Locate S,1 Heals From Childhood Trauma on New Album

Christina Schneider has been going to therapy.

Schneider, who performs under the moniker Locate S,1, was a victim of childhood abuse and has experienced complex post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. The talented musician is in the process of piecing together the fragmented memories of her life.

“It’s like there is a family living inside of you,” Schneider explains. “They’re all you, but they also come from things your dad said, or your mom said, or your brother said. … And the idea of integrating those identities is part of healing…uniting the beautiful dream world with the dark reality world.” In 2020, she began receiving a treatment called internal family systems, which is a psychotherapy that attempts to meld the tributaries of a wounded past into a "core self."

That's not the only shift she's going through. Formerly based in Athens, Georgia, Schneider and her partner, of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes, are in the process of moving to Vermont ahead of both artists’ upcoming tour dates. “I used to live in Vermont for about eight years, and I just fell in love with it,” Schneider explains. “It was a really wonderful community, and so many great musicians that pretty much inspired me to start writing my own songs, so I feel a deep connection to Vermont.”

But for Schneider, the move is also symbolic of a transitional period in her life, professionally and emotionally. Her upcoming album, Wicked Jaw, is the product of the frustration and pain that followed her after the release of her album Personalia in 2020. With much of her tour for that album canceled by the pandemic, Schneider was forced to confront her past trauma, culminating in the composition of tracks that Wicked Jaw comprises.

“The psychic pain that I was experiencing made me realize that there were a lot of emotional problems I needed to work on," she admits, "and I started going into therapy for treatment for that. The album really traces that timeline of personal growth and healing.”

The most recent single she released from the album, “Go Back to Disnee,” illustrates the binary of past pain and present healing. The disillusioned lyrics balance sporadic, image-evoking poeticism with incriminating signifiers of American life, while the bossa nova sway behind Schneider’s relaxed vocal performance paints an elegant sound.

“I actually wrote that song on the Fourth of July in 2020. It was when all of the George Floyd protests were happening and COVID was in full swing, and I lived in a pretty conservative neighborhood at the time, and I just heard all these fireworks going off and people partying, and I was like, 'This is fucked. What are we celebrating?'” Schneider recalls.

Schneider reveals her sense of humor with political irony in the single, singing, “Go back to Disney, back to the palace stairs / Back to the hiding places that were never there.” Chris Weisman joins on guitar, supplementing the song’s melodic descent and mirroring Schneider’s vocal theme. The song is "kind of a sarcastic 'go fuck yourself,'” Schneider says. “If you want to make America great again, then go hang out in Disneyland, because that’s as real as any America that I ever knew.”

With her album releasing July 28, Schneider is heading out on tour, and will play the Larimer Lounge on Sunday, July 23. Though she has toured alongside Barnes's band in the past, she'll be headlining the first leg before opening for of Montreal's tour in September. She explains that in past collaborations with Barnes, she felt her contributions were overshadowed by the more well-known, established musician. But if her credit as the sole producer of Wicked Jaw is not proof enough of her full autonomy, her newfound comfort on stage may be.

“I've always been a pretty introverted person, and so performing, I usually get pretty nervous right before I get on stage. But lately — it's almost involuntary, like I become possessed by this persona — I've become this almost aggro performer,” Schneider says with a laugh. “I noticed that people like to be told what to do. So if the audience isn't clapping, I'll just be like, ‘Guys, what the fuck? Like, let's go, what are you're doing?’ I guess I become a little bit of this weird, aggro standup comedian.”

While Schneider hopes others enjoy the album and empathize with the complex, difficult emotions it communicates, her own journey is paramount, and Wicked Jaw aims to demonstrate the hardships of exploring identity and the perceived contradictions that accompany healing.

“There’s this world of illusion and beauty and dreams around us that we can be a part of, and then underneath that is all of the pain and the terror and the loneliness,” Schneider says. “I'm really interested in integrating those two instead of keeping them separate.”

Locate S,1, 7 p.m. Sunday, July 23, Larimer Lounge, 2721 Larimer Street. Tickets are $15.