Ones2Watch Home

Photos by Isabel Dowell and Vika Brennick

Adeline Troutman, professionally known as Saint Avangeline, is just like us. Behind the ethereal stage design, flowy outfits, and flowers in her hair, she’s a self-proclaimed weeb, a daydreamer, enjoys RPG, and even spent ten years singing in a closet to shield her incredible talents from others. Finally ready to share her voice with the world, Saint Avangeline is stepping into the music spaces that are still sometimes pushed aside: queer and femme. “I want my music to feel very deeply vulnerable and intimate, specifically for the queer experience," she shares early into our interview. Still newer to the “mainstream” music scene, but pure of heart in all the best ways, Saint Avangeline is an artist worth watching closely. 

OnesToWatch: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your artistry. 

Saint Avangeline: I’m a lesbian artist from Atlanta, Georgia. My main audience that I started making my music for was other queer women. Growing up, I didn't have that representation, and especially in a Victorian-gothic-love-poem way, it was a lot of songs about heartbreak and not getting the girl. I want my music to feel very deeply vulnerable and intimate, specifically for the queer experience.

We're curious what the origin of your artist name is? What does it mean to you and how did you choose it?

There are a few meanings. I think it’s the same with my music and the lyrics. It takes on new meanings for me and layers. It evolves as I continue through this. I used to roleplay online, and Avangeline was one of the characters that I would roleplay as And she had long white hair, so I have this alter ego that has super long white hair that I'll wear sometimes in my stuff. The saint part came from my older music, which was darker in theme because I was in toxic relationships. When you are in relationships like that, the way that you cope is developing a martyr/saint complex. By turning the other cheek, I felt like a good person because I wasn't fighting back; I was just letting it happen to me. But then I wasn't biting back, so that's where the saint part of that came from—saint complex. I also thought that it would be a funny play on words of evangelical. I grew up super religious; I have religious trauma from that, and I just thought all of it together would be a fun play on words and a tie into my roots as a dweeb online.

When you're on stage and when you're making music, do you feel like yourself or is it a different version of you?

That is the weirdest part about being an artist. My truest self is just writing everything down and expressing myself that way. But stage-wise, I'm definitely a completely different person. It's funny, on the way to the stage, I was actually like, "I can't wait for this other person inside of me to come out and be on stage." I don't know her. I haven't met her yet, but I'm glad she'll be doing that on stage. I will be blacked out and dormant inside of myself.

What do you want the listeners to get from the fairytale world that you create?

I have what's called chromesthesia; it's a type of synesthesia where I can hear color. My stuff visually is based on this color palette in my head, based on my music. For my audience to be able to visualize all of the imagery and the colors from the sounds that I'm creating is super important to me. I like things to feel very tangible. I also just love creating very beautifully visual worlds. I'm very inspired by films like The Lord of the Rings, and I think it's magical. I don't know about you guys, but the feeling that I get in an IKEA or a nature museum where they have all of the staged stuff, and it just kind of looks magical. I like that. I want my stuff to feel like a snow globe, like you're looking inside this beautiful snow globe in this setting.

I like people to look into my world and to look through that glass. But I'm living out whatever it is in that context, and I'm not fully out of it. Through the looking glass, I suppose.

Has music always been your path in life, or how did you come to pursue it?

I actually really wanted to be a neurosurgeon growing up. But, I've been playing the clarinet since I was in fourth grade. I was always in a jazz band, I was in orchestra, I was in the Georgia Symphony Orchestra. I always did marching band. Any possible thing that I could get my hands on music-wise in that way, I would do. And then I had this weird cognitive dissonance thing where I would never publicly perform with my voice. I refused to let anybody hear me sing, but I would secretly sing in my closet, only in Japanese for about 10 years. I have over 600 or 700 covers on Smule, the karaoke app. When everyone would leave the house, I would go in my closet, far away from everyone, so no one would even get the chance to hear me, and I would just sing all of these songs that I loved that were in Japanese at the time. I would just sing the same songs over and over and over again for years. Around when I turned 17 was the first time people heard me sing. It's kind of funny because technically, from a public standpoint, yes, I technically got my start from the Lana covers, but it was a decade's worth of only singing in Japanese. I did a "Brooklyn Baby" cover forever ago because it was trending on TikTok, and I didn't want to lip-sync to “my boyfriend's in a band”. I wanted to do “my girlfriend's in a band”. When it blew up, people were begging for more covers of Lana Del Rey, and so I started to make more of those for queer women because they just really resonated with them.

That does make sense though, because Japanese music can be soft and lyrical.

My biggest influence is a Japanese artist named Hitomi Kuroishi. She's not very well known, I don't think. She's got a very ethereal sound. It's the most angelic music I've ever heard. She sings in Japanese, but also her own made-up language, which is something I'm exploring in my upcoming album.

What's on the horizon for you? What are you working on? What are you excited about?

This next album is going to be a blend of both sides of the spectrum that I've kind of been on in terms of my sound. Gardener of Eden was very ethereal and melodic, and then I did Inferno, which was pretty intense metal. While I love both of these albums, it doesn't feel like my truest essence. What I've really truly been wanting to do is go even more ethereal and kind of go even more chaotic. And so I'm kind of going to marry the two in this album, and it's going to be a mix of singing in a different language and a made-up language. I love the expression “the veil is thin”, like a thin veil between our world and perhaps the supernatural or just the otherworldly. Sometimes there are areas that we are in where it just feels like that veil is so thin. I want to explore that kind of in between.

What is your current obsession?

Oh, I've been playing Moonlight Peaks recently on my Switch; it's like Stardew Valley, and I've just been playing that every night, to be honest. Oh, and Naruto. I've been watching Naruto because it's my girlfriend's favorite childhood show, and I'm hooked on it. 

What is one item you must always have in your bag?

One is my Adderall. I always need my Adderall. Another is rings. I have lucky rings. 

What is one food you will never get tired of? 

Cuban sandwiches.

And lastly, who are your OnesToWatch?

Max Madley. She is by far the coolest, witchiest, just alluring figure. I am so inspired by her. We both feed off of each other's energy. She's just a true artist through and through. I have no words when I listen to her music. It's so beautiful. And she has an album coming out in October. 

Listen to Saint Avangeline below: