Sasha Goldberg and Maia Ciambriello’s journey began in the Bay Area, where they studied under the same vocal coach. After sharing a college dorm in New Orleans, the duo is now pursuing a professional music career in Los Angeles, taking their close friendship and creative harmony to new heights. Known to their impressive online following as The Army, The Navy, the vocal pop duo has been releasing music for three years, routinely going viral for their seamless vocal blend and the delicate poetry in their lyricism. 

I was lucky enough to catch Maia and Sasha before their performance at the Red Room at Berklee, about halfway through their first North America headline tour. The show itself was barebones—the venue prohibited The Army, The Navy’s set on account of it being a fire hazard. But there was something intimate about the stripped-down background visuals, especially contrasted with the pair’s whimsical outfit colors and silhouettes. When her hands weren’t occupied with her guitar, Sasha gestured to the audience in fluid choreography, beckoning us to truly feel the lyrics and insert our own experiences between the tight harmony lines. 

I met with The Army, The Navy in their green room an hour before the show to chat about collaboration, friendship, and presenting one’s true self to an audience. 

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To start off, I’m curious where The Army, The Navy comes from!

MAIA: It’s a silly story—it's not super meaningful, necessarily.

Sasha and I used to go to school in New Orleans, and we're from the Bay Area, so we’d drive from the Bay Area to New Orleans, and that's a 32 hour drive. We did it twice, and we would extend it; I think one time it took us, like, two weeks to get to New Orleans.

One of the things that we would do to keep ourselves busy is we would come up with random band names. They were really stupid, like one of them was “Hauling Overnight Oats.” And then one person said “The Army,” and the other person said “The Navy.” A year later, we decided we wanted to be a band together, and we came back to that list of random band names—and there was The Army, The Navy. We put them together, and we were like, this is kind of cool!

When we first moved to LA, we were really embarrassed by it. Honestly, we felt like people didn't get it.

SASHA: It's hard to pick a name and then have it suddenly be your full identity when you really don't have that much connection to it. Just like any stage name, it doesn't feel like you until you really kind of accept that it is. Now it feels totally good and normal. And it feels like us. 

I also want to congratulate you on the release of your new single, Dirty Laundry! Tell me about that song—where the idea came from and the process behind writing it. 

S: We started writing that song back when we lived in New Orleans, so a while ago. We had the first verse, and then we kind of forgot about it for two years.

You know, you go into the studio all the time, you make a bunch of songs, and then you fuck them up. You don't think about them for a while, and that's how it is. But then, a few weeks before this tour, we were just like, we have nothing that's gonna come out until the album, which is probably coming out a year or so later. So we figured, what if we post a little snippet of Dirty Laundry, and if people like it, we’ll release it? And then it ended up being the biggest viral moment we've ever had on the internet! So it worked out really well.

M: That's sort of what made us want to release it. We weren't really planning to, honestly. The live version, the one that we posted on TikTok and Instagram, is different from the one that we recorded—the recorded one always came first. We came up with that live version just for the video’s sake. [When we released Dirty Laundry,] I think a lot of people were expecting the OG TikTok video, and it's like… whoops!

That was my next question: how does that social media audience affect how you create and market your music?

S: A lot of the songs that we have out, or at least the singles—Alexandra, Vienna, and Persimmon—all of those came out only because we posted them on social media and people liked them. That pattern is really what has grown the band the most. That's what started it. 

It's tough, because so many people find music through social media these days: they find the video, and they want [the released song] to sound exactly like the video. They get demo-itis, which is what we call it when we're in the studio making a song and we get stuck to the unproduced version. People get stuck to these versions of the videos, and they really want [the final product] to sound exactly like that. And it's not going to, because we're gonna produce it out the way that we want to.

It's important for us to see the songs through the way that our heart is making music, you know? It's such an interesting dance between trying to make people happy and love and connect to the song that they first heard on TikTok, and also just, like, feel fulfilled with the song that we produce. So that's something that we're learning.

M: This last release, I feel like we've disappointed a couple or a handful or a lot of people, and that's okay. This song feels so authentic the way that we produced it. And the produced version came before that live version. That doesn't mean we won't do an acoustic, live version of it. I'm so down to do that, because we do love our listeners, and we want to feed them in the way that they want to be fed. But it is our music, and it is our heart and soul. And if it comes out that certain way, then that's the way we want it. 

