If you ask newlyweds Kim and Jarod Weldin what kind of music to expect from their duo Tape Waves, their response might be kind of vague. “Any adjective in front of pop,” Kim responded nonchalantly, when I asked, during our phone conversation last week, I asked her to describe the group’s sound. “Surf pop, dream pop,” Kim ticked off. “Surfy pop with some reverb vocals on top.”
The most important thing to know about the band–who are from Charleston, South Carolina– is that listening to them sounds like being at the beach. Their songs evoke the rhythms of gentle waves almost visually–and the over-saturated blue of the sky, and the glare of sunshine bouncing off the sand. Kim and Jarod love the ocean, and they have plenty of inspiration in their backyard. Kim’s a native South Carolinian who moved to Charleston for college, but Jarod grew up in profoundly un-balmy Syracuse, and left upstate New York to find someplace sunnier. But even more than a result of that scenery change, it’s clear, once you begin talking to Jarod and Kim, that their music’s relaxed dreaminess is a happy byproduct of their relationship with each other.
To put some whimsy in your next beach day, we’re bringing you a slice of real talk with Tape Waves. We’ve been excited to check out their brand new album Let You Go, out July 28th via Bleeding Gold Records, and especially the first track on that album: the mellow and luscious “Slow Days,” which we’re thrilled to premiere right here at AudioFemme! “Slow Days” kicks off with a weightless guitar line that, though far from flashy, sucks you in and slows you down until you’re running on Tape Waves time. Read on to learn more about shyness, slow songs, and how the two members of this chilled-out Charleston outfit learned to wrangle their inner control freaks.
AudioFemme: What were your musical lives like before you met? How old were you when you started playing, and what were your first instruments?
Kim Weldin: I started playing the piano when I was young, but I started playing the guitar around twelve or thirteen.
Jarold Weldin: [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][I started on] the guitar as well. I played in a bunch of bands in upstate New York before moving down here–I’m originally from right around Syracuse.
KW: I played, like, basic punk rock with my sister. Some Sonic Youth-type stuff by myself.
AF: How did you meet? Did you start dating first, or playing music together first?
KW: We met at work. It was your typical awful call center. We found out that we had both played in bands before, growing up, and we started sharing recordings with each other that we’d done, and we went from there. We had mutual admiration. I think we started dating first. He very slowly brought me out of my shell. I was really shy and hadn’t done it for a long time. We went to shows a lot together, and we talked about music all the time, and we both loved music. I guess I thought that phase of my life was over. Jarod went and saw..Surfer Blood? Or, Built To Spill, I think it was–and he was really inspired to start writing music. He did some recordings, and I was really impressed with them, so I jokingly said “Let me be in your band!” And then I think I said, “Well, no seriously, go ahead and teach them to me.” We sat down, and he was going to teach them to me on the bass. Eventually, I started recording vocal ideas on top. It was very slow and casual. We would make up band names as a joke.
AF: When did you officially start calling yourselves a band?
KW: I think after our first recording.
JW: We’d finished the music and I just assumed that, if we were going to do anything with it, we’d need to go back and record some drum tracks, but Kim was just like, “Okay, wanna put ‘em online now?” I said, “Okay, I guess we just need a name then.”
KW: The first few songs were done, and I was eager to share them. We had to pull the trigger on a name.
AF: How’d you settle on Tape Waves?
JW: I was pretty persistent about that one. We had a bunch of ideas, but just about everything’s taken these days, so it took forever to find something we both liked. We came up with a few and I really liked Tape Waves a lot, and I wore her down on it.
KW: It’s grown on me. I like it now. I think it represents the way we sound.
AF: Are you inspired by living near the beach?
JW: Definitely. That’s why I started writing the songs that Kim was talking about earlier [after seeing the Built To Spill show], because I was inspired by living by the beach and I like a lot of the newer bands that popped up that were doing a similar sound. It’s definitely conscious, but I think at this point it’s just what comes out when both of us play. Originally, the beach was definitely an influence.
KW: Growing up down here [in South Carolina], beach music has a bad connotation because it’s the Shag area. [My inspiration] comes more from just living here, and from imagery of the beach, being on the coast and things that represent that sound.
AF: You guys just got married (congrats!). What kind of music did you have at your wedding? Did you perform?
KW: We didn’t. I kept joking that I was going to serenade him. It was super low-budget, on a friend’s yard on some property out on an island here. We just put our favorite songs on an iPod and ran it through a PA system outside. Then we made mix CDs for our guests.
AF: Cute!
JW: A lot of eighties hits.
KW: With some contemporary favorites like Beach House and Real Estate.
AF: What’s it been like for you to be married and also creative partners?
JW: Awesome, but also frustrating at times.
KW: Our songwriting process has gotten so easy now. At first, it was hard, uncomfortable, to work with someone who you just don’t know. I didn’t know what to expect. And Jarod wrote a lot of the music at first, so I felt like they were his songs, I guess, and I was just adding vocals on top of something that was already written. I think now that we’ve written so many songs together it feels easy.
AF: How was recording this album different than recording your first?
JW: Um, it was pretty similar. When we recorded the first EP, we were just recording it, and we didn’t have much of a purpose with it. We didn’t know that a ton of people would hear it. We didn’t know if anybody would hear it. But we kept a pretty similar process. It’s really kind of unbelievably simple, the way we record. We use one microphone and we do it all in our living room. So we still did that with this record, but we focused on the details more, like cleaning up little noises and trying to get better at guitar tones. Things like that.
AF: Why did you make the decision not to record it in a studio?
JW: We–with our life schedule, it kind of just works best to be like, okay, we feel like recording now so let’s record now. There’s a lot of freedom that helps the record in the long run. It’s a lot more work that way, but it also–we have a little bit more control. Kim definitely likes doing her vocals at home, instead of in front of somebody else.
KW: Right now I’m only comfortable with Jarod recording my vocals, because they take a lot of work. I sing whispery because we like the way it sounds, but I run out of breath a lot, and he’s really good at manipulating them to sound flawless and flowing. I’m really shy.
JW: She’s really hard on herself.
AF: What would you like to do most after this album drops?
JW: We’re doing a release show here that should be fun, with a friend of ours that’s an artist. I think we’re going to try to work on booking some short tours and writing some new songs.
KW: I’d love to make a video. That’s a goal that I have. It’s a matter of finding someone to work with, and a budget, and things like that.
AF: Would you direct it?
KW: I think so. We’re both control freaks.
AF: We’re so excited to premiere “Slow Days,” the opener to Let You Go. I just listened to it this afternoon and it’s amazing. Can you tell me how you wrote that song specifically?
JW: Yeah, that one was–we wrote it really late. Towards the end of writing the record, we still didn’t have a song that felt like the opener to the album. That one kind of–well, I started layering guitars on a loop pedal and came up with the main skeleton for the music. Kim heard it and said that it sounded like it should be the opener. We tried to do some chord changes and things, but we felt like we should just keep it all one flowing piece with some elements brought in and out through the song. Kind of similar to that New Order song we covered. How it’s just one main chord progression, with all these elements coming in and out.
KW: Also, we had been listening to the latest Yo La Tengo album Fade a lot. Every time we tried to change a chord, we just kept thinking, what would Yo La Tengo do? Let’s just let it build, the vocal layers and the guitar layers.
AF: Why did you want that sound for the opener, specifically?
JW: It’s interesting because it’s not a typical opener, it’s got a slower vibe. I like the way it ends, and the way the second song comes in. Its an interesting contrast.
KW: I think it’s a good introduction to us, because it’s subtle, but it reminds me of the water. It sounds like waves to me, the guitar part that Jarod did.
And there you have it, folks. Let You Go will be out on 7/28/14 via Bleeding Gold Records. You can preorder it here, and get a first listen to the luscious and mellow opening track “Slow Days” right here at AudioFemme! And always remember to ask yourself–what would Yo La Tengo do?
There’s a moment in record-store-nerd-meets-girl classic High Fidelity when John Cusack’s character, Rob Gordon, catches a couple of skatepunks stealing records from his shop. The punks give back the shoplifted goods when their decks are held ransom, and Cusack’s character looks at their haul in disbelief. “Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, breakbeats, Serge Gainsborg… What, are you guys slam dancing to Joni Mitchell now?”
The pink-haired punk retorts, “Man, you’re so bigoted. You look at us and think you know what we listen to.” When they part with the last of the stolen merchandise, it’s a wrinkled copy of a guide to home recording; it foreshadows the end of the film in which Rob ends up producing their band’s debut single as The Kinky Wizards, titled “I Sold My Mom’s Wheelchair” (the actual track used in the movie is “The Inside Game” by Royal Trux).
This scene came rushing back to me when I first heard “No Time” by Dub Thompson. The quirky, static-laden piano ditty that introduces the track soon morphs into dubby beats and slinky organs, the sparse vocals layered with gritty reverb. It sounds like a sample of some weird reggae-punk record unearthed from a dusty crate, but in reality it’s the brainchild of two California teenagers named Matt Pulos and Evan Laffer. “We actually met in middle school,” explained Laffer in a phone interview with AudioFemme. “It wasn’t until high school that we started making music together. And then it wasn’t until after we made the record and found out that there was some interest in it that we both kind of signed on to the idea of really working on it in more ways.”
Laffer describes himself as the “non-musician” of the group, saying that “Matt is much more trained in certain respects. He knows how to play guitar much better than I do, and keys, and just has sort of a history of being in bands. But I was always really interested in music and would try to make little songs and stuff… [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][which] made it possible for some more oddball ideas to take shape. We each surprised each other with things that neither of us could or would think of, and then built on that.” They met with Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado in Bloomington to pull together ideas and material for 9 Songs, the duo’s debut on Dead Oceans.
“We went into the studio with Rado just with a collection of songs and that was it. It was not immediately obvious to us that it was going to be put together as a record exactly, let alone sold as a record. The songs were written in this crazy span from like three and a half years ago right up to a week before we recorded – it was just kind of an outburst of energy. A lot of the stuff just happened from Matt and I kind of fooling around, writing stuff by ourselves, writing stuff with each other in mind, in a sense. But by the end, especially with Rado’s production style, the whole thing kind of developed this unifying aesthetic.”
What resulted is a cheeky little romp through eight tracks (despite the album’s title) that borrow from all manner of prolific noise rock acts with an explosive energy. The snarky worldview the record presents belies the incredibly intelligent choices Laffer and Pulos make in terms of rhythms, change-ups, textural elements, and moods; it’s not only hard to place the record squarely into any one genre, it proves difficult at times to nail down even a single track. But that’s not a bad thing, just indicative of their exuberance, and maybe of some mild ADHD. Laffer explains, “There were things we did when we finally recorded it where like, five minutes before we did the take we would just decide… let’s have this one have a so-and-so feel, like, theme this song a certain way that we haven’t thought of before. It ended up being sort of like a tour of different styles or something throughout. We just threw out all these songs that we had written in hopes that some of them stuck together. Eight of them did, eventually.”
Listening to 9 Songs truly does feel like a tour through any vinyl junkie’s shelves. There’s a well-curated eccentricity there that tempers whatever irreverence crops up from time to time. There are, of course, many critics ready to dismiss that sort of impudence. “A lot of critics have been like, ‘Well, I hate to just burst their bubble cause they’re just kids, they’re nineteen… let ‘em have their fun,’” Laffer says, adopting the snobby tone of the band’s detractors. “We are a bit more serious about it than just that, but the humor is part of it and it wouldn’t be the same, it wouldn’t have as much character if the humor didn’t balance our some of the more moody elements or whatever… even if it might come across as kind of sophomoric, or even childish, as some people put it.”
Though he’s gained quite a few accolades in recent years, similar things were initially said about Ariel Pink, whose early home recordings were met with more than a touch of scorn and disbelief. Through all of the crass charm of those first releases, there were ideas brewing and very wise aesthetic choices being made. Even without that kind of context, it seems dismissive to write off Dub Thompson as nineteen-year-olds who are “screwing around,” but that’s more of a discredit to incredulous reviewers than it is to the band. “Perhaps,” Laffer agrees, “But… I would also add that to their credit, we are literally nineteen. We’re at an energetic time in our creative process right now. So when things fly out that might be perceived as off-color or even stupid, that’s just kind of how it’s rolling right now. And why dampen the energy of it, you know? We wouldn’t want to like, put a gag on it just for the sake of making something more sophisticated.”
Dub Thompson on stage at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn.
With the addition of Madeline McCormick on bass and Andrew Nathan Berg on synths, Pulos and Laffer have expanded their touring lineup to a quartet and are finishing up the last dates of an outing with Montreal’s Ought, a band equally enigmatic and bombastic, though with a slightly different approach. “It’s the first real tour we’ve done aside from just a few weekend gigs,” Laffer says. “We did a few in New York about two months ago. But this is essentially a month of no-breaks touring and shows.” They’re excited, he says, not only to visit cities where there’s substantial interest in what Dub Thompson is doing, but also relieved not to have to drive so far between stops. When they pulled through New York late last week, the Ought-curious crowd at Baby’s All Right thinned way down before Dub Thompson launched into a caustic set that made 9 Songs somehow even more vivid, so it was kind of a shame that not many stuck around. Pulos’ confrontational yelp was blunted only by reverb; Laffer attacked his kit with similar ferocity. There wasn’t a ton of banter, but then, most of the duo’s lyrics come off somewhat conversational, if inflected with shards of detached ambivalence.
The affect on 9 Songs – a sort of production quality that’s the antithesis of sounding produced – thankfully did not unravel on stage. If at times the songs seem a sort of cut-and-pasted melange of styles, the live set exhibited a carefully orchestrated flow. But delivered with haphazard, youthful gusto, it came off as just-unpolished-enough, and the set wasn’t limited to the tracks we’ve already heard from the band. In fact, there’s another record already in the works. “It’s got a little bit more of a hip-hop intent,” admits Laffer, “but it’s not necessarily hip-hop.” With such a cornucopia of styles at work on 9 Songs, the next album could be a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure of sorts. “Overall,” says Laffer, “I think I’ve noticed a lot of younger kids – kids who are still in high school – really dig it. Some of our relatives, our dads, they’ll usually just be like ‘Oh, the production is kind of noisy’ or something but still support it. Mostly, the thing we’ve gotten is ‘Oh, I can’t wait, I have no idea what they’ll do next.’”[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
When Jen from Swimsuit Addition calls me, she’s a bit flustered. She has good reason to be – it’s mere hours before her punk-inflected grunge pop band is scheduled to play a show in their native Chicago to celebrate two huge milestones in their career: the release of their latest album Wretched Pinups, and their subsequent two-week tour to support it. Sporting purple hair and tiger-print leggings, Jen ran to Target for some last-minute must-haves, and made a scene when she thought she’d lost her phone – only to find it in her back pocket.
“Something bad always happens on release days!” she gasps breathlessly, recounting stories of lost keys and other mild crises that put a damper on otherwise ecstatic moments. But today, crisis has been averted, and the only thing left to do is celebrate and reflect on the making of the record, how writing with a full lineup shaped the record, and where their first ever East Coast tour will take them.
AudioFemme: We’re loving Wretched Pinups over here and can’t wait for your tour to come through Brooklyn. My favorite thing about the record is the great balance you push between topics and ideas that are kind of serious, even aggressive statements and how that gets mixed in with some healthy doses of humor and fun. Was mixing it up like that a conscious decision?
Jen of Swimsuit Addition: Some of it’s conscious. Some of it acts as a kind of nervous laughter in a way. We kind of have to put that in there because… at some point you have to laugh. Also we collectively have this dark sense of humor – or anyway, I do, and maybe that kind of bleeds over. Becca [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][my guitarist] is famous for mishearing something. A couple of the lyrics on it that are funny are actually things that she’s misheard what I’m saying in a lyric and I’ll be like “That’s funny, let’s just leave that in there, or let’s change it.” That actually happened a couple of times.
AF: Can you talk a little about your writing and recording process?
SA: It’s funny because some of the songs take a half hour to write… just like the basis of them. Some of them take weeks or months to write. So I do a lot of demoing for my bandmates where I’ll just put a ton of guitars on it where I want to hear different elements of the song, and I’ll put electronic drums on it and I’ll show them the demos and then everybody inevitably writes their own part that they play in the recording. It’s kind of like if we were a coloring book and I was drawing the outline and everybody’s kinda coloring in the picture. Sometimes I’ll just bring a handful of “colors” or something and just be like “Let’s bring this together!” Sam brought two songs that she kinda outlined and then we put together, so we’re learning to write better together. Sam also kinda helped me finish some of my songs before I brought them to the band. For this record I think I brought a little more than half the songs to the band and then we all kinda just fleshed them out.
AF: So was that different from the way you’d approached writing your first release,Kittyhawk?
SA: Well with Kittyhawk we had a completely different lineup – it was me, Sam [on bass and keys], and this other drummer. Sam and I just like wrote everything – we kinda just told her what to play. I think I wrote 90% of that album too – Sam wrote the beginning of one song, I kinda helped her finish it. So it’s kinda like each album there’s more writing from each of us. For our next record that we’re doing, Becca wrote a song, and I’m hoping that Sam brings more songs. As we get better as a band we all get better as songwriters.
AF: Do you feel like the steps toward more collaborative songwriting have changed the sound on Wretched Pinups versus earlier releases?
SA: If I give Becca a riff to play, she adds something to it. Or if we give Sarah [the percussion] an idea, she would do it, but she would do it in her own way. And that’s partly because, you know, Becca and Sarah are extremely creative people. No one really wants to be told what to play; when you give someone something it’s really awesome to see how they take it to the next level. So I think in that way, a lot of the instrumentation on this album was more sophisticated than what we had on Kittyhawk. We play off of each other, we build off of each other. We’re always trying to decorate the songs more.
AF: Were there specific inspirations in writing this record, either musical or otherwise?
SA: I would say the big inspirations are kind of unknown 60s pop bands, a lot of 90s indie and grunge… those are the two main things. My emotions are the other thing. I’m a very emotional person. I take a lot of my emotions and put them into things that I create. So there’s a lot of that. Wretched is a very moody album. Unlike Kittyhawk and unlike our next album that we’re gonna put out. Very moody and emotional.
AF: Where are you getting the titles for your records? They’re really interesting, kind of loaded phrases.
SA: For Wretched Pinups, I need to give credit to my friend Josh who was in a band called Wretched Pinups. They weren’t around very long, but when we were hanging out I was like “I’m obsessed with your band name – it’s so awesome, it’s my soul or something.” I traded him a name – I had a name from a comic strip that I was doing. And I was like, “You can have the name from this if I can have that name for a record,” and he was like “DEAL!” For Kittyhawk, I don’t even really know how that came up. I think it was just because it was like, the first. Then we saw the collage with the spaceship cat [that we used for the album cover] and it matched.
AF: What was the comic that you were drawing?
SA: I have this little comic that I do called Emo Grrrls. My main character has a band called Jane Acid & the Hollowheads. And he wanted the band name The Hollowheads so I was like “Take it!” It’s just on a tumblr right now while I try to figure out what I’m doing with it. I’m maybe gonna print it and put it in some zine stores or whatever, but right now it’s one of those cathartic things to me. I take time while I’m doing it, but it’s a project that I haven’t really finished yet. It’s a fun thing for me.
AF: Do you feel like zines and Riot Grrrl have been a big influence on what you’re doing with Swimsuit Addition?
