Meaghan Garvey smells beachy but kind of demented 🐚🖤

On Midwestern Death Trip, Lana Del Rey, and the scent of a gorgeous county fair

I stole my entire music taste from Meaghan Garvey. Her Pitchfork reviews got me into Tinashe, Young Thug, Future, Jeremih, Charli xcx, and Neggy Gemmy. She stans Sample Sluts faves Addison Rae, Lana Del Rey, and Mazzy Star. I still think about her review of Nicki Minaj’s The Pinkprint sometimes, even though it was published roughly 12 years ago. Meaghan has, quite simply, impeccable taste and an incredible talent for expressing it. Here on Substack, the Chicago-based writer publishes “America’s premiere vibe-based email newsletter” with Scary Cool Sad Goodbye. Last month, she dropped her first book, Midwestern Death Trip—a fantastic memoir-slash-journalistic account of driving her blood-red Cadillac through the Midwest. She’s currently on tour promoting it, meaning you can see her read live if you’re lucky. Below, we talk important topics like Abercrombie Fierce, the Driftless region of Wisconsin, and what Lana Del Rey’s albums smell like.

—Anna

First things first: how many spritzes and where?

Usually five—two on my wrists, one on my neck, one in my hair, one to the chest. But on a Friday or Saturday night… maybe double that.

What was the first perfume you bought? Most recent?

Like the other girls of the late ‘90s/2000s, I was big on the scents of the mall—Victoria’s Secret Love Spell, Abercrombie Fierce, and Bath & Body Works’ Cucumber Melon spray, which maybe I didn’t technically buy, but would douse myself with liberally on weekend shoplifting sprees.

I met a cool girl here in Chicago who works at Merz Apothecary, which is like the dopest store ever—it’s an old Swiss drugstore from literally 1875 that used to sell herbal tinctures and now sells cute soaps and perfumes. Anyway, she put me on to Pearfat Parfum, whose scents are mostly about growing up in the Midwest, so now I’m obsessed. I went in the other weekend and bought their discovery kit, plus Knee High, which has notes of Indiana sweet corn, tiger lily, and fresh blueberries. So now I smell like a gorgeous county fair.

Describe yourself in top, middle, and base notes.

Top:
Lake water
Warm rocks

Middle:
Thistle
Honeysuckle
Approaching summer storm

Base:
Pine sap
Asphalt
Newport 100s

You have your first book out now, Midwestern Death Trip. What scents would you pair with pivotal moments in the book, or the overall vibes?

There’s a chapter that takes place in the Driftless region of Wisconsin, a place that defies all stereotypes of boring Midwestern cornfields—I mean, even the name is mysterious. I’ll pair this one with Morel Map by Clue, our beloved hometown heroes. In spring you can forage for morels in southwestern Wisconsin’s ash and elm forests. The vibe is green, damp, and fecund.

The chapter called “Strangers” takes place in a part of northwest Indiana where I lived in the late 2000s. I had just flunked out of college, so my days were mainly occupied by watching SVU and drinking White Russians with this guy I loved who’s dead now. There’s this scent from Universal Flowering that’s since been discontinued called Cool as Christ, which kind of smelled like an old man’s jacket, like leather and tobacco and resin. It reminded me of the grayest winter day where you just hole up in your crush’s apartment getting fucked up and feeding your heart’s little flame.

There are a couple chapters of the book set in northern Michigan, and thank the lord I found out about Pearfat, like I mentioned, because their scent Up North is just the Great Lakes in a bottle: fresh lemonade, ozone, white trillium, Lake Michigan waves, willow trees, Petoskey stone. That last one is Michigan’s state stone, these ancient fossils you can find near this crazy bar I’m obsessed with which is owned by an Elvis impersonator and also sort of a halfway house.

Can you pair some scents with random photos in your camera roll?

Nitesurf Neroli, Régime des Fleurs

Mistpouffer, Stora Skuggan

Winter 26, Ffern

I discovered the GOAT scent Salted Green Mango because you rec’ed it on Twitter. What other scents have you found via fragrance girlies?

Oh shit, I actually discovered Salted Green Mango on Twitter too, via my girl Minka, from whom I’ve probably gotten like 80% of my all-time faves, if I’m being real. She introduced me to that one and to my all-timer, Universal Flowering’s Holy Hell, which is just a godsend for us girls who are beachy but kind of demented. It’s like a perfect summer day, but then maybe there was a fire? That plastic beach ball element is the X-factor. Sooooo hot.

You’re famously our greatest Lana Del Rey historian. Can you pair scents with your favorite Lana songs?

I honestly think Norman Fucking Rockwell is the greatest album of my lifetime. I was listening to it with my sister last night, driving down Lakeshore Drive. A couple years ago I came across the Los Angeles collection by Thin Wild Mercury, which kind of has influencer vibes but whatever, I love their scent Zuma 1975 so much. It’s named after a great Neil Young record, but it reminds me more of “Venice Bitch”—last gasp of summer, high in the garden, nothing gold can stay.

That’s my favorite Lana album, but I’m also a big Honeymoon truther, as a woman who likes to waltz around my apartment listening to music from the 1930s and sloshing wine on the sofa and pretending I’m dead. So obviously the best accompaniment to a song like “God Knows I Tried” would be Tragedy Oil by Marissa Zappas—a scent in which you can live your Norma Desmond dreams and swoon around your haunted mansion, ranting about how it’s the pictures that got small.

I also feel like Chemtrails over the Country Club doesn’t get enough respect. That album came out right before I moved to Texas with this guy I met, so I would drive around listening to it in this beat-up old Lexus we bought for $400 at an estate sale out in Hill Country. “Yosemite” reminds me of wearing Cowboy Grass by D.S. & Durga, or Tauer L’air du Desert Marocain—sagebrush and bergamot and cedar and amber and a sky full of so many stars.

If you could only listen to three albums for the rest of your life, what would they be and what scents would you pair with them?

I am forever enchanted by The Exotic Moods of Les Baxter, which is one of the definitive texts of the exotica wave of the 1950s and early ‘60s. It’s just so lush and far-away and dreamy and romantic, and the perfect thing to put on when you’re having people over for cocktails to set kind of a Mad Men mood. I’ll pair it with Salted Green Mango, or another good one from Strangers Parfumerie—Sweet Farewell, which smells like rice powder and palm sugar and pandan and smoke.

Lady in Satin by Billie Holiday would have to be up there—the last album she released in her lifetime, so beautiful and sad. And I’m going to return to Marissa Zappas and pair this one with Violette Hay—violet and velvet and suede, soft and deep and mysterious.

And a newer record, but one that will be with me for a long time: Suntub by the brilliant Danish musician ML Buch, which I associate with Summer Sauna by (yet again) Universal Flowering. It’s discontinued too, but it used to advertise itself like so: “If you’ve been flung / Into the garden of green / By a volley of cannon fire / Watch for the soft shimmering rain / From a comfortable seat / In a strange place.”