What’s the usual process for songwriting?

M: Well, we live together, and we have for the past eight years, and that really helps us to be able to write music together easily. We never really sit down and say, okay, let's write a song about heartbreak. That's not really how we operate. I'll be in the kitchen, Sasha'll be on the couch, and she'll sing a little melody, and I'll be like, wait, that's really cool. And then we sit down and we come up with something on the guitar, and then the story just builds.

But it's pretty free flowing and natural. Writing is my favorite part of the gig, and since we live together, it's pretty accessible for us to just write whenever something happens.

And the songs you write are really personal; they're connected to specific emotional moments and people and places. What’s it like sharing and writing at this level of intimacy with another person?

S: I think that we have a really unique thing because we were born in the same place. We grew up underneath the same trees. We grew up eating the same food. We grew up with the same flowers. We went to high school together. We were in a play of Annie together when we were four. We were writing [a song], and one of the lyrics was about a bridge, and we realized—after the song was finished—that we were thinking about the exact same bridge in the exact same field. I feel like that is so unique to us, just because we've grown up in the same place. 

M: You're spot on. I think since we know each other so well and we've been friends for so long, [Sasha’s] heartbreaks are my heartbreaks and vice versa. She knows everything about me and I know everything about her.

S: Yeah, we tap into each other.

M: I don't think we write one song about one specific experience or person. Sometimes that happens, but overall, it's an accumulation of our shared experiences with X, Y and Z, which is a fun way for us to write. It feels very like freeing and not limiting.

What are you listening to right now that you want to put people on?

S: Saya Gray. Aggie Miller, Ryan Beatty. We love his new album. 

M: We love Dora Jar. Obviously. That was the biggest deal for us when we were asked to go on that tour. She's one of our biggest inspirations of all time. We've [also] been listening to a lot of Liana Flores.

What are your favorite songs you’ve written, and what are your favorite songs to perform?

S: I feel like all my favorites change so much as we write more music. It's always the new song, of course. But of the released ones… Oh, Little Bug. 

M: Little Bug is my favorite song that’s on our discography. I love the way that it's produced. And my favorite song to perform... I love Alexandra, always will. But I really also love Play the Music, and lyrically, that's one of my favorite songs that we’ve written. 

M: Yeah, it used to be Rascal. I remember when we wrote Rascal, we were like, this is the best song we'll ever write. And it's so funny how that feeling has changed over time, and how it’s  also just the same.

Do you have a dream show? Or aspirations with the future of this project in general?

M: To do our live shows with an orchestra! I want a beautiful string section, I want a whole instrumental section. That’s the dream. 

S: Yeah, Maia and I have always talked about performing theaters where people can just sit. I love sitting. I want that for people. I don't know if they want that, but…

M: Well, I don't think you need to be dancing too much to our set. [laughter] Yeah, and just like longevity. Sasha and I don't want to only do this for five years. It means everything to us to be able to play at these venues and continually grow and be able to have a long, lasting and fulfilling career. 

Was making music always the dream?

M: Oh, yeah.

That's awesome. 

M: Never had a backup plan. Both of our parents are very supportive of us, and my parents were always like, you're gonna be a pop star. You don't need to have a plan B. I think that really helped me with my confidence to just chase the dream. 

My last question: you put out Fruit for Flies, and then you put out Sugar for Bugs, and then there's Little Bug... I want to hear more about the bug theme, and if bugs will continue to be a big part of this project?

S: So… I think it's time to grow out of that. 

We came up with the EP names before we were even a band. We would just always just be writing down cool names for whatever reason, and we liked those two together.

But the bug theme, we're leaving it in the past. We're going for a little bit more polished, a little bit more mature for our debut album. 

M: We'll always be quirky and kooky, but we're moving on. 

I love how you thought of your band and EP names before the band and the EPs, and then you grew into them. I think that's really awesome.

S: Actually, our next two albums are already named!

M: Yeah. We know what we're gonna name this next one, and the next one after that. 

Charlotte Stokes ‘27 is a staff writer and Artist Relations Director for WHRB.