SA: I try not to talk about that a lot – they’re definite influences and it’s an obvious comparison that people make. But I hate to say that we are “Riot Grrrl” or something because Riot Grrrl is sort of a time capsule movement. It existed at a specific time we aren’t a part of at all. We’re definitely influenced by it, we respect it, and we love it, and it definitely influenced all of us at our core but we’re not trying to claim any real part in that movement.
AF: Do you feel like songwriting and being in a band is a sort of catharsis for you?
SA: Absolutely. I kind of have always wanted to say no to that question, but when I’m being truthful that’s where it comes from for me personally. It’s very cathartic for me to create – that goes for creating music or doing visual art or doing other musical projects even if they are completely different. To me, it is about getting those emotions moving and getting them out. So yeah it’s always kinda been like that.
AF: I think that making something acts as catharsis for a lot of creative individuals, myself included. I’m curious as to why you want to distance yourself from making that statement.
SA: I think it’s because, like, the initial catharsis for me, like starting when I was twelve years old and dealing with a lot of stuff, was just to get it out. And now what actually makes me feel good is finishing something. For years, even until I was like 22, in other people’s bands, playing their songs, I just wanted to get it out but I didn’t care about the final product. And now, for me, the important thing is the final product. The initial process, what sparks it, is just kind of like barfing up those emotions, but then what allows it to be like an actual finished thing is going into it in your head, going into it when I’m not emotional and being precise about how that gets tied up. So that’s why I wanna say no, because it’s like a project, something I’m consciously doing and I’m really thinking hard about it. Because it’s not like I’m crying my way through writing the song, but that’s almost how it starts. Something upsets me and I have to sit down and write about it.
AF: I always think it’s worth it to process even happy emotions. That editing process, too, there’s catharsis there, organizing ideas around how you feel. You must be feeling very excited about the tour right now! How long will you be out on the road?
SA: I keep saying it’s ten days…
AF: Have you toured a lot before?
SA: No! This is like the first thing… We’ve done weekend tours and stuff like that. I started booking this tour in December so I’m really proud of how it shaped up. My bandmates are all like, “Let’s have one day off!” and I was like [in a faux-tyrannical tone] “NO! We all got this time off, we have a van we’re gonna be out there, we’re playing every night!” We’re gonna be crazy exhausted afterward but it will be totally worth it.
AF: Anything in particular that you’re really excited about?
SA: I’m like really excited to meet people and just be in other communities. We play so much in Chicago, and when we go outside of Chicago we have such an amazing time. Most of the time it’s like Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan. But we have such a great time and we haven’t ever played on the East Coast before so you know, it just puts us in this whole new group of people. Obviously we have friends out there, and we know a lot of people out there but it will be really great to just like see a whole other community and meet people and have a lot of fun.
AF: Do you feel like there’s a good community in Chicago as well? What is the scene there like?
SA: Yeah, it’s a very supportive, awesome scene. We had a Kickstarter, and we weren’t really asking for much, just asking for people to pre-order merch. Like if they were gonna buy [the record] anyway, we were just like “Hey can you pre-order so we can have some cash to rent a van?” But we met our goal in like, four or five days and we were just like “WHAT??!!” It’s incredible. We have so many people who come out to shows, and people who are supportive, just with little things. And that goes for everyone – I feel like everybody’s trying to uplift and support each other. We’re all very happy when it comes to another band [doing well] cause we’re all friends with each other, we’ve all played with each other at some point. And we’re all very happy for each other. It’s a really great community.
AF: I don’t want to put you on the spot, because my mind always goes blank when people ask me stuff like this, but are there other Chicago bands we should be listening to?
SA: YES! There are so many, and I know I’m gonna forget some. We’re kind of like family – Absolutely Not is an amazing band. We’re gonna try to go to Austin with them next year. The Peekaboos are really great, I played in a band with two of them and with this project they’ve got such great energy. They do the comedy-within-emotional music thing really well. My favorite band right now, who I asked to open for us, is Kangaroo. I’m really obsessed with them right now – there was one weekend where I think I saw them like three times.
AF: You mentioned you have plans for another record already, even though Wretched Pinups just came out. Do you want to talk about it a little?
SA: We kind of had it planned from the beginning, it’s called Dumb Dora. And we play a lot of the songs that are on it when we play live because a lot of them are crowd favorites, they’re really fun songs. Wretched Pinups has a lot of the moody songs, and Dumb Dora is supposed to be like, for your sweet tooth.
Check out Swimsuit Addition on tour if you live in one of the stops below!
Eliza Callahan and Jack Staffen grew up at the same time–and in the same zip code!–but as the harmony-happy folk pop outfit Jack + Eliza, the pair spans decades. “Hold The Line,” the first single off their forthcoming EP No Wonders (via Yebo Music), takes the seventies-era classic rock that Eliza was raised on and braids it with Jack’s boy-band background. Mellow and sunny, the EP touches on a wide range of influences as it ambles comfortably through its five tracks, underscoring the pair’s intricate vocal harmony with a gentle guitar line. No Wonders presents Jack + Eliza’s music in its simplest form. As you’re listening to the EP, you can practically close your eyes and pretend they’re in your living room–so intimate it feels like a personal introduction.
No Wonders will be out at the end of this summer, but you don’t have to wait until then to get to know them. I sat down for a chat with the duo, to discuss their backgrounds, their creative influences and how the NYC music scene is like no other. Here’s what went down.
AudioFemme: So both of you grew up in New York. How did you meet?
Eliza Callahan: Yes, we both grew up in downtown Manhattan. We actually have known each other since we were about ten or eleven. We weren’t really friends, until I had a friend who played guitar in the band Jack was singing in, and their drummer quit, so they asked me to play drums. I’m really not a drummer. I do not know how to play drums. But that’s how we met. We went to rival high schools in Brooklyn, and everyone kept saying that we should write music together. We were both too shy to approach the topic, but finally we wrote a song one day and we liked it, so we kept going.
AF: When did you write that song?
Jack Staffen: I guess it’s been two years now. We wrote that song the year before last, in August.
AF: How do you guys relate to the New York music scene?
EC: We’ve been writing a lot, and now one of our goals is to find a niche and a group of people we enjoy playing with. There’s just so much out there that there’s no one community that you can gravitate towards. There are definitely bands who we’ve played more than one show with, who we really like, and at our schools there are scenes, but we’re also looking to be part of a bigger scene. Hopefully that happens naturally.
AF: Have you ever wanted to live New York and live somewhere else?
JC: (laughs) No.
AF: Is that because of the musical opportunities here, or do you just love it?
JC: Both. The music scene here is like nowhere else, but I also just love New York City.
EC: I could definitely see living in other cities in the future. I love to surf, and I love the beach, but I’m really not goo with non-urban environments. I don’t like silence. I can’t sleep if there isn’t noise outside.
AF:Tell us about your musical backgrounds.
JS: I started playing guitar when I was five, and I hated it. Then I picked up the piano and I loved it. When I was about nine, I was still really into the piano, but I picked up the guitar again and just fell in love. Pretty much from then on I’ve been playing music, and I started writing music when I was eleven. I’ve never gone in for formal training, we just had a piano and I picked it up from there.
EC: I started on classical guitar–the Suzuki Method–when I was three years old. It was funny because my parents didn’t want me to start that young, but I had a friend whose mom really wanted her to play classical guitar. She ended up quitting, but I fell in love with the Suzuki Method. When I was six or seven, I started playing jazz, and then I decided to play rock and roll because like every child–and every human, I guess–I loved The Beatles. So then I started writing music. I had a little recording device and I would record these stream-of-consciousness, epic songs that went on for eleven or twelve minutes. I went to a school where we wrote a lot of poetry, so I would take the words that I had written and kind of yell them, or sing them, over these weird chords I was playing. As I got older I developed more of a formal approach.
JS: My first song was like…a Backstreet Boys song. Yours was totally different.
AF: Why did you decide to just go by Jack and Eliza instead of picking out a name for your band?
EC: We didn’t start with the intention of being a band. It was just a project we were working on, and our friends would say, you know, this is a song Jack and Eliza wrote together. We just kept on writing music, and we started playing shows, and it became really hard to find a name we could identify with after we had been playing together for so long. And also, we really did want a name. We did not intend to end up being Jack and Eliza, and I hope people can look beyond the boy-girl name thing. I think that has various connotations, and I don’t want that to affect our music, or people’s views of it. But we were also very happy with the ring. We like the ring. I have a whole list of band names that I’ve been making throughout my life, and we just did not feel that any of them fit.
AF: Growing up in the same circle of friends, does that mean that your musical tastes are similar? Do you have similar influences?
EC: No, I think our influences are actually pretty different, although our tastes are getting more similar. I was raised on a lot of old rock and roll. My dad listened to old rock and roll, so I listened to The Kinks, The Beach Boys, that type of thing.
JS: I listened more to what was coming out when I was younger. Radiohead, Fountains of Wayne, Rufus Wainright, that was the stuff I listened to. As I got older I started getting into what Eliza was listening to.
EC: It’s interesting, because Jack comes from a more poppy background, whereas I come from a more rock and roll or folky background, and I think we taught each other the positive things about both of genres.
AF: Tell us about your new EP, “No Wonders”. When is it coming out? How did you start recording it?
EC: It’ll be out at the end of summer or early in the fall. We recorded it here in New York City, with Chris Zane, at Gigantic Studios. We recorded it from December to February. We had completely written the EP before we went into the studio.It’s pretty stripped down. We wanted to keep it simple and have people listen to us first as us in our most “bare” form, and then build from there. We definitely want to add more sonic texture in the future, but to start out, we wanted to keep it very straightforward.
AF: You’ve been playing a lot of shows around the city lately. How has that been?
EC: It’s been a lot of fun. It’s weird, though: we’ve both been performing since we were really young, but I get more and more nervous every time I perform. I don’t know why. When I was younger I could care less.
JS: And I really love performing.
AF: It seems like you guys are kind of opposites, and you balance each other out.
EC: That definitely is true. Jack has a very clean, lovely voice and can sing way higher than I can. Jack takes the high harmony a lot of the time. So Jack will start doing these vocal runs, and then to counter his Backstreet Boy vocal runs, I’ll attempt to sound like Lou Reed. Well, that’s an extreme. But in rehearsal, that is our battle.
AF: Do you write songs totally collaboratively?
JS: It’s pretty much all collaborative. Occasionally one of us will bring a chord progression, maybe with the melody, maybe not, and we’ll work from there.
EC: I don’t know how we’re able to collaborate–I don’t want to say so well, but I don’t know how I would write a song with anyone else. It’s not something that I foresee being possible with anyone else. If anything, the chord progressions are usually collaborative. Jack usually writes most of the harmony, because his voice is better. I write a few more of the lyrics. But it’s pretty much collaborative.
AF: As a writer, I’m totally mystified by that. It seems horrifying sharing control over a project. Is working together sometimes difficult? Do you have any advice for people who want to learn how to collaborate?
EC: Well, I feel that way too, because I write a lot. I think about collaborating on my poetry, or my creative writing pieces, and that’s terrifying, but for some reason, with songwriting, I’m a lot more willing to let go and let something happen that I might not allow when I’m obsessing. I think it’s that I don’t obsess over songwriting the way I do with my other writing. I don’t know why that is, but I think that’s what allows for a hopefully successful collaboration.
Justin Vallesteros began Craft Spells as a bedroom pop project, so it’s only fitting that for the band’s sophomore release, he’s returned to those reclusive roots. With the 2009 release of some enigmatic demos that would go on to make up the bulk of highly-anticipated debut Idle Labor in 2011, Vallesteros built buzz amongst bloggers, signed to Captured Tracks, and assembled a touring band. Craft Spells also released an EP, Gallery, in 2012, seemingly predicting that such prolific output would continue. The band toured while moving its home base up and down the West Coast, but Vallesteros found himself distracted and uninspired by surroundings in Seattle and San Francisco. He moved back in with his parents, spent his days writing and skateboarding, and completed Nausea, a deeply introspective album more orchestral, ambitious and accessible than anything Craft Spells has released to date. In the midst of a brief tour that included a stop at Brooklyn’s Northside Festival, Vallesteros answered some questions about the new directions he’s taking with his project.
AudioFemme: It seems like your aesthetic has changed slightly since Idle Labor; do you feel like that’s true? In what ways has the band evolved over the last four years?
Justin Vallesteros: Yes, it’s been four years. A lot has happened to me personally and the new record is a good representation of what I went through. The aesthetic changed cause I change, we all change. It wasn’t a conscious decision, I’m just a different person. Evolving like a Pokemon.
AF: Did you feel a lot of pressure in making a second record in terms of how critics would inevitably compare it to the first?
JV: I knew a lot of the fans of Idle Labor would tilt their head to it, it was definitely a side bust. I’m gonna make what I want though, so there was no stopping what I was writing. I can’t be that guy who makes pastel-like music all my life. I’m a real person with feelings. Maybe the next release will be the happiest shit I’ve written, or the saddest, who knows?
AF: It’s been two years since you’ve toured with the band. Anything you’re nervous about or excited to get back to?
JV: Excited to take people out of their night life, putting their phones away and bringing them into our world for an hour. It was cool playing to packed show at the Warsaw in Brooklyn and looking up midway and didn’t see one phone and everyone in silence. That rules.
AF: The new record has some great orchestral flourishes and also some really pretty quieter moments, particularly in the juxtaposition of the last two tracks. How did arranging it all come together?
JV: It’s good to take the album through different worlds and landscapes as it goes. It’s better than writing a whole album of single guitar line jangle pop.
AF: You’re releasing the demos alongside the album in a special edition. What’s your reason for that?
JV: If you like J Dilla or Nujabes, you will love these demo versions of Nausea. It’s gonna sound awesome on cassette too.
Stream single “Breaking The Angle Against The Tide” below, order the LP on Captured Tracks, or, if you’re on the West Coast, you can catch Craft Spells on tour in July at the dates below:
7/16 – Santa Cruz, CA – Catalyst Atrium
7/17 – San Francisco, CA – The Chapel
7/18 – San Diego, CA – The Hideout
7/19 – Santa Ana, CA – Constellation Room
7/20 – Los Angeles, CA – Part Time Punks at the Echo
Innovatively-minded, Luna Aura is a part of a generation of artists who strive for societal change through their creative endeavors in the music industry. Her songs, all self written and co-produced, are filled with hypnotic beats and catchy lyrics. Each track is a singular and organic exploration of Luna’s sound, which makes the EP fascinating and keeps us on our toes. If her music in and of itself didn’t make her cool enough in both her daily life and in her creative work, let me add that she is a serious advocate for gender equality. Luna has a strong and dazzling personality, quirky and self-aware in equal measure. Last week I had the delight of talking to Luna on the phone about her musical career and the path to her forthcoming debut EP.
AF: When did you first get into making music?
LA: I first started singing at a really young age, about 3 or 4 and then I started writing songs when I was about 10 I was a dramatic little one, writing about relationships and all these things that I have never experienced, that I’ve just observed in other people. I learned how to play guitar around the age of 15 and started going out and performing my own music and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 5 years or so and just over the last year I’ve been producing all of my own music and all of the music that you hear today.
AF: Did you run into any nay-sayers in your family or were you supported?
LA: I was so lucky as a kid because I had loving parents. We weren’t well off by any means you know my dad was a cop and my mom was a stay at home mom and I have four other siblings so it was kind of a packed house. We each have our own individual quirks and talents but no matter what they are our parents always said that they will support us 100 percent in whatever it is that we want to do. For this I think it was difficult for my parents because I didn’t want to go to school and I didn’t want to go to college, I just wanted to focus on this. I’ve always had a pretty entrepreneurial spirit, I’ve never wanted to be the person that waited for someone else to tell her that she was ready to do something, I just wanted to do it. I think once my parents saw this drive in me and saw the success behind it and of course the talent that was leading it they’ve been nothing but supportive. And my whole family has been so loving and supportive throughout the whole journey from when I was so small until now.
AF: You have a very unique sound; how did you develop that?
LA: When I was younger I listened to three things: pop music, hip-hop & rap or country. I was obsessed with all three of those genres growing up so a lot of my influences are from those three genres. I think I just love the shininess of pop and the fact that so many people love it and it’s so infectious. For rap & hip-hop I love the way it feels and the way to made me feel when I was growing up and with country I love the storytelling behind it. I appreciate all the storytelling in country music and all the songs that I have loved. I think today I’m just blending all of that together so with the synths and the beats and all of that, the rhythm comes from my hip hop & rap background, the storytelling comes from my country background and the ultimate big picture of it is very much pop. I’m going with what’s natural to me. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve done that. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to immerse myself in different genres none of them ever worked because I was forcing it. Now with this EP it’s 100 percent natural and from me; it’s everything that makes me feel right.
AF: What is your writing process?
LA: When I’m producing I am always with my buddy Sean and we’re always at his place doing it. I tend to write in my room a lot. I think it is only due to habit though because when I was younger I wasn’t showing people these songs that I was writing. I was just doing it by myself in my room and then hiding my little notebook so I think as a habit being in my room and just kind of being by myself and being in my own space with no distractions just becomes “my home” when it comes to song writing.
AF: You live in Phoenix right? Describe the music scene there.
LA: It’s definitely, because it’s so small, somewhat of a family. When there are artists out there or bands that are really doing a good job and you know kicking butt, I feel like everyone likes to come together and collaborate. This person wants to meet this person and that person wants to meet the next person and do all these ‘collabs’. So I feel like, more than anything, it’s like a small little family.
AF: What is your experience as a female artist?
LA: I don’t want to say it’s difficult but it is kind of difficult. I think that there’s a lot of social pressures when it comes to being a female artist. People expect you to be sexy and they expect you to be sultry and always be beautiful and to never really show any side other then that, especially as a pop artist. For me I have always been obsessed with people like Joan Jett and Gwen Stephani and Janis Joplin and these women that were just owning it. They weren’t being feminine by any means they were just performing and they could hold the stage like any other man. And I feel like for me that’s where I come from, that’s where I’m going and that’s where I am. So when it comes to live performing you can see that side more. When it comes to the promo photos and all of that I am very feminine and brightly colored and all of that, but you’ll really see the tomboy in me while I’m performing. You have to prove yourself definitely as a female artist, more so then a man would have to prove himself.
AF: So what do you do outside of making music, any hobbies?
LA: Just like crime fighting, basic stuff like that. I like working out, kind of but not really, never mind I don’t like working out. There’s not much you can do in Arizona cuz it’s like 110 degrees at all times. I read and write music and I like coloring my hair a lot. Which is why in like every picture you see of me my hair is a different color. So part time crime fighter, part time hairdresser.
AF: Who, dead or alive, would you want to sit down and have a cup of coffee with?
LA: Maya Angelou, for sure, who just recently passed away and which was completely heart-breaking for me because she was somewhat of a mentor for me.
AF: In what way?
LA: With a lot of her writings and she’s just one of the most amazing women to ever exist and I would do anything to have had a cup of coffee with her.
AF: Dream collaboration for a song?
LA: That’s so hard! Right now, you know what I am so in love with Twenty One Pilots right now. So inspired by Twenty One Pilots – I just think that they’re both just so talented and when it comes to the writing and all the elements within it they are just geniuses. I love those guys. You’ll actually see an influence they have on me in the music videos that are coming out this summer too.
AF: Anything else you wanna divulge? State secrets?
