If you were to ask 11-year-old me what’s the coolest fact about Lisa Molinaro’s career it’s that she wrote the music for a movie that featured Star Trek’s Pavel Chekov — the actor Walter Koenig!
But modern-day Rob and, indeed, Punk Rock Bach are much more focused on music than Star Trek. Molinaro, who has performed previously with Modest Mouse and other bands, is releasing her debut solo album in the coming weeks — and for this issue, we chatted with her about the upcoming record.
Plus — Georgia Wilkinson-Derums is sharing how she listens to music. She’s in the band Body Type, which has a new album coming in July!
Also this week, I’m launching a method for Punk Rock Bach fans to support the newsletter. More on that at the issue’s end.
But let’s keep the music jamming, folks! Onward!
Lisa Molinaro sets down her viola to showcase a breadth of musical skill on upcoming album
Lisa Molinaro is a violist with range.
She teaches music and French. She performed on stage and in studio with Modest Mouse. She toured with The Decemberists. And she even wrote the music for a film featuring Paula Abdul.
“My background training is like in more of a classical realm,” she said. “And then my background playing is more with performance, a little bit more with playing in a band called Talkdemonic.”
Now she’s going solo. Molinaro is set to release her debut solo album “Blind Trust” on July 17. On Tuesday, she released a fresh single from the album: a track titled “Peach Fuzz.”
Despite her background as a viola player, the new album doesn’t focus on that instrument.
“The viola was not super prominent, except for maybe in like one song, and that was purposeful,” she said. “I wanted to showcase other things, you know? I knew that I was not just a violist, I wanted to be able to sing, I want to be able to play some bass, I want to be able to like tell stories, you know, and like I didn’t feel like it needed heavy strings.”
Molinaro said her favorite track on the album is the single “We All Get Stuck.” She said she was glad that was the first song to be released from the album.
“To my surprise, everybody I had spoken to that I had issued the record to, you know, in terms of like publicity and promotion and stuff like that, and even just listeners, friends of mine, they all loved that song as well,” she said. “So I was pleasantly surprised to know that […] everyone was on board with me for that being the first song to come out.”
Some of the musicians who influenced her as she composed the album included Radiohead, Bjork, Karen Carpenter and Hildur Guðnadóttir, she said, among others.
Solo songwriting vs. collaboration
Creating a solo album and contributing to other bands’ works, she said, are very different ways of thinking.
“Yeah, it’s two completely different head spaces, if you ask me, because [with contributing to other works] you’re already given a lot of structure, oftentimes you’re handed something that’s pretty much already there, and they’re asking you to embellish it, right?”
She said with Modest Mouse, she’s been part of the songwriting process when it comes to strings and harmonies for vocals.
“Those are more accessorizing, and so I come in with, like, here’s something that’s already exists, right? Make yourself fit into it,” Molinaro said. “And so I have to just listen to it carefully, figure out what are the goals sonically of the song. How do I accentuate it without stepping on it?”
Her discography with the band includes the albums Strangers to Ourselves and The Golden Casket, according to her website.
Songwriting is different, she says, because “it’s all up to you.”
“You’re a blank slate, right?” she said. “And so, at first, it was like a little challenging, just because I kind of [am] not sure where, you know, where to go with an idea.”
She said she built many of the album’s string sections before working other components into songs.
“And maybe that’s just because I’m a string player, so I came in kind of with that idea first,” she said. “Like, I want the more orchestral part to speak first, and then I’m going to add some guitar, and then I write some lyrics over it, so songs always came first, and then like words and some other things.”
The accidental film composer
Beyond her solo album and collaborations with other music groups, Molinaro has dipped her toe into film score composing. She scored the 2025 film “Raging Midlife.”
It’s a film in which she also appears.
“Somebody reached out to me and asked for an ex-partner’s contact info, so they could reach out to that person to be in their film,” she said. “And I wrote back, because I didn’t know who this person was, and I wrote back saying, ‘well, you’ve got a lot of nerve writing to the ex-girlfriend to get [that contact information].”
