something.” I was feeling like everything that I make is still a little bit weirder than that visually.
When I made ‘10 Feet Tall ’I was like, “OK.. I want to do something that feels a lot more playful than the other stuff that I’ve done.”
And I feel like that kind of opened up the door for me to just lean into that and all the visuals in a way that felt like it matched more.
A: While making the EP, were there any specific inspirations or influences that you kept coming back to, whether it be songs or films?
S: I was listening to a lot of Sheryl Crow. A lot of the songs I think kind of have the early 2000s sparkly guitar feel to them. I think at the time I was listening to a lot of Dora Jar. I love how playful she is. In all of her performances and her music and her visuals, it just feels so magical and she’s coasting on this beautiful wave.
I’m always watching a lot of older Wes Anderson movies or like little Jim Henson documentaries and stuff like are definitely super inspiring for me.
Throughout the years that I’ve been trying to navigate the industry, I’ve had a lot of meetings where they’re like, “Who are your North Stars and artists? Who do you want your career to look like?” Maybe they expect me to say Jim Henson because it’s puppets. My answers are always really weird and not even vaguely music-related half the time. I try to get inspiration from a lot of other things outside of music.
A: It’s good to have different creative outlets to go to and from. What’s your favorite Wes Anderson movie?
S: Fantastic Mr. Fox. Because I’m the biggest stop-motion fan. It’s one of my comfort movies. I think I could watch it probably several times back to back in a row. Which I don’t think my roommate would appreciate if I just had that on the TV over and over again.. But I just think it’s so sweet and so clever. I love the visual world that it lives in. I’d love to do something with stop motion in the future.
A: If you brought a little Wes Anderson-esque to your visual world it would be gorgeous. I’d love to watch a mini film of that sorts.
S: I had an idea that I think is kind of in that world this morning. We’ll see, hopefully it comes out as Wes Anderson-y as I am planning.
A: Do you ever discover something about yourself through making a song that you didn’t know you were trying to say when you started it?
S: I think a lot of the times when I’m writing, it’s kind of like melody first and I’ll mumble words with it. I won’t really realize the words that I’m saying and then I will listen back to them and I’ll go, “Oh, I didn’t know that I was feeling that way.”
I think it’s kind of like I’m so focused on following what melody feels right, that I’m not keeping guard at the door of all my feelings. So they kind of just start to like peek through.
I think that’s why I love writing so much. It feels like a way that I can figure out things that I can’t figure out by just sitting and thinking. I think it creates a kind of a conversation with myself that feels like an entirely different thing where I definitely learn a lot about myself.
Sophie’s crafting sessions are like a natural extension of the world she’s built around her music, she invites fans to make their own puppets alongside her and become part of it.
She loves seeing what people create especially because their ideas often surprise her.
“It’s like I’m giving them this clay to mold. I think it’s gonna look one way and then they come back and they’re like, ‘Look,’ and I’m like, ‘Wow, this is the most incredible thing ever. I could have never thought of that.’”
Her own puppets have helped her understand herself, and she hopes other people can find something similar in making their own. Sophie sees playfulness as something we often abandon as we grow older, even though it can be one of the simplest ways to process feelings we don’t yet have words for. “There’s something so special about it that we lose in trying to make something that feels more complex or harsh or grown,” she says.
Making the EP helped Sophie move away from seeing herself in black and white, instead learning to sit with her contradictions and accept that different versions of herself can exist at once.
A: What’s been your favorite part of the entire process of the EP?
S: I think my favorite part has been just making stuff.
I love sitting and crafting and making things for hours. It makes me really happy to be able to focus all my time on it now.
A: And through that, you’ve created a world where being too much, too weird, too emotional, and just a little bit uncomfortable is allowed to exist.
What do you hope someone gives themselves permission to do after spending time in your world?
S: I would hope that people would give themselves the permission to be uncomfortable and not know things and have it look kind of weird and strange and try and find the beauty and the levity and all of the fun in that.
I think that a lot of those feelings can feel really gross and heavy, but to kind of reframe them in a way where it’s all part of the process, there can be kind of like a magic and a sparkle to that as well.
A: Everyone needs a little magic in their life!
If you could bring one fictional puppet character into your universe, into real life for a day, who are you inviting and what are you, what are you doing together?
S: You would think I would say Puppet Sophie, but she’s really just like a handful, so I actually don’t know if I would want that.
I think maybe I would bring Teethy into the world. Teethy is kind of the puppet that embodies my fear, but I feel like I would want to take Teethy on a nice, beautiful road trip to get him out of the cage of fear and just do a lot of sweet things.
I think that I try to do those things for myself when I feel a little petrified by the world.
Whether she’s crafting 400 DIY puppet kits for tour prep, unravelling complex emotions into sparkling early-2000s-infused pop hooks, or taking her anxious felt companions out for a spin, Sophie Truax reminds us of the magic hidden in life’s messy, handmade edges. In an automated world pushing for effortless perfection, her art is a refreshing invitation to slow down, pick up a needle and thread, and embrace the delightful, weird, and unpolished parts of ourselves.
Can’t Split a Worm is available to stream now, and you can catch Sophie bringing her captivating, story-driven world to stages across North America this tour (and don’t forget to bring your puppet!)