LA: I don’t know. I’m eating pizza rolls right now. My EP is going to be released on August 26th of this year. My song “Radio” is available on ITunes, Spotify and Amazon currently. I’m going to be performing at the Summer Ends Music Fest in September with Foster The People, Kittens, Fitz and the Tantrums and bunch of other really cool people. So I guess I’d want people to know that.
Luna Aura’s self-titled debut EP will be released on August 26th and will be followed by her performance at the Summer Ends Music Festival on September 28th. Watch her debut video here via Youtube:
Everyone’s had a broken heart. That’s why songs about love gone wrong are so ubiquitous; as listeners, we crave relatable lyrics telling tales of liars and cheats and unrequited crushes. We make playlists to deal with love’s letdowns, and as we sing along and we might have a good cry or hit the gym to take it out on a punch bag with our ex’s name on it. Either way, there’s no denying the catharsis inherent in woeful ballads and sassy bangers alike. Lovelorn listeners take heed: Emmy Wildwood has arrived with her debut EP Mean Love, a smoldering new crop of post-breakup jams. Over the course of four songs, she skewers toxic relationships, calls out distant lovers, and offers up a healthy dose of how to get over all that and move on.
Wildwood is a force to be reckoned with, and it goes way beyond her savvy, straight-for-the-throat anthems. She’s performed in a wide range of musical projects, fronting punk-rock outfit VELTA and alt-country band The Stone Lonesome and appearing regularly as “Lizzy Strandlin” in all-girl Guns N’ Roses cover band. And that’s just her sonic resume; she’s worked in fashion for years, both as a stylist and as proprietor of Tiger Blanket in Williamsburg. She also operates a record label of the same name, which will release Mean Love on June 24th. Not only did we chat with Wildwood about her EP, her songwriting process, Alfred Hitchcock, and the harsh realities of dysfuntional relationships, AudioFemme is pleased to present an exclusive streaming premiere of the record. Check it out below while you read Emmy Wildwood’s words of wisdom.
AUDIOFEMME: Congrats on the EP! We can’t wait to share it with the world; the songs have such irresistible hooks, and your voice is incredible. In your words, what describes the sound you’re going for on your solo project?
EMMY WILDWOOD: Well, I have a primarily punk background – I am from Tuscon, Arizona, and there’s not a lot of people, kids particularly, playing music. Except for boys, and boys played punk, where I was from. So I learned to play power chords and punk stuff early, so that I could be in bands because there was no one else playing in any other kind of band back then. So I’ve always played punk, and then I got into more distinguished music later, so there’s sort of an influence of pop singer-songwriters and things like that. But for me it always comes back to rock n’ roll and punk so I would say that that’s pretty prevalent in the voice. Even though there’s a pop sound it’s always pretty driven by a lot of nasty electric guitar sounds. I would say it’s electronic pop with a very punk feel.
AF: It definitely hearkens back to the era that produced great punk rock-inflected pop acts like Cyndi Lauper and Blondie. You use vintage drum machines to achieve that sound?
EW: We sure do. I had this idea that I wanted to just do electric guitar and electric drums, [/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][particularly] LinnDrum, which is like a seventies big honkin’ horrible hugely heavy drum machine. Prince used it on his Dirty Mind album which is the one he made in his living room and it sounds really gnarly and grungy and I wanted to make something like that. LinnDrum is a big part of where this project started.
AF: So when you’re recording these songs, is it primarily you at home, alone? I know you’ve had some producers come in and work on it as well, but as far as the recording process, how do you go about that?
EW: I cut a bunch of demos on my own over the last couple of years, just electric guitar and voice. And I sent this new set of songs to my friends Zach Jones and Greg Mayo. Zach and I were in a three-piece garage rock trio called VELTA. He’s in this big pop band called Great Big World – they have that song “Say Something” with Christina Aguilera – and he got this huge drumming gig and has been touring a lot, and Greg plays with everybody in New York. They’re both amazing producers, they both play a bunch. They’re really good friends of mine. I’ve known them for a long time and they knew I wanted to do this and they’re huge Prince fans, huge pop fans, and I’ve played with them for so long I felt like they knew me so well so I called them up to help me make this particular sound happen cause I knew it wouldn’t take too much to make them understand what I was trying to do.
AF: So it made sense to approach them because you’d had so many prior conversations about how you wanted your solo stuff to sound?
EW: Yes. And just like, having been friends with them, we had common love of the same sort of stuff. It was one of those things where you don’t really have to have a conversation, somebody just knows you, and knows what you’re trying to get across, it was a lot of that cause they’re such good friends. And I respect them both musically so much. They both have amazing taste. I understand melody, and rhythm and ideas, and I’ve been doing this a long time, but they’re like really studied. They have all the stuff in the library, they can make anything I wanted to happen, happen. They’re really amazing musicians and they were incredibly important cause I definitely couldn’t have done that on my own. Especially some of the weirder, more creative stuff that’s on there that’s bizarre-sounding.
AF: Well how about the writing process? You mentioned that you had demoed the tracks before you even went to them, and I think there’s a lot of really interesting concepts and themes within the record, so can you tell me more about where you were as you were writing this and influenced the material?
EW: I had a lot of demos from sort of a tumultuous last two years. Definitely driven by breakups, I will say that. Also a lot of changes. I moved out on my own for the first time after a big breakup and I wrote probably 35 or 40 songs that weren’t being put to use. I had this sort of collection it was really hard to choose; I picked three of those songs that I wrote and I demoed those out. “RVR LVR” was the fourth one which I brought to the space. We were gonna do another, sort of heavy tune that I had written called “Rosewater,” and they were like, “Man, do you really want this EP to be like, this heavy? Don’t you want something like, super fun on the record?” And I was like, “Well… I have half of a super fun song.” I didn’t have a lot of “super fun songs” written, you know what I mean? I was dealing with some health stuff too. So it could’ve been this really really heavy EP but they sorta helped me put this more fun spin on the whole entire thing because they co-wrote this fourth song with me. Because of them of them I have an EP which made my life a little bit more fun that what was going on.
AF: I think lyrically, these songs are definitely dark and heavy in subject matter, but I feel like they’re written so poetically. That’s maybe too flowery a term, because there’s also a lot of anger and bite there, but its not like you’re calling anyone specific out. A lot of times you’re blaming yourself in these situations as much as you‘re blaming another party. And it’s so straightforward, so uncomplicated – just a collection of these charged phrases that feel very powerful as a whole.
EW: Lyrically, I’m always really honest. Some people worry about things coming off a certain way. I don’t like to be shocking on purpose, but if my honesty is shocking that’s cool to me. I like to say things in a way no one’s ever heard before, I like to play things in a way people haven’t heard before. I mean I guess that’s what we’re all trying to do. Lyrically I was just really honest and really proud about that and lyrics are something that I’ve always put a lot of time into. It’s something that’s really important to me because I listen to lyrics very intensely. The words make me feel much deeper about the music. I didn’t even know that I was blaming myself as much as I was blaming myself until you said that but that’s totally true.
AF: Well a lot of what you’re referencing on this record, particularly on the first two tracks “Mean Love” and “Stung,” are really relatable scenarios. We’ve all been in a dysfunctional, toxic situation, either with a lover or a friend or even in business relationships. There are a lot of sycophants out there. And if you spend enough time in those kinds of situations, you risk becoming a sycophant yourself. The lyrics to “Blondes” in particular kind of talk about that. It’s layered under poppy, rock-driven production but the words are very sinister and violent. Can you talk a little bit about the metaphors you’re using? Or should I call the cops?
EW: [laughs] You probably don’t need to do that! I read this article actually, on Alfred Hitchcock, his movies and how he always cast blonde girls because they looked “better in blood” on screen, cause the red stood out better. And it stuck with me for a long time but then it sort of became this thing, this imagined scenario, this song. This one I would say is less autobiographical, although it always becomes that, somehow, for me, relating it back to a personal situation. The song tells a story of a relationship where one partner is angry at somebody besides the person they’re taking their anger out on. I just used that metaphor of the blonde girl as the other girl. It’s a violent song because I’m comparing that to a horror film, but that’s where that metaphor came from. Don’t call the cops, it’s all good.
AF: I have read a little bit about Hitchcock’s relationship with Tippi Hedren, who starred in The Birds and some of his other movies and the reality of his behavior toward her is more terrifying than most of his actual movies I think. He was really obsessed with her, and did terrible things to her…
EW: Yeah, he pushed her. That’s the whole thing. I feel like we sort of do this to each other in relationships, it’s this recurring theme. He pushed her to get an emotion out of her that he needed to draw power from, that the movies maybe drew power from. Just to make it more passionate, more emotional, he pushed her to these extreme places to get something out of her, and was also totally obsessed and in love with her. I was totally fascinated by that whole concept of pushing somebody and all of that sort of obsession and craziness that follows love.
AF:Obviously it’s a painful thing to have a romantic falling out with someone or a separation, but especially having now channeled all of that into the EP, do you feel like that’s a thing that has pushed you and been transformative?
EW: It did push this EP. I had a really significant twelve-year breakup. I was with someone since I was a teenager. But “RVR LVR” is actually a happy song, and “Stung” is heavy but it’s a happy song too in the sense that it’s [about] falling in love again and learning to trust somebody again and somebody loving you even though you’re, sort of, to put it UN-poetically, screwed up, or not as strong as you feel like you were. It’s really hard to go into a new relationship when you had an idea of what your whole life was gonna be like, constantly evaluating every new thing, [thinking] is this hard because this is not right, or is this hard because I thought it was gonna be another way and it’s a different way? And someone being patient with you through that. “Stung” is definitely about being in love again and someone loving you through something hard like that.
AF: You mentioned “RVR LVR” – that’s a definite favorite of mine. It almost gives the whole EP a fairy-tale ending, not just for the mythical imagery of someone rising out of the mist so-to-speak, but it’s also a breath of fresh air after all the weightiness.
EW: Good! It wasn’t the last one we did, but it was the last written. I was so excited to have it because it just sort of rounded off the EP in a way. I hadn’t seen a close to where it was gonna finish off. I didn’t know if we should do five songs or six songs or three songs or a mixtape. And then we wrote “RVR LVR” and I was like “Oh! It’s these four. That’s it.” And the guys felt that too. It was just understood, and we all felt the same way. So it was sort of a breath of fresh air to the EP in general just sonically. “RVR LVR” is about the fun stuff. It’s about like, going out and getting someone and winning someone over, so there is happiness to it. There’s a lot of honest things about what it is to break up and fall in love again and evaluate yourself through it and evaluate your partner through it.
AF: So what ended up happening to these other songs? Will they go onto an album or is it time to put that phase of your life behind you and move on? I’m sure you’re still writing new things.
EW: Where do all the lost songs go? You know, a lot of people in their lives have concentrated on being like, the best guitarist in the world or being the best singer in the world. I wanna be a great singer and I’m always trying to get better at guitar, but for me it’s always been about writing the song. I wanna have the perfect ‘song moment.’ I write so much – that’s really what I spend my time doing, almost to the point that it doesn’t feel like a choice. I don’t sit down and practice, I sit down and write. [I have] a lot of songs that I just have never produced. They’re just floating somewhere in my hard drive. I don’t know if they’ll be significant to any particular project in the future, but you never know. Actually, [with] “Mean Love” I had the chorus for a long time, and it just shaped up two years ago. But there are a lot of songs that maybe will never be heard by anyone besides my pug, Pilot.
Pilot the Pug, Keeper of Lost Songs
AF: Then again, maybe you have something that’s rolling around in the ether that will be a huge hit.
EW: That would be great. You know, I feel like things like that are always surprises. There are songs that are still my favorites that I wrote, you know, seven years ago, that I think are cool songs that maybe I’ll use an idea from eventually. With the EP, to bring it back to the theme behind it… for me it’s like I’m only able to reflect on things once they’re processed. I’m like a lot of emotional human beings [in that] when things are really difficult I can’t even pay attention to them. I went through this breakup a while ago, like three years ago. I had trouble even talking about it for a really really long time. It’s something I will never forget because it has shaped a lot of these last few years for me but I’ve moved forward in a really great way. I like to reflect on the dark things and my innermost secrets and my weird feelings. I’ll always be a little dark in my writing but as far as that chapter being closed, it’s closed, and it’s cool to have this EP, listen to the songs, and be like “Holy cow, did I write that?!”
AF: Would you play these songs to your ex? Do you think he’s heard them?
EW: I have no idea. That’s pretty funny. What’s funny is these songs aren’t even particularly personally about him but more about what resulted because of him, and things that have happened since him. I don’t even know what he’s thinking. I don’t really care. I have a boyfriend now who is amazing. Actually, he co-wrote “Stung” with me. He’s a singer, too and a music writer, like you. He gets it.
AF: So I’m really interested in what you’re doing over at Tiger Blanket. It’s both a record label and a clothing store?
EW: Tiger Blanket is a label that I started a really long tome ago. It was just sort of a fantasy. Any record I made on my own or with friends we would put out under the Tiger Blanket label, but it really came into fruition a few years back with a country music project that I was in, believe it or not, called The Stone Lonesome, that we put out on vinyl. And then I realized that this label needed to be a vinyl label, because I love vinyl, and no one was buying CDs. People were collecting things in limited runs which were something that I liked in particular. Then when I opened my store in Williamsburg it all just came together. I’ve always worked in fashion to make money – cause we all know how profitable music is – so I’ve always worked on styling and [finding] vintage stuff. It became a lifestyle concept – you buy the outfit and you buy the record that you wanna listen to while you get ready to go out to see the show that you’re gonna go see. Unfortunately our landlord has followed the trend of this neighborhood and bumped it all up. So we have to find a new home, location TBD, so right now we’re focusing primarily online. But we’ll have a new release in August and out first piece of clothing specific to the brand that is our own in-house design in August as well.
AF: What records, other than your own, have you released so far?
EW: Last year we released Mother Feather, do you know that band?
AF: I actually do, we booked them for our Scene X Sound event! They’re playing June 26th in LIC on the roof of the Ravel Hotel.
EW: Oh, awesome! They’re kick ass. We also put out Erin Mary and the West Island, sort of a sixties-sounding vibe. She wrote the whole record from the voice of a dead little girl ghost.
AF: Ooooh, creepy.
EW: Yeah, it’s very creepy. I love these sort of conceptual groups and bands, and it has been all girls so far which was not necessarily my intention, but I just put out what I liked and what came in front of me, and what I created a bond with, music I fell in love with and I put it out. I have a few bands in the works, but we’re just seeing how those projects shape up right now and we’ll probably do another release in the Fall.
AF: I have no idea how you find the time to do all this! You’re also in a pretty cool cover band, I hear.
EW: Oh, right! Guns N’ Hoses! Yeah, we play a lot, our next show is June 28th at Bowery Ballroom. I joined two years ago, maybe more that that now. We started by playing all of Guns N’ Roses Appetite for Destruction album and now we’re doing Use Your Illusion as well. It’s wild, because I liked Guns N’ Roses… it was on the radio when I was a kid, I loved their performance, I loved Axl – I thought he was frickin’ bad ass. But joining this band made me get way deeper into their music and see how cool they really were and what they were doing was super innovative. I got way deeper in the catalogue and if anything it’s made me a way better guitar player. It’s harder stuff than I was used to playing – punk rock songs and Nirvana and Weezer – it’s not the same stuff. So it made me a better guitar player, that’s for sure.
AF: GNR, and that type of hair metal rock n’ roll in general, has been pegged from the get-go as both innately masculine but also sort of goofy. It’s macho but almost to such an extreme that it’s kind of a joke. As a group of women playing that music, how do you feel that changes it?
EW: We put on a show, we try and play our characters. We curse at the audience, we drink, we jack on stage, it’s all part of the show. It can be incredibly goofy. As far as us being girls doing it? I don’t know, maybe it sheds light on how ridiculous it really is. But really I think things always sort of come back to the spirit of that band. They were just nuts. They were crazy, they were living up what people really think is the insane rock n’ roll lifestyle and they fully embraced that and they were super proud to be gross and wild and addicted and promiscuous… I mean that’s what half the songs are about. It is a novelty because we’re all girls and they weren’t, but we hope that people come and they’re impressed by the playing, which they usually are. We do it because the songs kick ass, and we do it cause it’s funny and because people like it. We didn’t think it was gonna be as big of a deal when we started it as it turned out to be.
AF: People love their cover bands. Particularly with the era GNR came from, playing that genre… there aren’t a lot of modern bands that have that sound, and people who listened to bands like that in their heyday are barely interested in new bands doing that anyway. They want to hear those classic albums.
EW: Oh Yeah, I mean it’s fans of Guns N’ Roses coming. They don’t care… I mean, they think it’s cool we’re girls, but it’s fans that wanna hear the songs played live, that’s for sure.
AF: That sounds totally awesome. In terms of your solo project, though, what are your hopes for the EP? Where do you want to see it go, who do you want to hear it?
EW: This! These conversations are what I would like to have happen. Someone to hear something, think it’s cool, spend the time actually reading the lyrics and seeing that maybe it’s surprising compared to how it sounds sonically. If this happens like twenty times or ten times or five times, that would be really satisfying to me. And if the songs go somewhere else, sneak into a television show or a commercial, that would be wonderful too. I won’t make any big plans for them because I believe they will find their audience. I think we’ll be playing them [live] in July. That’s the first show.
AF: What will your live performances entail? Will you play with a full band or will it be a more stripped-down solo performance?
EW: It’s definitely me, Zach and Greg. Zach plays drums and synth stuff, Greg’s a guitar player and plays some synth stuff, and I’m gonna play a little electric guitar, some songs with and some without. But I will tell you that all three of us are fairly raucous performers and the live show is always fun when we get together. I like to lose myself a little bit on stage and get a little gnarly and eat my hair and sweat, all the good punk rock stuff.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Dan McGee, of Chapel Hill garage rock band Spider Bags, does not have time to grow orchids or build model ships. He works triple duty these days, with a family, a job, and a brand new record, Frozen Letter, due to come out on August 5th via Merge Records. When I called McGee last week, though, he didn’t seem to mind the stress. In fact, being busy suits him: in the early stages of recording Frozen Letter, McGee realized that his wife was pregnant and that he had nine months to get the record finished, but the focus that pressure gave him–and the rest of the group, with Rock Forbes on drums and Greg Levy and Steve Oliva switching off on bass and guitar–led to the Bags’ most cohesive album to date. Here at AudioFemme, we got our paws on “Back With You Again In The World,” the first single off that album, a couple of weeks back, and we were psyched to hear that the Bags haven’t abandoned the sloppy and earnest feistiness that’s always made their music so much fun to listen to. But the musical ESP between the four Spider Bags is no accident, and it’s more apparent than ever on the new record that even when the music is at its noisiest and dirtiest, there’s a complex dialogue going on beneath the surface.
AudioFemme: Congrats on the new record coming out, we’re so excited! What has it been like recording Frozen Letter?
Dan McGee: We started recording in late June-early July last year, with the same engineer I’ve been working with for a while now, Wes Wolfe. I had a lot of ideas for this record and I went into the studio just wanting to see which songs worked together and which didn’t. I wanted to get four or five done. Then, while we were doing them, my wife came to visit with my daughter, and she was smiling a lot, and I was like ‘Oh man, you’re pregnant, aren’t you?’ And she was. So then I realized that I had to think about this record a little bit differently, because I had to get it done in nine months. Instead of doing five songs that weekend we ended up sleeping in the studio and doing eleven. There are eight songs on the record, but we tried three more just to see how they would fit. Actually, this is the closest I’ve ever come to making the record I started out thinking I wanted to make.
