EQUAL Parallel EP Interview By Adeline Chai

Harmonic sister duo EQUAL – comprising of Saleen and Chelsea Nolan – has already made big strides in the first month of 2025. From putting out single Stupid — which saw them flying to New York for the first time to co-produce with one of their biggest inspirations, Grammy-nominated producer, Dr Blum – to finalising their second EP, Parallel, for a February release, the sisters are ecstatic about seeing their hard work pay off. There’s no real recipe to their success, as it turns out, although a few risky DMs and a cultivated tolerance for rejection, paired with a committed dad who drove his daughters to an endless amount of summer gigs might have helped.

“I feel like parents are usually like, ‘That’s [pursuing music] not a job’, but our dad was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be your job’, and we would fight because he would be way more serious about it than we were,” Saleen tells me while sitting next to Chelsea on the floor of their childhood bedroom.

“We’re like 12 and 14 and he’s like, ‘Hey, you have seven festival performances this summer’,” Chelsea chimes in. “He’ll drive us everywhere and he’d always be like, ‘Where’s my cut?’, but he would never take it.”

The duo jokes that their dad was their manager but above all, he was a proud parent who believed in what his daughters had to say. When It and It Chapter Two were being filmed down the road from Chelsea and Saleen’s Oshawa home in Ontario, their dad took the sisters to sing for all the construction workers on the film set during their lunch break, which eventually led to the family rubbing shoulders with Hollywood big name director, Andres Muschietti.

“Our dad was always the type of person to do stuff that I would never have the guts to do,” Chelsea smiles. “He was just like, ‘Doors are meant to be opened, and if they’re locked and you can’t go in, who knows what’s on the other side of the door?’”

This in turn built up Chelsea and Saleen’s courage, which they would later use at a Twenty One Pilots show to approach the band’s long-time multi-instrumentalist, Jesse Blum (also known as Dr Blum). Initially, the duo wanted Jesse’s feedback on their music. After he sent them a message on Instagram a week later, Chelsea took a leap of faith and asked the producer if he would be keen to work on a song together someday.

“He didn’t reply for a month and I was like, ‘I ruined it, I burned the bridge’, then he messaged me back a month later being like, ‘Sorry, I was on tour with Twenty One Pilots, we were at Lollapalooza’ or something but he was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it’,” Chelsea laughs. “I would never have the guts to do stuff like that if it weren’t for our dad.”

Stupid came from the duo’s reflections about all the years of dedication and hard work they’ve put into performing, writing, and recording music. In particular, they wanted to capture the emotions that seem to haunt every creative – imposter syndrome and “trying really hard but also never feeling like it’s enough”.

“It was a hard one to write,” Chelsea admits. “I was like, what better inspiration than what we’re dealing with right now? Looking around, who thought little poor us who literally have a Habitat for Humanity home could get here?”

The sisters are candid about being born into poverty, and how they have had to launch their music careers without any financial backing. While they’ve had their moments of frustration at times when having more resources would have meant advancing their careers quicker, they also “wouldn’t have it any other way”.

“Knowing you could have it worse – for example, I have a good job now but there are people who have been there and they’re like, ‘This place sucks’. I’ve gone there after being at terrible places and I’m like, ‘This is great’,” Saleen says. “When you’ve been at the bottom, you can realise that it’s such a growth rather than just being like, ‘Oh, I’m already here.’”

EQUAL’s humble beginnings have kept them grounded in their roots despite being well on their way to the top. The sister duo is passionate about championing honesty and vulnerability in their songwriting, boasting a gorgeous discography that details all the joys and woes of growing up, being a creative, and falling in and out of love. Fans of EQUAL can be reassured that this is something that will never change.

“I really want to drive home being emotionally available,” Chelsea says firmly. “Being emotionally available is such a hard thing for a lot of people but that’s where the vulnerability comes from.”

“I remember having issues in school with my friends and I wrote songs to feel better about it because I wanted to understand why I felt the way I felt. Every time I write, I just hit record and play chords that make me feel the emotion that I’m feeling right now, then I’ll say whatever comes off the top off my head.”

EQUAL’s discography has thus beautifully archived the pair’s growth as artists and humans. Having listened to Parallel from start to finish, I tell Chelsea and Saleen that their new body of work is stunningly self-assured, containing songs that I feel will define EQUAL in one way or the other forever. It’s clear that the duo has lived and learnt a lot since their first EP.

“We’re finally getting a bit of an idea of what we want to do vision and music wise,” Saleen grins. “With music, I feel like it took so much time because you get familiar with it. It’s just that sometimes you don’t understand it yet, but once you do, it’s relieving.”

“You kinda ate with that line, I’m not going to lie,” Chelsea remarks. We all laugh. “It’s like I have OCD and when I figured that out, I was like, ‘That’s what that is’ and it chilled me out because I was like, “Okay, it’s a normal thing’.”

The sisters are taking their time in finding their footing in the industry – they’re in no rush to reach the mountaintops, but are determined to make an indelible mark on this world through expressions that feel right to them. I suspect that EQUAL has no qualms about defying boundaries and breaking rules while doing so, and that’s precisely why they’re so exciting to watch.

Speaking about Dean Ave 1190, a track on EQUAL’s upcoming EP, Parallel  — and a personal favourite of mine — Chelsea reveals that the song poured out of her in just one take.

“I’m very glad that you like that one because I like it too,” she beams. “The arrangement was kind of all over the place…but again, it doesn’t matter if there’s a structure of verse, chorus, verse, chorus.”

“Music is about emotion, if it makes you feel something then you’ve done the job.”

If there’s one thing I know to be true, it’s that EQUAL is not interested in replicating what’s been done before. Chelsea and Saleen Nolan are jumping into the deep end, and I have a feeling that they’ll do more than just float.