She said she would help that person get in touch with her ex if they let her audition for the part, too. In the end, she got the part.
The movie also includes Paula Abdul, Eddie Griffin and Walter Koenig, according to the Internet Movie Data Base. The movie was directed by Rob Taylor.
While spending time with the filmmakers in Portland, Molinaro said they learned she was a musician and suggested she write the film’s score. Fast-forward a year — the movie was still in process and the filmmakers asked her if she was ready to write the movie’s music.
She said yes without knowing how to begin.
“And then, like, the weirdest things started happening, and I got some counsel from a couple mentors,” she said. “And I would tell them, I’m like, ‘You’ll never believe this. Like, I kind of wrote this little part with a piano, and I added some strings and stuff, and I put it up to the scene, and, like, without putting the two together beforehand, things that I wrote in the song synced up perfectly with things that happened in the scene.’”
She said a mentor she spoke with told her “that’s a part of the magic.”
Lisa Molinaro’s debut album “Blind Trust” is set to debut July 17. You can pre-order the album via Bandcamp. The music video for the single “We All Get Stuck” is available on YouTube.
Body Type’s Georgia Wilkinson-Derums remembers keeping Madonna and Eminem CDs on repeat
Aussie punk band Body Type’s new album “Tally” is set to hit stores on July 24.
The record is the band’s third album — but also marks the group’s 10th anniversary, according to a news release. Previously, they released “Expired Candy” and “Everything is Dangerous But Nothing’s Surprising,” per Body Type’s Bandcamp page.
Among the tracks on the latest album include “Planet 8,” “Mulberry,” and “Sick Bag.”
This week, Punk Rock Bach got in touch with Georgia Wilkinson-Derums, who plays bass and provides vocals for the band. She shares how she’s listening to music currently and what she was listening to way back when.
Editor’s note: Q&A has been lightly edited for style, syntax and typos.
Punk Rock Bach: How do you prefer to listen to music?
Georgia Wilkinson-Derums: I'm lazy so I use streaming platforms and YouTube. If I had it my way I would own a car with a CD player and just spin a handful of my all time fav albums while I drive but alas. I also love the ol’ radio and the sound of my nan singing in the kitchen.
PRB: What are you listening to now?
Wilkinson-Derums: I've been listening to “Ember” by Iceage a lot. I always do that thing where I have one new fav song and just listen to it on repeat. Also listening to the Kali Malone album “Music for Intersecting Planes.”
PRB: What is your favorite music-listening memory?
Wilkinson-Derums: My favorite memories are always the early ones, I had a walkman and Madonna and Eminem on CD and I would skip around the burbs kicking honkey nuts and listening to those two CDs on repeat.
PRB: What do you listen on?
Wilkinson-Derums: Phone :/ So boring! But I love my phone!
Body Type’s third album, “Tally,” is set to release on July 24 via p(doom) Records. You can watch the music video for the single “Sick Bag” on YouTube. Pre-orders are available at p(doom) Records’ online store.
What I’m listening to…
As noted in the intro, I’m a long-time Star Trek fan. I love the original series, the 80s/90s spin-offs (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager). And I love the movies.
Especially the music from the movies — from the exceptional score of the sixth film from Cliff Eidelman to the unforgettable symphony of the second.
And it’s that second score I was listening to this week: James Horner’s music for “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
This is the one where Khan (Ricardo Montalbán) brain-washes Chekov (Walter Koenig) by putting slugs in his ears.
The music has a sense of adventure, playfulness and excitement. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s a lot of fun to listen to and paints a picture in your brain. Highly recommend.
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Thanks for reading Punk Rock Bach! We’ll be back next week with a Q&A with Tiger Bear Wolf — which has a new album set to release on July 17. See you next Thursday!
Lisa's a star! Appreciate your profiling her.....