AF: So recording it all at once actually had a positive influence on the finished product?
DM: Yeah! It had that external focus, you know? Made me narrow my choices down. Sometimes I think I can get a little too spread out, so it helped that there was a really strict time limit. It was actually the record that I really wanted to make, that I’ve been wanting to make for a while.
AF: That’s fantastic. So what about it makes it the record that you had envisioned?
DM: I had an idea for a cycle of songs. I really wanted to make a record that sounded like a classic rock record, that was mixed like the old AC/DC records, or like Dark Side Of The Moon. I wanted to have songs on the record that would lend themselves to that. There’s only eight songs on the record, you know, and I wanted them to be in kind of a cycle that would have a theme, though that theme wouldn’t be real specific. And I wanted it to sound like a seventies rock record. That was kind of the concept I had going into it, and we got pretty close. I’m stoked.
AF: When you start writing individual songs, are you thinking about the general sound you want to aim for? Do you start with a riff or a chord, or just an aesthetic you want to produce?
DM: Recording songs and writing them is different for me, but most of the time when I’m writing songs I’ll have a pretty good idea–before I actually strum the guitar–what the chorus is, or the melody for the verse. When I start picking through the song on guitar it starts taking on its own life. I don’t ever really go into any specific song with any kind of concept. It’s not the same as a record, where you have to really try to have an idea of what the record is, as a collection. I’ve made a few records now, and some of them are better than others, but I think the better ones are the ones where I’ve had a really clear concept of how the songs relate to each other and how they sound together. I think that’s really important, because the songs that relate to each other are the ones that people identify with, and the other songs fall through the cracks. If I don’t have a concept for a record, I’m not doing all the songs justice. You can’t just put all your best songs on a record, because it just doesn’t work that way. People don’t hear it that way.
AF: Where did you get the idea for the title of the record, Frozen Letter?
DM: It’s from a song on the record called “Coffin Car.” That song starts with an image that I had of walking in the snow and picking up–out of the snow–a big…you know those oversized kids’ magnets that you keep on the fridge? Just the tip of one of those sticking out of the snow, except it’s giant. It’s a pretty ambiguous image. Whenever two words are together, it gives you a feeling, but it could mean anything. It could mean nothing.
AF: What’s the music scene like where you live, in Chapel Hill? Are you a big part of it?
DM: Yeah, I’m definitely a big part of it. When I first moved here eight years ago, it seemed like the musical heyday was kind of in the past–some of the older clubs were closing down, you know, not as many people were involved in the scene–but there’s been an upsurge, and a big part of that has been independent record stores opening again. When I first moved here, Bull City Records in Durham had just opened and that was huge, because it really gave a focal point for musicians and people who like music to hang out. Since then, there’s another record store that’s opened in Chapel Hill called All Day Records. It’s a pretty varied scene. There’s way more rock and roll [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][in Chapel Hill] than there was when I first moved here. There’s also a really cool underground noise scene. Synth-driven scene. I feel lucky to live in a town where there’s a really solid scene like that. Even though people play different music and there’s different genres, everybody supports each other, because it’s still pretty small here. There’s not a lot of ‘Oh, I’m not going to that show because it’s a rock and roll show,’ or ‘Oh, I’m not going to that show because it’s a noise show.’ There’s three clubs. You know that if a guy is booking a show at this particular club it’s probably going to be interesting and cool, so you might as well just go.
AF: How did you come to live in Chapel Hill?
DM: I was traveling with a band, I was in in New York, and I had a couple of weeks off. I had friends that I knew from New Jersey who had moved to Chapel Hill. It was kind of nice to come here and relax for a couple of weeks, to be somewhere with a couple hundred dollars in my pocket, sleep on somebody’s couch, enjoy the open air. I met my wife one weekend while I was here and we totally fell in love. A year later I was like, holy shit, I live in Chapel Hill!
AF: How has having a wife and family changed your relationship with rock and roll?
DM: It’s crazy–when I was younger and on the road a lot, friends would talk about having kids and stuff and I would wanna leave the room because I was afraid I’d get the bug. But it’s funny, because at least for me, it’s given me a tremendous amount of focus where I haven’t had focus before. It just enriches your life. It makes things, in an amazing way, have constant perspective. It’s hard because I really miss being on the road. I used to love being on the road and I have a lot of friends all over the country who I don’t get to see as much as I used to. But things change, and I feel totally grateful for my family and lucky that I was able to see this part of life. I can’t imagine not being a father. I have two daughters.
AF: How old are they?
DM: My oldest daughter, Dell, she’ll be three in August. My youngest was born in March, she’s just three months old.
AF: Have they been to any of your shows?
DM: Dell came to a show last year and it totally blew her mind. It was in a bigger club, so she and my wife were standing in the back. She could tell it was me up there and she was totally amazed, and she thought I played the drums because the drums were the loudest. But she was jazzed for the rest of the day, jumping around and singing, totally inspired. But she doesn’t get to come to too many, because they’re usually pretty late at night. And loud.
AF: So what are your plans for after this record comes out? Do you have any hobbies or extramusical activities that you’re excited to get back to?
DM: I don’t have a lot of time, between music, family, and work. I have a lot of interests, but I don’t have time to build ships or anything. Family, music, work. That’s it right now. Maybe when I’m sixty I’ll start growing weird flowers in a greenhouse somewhere.
AF: Are you going to start touring?
DM: Yeah, totally. We’re planning to be on the road–we’re just waiting for a couple of things to fall into place. I want to be on the road as much as possible, to promote this record as much as possible. I feel like it’s the best record we’ve made as a band and I want people to hear it, I want to be out there playing the songs. Nothing’s solid yet, we’re waiting for some things to fall into place. But we’ll be out there, for sure.
AF: Do you like playing live more than recording in the studio, or is it just a totally different experience?
DM: Lately–well, I like them both. I always liked playing live more than recording. In the past, the guys I recorded with wouldn’t necessarily be the guys I took on the road, so we’d learn a song with the band on the road, and then we’d record in whatever town we were stopped in before I lost those guys, and then I’d get back, put another band together, and teach them the songs. But now, with the musicians I have, it’s a totally different process. We record the songs, and if there’s something I feel I didn’t get right when we were recording, we can work it out onstage. The songs have a life, within the three of us playing them together, which is really cool. You can feel a song still growing after we record it. Playing live is a lot of fun especially with the guys I have now. It’s just the three of us onstage, and we have really good communication together. It’s nonverbal communication, where it’s like we’re experiencing something together on this entirely different plane. Very wild.
AF: Your uptempo songs are so high energy, it must be a huge rush to play them for a crowd.
DM: It really is. It’s like this burst of energy that puts everything in life into perspective–like, ‘Oh yeah, this is what I love to do.’ It feels great. There’s a reason why I have two jobs. It makes sense.
Frozen Letter will drop August 5th via Merge Records. To tide you over, here’s the second single from the album, the jangly and raucous “Japanese Vacation.” Like many Spider Bags songs, this track can be read a couple of different ways: at its most basic level, it’s a fun-loving track and unimpeachably simple hook. Behind the catchiness, of course, is something mysterious and even kind of sinister. Lines like Every step is soft and cruel/Like how the raindrops feel/To the swimming pool stick out on “Japanese Vacation,” with imagery that’s ambiguous but vivid. Listen below!
Charlotte, NC rockers Flagship recently wrapped up the Three of Clubs tour, co-headlining with Terraplane Sun and Little Daylight in over twenty five cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nashville and Chicago. Their self-titled debut album, which was produced by Ben Allen (who has worked with Animal Collective, Washed Out, and Youth Lagoon) has been getting a ton of buzz since its recent release on Bright Antenna Records and can be best described as a folk-rock tour de force.
The band came together in 2011 when solo singer, songwriter and guitarist Drake Margolnick joined local musicians Matthew Padgett (guitar, backing vocals), Michael Finster (drums, programming) and Grant Harding (keys) to from Flagship. In 2012, Christopher Comfort joined on bass. Since then, they have become a staple of their hometown club scene and were voted Best Local Band for Charlotte Magazine’s 2013 Bob Awards.
Michael Finster took some time while touring in the UK to talk to us about their past tour, his musical idols, and the future.
AF: Where do you draw inspiration from when writing lyrics for your songs?
MF: I personally have no part in writing any lyrics, but I know that all the lyrics are pulled from different life experiences that have all happened at different times.
AF: How did the collaboration with Ben Allen as producer on the album come to be?
MF: Whenever we were preparing to record our debut album, we were sifting through different producers. Ben Allen was the name that we felt fit the most in the whole equation. We just truly loved what he had done, and had respect for him.
AF: What would you say is your creative process when writing and recording a new song?
MF: Our creative process is literally just getting in touch with ourselves and what we feel the song needs. Whenever we start writing, we typically know what a song should feel like as soon as it starts. Things just become clear to us very easily when it comes to direction.
AF: What do you like most about going on tour? And what’s the hardest part about it?
MF: The best part about going on tour is meeting brand new people everyday and connecting with people who connect to us through our music. Its truly a beautiful relationship. The hardest part about tour is the lack of independence. At home [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][we have] vehicles and individual lives, on the road, we basically have one vehicle and one schedule. It becomes difficult to have alone time.
AF: You just wrapped up the Three of Clubs tour along with Terraplane Sun and Little Daylight. What was your favorite moment from the tour?
MF: My favorite moment from that tour was one specific night in Seattle, WA. We typically like to change around the lyrics to other bands’ songs when we are out on the road. We had all changed around some lyrics to a Little Daylight song. Whenever that song started in Seattle, we all rushed to the front of the stage and shouted our revised (and perverted) lyrics. The looks on their faces were priceless.
AF: What are some other bands and musicians you’d like to tour with in the future?
MF: I would love to tour with some of my personal idols. The National, U2, Coldplay, Noah and the Whale, Arcade Fire, St. Vincent…
AF: I know The National and U2 were big influences for Flagship. What else did you guys grow up listening to?
MF: We all grew up listening to an assortment of music. A lot of it was kind of crappy. I personally grew up in the church and spent a lot of time listening to some Christian punk bands and other things like that. I also really got into Motown as well as the Beatles, and Michael Jackson. I feel like Michael Jackson transcends all generations.
AF: Your self-titled debut album has gotten some really awesome reviews and has, in a way, set the stage for you guys. What’s next for Flagship?
MF: I am currently answering these questions from the UK which is cool because we are touring here at the moment, but we are doing some regional touring over the next month, as well as some writing. We are very ready to write.
AF: What are some of your favorite venues you’ve ever performed?
MF: My personal favorite venue was Stubbs BBQ in Austin, TX. We played on the outside stage in front of a huge crowd. It was amazing.
AF: What are your must have staples while touring?
MF: Whenever I’m on the road, I absolutely have to have my herbal green tea. It calms my body from a hectic touring life. I also need Naked juice drinks. Those make me feel healthier. I also need my headphones, just to shut myself out every now and then and center myself.
AF: Do you think living in North Carolina has had an impact on your music style?
MF: I think everything I have experienced in life has some sort of influence on my musical style. North Carolina brought me together with all the guys in the band, so that is obviously a direct influence. I don’t think that any particular NC music has had an influence on me, but I do believe I’ve been affected by every person I’ve met there.
AF: What has been the most surprising or unexpected part about your journey as musicians?
MF: I think in my personal experience, the most unexpected part about my journey has been changing my expectations for things. I remember being a young musician in high school, and dreaming of being on a label and touring the country, then actually achieving those things and not feeling like I always expected I would. It’s not that life is a disappointment, it’s just that things aren’t always as glamorous as you think. You work your ass off to achieve something, and once you think you’ve achieved it, you work more, and then work even more. Real success comes to those who can find joy in the amount of work they put into their craft.
Flagship are playing festivals and scattered dates throughout the summer. Check out their lyric video for “Break the Sky” below:
We are all searching for something on this earth. Whether it is truth, love, acceptance, or even validation, we’re convinced that the questions we have are deserving of answers. But we spend so much time looking out into the world for answers that we sometimes forget to look within ourselves. Singer-songwriter Orenda Fink’s third solo album Blue Dream utilizes self-exploration first and foremost to answer life’s biggest questions. Prompted by a series of dreams about death, Orenda began writing introspective songs that expressed precisely what she experienced through her dreams. She’ll share those thoughts with the world on August 19th, when Blue Dream is released.
It has been said many times that dreams have varied, and invariably deep meanings, and with Orenda’s new album comes an opportunity for all of us to dig deeper into our own unconscious selves. While her previous solo LPs Invisible Ones and Ask the Night relate to events in her life, Orenda feels as though Blue Dream is far more personal than anything that she has created before. With this album, Orenda finds new ways to cope with immense pain and heartbreak. She truly believes that if we gain a better understanding of death, then we can live a better life — an intriguing perspective that challenges us to dig a little deeper, rather than just continue on, scratching the surface of our feelings. I was fortunate enough chat with Orenda about Blue Dream, as well as her progression as a musician. Here’s what went down.
AF: How would you describe your music and your sound?
OF: I usually use the words melancholic and ethereal for music and sound. I usually write about things that are very personal. I guess it’s confessional in some ways, but maybe slightly a little romantic too.
AF: What affect do you think growing up in the south has had on your music? Do you feel as though it is a strong presence in your songs?
OF: Yeah, I think that growing up in the south definitely had an effect on my music, it’s not an obvious literal musical influence, but it’s not just in sensibilities. I tend to think that the south is kind of romantic. I mean people take issues and they kind of get blown up into these kind of archetypal situations of epic proportions (laughs). At least in the deep south where I come from, and I think I get that flair for the dramatics probably, from the south. But also…you know I think there’s just something about the heat and the humidity there. It kind of holds people, holds emotions in; kind of pulls them together until they’re almost visible, tangible things outside of your own body. You know, like you can…almost have an experience with them. Like ghosts I guess, they’re almost like spirits; and I feel like that’s something from the south that seeps into my work. It’s kind of that true connection with things that could leave you, but they don’t.
AF: Tell us about your upcoming album Blue Dream. What was the creative process like for you, and what are you most looking forward to?
OF: Well the creative process for Blue Dream…I mean it kind of feels like a dream in a way because I started writing it after my dog died. Which doesn’t seem like probably a huge deal for a lot of people, but I had him for 16 years, and we had an extremely codependent relationship with each other (laughs). I mean I took this dog all over the world. So it was really really painful when I lost him. But outside of that, I had this deeper emptiness when he left that was kind of like…in a way, an existential crisis where I realized I didn’t have a framework of how to deal with death. You know, whether it be a dog, or my husband, or my friends, or myself, and it kind of left me reeling for the better part of the year, until I started doing this dream analysis through psychotherapy and during that time I just was having an insane amount of dreams, every single night, and they were all about death. And my dog was in a lot of them, but not all of them. And this went on for about six months, and I felt like I was having the answers or something close to the answers said to me, through my dreams; in a way that I could never have imagined. You know, because in my conscious waking life, I felt despondent and kind of nihilistic about everything at that point. But in my dreams there were different stories unfolding that pointed away from that. It was a powerful time for me and that was when I started writing this record. It’s not necessarily a concept record; it’s not a record about death, or not a record about a dog, or anything like that but these are the things that were happening in my life while I was writing this record. I was just writing and writing and one day I realized at the end of it that I was standing outside of the tunnel looking in, instead of in the darkness and thinking “I think I’m out of the tunnel. And I think I have correctors.”(laughs) So that was kind of what the process was. I think the creative process was going on in my dreams and the writing was just something I did outside of that.
AF: In what ways would you say that this album is different from your last two solo projects?
OF: Some people might chuckle at this, just because of the nature of my writing; but I do feel like this record is more deeply personal than the other two solo records, just because of where I was when I wrote it. You know, when I wrote the other records I wanted to break away from singing about love and love lost which was a big theme of Azure Ray ‘s because I was happily married and I just didn’t really feel those emotions, so I was looking for outside influences with Invisible ones and Ask the Night, you know Invisible ones was heavily influenced by my travels to Haiti, and Ask the Night was kind of like an exploration of southern Gothic folklore if you will, so even though those records related to me in a personal way, they weren’t deeply personal like this record is. This is the first time that I feel like I’ve felt this kind of intense heartbreak of a different nature, but that I had felt during that Azure Ray work.
AF: What is your favorite song on the album?
OF: Hmm that’s a tough one, I mean it’s hard to say because I feel like they do kind of represent different stages of that year, so there’s ones that are more redeeming, and something that are just in the darkness. And so, it’s kind of a journey for me. It’s hard to pick one or the other, but I guess I’d say either “Holy Holy” or “Poor little bear.”
AF: My favorite is definitely “You Can Be Loved” — it’s just so beautiful.
OF: Aww thank you!
AF: So I know that in the past some of your solo music was inspired by Haitian Folk music, is this also the case with your new album?
OF: You know, someone else asked me this question. I’d say probably not consciously, but when I kinda look back at some of the backing vocals, and the treatment for “This Is Part of Something Greater” it kind of has…what I hear as plaintive cries and traditional voodoo folk music. You know, I love the way the women sing and they just belt out these plaintive cries kind of in unison so I think maybe inadvertently I just hear that sometimes in my head as the backing part, without even meaning to. It’s what my ear wants to hear as part of the piece. So I think there could be some unconscious influences in there for sure (laughs).
AF: I feel like many people search for the meaning of life, but very rarely do you hear about someone searching for the meaning of death. So on your journey what did you find, in searching for the meaning of death?
OF: It’s interesting, because I feel like that’s such a good observation, but you know they’re so closely connected, but it’s just that death is scary. It’s horrifying, and that’s why you don’t search for the meaning of death because you don’t wanna think about it. You just wanna think about life, because that’s what’s in front of you, and death is this terrible thing at the end that’s unavoidable but you have to literally deny it in order to live a full life. So it’s really tricky to go down the rabbit hole for the meaning of death, and it was a weird place that I was in but I guess I feel that exploring the meaning of death can help you live your life. Through my dreams I found that I have less of a fear of death, or less of a fear of losing because I don’t feel like anyone can really know what the meaning of life or death is, but I think that through some real searching you can find out what it isn’t. If that makes sense. And I feel like what I do know now is that there is some kind of life after death. What it is? I’m not sure. But I feel like that’s what’s been told to me through my dreams and I think they’re just as good a source as anyone else in the world that tries to tell you what they think, because it’s a direct source from you; your wisdom that you can’t access in the conscious realm.
AF: I read somewhere that you feel very strongly about the idea of human beings healing, through finding their “Interior God.” Could you elaborate on this concept? I’d love to hear more about it.
