Pittsburgh-born Montell Fish is a multitalented musician who got his start in 2013, making contemporary Christian music before shifting into the alt-R&B he’s known for today. One might know him from his enormously viral singles "Fall in Love With You." or "Destroy Myself Just For You," which touch on themes of sacrifice as means for the realization of some elusive idea of love. Throughout his career, which has now spanned for over a decade, Fish's music has explored the analogous religiosity between love and piety. His music has retained a pensive quality, a holdover from his roots in Christian introspection. With soft yet powerful vocals, Fish is best known for singing falsetto over a scratching, nearly raw guitar. 

This week, FLAUNT catches Fish following the opening night of his tour in Los Angeles, discussing his latest EP, Nest, Matthew Williams, and bikes.

What is it like being a man of faith and working in the music industry?

I started off very explicitly religious. At first it was very much expressing God to the highest degree. Now, it's just a lot of questions and the feeling of wanting to to be loved forever.

Faith is interpretation.

Exactly.

At the root of it, it's all love.

I feel like I separated my faith and what I had to choose to believe, rather than you know just believing it because it's in the scripture. At the end of the day, I still have faith, but I see it in a different way now.

Was your father a Preacher?

Yeah, my mom and my stepdad are Pentecostal, so very spiritual, speaking in tongues, like running around the church sometimes, stuff like that.

Wow.

The cool thing is with music, It's very trance-inducing. A lot of people cry during church to music, I think you learn a lot about, what's in there when that happens, and how to access that that same place.

How was it to collaborate with Matthew Williams on the ALYX Compilation album?

That was chill. I would just see him when I was in Paris, I literally just sent him a song, and he was like, "This is fire."

I was at the show in LA, what the inspiration was behind wearing Mountain Hardware snow pants?

I was larping in the snow pants for sure. I go outside every day, whether biking or walking or running. I don't ski or snowboard yet. That might come the in the future years.

‍Biking, you find a lot of freedom in it?

Yeah, I listened to Nest a lot (my latest EP) while working on it, I feel like the bike is one of the places where I could just reset my mind and just like listen to my my soul a little better.

So you would revise the tape as you rode, then get back to it when you get home?

Yeah, I definitely did do that a lot. I started getting up really early, waking up with the birds in blue hour, it became a really special time.

Is there correlation between exercising and your music?

There’s a quote "My brain only works when my my legs are.” I think movement, even music, is such like a point A to point B type of thing. I think it's nice to feel like you're you're on a journey.