OF: That is actually a quote from Alejando Jodorowsky. He’s a filmmaker, a writer; he’s made the movies El Topo and Santa Sangre and Holy Mountain. He’s an amazing experimental art film director. He’s also written a lot about spirituality, and magic and art and how they connect. So that quote is a direct quote from him that I just felt like really summed up the work that I had done, the dream work; and the journey I had gone on which is that your Interior God is basically just a way to tap into the source of something that is beyond your conscious mind because our conscious mind only drives about 10% of our actions, our thoughts, our feelings. There’s this whole other welt of something, we don’t understand what it is that is really driving the ship. And I think in that there are some archetypal truths about life and death and humanity and if you can tap into that, that’s your “Interior God.” That’s what anyone who’s ever created any religion has done. Or any kind of spiritual philosophy, I feel like is basically just people tapping into their “Interior God” and trying to essentially translate what their hearing. So I guess that’s why I feel like if you can find that within yourself it’s gonna be the purest source of information. Cause everyone can tap into it. You don’t have to have someone tell you what it is. Not to say that it’s not good to listen to a certain type of religious or spiritual background, but I think that it can work in conjunction to find like a more truthful version of life and death when you listen to your own self. And that to me is your “Interior God.” It’s the collective unconscious, it’s your personal conscious, and it’s tied into everyone that has ever lived.
AF: How have you progressed as a song writer? What are some important lessons that you have learned along the way?
OF: You know, it’s weird when you do this for a very long time, because I feel like you go in cycles that are kind of prolific, and have quality, and a lot of it has to do with inspiration I think, but also there’s an element of craft to it. That I… In previous years sometimes I kind of just scratched the craft element and just went on pure inspiration. So I feel like even though this record is darker than a lot of my other stuff, it’s “poppier” in a way. I kind of like revisited the craft of writing a song. Like the pop structure and I think that’s easy sometimes when you have heady, heavy subject matter. It’s more digestible if you can deliver that in a way that is beautiful and pleasing to the ear, so I guess I learn lessons with every record that I write, but this is where I’m at right now so we’ll see how it plays out.
AF: What are some advantages and disadvantages to being a solo artist as opposed to being in a band?
OF: Well I definitely love collaborating with people. That is where my heart is. But I do think it’s important to release solo records because they are the most self-indulgent type of art. You don’t have to consult with anyone, it’s all about you, but I think like for me, especially on this record; I don’t think it would be fair to another collaborator to even share this material with them. You know, because it is so deeply personal, but I think there is an advantage to having a solo outlet that you can do that, but at the same time I do feel like I am a collaborator at heart, I love working with other people. I feel like mentally it’s really good for an artist because you get to share the creative process, but then you also get to share the heartache, or the celebration, the triumph, all of it. And I think that being a solo artist is a little isolating for me, but I like having the option to do both.
AF: Dead or alive, who would your dream collaboration be with?
OF: Oh Gosh (laughs ). Alive: Dr. John, and Dead: Nina Simone. I actually ran into Dr. John at the Atlanta airport a couple months ago! I got off my gate and he was sitting in the airport wheelchair at the gate that I got off of and I was like: “Oh my God! Dr. John!” And I could tell he was like trying to get help and no one was helping him. So I got up my courage and I walked over and I was like: “Are you Dr. John?” and he was like “Yes.” And then I was like “Do you need help?” And then he was like “Honey, I do need help.” And he said “Would you come stand in that line for me?” And I was like “I would be honored to! (laughs).” So I stood in line for him and I got him help, and he gave me a huge hug and was like “Do you wanna take a picture with me?” And I was like “Yes!” So that’s my weird little Samaritan moment with my biggest idol ever.
AF: You got a picture with him too? That’s so cool! Are there any upcoming shows or live performances that our readers should know about?
OF: Yeah. I’m hopefully doing a tour in September. But we’re still putting that together. So my plan is to do a full length tour but I’m not sure if I’ll be supporting someone or going out on my own so that to be determined. But a tour is being planned, which is something I haven’t done in a while.
Orenda Fink’s album Blue Dream is out on August 19th. Check out her first single off the album, entitled “Ace of Cups,” below.
Sylvan Esso’s self-titled debut is a beautiful study in synergy. Combining the timeless, self-possessed sound of Amelia Meath’s velveteen vocals with cleverly nuanced, exultant electronic production from Nick Sanborn, the project has captivated an ever-growing fan base that includes the industry’s heaviest hitters (they’ve supported the likes of Justin Vernon and Merrill Garbus on national tours) all on the strength of just three Soundcloud offerings. The tracks on Sylvan Esso (streaming now on NPR) are as deceptively simple as those that precede its May 13th release on Partisan Records; all that’s at work here are Sanborn’s synths and beats and Meath’s melodic acrobatics, but the dynamics between these two elements elevate the abilities of the other at every turn.
If the formula seems done to death, it must be said that these two work so exquisitely together it feels entirely fresh. They both come from folksier backgrounds; Sanborn played with Megafaun while Meath was a founding member of Mountain Man. Much as she did during her time with that band, Meath elevates everyday experiences, thus revealing the poignance that can exist within the mundane. The narrative in “Uncatena,” for instance, centers on washing dishes and writing letters. Sanborn’s handling of Meath’s swooning, antiqued melodies comes off as preternatural; whether he lets them rest unadorned over subtle textures or manipulates her lines entirely to serve as a beat or movement in and of itself, it’s always expertly executed, respectful, and perfectly at home in its broader context.
Last January, we caught up with the pair as they kicked off a headlining tour at Baby’s All Right. Their easy give-and-take was apparent even in the way they riffed effortlessly on Star Trek, the inherent un-sexiness of playing baritone sax, or an upcoming tour stop in California in which each admitted they were looking forward to being served “overpriced juice” from a “surfer dude-babe” (Meath) or “vegan girl with an undercut” (Sanborn). “We can’t describe how grateful we feel to be headlining shows at all at this point. I mean we have like three songs on the internet. We’re just so grateful to people for being attentive,” gushes Sanborn.
There was plenty reason to take note of the band’s early online presence. “Hey Mami” introduced the group with a forward-thinking look at the realities of street harassment, though couched as it was in cheery playground handclaps it was just as easy to dance to as it was to provoke conversation about the dually damaging and uplifting nature of unwarranted comments from bystanders. “Cat-calling… happens, and it upsets me. You don’t know what to do,” Meath admits. “Sometimes, it happens and you’re like, ‘Fuck you, I feel really threatened and unsafe,’ and then someone will do it and you’re like, ‘Awww yeah! I’m gonna go home and think about you later.’ Or it’s an old guy who’s like ‘Bless you,’ and you’re like ‘YES!’”
The song was released on 12” as a means of placing the band’s music in a specific frame of reference from the get-go. Sanborn says, “We really wanted to contextualize it right away. We had this idea to do just an old school format – a 45RPM single with the full acapella instrumental. I’m a DJ, and all the old 12 inches I would buy [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][were like that]. It invites remixes, it puts it in a context that we always wanted it to be in since we started working together.” Though it appeared as a b-side to “Hey Mami,” “Play It Right” was actually their first collaboration. “I did a remix for a song she wrote for Mountain Man and that became ‘Play It Right’ and we just kept sending each other stuff that we thought the other one would be into,” Sanborn explains. Meath adds, “We both have very, very distinct sounds which are actually kind of disparate. People keep calling us fucking ‘electro-folk.’”
Call it whatever you want, but it works so well it’s hard to imagine either of them involved in projects more well-suited to their strengths (not to mention playing up each other’s). “Each of us tends to have instincts to do what we’re gonna do, which is why we have individual voices. But we try to serve the song first,” says Sanborn. His DJ intuition serves Sylvan Esso especially well on pumping club anthem “H.S.T.K.” Meath’s vocals are spry and jazzy at the song’s outset, bouncing over springy beats before growing sultry and daring on the line Don’t you wanna get some? Sanborn loops that line and builds the mood into a frenzy in which tiny, thoughtful flourishes pop like flashbulbs. Tracks like this are especially vibrant when performed live, perfectly suited for the sensual, hip-hop inspired gyrations Meath executes with a dancer’s grace.
Sylvan Esso have kept up a pace that could be hard for other bands to maintain. “It’s just two of us. It’s not like we have some machine that’s just gonna keep going for us,” Sanborn says. “We can predict what will be fun for us and what will be not fun for us. Already we’ve said no to things that we thought were a bad idea.” Meath cites the importance of naps, perspective and nutrition when it comes to stamina and maintaining a good attitude, stating, “The minute I start getting to be a Grumpus Maximus, [I know] something’s going on. What’s going on? Maybe you just need to eat a bagel.” “Could I Be,” a standout track on the LP, perfectly elucidates the exhilaration and exhaustion of that hustle. And it’s incredibly effective as a motivational tool; the chugging synths and persistent beats mirror the locomotion of the “train” that Meath refers to even as Sanborn distorts her voice into a mechanical whistle. Like “The Little Engine That Could” the moral of the story is that any goal is well within reach given solid hard work.
But it’s a respect for what the other brings to the table that makes this collaboration a resounding success. “We’re a partnership, just a man and a woman in a band on completely even footing, and that’s how we treat everything,” Sanborn says. “Really early on we established this relationship of being hyper honest when we didn’t like something. One of the best aspects of this band has been being able to argue pretty vehemently and not have emotions be involved.” Meath adds, “I’ll have this hook, I’ll sing it to him, and he’ll be like ‘Okay, cool. I have this beat.'” Then, Sanborn continues, “We just keep working on it til it’s something that we both like.”
It’s an exchange best illustrated by the metaphors within “Coffee,” a breakout track for the band that, at its most simple, is about dancing with a partner. Though it had been released only days prior, the audience at the Baby’s show knew every single word from opening lines True, it’s a dance, we know the moves / The bow, the dip, the woo, to the infectious Get up / Get down of the chorus, and Meath’s imploring Do you love me? sung so confidently you get the sense she knows the answer is always going to be ‘yes.’ She wrote a treatment for the joyous video that would accompany the track. “I sat down and studied music videos for like a week,” she says, detailing a syllabus that included TLC’s “No Scrubs,” Jon Hopkins’ “Open Eye Signal,” and Sean Paul’s “Get Busy.” It splices slow-mo scenes from various dance parties – subuirban gymnasium hoe-downs, 50’s sock-hops, jaded hipster house parties, and finally, a futuristic flash mob styled by Sylvan Esso’s friends at Dear Hearts, a boutique in their hometown of Durham, North Carolina. Sanborn says the video reflects “our whole aesthetic, referencing pop but pulling the things out of it that we love.”
Pop sensibility drives every track on the record. It comes from the rustic traditions that inform Meath’s style of singing as much as how her vocal gets filtered through Sanborn’s modern approach. “With electronic music you kind of have to reinvent the wheel a little bit,” he says. “Every facet of it: hardware, software… every part of musicianship and instrumentation is changing constantly. It’s really immediate and not entirely predictable. Electronic music is moving out of rigidity.” Whether highlighting the sinister courtship rituals of the modern male on “Wolf” or listless teenage shenanigans on “Dreamy Bruises,” Meath’s imaginative lyrics and their easygoing delivery haunt those purlieus with a finesse and elegance that magnifies the contributions of both performers. “It’s mostly just being really good partners in crime,” Meath says. They’re hardly committing felonies, though; as a record, Sylvan Esso feels more like a gift.
Sylvan Esso play NYC in May 8th at The Westway, and as supporting act for tUnE-yArDs at Webster Hall June 22nd and 23rd.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
AudioFemme caught up with Teeny Lieberson to chat about TEEN’s new album The Way and the Color, what the possibility of motherhood means to musicians, and advice for ladies aspiring to become musicians.
AudioFemme: I heard that you’re touring with Phantogram, which is awesome.
Teeny Lieberson: Yeah. We’re really excited about it.
AF: Are you going to be with them for the entire tour?
TL: For the US leg. I think they go to Europe after that. We’re not going with them.
AF: Can you talk a little bit about how you got started with this record?
TL: I actually started it as a solo recording project. It kind of just grew from there. I was recording a little album on a four track recorder and then it just felt like the songs were strong so we decided to make a record. I asked my sisters to come play because they were free. Then, it just kept developing from there. Jane was an original member and she kept playing bass for about two years. She recorded the Carolina EP with us. She left the band this year and now we have a new bassist.
AF: What is like playing in a band with your family? Any sibling rivalry? Family drama?
TL: Not a ton. It’s good in the sense that taste-wise and choice-wise we are often on the same page and it’s pretty unspoken which makes writing easy. That’s why we’re able to do things quickly. Bickering happens. But it resolves itself pretty quickly.
AF: What was it like growing up with so many musicians in your family? Did you play together when you were young? Are either of your parents musical?
TL: Both of our parents are musicians. My father was a composer, my mother plays rock and folk music and toured. We had it around us all the time. We didn’t play our instruments very much. Catherine just started playing the drums. It hasn’t been long at all, so it’s pretty impressive. It shows the genes are there. But you know, we sang a lot. We sang constantly around the piano. It was a part of us being kids. But then as we got older we started to ignore each other [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][laughs].
AF: Your album has very heavy r&b influences, but there’s also electronic music. Can you talk a little about that process? Mixing the electronic stuff into the live instrumentation?
TL: A lot of that stuff happens post. We usually start with the bare bones of the band when we’re tracking the songs. Our producer likes us to get as much live material as possible. We record drums, bass, guitar, and keys and that forms the basic layer track. From there we go in and add whatever we want to and the producer chops things up or adds in synth or takes the drums out or adds reverb or a sound to the snare at a certain point. A lot of that is in the production. He was chopping things up as I was playing them sometimes.
AF: What are some of your earlier musical influences? What did you grow up listening to?
TL: There are so many influences. I’m definitely attracted to powerful singers, no matter what genre. When I was younger I really idolized Ella Fitzgerald and how imaginative her vocabulary was. Hearing her scat is just totally insane. I would listen to Courtney Love. Of course, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Al Green, D’Angelo, Mary J Blige, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu. I tried to sound like them when I was a teenager. I loved that R&B singers use their voice to tell a story while also doing all of these other things and creating so much color throughout. That’s definitely what we were going for with this record.
AF: You’ve probably listened to this album a thousand times. Has your feeling of it changed now that you’ve listened so much and played it live?
TL: Yeah. It goes both ways. It kind of loses a bit of its story, of its personal touch. You have to find a new story with it when performing. So much of my writing has an indirect correlation to an experience so when the moment has passed it changes how you feel about a song. When you’re performing it, it becomes its own separate thing from the recording. That’s really fun. You can explore in a totally different way. We like emulating what we did, but we also really enjoy trying things really differently live. I know not everyone likes that, but I really do. It makes something more exciting for us and in the long run for the audience to hear.
AF: Do you have a favorite song off of the album?
TL: It changes. I definitely love “Sticky,” that’s one of my favorites. It’s one of the more personal songs. Well, that song is just about motherhood and exploring that – what comes with it, what comes with the possibility of it. The inner workings of someone’s mind; deciding whether or not to have a child. Every woman goes through that at some point. I would imagine most women go through it because it’s biological. It’s something I didn’t want to be afraid to explore. I was wondering why more people aren’t talking about it. There are so many female musicians and not many of them talk about motherhood or even just the question of it. I think it’s changing now, too, with being a modern woman and the idea of not having children. As a musician, I’m on the road all of the time I just wanted to embrace that. It seems a little taboo, which I think is ridiculous.
AF: Do you feel like you’ll eventually have kids?
TL: I don’t know. I’m getting older so it’s something I’m thinking about actively. It’s become a topic of conversation more now that I’m getting older. But my career has also become a bigger part of life. I don’t think they can’t go hand-in hand, but what I do unfortunately, requires a lot of travel. I don’t have an answer yet.
AF: “Sticky” has a really strong gospel element to it. That makes it stand out to us. Did that happen organically in the song-writing process?
TL: I actually demoed that song separate from the rest of this record. I had worked on it with this other project that I was doing with another producer we work with. I started it based on – not trying to compare it at all, but the inspiration for the song – Max Roach and Abby Lincoln. They did this record called We Insist, a totally amazing civil rights record. There’s this one song called “Driving Man” with a section in a different time signature. I actually wrote the song starting with that signature in 5. “Driving Man” has that thump and the strong vocal. It sounds spiritual, not sure if it actually is. It was a direct inspiration, for sure. I liked the idea of it being bare in the front section and building up into the chorus. It happened naturally, while also having the spirit of that song. Gospel music is also just the most powerful music in my opinion. So anytime I can channel that feeling…
AF: Now that you’ve finished this album and you’re touring, do you see the band staying together and making more albums? What’re your thoughts for the future?
TL: I think all of us are pretty into it. We’re going to keep making records for as long as its possible. Both of my sisters make music on the side. I’m going to make a solo record when there’s time. But for us as a band, we’re definitely going to keep going. We’re only just getting good now, so it can only get better. We’re starting to touch on things that make sense musically with each other. That feels good.
AF: Do you have any dream collaborations? Some that are in reach for you?
TL: D’Angelo. I’m so obsessed with him. There aren’t too many people I’m obsessed with. But he doesn’t make music anymore. Love Little Dragon. That would be really cool. I love the way she sings, love the way they approach music. I love St. Vincent, also. She’s amazing.
AF: How is it touring? Exhausting? Exhilarating? Any touring stops you love?
TL: I am somebody who I think does very well with touring. I really enjoy the freshness of a new city every day. It’s really exciting. I love how many new people you meet, relationships you make on the road. I love how spontaneous all of it feels. Festivals are definitely the highlight of touring. Especially in Europe because you meet so many musicians and it’s always the most fun. Good weather makes touring so much better.
We went to Europe last year and we actually did really well. We were surprised by how well we were doing. Audiences were great. But it was gray for thirty days straight. And cold. We were thinking, why are we tired, why are we bummed out? Also trying to stay healthy and sleep a lot. Sleeping and eating become number one. Of course they’re number one in everyday life. But on tour you’re always panicked about sleep and food. But something about your life becoming that basic can be really relaxing for people like me. All I have to worry about is when I’m gonna eat or sleep. For others, because you don’t have control over those things, it can be really uncomfortable.
I love touring. I live with my boyfriend, so being away from him is the worst part. But that’s it!
AF: Does he ever join you on tour?
TL: He did this last time which was really nice. He surprised me on the road. I think our next tour is only six weeks long. So, hopefully he’ll visit me on this next tour.
I think Phantogram and TEEN is going to be a great match on this new tour, too. Hopefully the audience will embrace us.
AF: Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for a younger girl or woman aspiring to be a professional musician?
TL: I’d say: practice as much as you possibly can, do not be intimidated by anyone (male or female), and the most important thing is to keep going at all times, even if you get a bad review or someone writes a horrible comment. I know people say this all the time, but it really is true: perseverance is number one. Perseverance separates the people who can from those who can’t. It’s really hard. I mean you’re doing what you love. But there’s so much competition in music. It’s difficult but it’s worth it.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Juana Molina’s music has an associative, evocative magic usually reserved for smells: it can time-travel you to different seasons, countries, and decades. She chooses rhythms over images, harmonies over words, and the spooky beauty of her albums etches out a world that feels familiar but that is usually only accessible through the subconscious. To call it electronic folk minimizes its strangeness. Molina’s records are feats of editing, but it’s difficult to consider them clinically as you’re mid-listen. That’s because each track is a fully-formed world, with not just characters and scenery but also laws of physics and tidal patterns of its own.
In the mid-nineties, Molina was a successful Argentinian television comedian with a hit sketch show called Juana y sus Hermanas. Her decision to begin making records in 1996 was unpopular amongst her fan base, who figured the music for a vanity project and refused to come see her perform. Outside Argentina, Molina’s recognition has come almost exclusively from her musical career for years, but within her home country, her sixth and latest release Wed 21 marks a milestone. It’s her most overtly danceable record to date, and also her most extroverted. Argentinian audiences have responded in kind, showing up for shows in unprecedentedly large, enthusiastic numbers. That Molina’s audience and her new record share a common mood–buoyant, joyful, and ready to be transported into the little world created by her harmonies–is no coincidence. Just as she tightly stitches her loops and melodies together without leaving a trace of their seams, Molina approaches each new record with her audience in the back of her mind. As the audience grows, the music gains momentum.
I called Juana Molina up last week to talk about Wed 21, her changing audience, and her intricate, solitary recording process. Molina spent her childhood in France and is trilingual, and she told me that the title can be pronounced three ways–she says the number twenty-one in Spanish, English, or French, depending on who she’s speaking to. Words have never meant much to Molina, but the way people experience her music always has, and so it’s fitting that Wed 21 holds different nuances in different ears. Read on for more:
AudioFemme: So, Wed 21 has been out for a little while. How has it been having it out there in the world?
Juana Molina: Well, we should ask the people, but I think it’s going well. I’m very happy with the response I’ve known about. I think it’s a very happy record somehow, without being too light. I don’t have–well, I shouldn’t say that, I do have preferences for my records–but I didn’t know that this one was going to be so well-received.
AF: Is this your favorite record that you’ve made?
JM: No, my favorite record is always the first one that I produced myself[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Segundo], because I think that that record, which I made in’98, kind of set the course for the path I was going to take. It’s like the seeds for every record I’ve made since.
AF:Did you know how you wanted it to turn out when you started making it?
JM: No, not at all. I wasn’t even thinking about making a record. We had just moved to Los Angeles at the time, and I had a few things recorded from earlier, I think from ’97. So I bought a computer and I was trying to understand how it worked. After a few months, or maybe more, I had something that I thought was a demo. I thought I would record the songs again later, in a real studio. I didn’t realize that all the takes, everything I’d done, would be impossible to repeat with the same freshness. So I decided to use it as a record, even though the quality of the recording wasn’t excellent. There’s lots of haze–things producers would hate–but I took as more important the feel and intention of the moment that I made it. And I think that’s why I love it so much. I had done a previous record, three years before that, but that record [Rara]doesn’t really belong to me, because a producer took charge of the sound. And I think he did a very good job, especially because I didn’t know how to transmit what I wanted to do. It was a time when everybody thought you needed a producer to make a record, that it wasn’t possible to make one on your own, but then the sound of the record doesn’t really represent what I do. So that’s why I consider Segundo my first real record.
AF: Has your songwriting process remained the same since your first records?
JM: I think what’s the same about it is the fact that I get taken, absorbed–I can’t quite think of the word–by what I’m doing in a certain moment. I just start playing, and some things I record just take me somewhere else. Somewhere else totally. I am not in a room recording with a guitar, I am somewhere else. When that happens, I start working on whatever it was that absorbed me. Now, I also think about the listeners, which I didn’t do before. Somehow, unconsciously, the public and the audience is present. I can’t get rid of that presence. They exist. They didn’t exist when I was recording Segundo. They have started to exist since. When I have this thing that comes and takes me, it’s like I’m absorbed and totally taken into this new world, and I think that can happen also to other people, too. I know I’ve said this many times, but when [I get absorbed into this world,] thought and thinking disappear. You have the feeling of things coming to you, like animals coming to Snow White. It’s a very special moment and I love it when it happens; I think that when that happens you have found a truth.
AF: Is there anything except for songwriting and recording that makes you feel that way? Can you decide to get absorbed into that other world, or does it always happen by accident?
JM: No, it is absolutely impossible to determine how to get there. You can’t say, okay, today I’m going to get into the right mood to record. Once I’ve started making a record, I keep being in that mood because I keep working every day. I need space and time to dive in, like a tunnel. If I’m not playing, I don’t get into that mood. If I’m traveling, say, touring, I’m only playing the shows. It’s rare that I would play somewhere else than the shows. Sometimes I get ideas during soundcheck. I get a bit of a feeling–I wish I were home, so I could work on this–and I record it somehow, but I usually can’t really use it afterwards. I can’t get back to the same idea. But occasionally there are a few songs, “Bicho Auto,” for instance. That song was created (to use a big word) in soundcheck.
AF: You’ve said before that lyrics come last for you. I don’t speak Spanish, so I can’t understand most of your lyrics, but I’ve always thought the way the words sound is a huge part of your music. Is rhythm the thing you think about most when you’re coming up with lyrics?
JM: Absolutely. The thing is that I think lyrics are the disguise for the true melody. I make the lyrics totally fit into the melody that was there before. Lyrics have to respect–or, to submit to the melody’s desires. Sometimes I need to change letters around, because it’s not always you can find words that fit your melody, but in general they’re pretty similar to the original. That’s why they sound so organic in the song–because they were there from the beginning, even though I write them after I’ve finished the last beat of the last little note of the song.
AF: Why do you occasionally sing in English?
JM: Very occasionally. On the first track [“Eras”] I sing in English because that’s someone else saying that to me [The lyric is “Come, come quickly.”]. That person spoke English in the story. It’s not me talking, it’s the other person talking. And then…when I moved to Los Angeles in the late nineties I wrote “The Wrong Song,” in Segundo. It was a strange track because it was in English. The English is really wrong, that’s why it’s called “The Wrong Song.” Even though I speak English, I am in Spanish. I could do it in French and I actually have done it, because I lived in France when I was a little girl, so French is really my second language, and English is still a borrowed language. I can use words but they aren’t my own words. I sometimes don’t know if I should write in English or not. I have a very good friend, a musician, she’s from Canada. She told me once, “Listen, we’ve been listening to your music for so long. The least you can do is write us a song in English.” If I see it from that point of view, I thought it was a nice idea. So I wrote a song in English, but I didn’t dare to publish it. It feels weird [to sing in English], and I can’t really be singing if I need to think about the pronunciation. I wish I could do it. I think it would be a good thing to do. But I can’t.
AF: Four years passed between your last record (Un Dia) and this one. Why such a longbreak?
JM: I don’t know what happened. Just life. Love and despair. Sadness. These kinds of things get me away from recording. Then last year I thought, Oh my God, it’s been four years, and I really, really didn’t feel that four years had passed. So I started to work. I forced myself, I needed to make a record now. I started working on nothing. I just really wanted to have a record out.
AF: Do you find that your records reflect your personal life?
JM: I wonder. I don’t know.
AF: You were talking about sadness, but as you said earlier, this record is pretty joyous.
JM: Maybe I was happy because I had gone away from those feelings, and because I was making a record again. But also, playing live has changed the way I write. When you’re on stage in a standing venue and you play very mellow songs, people get a little disturbed. They need something that takes them. I’ve discovered that I really love playing standing venues more than anything else. There’s an energy there that comes from people standing. If they’re dancing, and moving, we’re all going to the same place together. Sitting venues, even if people are really enjoying the show, I need to drag them a little bit. That’s why, when a tour is coming, I beg the booking agents to put me in standing venues.
AF: And you took all that into account while writing the songs on this album?
JM: Yeah. The possibility of there being a show influences me to do something different. Also, the audience itself has changed a lot. It’s like a party when I play, especially here [Argentina]. And I’m so happy, because that didn’t happen for years.
AF: Are you becoming more well-known for your singing, as opposed to acting, in Argentina?
JM: Yes, but it took a long time. People just didn’t like that I changed careers. Press was pretty mean, and absolutely ignored all the work I was doing, as a punishment. I kind of understand, it’s not that I am resentful. I was really popular making comedy, and people don’t want you to change. People just didn’t come to my shows because they thought that, because I was an actress, what I was doing was shit. But in the past five or six years, that has changed completely. Over the years I have built a completely new audience with completely different people, and only a few are fans of both things.
AF: Would you consider doing both comedy and music?
JM: No. I did, but it was a mistake. It’s such a different mood, to make someone laugh or to make someone listen–or dance. A completely different activity. I was so vulnerable when I started to play music, because while I was acting I was impersonating a huge number of characters and making fun of them all, so nothing could hurt me because it wasn’t myself I was being. I was someone else. Being someone else allows you to act and react in a completely different way. Playing music, it’s exactly the opposite. That’s why I think they’re absolutely incompatible.
AF: Even though you’re more vulnerable, music is more rewarding?
JM: Yes, because the whole point is not to be strong. I’d rather die–we have a saying, “to die with your boots on.” You’d rather die in war than be hidden away in your house. Meaning: you’re a real soldier.
Visit Molina on Facebook, and get your copy of Wed 21 here! Check out the music video for “Eras,” off the new album, below:
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Willie Watson recorded his debut solo effort, the straightforwardly-titled Folk Singer Vol. 1, over the course of two days at Woodland Sound Studios, the studio owned by Gillian Welchin Nashville, TN. In those sessions, he played whichever songs came to mind: the collection features some well-known numbers like “Midnight Special,” along with rarer inclusions such as “Kitty Puss” and “Mexican Cowboy.” The track list has sprawling origins, spanning blues, folk, and rock and roll as well as decades. Collaged together by producer David Rawlings, Folk Singer ambles through its ten tracks with the lowlight unadornedness of a late-night impromptu performance.
And in a way, it is. When Watson split from Old Crow Medicine Show, which he’d co-founded and been part of for a decade and a half, he wasn’t sure where he would end up next. Though he didn’t start out with the goal of making a record of traditional songs, it does seem like kind of a neat return to basics: after a long run with a band that helped define contemporary folk music, Watson’s solo career so far has been an opportunity to revel in the old songs that made him love old-time folk music in the first place.
A couple weeks ago, I got a chance to chat with Watson about his new album, the traditional songs on it, and how he came to love old-time music. Read on for more:
AF: What made you decide to put out a solo album after you left Old Crow, as opposed to forming another band?
WW: You know, it just sort of happened that way. I’ve been singing old songs–folk songs, traditional songs, whatever you wanna call them–for years. Once I was on my own, I wasn’t sure what my next move was–if I was going to have another band, or try to write a bunch of songs. At first, I did start writing songs, but I don’t think I was satisfied with what I was writing. I was starting to do some solo shows, and I had a few songs I’d written, and I would do a mix of those with old traditional songs, at those early shows. I was a lot happier doing those old folk songs, and I think the crowd was a lot happier, too. I thought those were great songs that people should be hearing, and that I wanted to be singing.
AF: You’re in a position to introduce listeners to those old songs for the first time, in many cases. How cool is that?
WW: Totally cool, and I’m happy if I can be that guy. Alternately, if they heard where they came from, they might not want to listen to me anymore. I would much rather put on Leadbelly singing “Midnight Special” than listen to me. It’s surprising, a lot of people might not even realize that these are old songs. I think if they have the record, Folk Singer, and they read the reviews and write-ups, they’ll get it–but I’ve played shows and had people think I wrote all those songs.
AF: You grew up in upstate New York, right? What was the musical community like there?
WW: Around Ithaca and Tompkins County–which is right next to Schuyler County, where I’m from–there’s a lot of old-time fiddle music. There was a banjo player named Richie Stearns and all those guys from Donna The Buffalo, they’re old-time players. There would be a weekly old-time jam every week up there. So I was exposed to that first hand, being around the scene and the music every week. Richie Stearns had a band called The Horse Flies, and they were a mix of old-time fiddle music with eighties pop. They had a drum set and they all plugged in, and Richie Stearns was playing clawhammer banjo. Judy Hyman played the fiddle and would dance around the stage, doing this headbang-y thing with her eyes rolling back in her head. I was about thirteen, and I would see this stuff and thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It was dance music, and it really moved me in a big way. That was my introduction to old-time music. I knew it wasn’t bluegrass, this old-timey thing The Horse Flies were doing. It was something a little bit different, and it really stood out. I was already listening to Neil Young and Bob Dylan. Of course, at the same time I was also listening to Nirvana, too. They did that Unplugged thing, where he sings the Leadbelly song [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][“In The Pines/Where Did You Sleep Last Night”]. I knew my dad had a Leadbelly record in the basement, and I went and got it out. Really, that changed everything for me right there. It was all coming together at the same time.
AF: Were there other kids excited by old-time and interested in playing it?
WW: Yeah. I started a band pretty quick. A lot of the old-time players had kids my age, so they all had guitars. We started a band called The Funnest Game that was kind of the same thing–clawhammer banjo, electric guitar, drums. People liked that we were young and we were playing this stuff, so we started playing shows at clubs when we were about fifteen or sixteen. And they’d pay us. Which was nice! It was like, “Holy cow! This could be a job?!” So I quickly dropped out of high school when I was sixteen.
AF: Did you meet up with Old Crow Medicine Show pretty quickly after that?
WW: It was a few years. I had that first band, and then Ketch [Secor] moved to Ithaca when…I must’ve been seventeen or eighteen. Richie Stearns knew Ketch from the festival scene and he introduced us. Ketch moved up [to Ithaca] and then Critter [Fuqua] moved up a bit later. When The Funnest Game was about to break up, Ketch and Critter’s band had just broken up. They opened together for The Funnest Game and sang together, harmonized, did their duo thing. I was floored. As soon as they started singing, I immediately really badly wanted to sing with them. And so we made that happen.
AF: Looking back on it now, how do you feel about having been a part of that band?
WW: What can I say? It was everything to me, to us. That band was my whole life for almost fifteen years. I wouldn’t change anything. We just kind of grew apart. In the early days we played a lot of old music and not as many songs, although we were always writing. I don’t have any regrets, but I’m really happy that I’m where I’m at now. I’m playing the music I want to play, and it’s real simple, and I don’t have a big light show–I’m in a good place with that.
AF: Let’s talk about how Folk Singer became the collection that it is. Can you tell me the story of how one or two of the songs came to be included on the album?
WW: Anything in particular?
AF: How about ‘James Alley Blues?’
WW: Okay, yeah. That’s a Richard “Rabbit” Brown song, and I don’t know too much of what he’s done, I just know that song, and also he does this great version of the Titanic story. He definitely plays ‘James Alley Blues’ different [than I do], it’s more bluesy, and he’s got all that finger picking guitar stuff. I heard it and I knew my voice would be right for it, but I had to find a different way to play guitar, because I don’t really play blues like that. That open-tuning blues stuff. I knew I really wanted to do that song because it really reached out to me. I related to what he was saying, and what the song was about really hit home for me. So I just had to find a different way to play guitar, you know, find a way that the song could come out of me.
AF: Were there any notable exclusions? Songs you were sure you wanted on the album, but that ultimately didn’t wind up making it?
WW: We recorded over twenty five songs for this album. There’s still a whole bunch of stuff in the can. That’s where Dave [Rawlings] comes in. The idea was just to get in there and sing whatever was rolling around in my head. I had a little list of songs. Then Dave would say, “Okay, that’s great, but do you have anything in the key of C?” Some songs were totally off the cuff, and yeah, some songs didn’t make the cut. Like “Kitty Puss,” that song wasn’t supposed to be on there. When I flew to Nashville to record the sessions, I was listening to that on the plane before I landed. I’d never played it before. I got into the studio and they were adjusting the sound, and the guy was like, “play something,” so I just played “Kitty Puss.” That was the first time I played the song, so I remembered what words I could. I kinda rearranged the words, I think, just because I didn’t know exactly how the guy did it on the record. He recorded in the early twenties, before there were electronic microphones. Back then they were literally singing into a funnel. It was just him and a banjo, and he’d sing a lot of children’s songs and novelty songs. I’d been listening to it for a while. I didn’t expect it to be on the record, it just came out really good.
A great big thank you to Willie Watson for talking to us! Folk Singer Vol. 1 will be out on May 6th, and you can pre-order your digital or physical copy here. Watch Watson perform the first track, the classic “Midnight Special,” below:
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Boston “tank-top pop” band Bearstronaut is taking the New England dance scene by force. Known for their active, beach party-like performances, they’ve performed at the Boston Calling Music Festival and recently won electronic artist of the year at the Boston Music Awards (2013). They’ve described themselves at “part new-wave, part britpop, part electro, part r&b, but for the most part synth pop”. We asked guitarist David Martineau, keyboardist Paul Lamontagne, and bassist Nate Marsden a few questions about what it’s like to be a break out pop group.
AF: Some of the songs on Paradice are great party anthems – “A Better Hand” and “Moniker”, for example. Others, such as “Birds of Prey”, are more like love songs. Can you tell me a bit about the story or context behind the EP?
Paul – Our idea of “Paradice” was a great way for us to make these very bright and extravagant productions while leaving a tinge of darkness around the edge with a lot of the themes in the lyrics. I liked thinking of Paradice as the place you want to escape to, but when you’re still have to deal with all the same complicated life stuff as before. Kind of a “careful-what-you-wish-for” scenario.
Dave- We had some ideas for songs that we needed to reign in a bit in order to fit the concept we had for “Paradice.” We like the songs to have a contrast between the music and lyrics. Where either the song is bright and happy sounding but the lyrics deal with a darker concept, or vice versa. So “A Better Hand” is a dancier track, but the lyrics are about someone’s last days on death row.
Nate- I tried to reflect the themes of the EP in the album art. We got the opportunity to use a photo taken by our friend, Emily Knudsen, from her recent trip to Peru. It’s an amazing photo of this beautiful desert scene at night, but there’s also this ominous looking shack in the foreground that draws you in. Her photos have this incredible juxtaposition of being beautiful but also sad, or dangerous at the same time and I think that works perfectly with our music.
AF: How about the musical inspiration? Do you all collaborate when writing?
Paul – It’s a collaborative thing. We have worked out our individual roles a little bit so we each bring something new to a project. A lot of times we’ll work out sketches and demos of musical ideas and they get chewed around and mangled and shaped to support the context of what we’re trying to pull off. Designing the song idea is a pretty collaborative process.
Dave- I do my best to come up with a lyrical concept or story to apply to a demo or idea. Then present it to them in context I think is a good start. But they’re awesome at pointing me in a strong direction and helping me steer the focus of whatever I’m working on lyrically/melodically.
Nate- Living together definitely makes it easier to write. I love when someone knocks on my door and goes ‘Dude, you have to hear what I just did’ then a few hours later, we have the basis of a song.
AF: You self-released your first EP in 2009. How do you feel you’ve grown as a band since then?
Paul – Speaking for myself, I definitely felt like a novice putting that EP together. I learned a hell of a lot about making a record and what it takes to build a song. Songwriting has remained very challenging, mostly because I feel like we have no other option but to top ourselves. I barely knew anything about synths, samplers, production when we started, but the nature of those instruments is very exploratory. As we began to get creative with song ideas, it kind of unlocked new ideas from the instruments. It was very exciting to start from square one and have production skills and keyboard techniques come as a result of learning how to write songs.
Dave- That record was incredibly necessary for us as a group. We learned a lot about writing as a group and how to push ourselves creatively. At the same time, we figured out how to step back and listen critically at what we were doing as a whole. Now, we are trying to make themes more prevalent between songs and what will be on our album. The first ep will always sound like songs by 8 different bands in a way, but I think work ethic was what we took away from that experience the most. Nowadays, we’ve all gotten pretty good at being each other’s critics and knowing how to take that criticism as encouragement to keep working.
AF: The kind of music you write is made for dancing. I’ve heard and read great things about your live performances. Do you do anything special on stage to engage the audience?
Nate- I just always try to look like I am having fun, no matter what. If it doesn’t look like we’re having a good time and dancing, how can we expect the audience to do the same? That’s my philosophy.
Paul – My hands are always stuck on a keyboard the whole show. I’m not exactly running around the stage but I do my bit.
Dave- We try to give our audience a bit more than just playing the album live. With “Paradice,” we added some auxiliary percussion to our live set up in order provide a more engaging aesthetic. We streamlined some transitions between songs in order to keep the momentum up. As a front man, I do my best to try and make people feel comfortable with breaking out a bit at our shows. You have to walk the line between being annoying and encouraging. So I make an effort to try some new moves on stage to show them I’m ok with letting my guard down in front of them.
AF: What was it like to be nominated (and awarded) in a couple of categories at the 2013 Boston Music Awards?
Nate- Being nominated is a great feeling. It’s a weird sort of verification for everything we’ve done in the last year. Once I found out we were up for a few awards, I immediately reflected back to figure out why we were nominated and it reminded me of some crazy milestones we reached as a band in 2013. It’s nice to see that other people take notice of the hard work we’ve put in as a band. As far as winning Best Electronic Act, that’s kind of mind-blowing. With crews like Zone Def, HNDMD, and M|O|D all in Boston, we are like nerdy kids in gym class. Overall, it was a crazy night. We got to see some of our best friends win awards, and we got drunk while wearing ties, which is what it’s really all about.
Paul – It was a great night and I got to see so many friends there. It does feel great to win an award but I felt very proud to be among a lot of people I respect. We won an award for Best Electronic Act and for that category in particular, there’s a lot of amazingly talented electronic artists in the area who are so fluent and skilled with electronic production that it does feel like we are a bit of mis-representation haha. We’ve got drums, bass, and guitars just like every other band. Shout out to Tone Ra, Soul Clap, GMGN, Tide Eye, Tanner Ross, Andre Obin,
Dave- It is such an honor to be a part of the BMA’s. We had such a good time partying with everyone that night, basically to celebrate everyone’s hard work from the past year. My favorite part was definitely playing our set right after we won. We were all so excited to play at that point, it was one of my favorite sets of ours this past year.
AF: How did your friends and folks at home react to the Awards?
Nate- I think since we are all so close to our families and friends, it felt like they won as well. At least I hope that’s how it felt, since we truly couldn’t have won without them.
Dave- Our friends and family are incredibly supportive; always have been. They knew how much it meant to us to win this year. It felt great to bring something home this time to show them the fruits of our labor in a way.
AF: Many reviews mention a “human” quality to your work. People have called it “grounding humanity” and, more simply, “honesty”. What part of your music lends this quality?
Paul – That’s the trick, making music the way we do, it is very easy to get carried away. There’s always got to be a way to connect with people. We always try and tether our songs with that human element. I heard someone talking about the Strokes and how they always tried to make their guitars sound like computers played them. I sort of want to do the opposite, make computers feel like humans are telling them what to do and making mistakes. At the end of the day though, it’s all about trying to express something that feels real, even in the unnatural environment we put it in.
Dave- When it comes to lyrics or stories, I try to create a balance between vivid imagery with accessible hooks. Some songs take longer to get there than others. But we want the hooks to be accessible, and for our audience to want to hear them again.
Nate- A lot of the human element also comes from our live show. Since we are all actually playing instruments, we tend to make mistakes. We’re not just standing up there pretending to be doing stuff.
AF: What are your favorite synth-pop bands, from the 80s and today?
Nate- Bow Wow Wow and that song ‘Electric Avenue’ by Eddie Grant
Paul – The Tough Alliance, Talk Talk, Delorean, Blancmange, Hot Natured, Saint Etienne
Dave- From the 80s: ABC, Human League, Duran Duran. From today: Hot Chip, Cut Copy, Polica, Painted Palms
AF: How many of them are influences?
Nate- 6, to be exact
Paul – I’m generally more interested in the songwriting and how clever they are at using their instruments to capture a feeling. Synth-pop bands are lucky to not have to exist in an actual environment. What I mean is, they can be as stark or lavish as they want and be as personal or as larger than life as they want. That’s a pretty attractive advantage.
Dave- All of them for sure. It’s really interesting to see how many of them cross paths or borrow from each other. When we analyze influences, we like dissect what parts we like and dislike to see what we want to draw from.
AF: Do you come down to New York often for live performances? How do you like it here?
Paul – I never know what to expect out of New York. We played Glasslands a couple weeks ago with the Hood Internet and Pictureplane and it was incredible. I loved it.
Dave- Yeah, we’ve definitely had a tough go of it in NYC. But the Converse show we did at Glasslands gave me some new found hope.
AF: What’s your favorite thing about Boston? What’s the best thing about Massachusetts?
Nate- Mo Vaughan and clam chowder.
Paul – The Greek Corner on Mass Ave. in Cambridge
Dave- The ability to escape the city fairly easy. All of our families are in CT, so it is nice to have home close by.
AF: It’s been freezing down here these past few weeks. It must be even worse up in Massachusetts. If you could live in one season forever what would it be?
Nate- Definitely Spring right before it becomes summer. We New Englanders work hard for that nice weather.
Paul – That first week in October is the sweet spot.
Dave- I’m all about the beginning of spring. Let me put on some shorts and bust these gams out already, please.
Check out Bearstronaut’s “Passenger Side”, off of their new Paradice EP:
Although Ben Chasny and Donovan Quinn’s initial dislike for each other when they met, a few years ago, was personal–not musical–it’s tempting to talk about, because their work together now is so dependent on their bond. They always liked each other’s music (Quinn released albums with Skygreen Leopards, Chasny with Six Organs of Admittance, Rangda, and Comets on fire, to name a few). When the pair formed New Bums, they entered into a collaboration that uniquely fused each member’s skill set into a partnership that couldn’t be broken in half. On their debut album together, Voices in a Rented Room, the group wears its intent on its sleeve: Quinn’s trademark folky lyric imagery seems to be emitting simultaneously and from the same point of origin as Chasny’s delicate instrumental ramblings.
The low-lit, husky vocals of the first song on Voices, “Black Bough,” immediately conjures a backdrop of moodiness and melancholy, and that aura stays strong throughout the album’s twelve tracks. Acoustic guitar-based melodies, bearing tight-knit likenesses to their lyrical counterparts, emerge over this backdrop, waxing and waning as the songs wear on. It’s dark, sparsely-laid stuff, with lots of chilly backup oohs and ahhs, that also brings some catchy phrasings–like the ones on “The Killers and Me”–that have kind of an old-time cowpoke feel. “The longest train I ever saw..” one line begins on “Town on the Water,” in un-showy evocation of the traditional–and great–“In The Pines.” In other spots, too, New Bums tip a quiet salute to Old, Weird America with ragged vocals and guitars that trill like mandolins. The band side-steps a direct descendant-ness from American folk, though, with switched-up rhythmic weight and a modern approach to lyrical metaphor. Though the music emerges from a couple different songwriting traditions, New Bums’ tracks are too interior, and too personally crafted, to really resemble anything but themselves. The influences are visible, but none will smack you over the head.
Separately, Chasny and Quinn have been associated with the new folk and acoustic-leaning psychedelic schools of music-making. This project’s most apparent deviation from their other lives as musicians is how dialed down the impulse to push into new, extreme turf feels on Voices. The music demands attention the way a whisper makes you quiet down to hear it. “I don’t know if anyone will notice it or care about it, but I like it because it’s sweet,” Quinn told AudioFemme last week, explaining “Town on the Water” is one of his favorite tracks off the new album. A lot of the songs on Voices, sweet or not, are like that, quiet enough to slip by unnoticed. Whether sighing like a woodsier, and slightly less devastated, Elliott Smith on “Mother’s Favorite Hated Son” or tracing the feathery, high-register melodies of “Black Bough,” Quinn and Chasny’s vocals yield more the more–and the closer–you listen to them. If you like your folk low and slow, your guitars sweet and your lyrics bleak, try Voices in a Rented Room on for size. The album’s out February 18th on Drag City. Check out the music video for “The Killers and Me” below:
Last week, I called up New Bums to talk about the recording of Voices and get some insight into their collaboration process. Turns out, there’s a mystery man named Willem Jones behind the duo, and he started it all–even directing the video you see above. The story of their initial dislike for each other became even funnier when, since the two band members were in different parts of California and I kept losing one or the other’s line when I tried to put them on conference call, they started ragging on each other like Jewish mothers. “I don’t think he has service,” Quinn said first. “Let me give you another number. Once Chasny was on the phone, Quinn dropped out. “He has a land line,” Chasny insisted. “Ask him why he isn’t using his landline.” The pair had clearly overcome their differences, and then some. Read on to discover how New Bums write their songs, where they got their name, and which of them is secretly a malevolent space alien just biding his time before pursuing world domination.
AF: We’ve heard your band is a “grudging match-up.” How did you guys meet?
Donovan Quinn: We had a mutual friend named Willem Jones and he brought us together. At first we didn’t get along for various reasons, but over time we started talking about music and different writers and found that we had a lot in common, but there are also a lot of differences to our approach. I’ve always been a fan of Ben’s music. I just jumped at the opportunity to work with him.
Ben Chasny: We had crossed paths at festivals before we started hanging out with Willem, and I think [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Quinn] had a dislike for me from then. Apparently we had already met once, and then I ran into him while I was at Amoeba Records shopping, and he tells me that he came up to me and I didn’t recognize him. So he got offended and wrote me off forever.
AF: So you just got off on the wrong foot? Your differences were always personal, not musical?
DQ: Yeah, I think Ben is easily one of the best guitar players in the world. He’s a shredder. But he’s also a great songwriter, and songwriting has always been my main interest. We tried to make that the focal point of the group—as opposed to the other projects we’ve each been a part of—so we always try to start a song by having the lyrics and melody together, and then work from that.
AF: You guys are both veterans, you’ve each been involved in a bunch of different collaborations.
DQ: Yeah, we’re old. We’ve both been around for a long time and have done a lot of music. When we got together and decided we wanted to start New Bums, we really wanted to come up with an idea and an aesthetic that we hadn’t done before, that would be its own thing. We do benefit from having done different albums, been involved with different bands, but it was important to make sure we were doing something new with this project.
BC: An interesting thing I’ve noticed throughout the years, is when two people get together to collaborate, they kind of always want to do what the other person is doing. So if you have some guy—not me, but if I take this out of my perspective—who was doing a lot of heavy metal, and he got together with someone who was doing dance music, the heavy metal guy would start wanting to do dance music and the dance guy would be like, ‘Oh, no, I want to do what you’re doing!’ That’s what always happens to me when I collaborate. With Donovan, it was apparent pretty immediately that there was a certain middle ground we were going for. I mean, what we do separately isn’t so different in the first place.
AF: Where does the name New Bums come from?
DQ: I don’t know if Ben will remember this differently, but that’s another Willem Jones thing. We would get together at his parties, and we were the only people there under sixty years old, and we were called the new bums. It just stuck. I really like the name. I don’t know if it’s the best name, but for better or worse, we just became the New Bums.
BC: It came to the point where we’d try to come up with other names. When we tried to do that, nothing else made sense, because that’s what those guys were calling us. We don’t see each other that way, but we thought it was funny.
DQ: It’s really a partnership. We wanted to have a band where, with anything we put out, we couldn’t do it without the other person. Especially because now, if you meet a band, every single person in the band has their own thing, too. They’ll play drums, or whatever, but also have their own project. We wanted to try to get away from that auteur thing and have it really be truly collaborative.
AF: Do you write songs totally collaboratively?
DQ: Usually, one of us will have an idea, and then try not to develop it too much, so that the other person can have some input. It might just be a chord change or a couple of lines, a lyric idea, and then the other person will just jump on. An example would be “Your Girlfriend Might Be A Cop,” I started with the idea of hanging out with a new friend and getting the crazy paranoid idea that this new friend of yours actually might be a cop who’s gonna turn you in. Ben saw that in a notebook of mine and came up with a melody around it. He came up with this idea of the unreliable narrator, and it being somebody’s girlfriend. That’d be an example of how we would work—somebody comes up with an idea, the other one rearranges it, and it goes back and forth.
BC: Donovan’s really lyric-oriented, and I’m more driven by chords and music. He doesn’t work on chords as much, and I definitely don’t work on words as much. But it’s funny, on the record, the songs came in every different way. Some songs he wrote all the lyrics, some songs I wrote all the lyrics, on some songs the verses are half mine and half his. The music is written mostly by one person, though. Every song seems like it was created in a different way. Which is pretty exciting. We don’t have a template.
AF: Is that an example of what you were talking about before, about picking up on what the other person in your group is doing and wanting to get into that?
BC: Yeah. That’s the reason why I’m in this band. I’m in a bunch of bands, doing different things, but the reason why I’m in this band is because of the word stuff. This is my band to work on lyrics. Also, to have a good time.
AF: Even if you did get off to a bad start, you seem to have gotten very close. Is the music you’ve made a byproduct of your friendship?
BC: Yeah, I moved away from San Francisco for a while, and we would use the band as an excuse to get together. He’d say, ‘I’ll fly up to Seattle,’ where I was living at the time, ‘We’ll finish this record!’ And he’d come up and we wouldn’t even work on it, we’d just hang out. In that way, the band was more of a vehicle for friendship, but now we’re doing it more seriously.
DQ: Like I said, I was a fan of Ben’s. I think he has a great aesthetic and a great mind for music. We’d go to the bar and talk about Townes Van Zandt for hours. I just get excited about working with someone I can see eye to eye with, and who also has ideas I never would have. Even if there was no record, or shows, we would still have become New Bums and it would have been a secret band for our own enjoyment.
AF: It sounds like a really fun and easy experience for you, making music right now.
DQ: Our idea of fun may be different than some peoples’. Both me and Ben—we aren’t known for, uh, a relaxed demeanor when it comes to music. We’re both liable to have a total meltdown during any given moment at a show, but it does help to have somebody with you who you can kind of rely upon. It is really fun. Ben says that it’s kind of like a buddy film. We try not to be ever at all lazy with the music—have space and all that, yes, but we also take a lot of time to make sure that we can listen back to a song a thousand times and there’s not something in there that we think is shitty.
AF: How did that come through on your new album, Voices From A Rented Room? What were your goals for the record?
DQ: Every step of the way, the way we came up with the songs was a product of all these ideas and dreams we had and that we had talked about for years. We tried to get the feeling of the two of us in a room playing the song together, very loose and late-night feeling. I feel that a lot of new music is really built up. Whether it’s pop, or heavy music, or whatever, it’s really pushed up to ten—armored, in a way. I think that’s because it’s hard to get attention in the music world, because there’s so much music, and so many ways to hear it, that people really want to immediately make a big impression. We kind of want the opposite of that. We want to come across naturally, the way we would if you were in the room listening to us come up with the songs and jam.
BC: I was just happy to have songs with more of a narrative—an apparent narrative—as opposed to the kind of material I usually work with, which has more of a hidden narrative and fewer words. I think if New Bums has any philosophy, it’s just…um, to record songs ourselves and not spend a lot of money. True to our name. We tried not to be very extravagant, and at the same time, we wanted to take a lot of care and pay a lot of attention. I don’t know that we have a philosophy beyond that. If we do, it’s still in the works.
AF: The first track “Black Bough,” which you’ve released already, feels very pared down and sparse.
DQ: That was the first song that we wrote for the project. After we came up with “Black Bough,” it gave us a lot of confidence to go forward with the band. That song, maybe more than any other on the album, has all the ideas that we wanted to get across with the band. It’s sparse, and has a lot of space, which we always enjoy. It’s got the kind of space you hear in seventies outlaw country music, and early hip hop, too, where the beats are really spacious.
AF: What was the process of recording that song like?
BC: We were just trying to figure each other out, at that time. We lived really close to each other, and he would come over late at night. He had that song, and I remember just playing it my garage, because I was lucky enough to have a garage in San Francisco at that time. I remember drinking a lot, and not remembering how to play the song. It was a pretty fun song.
AF: It’s funny you should say that, because the song—and the whole album—also seems very melancholy. Do you both prefer darker stuff?
DQ: Yeah, me and Ben have that in common. We tend to do dark music. Different people have different things that make them want to write, and usually I write when I’m looking back on something. I write a lot of songs about relationships—romantic, family, friendships—but the point of view I find it easiest to write from is when it’s over, and you’re looking back on it, which is inherently sad. So that leads me into darker territory more often than not.
AF: What’s your favorite song on the album?
DQ: I have a couple. I really love “Your Girlfriend Might Be A Cop” and “Black Bough.” “Town on the Water” is kind of a band favorite. It’s one of those songs where I don’t know if anyone will notice it or care about it, but I like it because it’s sweet. It’s a kind-hearted song, which is hard for our band to write. We’re better at the dour, shattered songs. “Town on the Water” is about combing your hair to go out on a date, dancing in the hallway and stuff. I was really excited to have a song like that, that I thought my mom would like. In fact, Chasny gave his father the album and he said that was his favorite song. We were pretty excited about that.
AF: Earlier, Donovan, you mentioned that Ben kind of thinks of your band as a buddy film. If we were watching “New Bums” The Movie, how would that buddy film end?
BC: Well, I would hope it would be a sci-fi buddy film. Donovan would definitely end up being an alien. Or one of us would, at least—much to the surprise of the other one. Not a nice alien. A real mean alien. But an alien that wouldn’t harm the other band member. It would be like—oh wow, here is this creature that’s usually really mean, but it’s been nice to me this whole time.
AF: So Donovan the Alien would wreak havoc on the world, and then spare you?
BC: Maaaaybe. It would be a big question mark. Just like The Thing, at the end. Would I actually be spared, or not? In fact I think there’s a good chance that that’s actually how the band is gonna end. Maybe without the alien part.
AF: Well, that leaves room for a sequel.
BC: Precisely. A big question mark.
Many thanks to Ben Chasny and Donovan Quinn for entertaining our questions! Once again, Voices in a Rented Room is out 2/18/14 via Drag City; you can pick up your copy and learn more about the Bums here. Listen to “Black Bough,” the first track off the album, via SoundCloud:
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Skaters have had a hell of a year. The New York City-based foursome—comprised of singer/songwriter Michael Ian Cummings, drummer Noah Rubin, guitarist Josh Hubbard, and bassist Dan Burke—got together in early 2012 and immediately started booking shows, even before they had officially practiced together as a band. Wasting absolutely no time, they soon had enough songs to release their first EP, “Schemers.”
“That was all done by ourselves,” says Cummings. “Then we decided, fuck it, we’re just going to put it out for free. Because nobody knows who we are and we aren’t going to charge our friends for something we made at home. We had no reason to do anything besides get peoples’ attentions.” And that they certainly did. The “Schemers” EP reached well over 10,000 downloads before the band took it down and signed with Warner Bros. Records for their first full-length album. Since then, the Manhattanites have amassed a huge fan following, who are now patiently awaiting the release of the band’s debut record, titled, of course, Manhattan. The album is due out Feb. 24th (and currently available for pre-order), but we thought we’d catch up with Michael in the meantime to talk about New York City and Skaters’ plans for the future.
AF: So you guys used to do a lot of covers when you first started playing shows; what’s you favorite cover to play?
MIC: There’s this song by the Pixies called “Allison” and I really love that song. I think that’s a special song for me, especially since it’s only a minute and a half long. It just sounds like it has every part that you need in a song. I think it’s a pretty perfectly written pop song.
AF: And the Pixies just came out with some new stuff, how did you feel about that?
MIC: I’m not so sure about that stuff…The Pixies without Kim Deal is not the Pixies to me. I mean obviously Frank Black is amazing and all but…it’s a weird vibe, you know. I like watching Joey Santiago though, he’s a funny dude. But yeah it’s not the Pixies, really, is it?
AF: I saw on your Twitter that you guys did a pizza crawl last week which seemed pretty successful.
MIC: Yeah we hit five spots up, we were trying to get six but there was too much traffic so we only got five in. But it was enough pizza, I had six slices of pizza or something. A lot of fucking pizza.
AF: Well, being that your upcoming album is sort of an homage to NYC, what’s your favorite spot in the city?
MIC: I like going to touristy spots in New York by myself. It’s a funny departure from where I usually hang out, in East Village, but I just enjoy going to the Empire State or museums, like checking out stuff at the MOMA or PS1. Those are the kinds of things that make you feel like you’re taking advantage of the city. It’s kind of like a romantic New York feeling. Sometimes you just decide to not work for the day and just go look at art, and it’s just a fun thing.
AF: Yeah doing museums alone is definitely a great experience.
MIC: Yeah because you can really figure out what you connect with, too, which is super different than when you’re with people and you’re trying to hold a conversation, but you don’t even care. Like, who cares? Sometimes you don’t want to hear what something means to someone else, you just want to like what you like. My friend Fab told me the best thing you could do to get into art is to go into a museum for ten minutes. Go in there for ten minutes and find one thing that you really love, and then leave. You don’t have to over-intellectualize it. Your opinion is as valid as anyone else’s.
AF: So do you feel like it’s sort of the same with music, for someone who’s trying to get into a new band or genre?
MIC: Totally, I think it’s the same thing with listening to records or reading a book. Like a great book, you’ll read cover to cover, or a great record you’ll listen to it all the way through, but if it’s not clicking, just fucking turn it off, find something else. That’s what it’s there for, so you can experience it however you want. I think that’s the cool thing about music these days, you can just experience so much of it whenever you want and often you get lost in, like, little Spotify playlist holes. Just clicking on related artists, you know what I mean? That shit’s fun for me, I like that.
AF: For your album, do you feel like you want people to sit down and listen to it the whole way through?
MIC: I think our record makes sense listening to it all the way through. It’s not very long. That’s kind of why we made it short, you know, it’s like 33 minutes long or something. For a debut record, I feel like that’s super important, if you can keep people on the hook and not clicking off. Hopefully they listen to it all the way through and that’s great. But if people just connect to one song, that’s just as good for me. It doesn’t bother me at all.
AF: One of my favorite songs off the record is “Fear of the Knife,” with its kind of reggae sound. What’s your favorite?
MIC: I’d agree that that vibe is one of my favorite vibes. I think “Bandbreaker” is my favorite song off the record. I think it just kind of makes you happy, in a really non-cheesy way. I like it, it’s got a good energy. Kind of like a gritty white boy ska without going into “Santeria” territory.
AF: Actually, speaking of “Fear of the Knife,” where did the inspiration for those lyrics come from?
MIC: Oh yeah, I had a weird stomach problem and I couldn’t eat anything. Everything I ate just hurt my stomach to the point where I was like curled over. So I went to see doctors and shit and I was kind of freaked out. And then they thought that they were going to have to operate and take something out and I’ve never had that happen. And I didn’t have health insurance and that freaked me out even more. So that song was just about my fear of the operating table.
AF: What ended up happening?? Are you okay now??
MIC: Yeah I’m okay now, it was a very weird thing.
AF: Okay so what’s the writing process for you guys, is it lyrics first or music first?
MIC: It’s kind of different every time. You don’t really want to do something the same way every time or else things always sound the same, or at least I feel that way. So sometimes you’ll have a lyric first that you know you want to write into a song because you think the lyric’s good enough. That’s what we did with “I Wanna Dance” with the lyrics “I wanna dance but I don’t know how.” I had that in my head, I was like, What a good sentiment, that you want to belong to something. It was a good metaphor for just wanting to be part of something that you couldn’t be a part of or didn’t know how to be a part of and just feeling left out. And then sometimes you write just a riff, like with “This Much I Care,” and that becomes the backbone of the whole song and everything falls into place after that. So you know, as long as you keep an open mind about having no rules, then you’re cool.
AF: So does it help having your bandmates to sort of bounce ideas off of?
MIC: Yeah, especially Noah. Noah knows me so well that he knows when I’m phoning it in…when there’s something subpar, he’ll call me out on that. And Josh and Dan are really good because they’re the most honest music listeners. When they hear something, they respond to it in a really immediate and passionate way. So you just get the best, most honest read.
AF: Where do you guys see yourselves going from here, musically?
MIC: I think the tracks that you were talking about like “Fear of the Knife” and “Bandbreaker,” I think those are indicative of what I want to do more of and what we want to kind of push the band towards. Keeping the same edge to the songs but not being afraid to make really sparse music and melody-driven songs. I think those are the ones that people respond to the most.
AF: So for this record, you guys went into Electric Lady Studios, but I know you recorded the “Schemers” EP at home…How was that transition?
MIC: Honestly, I was nervous before we [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][recorded the album] because I’d never spent that much money on a studio before and I’d never had a studio for a month on lockdown, like living out of a studio. I’d never done that before. I’ve always made stuff at home and sometimes you get the best results out of [doing it that way]. So I was kind of nervous about being there, about making a product that was going to sound sterile. And you kind of go into that place and you see all the records on the wall, bands that you’ve grown up listening to, and you feel this kind of self-imposed pressure to create something as good as that. You just have to put that aside and try to focus on what you’re doing and believe in it, and believe that you’re in the same situation that those bands were in when they walked in there. And ultimately we picked a really good producer. He’s very modern and has great taste, very similar influences as us. His name is John Hill. So we ended up coming out with something that we’re all really happy with, and now I’m not intimidated by big studios anymore.
AF: What is your favorite part of the album cycle—between writing, recording, touring, promoting…
MIC: I like the writing and recording, I think that’s the most fun because it’s the most creative. I think touring isn’t the most creative but it can be fun in a completely different way. Not in that fulfilling, healthy way, but just in a pure fun kind of way. Touring is obviously different than what you normally do. You meet a lot of people, see a lot of stuff, so that’s always fun, but you never come out of a tour feeling creatively fulfilled. There’s always a little bit of a void there.
AF: I saw that you guys mentioned that your goal was to sell out the Bowery Ballroom, which you’ve already done, so what’s the next goal for you?
MIC: Man, that was it. I never made another goal. Now I’m just along for the ride I guess. I’d like to sell it out again on February 24th, that would be very nice.
AF: What are you most excited about for this coming year?
MIC: We’re going on a UK tour with Drowners and I think that’ll be really fun because we’re all really close with those guys. Matt [Hitt] used to play guitar in our band and we’re just good friends with them, so it’s going to be a really exciting tour for us. And then obviously we have to come back and do SXSW and do our own headlining tour and that should be pretty interesting, too. We’ve never really played outside of New York besides Lollapalooza and a couple of shows in Boston, so I don’t know if there’s people out there that want to hear it on the West Coast but I hope so. We’ll see.
AF: You guys are also playing Governor’s Ball, are you excited about that?
MIC: Yeah Governor’s Ball is gonna be awesome. I saw the lineup and it’s pretty insane. I want to see Outkast, The Strokes…Drowners are playing. There’s a lot of bands.
AF: How would you describe the New York City scene for up and coming bands?
MIC: We kind of kept our heads down from the get go, just trying to take little steps. It definitely takes a lot of hard work in New York but if you’re motivated and you make your own world around your band, then you can do stuff. I don’t think there’s any golden ticket or anything, some bands think there’s going to be a golden ticket. We came from the school of thought where you create that golden ticket. You have to do the fucking work and make things special and make yourself stand out in some way, and that’s when people will notice.
AF: Would that be your advice for new bands trying to make it big in New York?
MIC: Yeah, just work harder than anyone else. I think that’s the advice for anyone. If you just don’t stop working on something, give it all your attention, you’re going to go somewhere with it.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Electric Eye‘s debut collection Pick-up, Lift-off, Space, Time came out last spring, but three of the group’s four members have been playing together for a decade and a half, since they were in high school in a small city on the west coast of Norway. Even then, guitarist and vocalist Øystein Braut (also of The Alexandria Quartet) loved the grooves and repetitions of psychedelic drone music. In 2012, the band of four–each already established in the Norwegian music scene–officially solidified into Electric Eye and began working on their self-produced first LP.
The record spans a broad range of influences, channeling a groovy, plodding twelve-bar blues on one track and shimmering over Indian seven-note scales on the next. Each song takes its time to develop, growing into a multi-textured soundscape with layers of distortion, synth and long jams that could be a soundtrack to a movie, or a trip into outer space. Though Electric Eye embraces the expansive power of repetition, each instrumental line develops its own set of twists and turns, recalling the psychedelic sounds of seventies drone rock while also rolling a catchy array of pop hooks and bluesy rhythms into the mix.
In between a Portugal tour, Oslo Psych Fest, and coming to Austin to play SXSW this March, Øystein Braut was kind enough to chat with Audiofemme about drone grooves, the psych scene in Norway, and the influences that contributed to Pick-up, Lift-off, Space, Time.
AF: You’ve toured a lot in the past few months, including a trip to Portugal. How have your travels been?
ØB: I’d never been to Portugal before, so that was really cool. It was in the late fall and the weather was getting cold in Norway, so it was nice to head down there and enjoy the nicer weather for a while. We played seven shows, I think. The crowd was amazing. Most of the shows we played by ourselves, without any other band. We had some local support in a few places, but basically we did our own tour.
AF: You also came back to Norway to play Oslo Psych Fest.
ØB: I’m involved in setting up that festival as well–just trying to build a psych scene in Norway. We’re taking the model from the Austin Psych Fest, which I went to last year. [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Oslo Psych Fest] was a great weekend, and hopefully it will become bigger in the future. We played with ten other bands. We had Wolf People and The Rolydrug Couple, from Chile, and Disappears played just after us.
AF: What’s the psych scene like in Norway? Is it getting big?
ØB: I mean, Norway is a pretty small country, so everything is relatively small here. For the festival we had maybe two hundred people each day. That’s why we keep trying to get abroad as much as we can. Norway only has about five million people, so we have two or three cities that we call major cities, which are small cities by US standards I guess. It’s easier to go to the UK or Germany or the rest of Scandinavia, maybe the US.
AF: How did Electric Eye come together?
ØB: All of us except the drummer went to high school together in a small city called Haugesund on the west coast of Norway. We started playing together about fifteen years ago, and just kept playing over the years. Two years ago, we all started working on this project, which felt very natural since we’d been playing together all this time. With a new name and new songs, we had a new band. We started in 2012 with some gigs, and then we recorded an album. It’s gone really well so far.
AF: The four of you have played not only in different bands, but in different genres. How did you settle on the music you currently play?
ØB: I’ve always been really into psych stuff, but never had a band that did it. I had a lot of songs that were meant to be really long, and more psychedelic, experimental, whatever you call it. In the music scene in Norway, if you need someone to play bass on your songs, you just call them and ask them. It’s not really separated by genre. Of course there are some separations between black metal guys and pop guys. But the scene is really small and not that separated. We’re all musicians. For me, it’s not that different playing different genres, as long as it’s cool music.
AF: What was it like recording your debut, Pick-up, Lift-off, Space, Time?
ØB: We did it ourselves in our rehearsal room in the summer of 2012. We recorded the drum groove, which are sort of monotonous, and just started layering stuff on top of it. We really like to have a pop hook in there somewhere, even if it’s kind of got a jam sound. We worked on the album a lot during the fall of 2012. We produced all of it ourselves, because we kind of had an idea where we were going with it and knew how it was supposed to sound. It didn’t really make sense to bring in some producer, because we had a good idea of what we wanted it to sound like. So we just did it ourselves.
AF: What’s the significance of the album’s title?
ØB: It’s the first four songs of a Swedish album from the sixties, by a band called Hansson & Karlsson, and the album is called “Man At The Moon.” It uses, like…drums and organs, only. I love that album, and I thought it would bring some nice images to mind. I liked having a long title, as well. It sounded cool, I guess. There’s no hidden meaning. It sounds like a countdown for a space shuttle taking off.
AF: Is there a philosophy behind the instrumental, soundscape-like quality of the album?
ØB: I think we just decided to not be in a hurry with the songs, and not to feel like we had to be in a hurry to get to the chorus. We gave the grooves time to develop. It could be a soundtrack for a movie or something. And whenever we play live, as often as we can we use some visual projections, which seems to work really well with the music.
AF: You’ve mentioned you draw inspiration from India. Tell us how that factors in.
ØB: I went to India the year before we started this project. I’ve always been interested in classical Indian music. We use those types of scales, and some Indian instruments. Something called a drone box? Whenever we play concerts and we have it, it plays one really ambient, background chord. Compared to Western music, Indian music allows stuff to last a little bit longer. It’s more hypnotic. Some songs can last for twenty minutes and that’s not weird, that’s just how long the pieces have to be. That’s also the philosophy for our album. We don’t have any twenty minute songs, but we believe in letting the songs evolve to however long they’re supposed to be.
AF: It must be liberating to decide that you’re not going to pay as much attention to typical song structure.
ØB: We have short songs, but it’s kind of nice to have more space, compared to contemporary popular music, and not be stopped by the four minute limit. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff from contemporary, regular music that’s great. We use chorus and verse structure, but we don’t feel trapped by it. And when we play live, we try to let the song be a starting point and then improvise. It’s really important to try to keep it interesting, of course, and not to lose the hooks of the songs. The easiest thing is just to put on a lot of noise for twenty minutes, without any stuff going on in it. But to do it for twenty minutes and keep it interesting…
AF: There are also a couple of tracks (6 AM, The Road) that feel so bluesy. Is the blues big in Norway? Where does that aspect come from?
ØB: I always loved the blues. Some of the older blues has a lot of the same stuff we like to work with: groove, minor changes, being repeated over and over. That’s kind of what we’re doing as well. Here in Norway, older people listen to the blues more than younger people do. But it’s kind of the basis for all rock and roll.
AF: Do you incorporate traditional Norwegian folk music into your playing?
ØB: No, not really. Norwegian folk music is more dance music. It’s similar to Irish or Celtic music. They have some scales and stuff that we use, but I’m not really interested. I haven’t listened to all that much of it, actually. American pop music is more exotic, or exciting, for me.
AF: You’re coming to America in March, to play SXSW in Austin. We’re so excited to have you over!
ØB: We’re super excited. This is our first trip over. I’ve been to the US before, to Austin Psych Fest, but never played there. I have friends who say that SXSW is crazy, super crowded, super colorful. That’ll be cool. And then we’re going to start recording pretty soon, and hopefully get back to the US, and then get picked up by some huge record label–haha. I don’t know. We really just want to keep on doing what we’re doing.
Thanks so much to Øystein Braut for taking the time to talk with us! You can buy Pick-up, Lift-off, Space, Timehere, and check out the ethereal and gorgeously spacey single “Tangerine” below!
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The Casket Girls seem to have come together by a serious stroke of luck—or magic. The Savannah, GA three-piece was formed when Ryan Graveface (of Graveface Records and quite a few other bands) happened upon sisters Elsa and Phaedra Green, singing and playing Autoharp under a tree in a park. Their collaboration since that fateful day has mainly involved Ryan creating electronic-shoegaze music for the girls to write lyrics and sing to, resulting in ethereal, catchy songs that quickly amassed a cult following. Their sophomore album, True Love Kills The Fairy Tale—conceived while the girls were in some sort of dream or drugged up state—sounds both enchanting and spooky, and listening to it all the way through feels somewhat like exploring a haunted castle. The record is due out Feb. 11th, and in the meantime we caught up with Phaedra and Ryan to talk a little about where they are and where they’re going. Read on, and keep an eye out for True Love Kills The Fairy Tale!
You guys say you’re all very connected/linked with each other as people, despite the serendipitous way in which you met and became a band. Can you describe this connection, and how it aids you creatively and collaboratively?
Phaedra Green: It feels as though we found each other when we reflect back on all the myriad of minutia decisions that were made to cross paths at that exact point in time. Therefore it begs the question, was it the first we met?
You’ve talked a lot about the story behind this new album, and how Elsa and Phaedra don’t remember much from the night they actually wrote the songs. We haven’t heard much about how things came about musically…what were some of Ryan’s inspirations in making this record?
Ryan Graveface: Heartbreak (ending an engagement), making my own absinthe, collecting Pogo’s original artwork etc…the record, musically, came from these things.
The album mentions a lot of things that go hand in hand (ashes and embers; stone and rock) as well as opposites (fire and water; light and dark). What attracted you to these themes?
Phaedra: We spend a lot of time thinking about not only the things that make us different but also the things that make us the same. It’s been a fairly prominent topic in our conversation, studies and also in our dreams.
How do you think you’re developing and evolving as a band, going from your first album to your second? What feels different?
Phaedra: We’re not sure what exactly feels different, but we do feel different. Being involved in this band has been a constant evolution.
Do you plan on staying in Savannah for the time being? Do you find all of Savannah’s Spanish Moss-covered Oak trees as inspiring as we do?
Phaedra: Yes, yes and YES!
If you could have one person, living or historical, listen to your album, who would it be?
Phaedra: Johann Sebastian Bach!
Who are some of your musical inspirations? Do you have anyone with whom you would absolutely love to collaborate on a project?
Phaedra: We are inspired by anything from ‘60s girl groups (Phil Spector), to experimental and modern pop. We are obsessed with Janelle Monae. (Janelle Monae, if you are reading this, please contact Ryan Graveface.)
So you asked fans to submit video footage for “Chemical Dizzy”’s music video…did you get some good stuff? You guys have done this sort of fan-involvement thing before; what about that is attractive to you?
Ryan: I just get so bored with the usual roll-out of a record that I like to throw in a few interesting ideas here and there. We received a bunch of really cool submissions and our guy is currently trying to turn it all into a proper music video. I feel very blessed that people care about our music enough to take the time to do things like this. It’s radical.
You guys are heading out on tour soon…where are you most excited to go? Do you have a favorite city or venue? What are a few of your tour bus necessities?
Phaedra: New Orleans is our favorite place to visit. We can’t wait to go back there. Ryan drives us around in a van or a car and sometimes we have to sit with instruments on our laps, so necessities pretty much are just air and water and some food. If we luck out, we get our own hotel room and a bottle of Chandon sparkling rose.
If you could have any super power, music related or not, what would it be?
Phaedra: We would like to further delve deeper into the prospect of our psychic abilities.
There are plenty of bands playing shows these days that borrow heavily from the sounds of decades past, but no one merges garage, psych, and Americana so profoundly as Brooklyn’s own Prince Rupert’s Drops, who also manage to update these sounds just enough for their work to sound wholly new. The band released their debut LP, Run Slow, on Beyond Beyond is Beyond Records last November. It was the first release for the new label, run by East Village Radio’s Mike Newman, and hits all the reference points of a record store clerk’s dreams.
Guitarists Leslie Stein, Bruno Meyrick-Jones, and bassist Chad Laird share vocal duties, sometimes harmonizing and sometimes taking turns track for track. Each member of the band, rounded out by drummer Steve McGuirl and Kirsten Nordine’s synths, bring unique elements to every track, and those tracks in turn take on varied personalities. Leslie’s stoney twang, for instance, lends folksy vibes to tracks like “Lungs”, “The Fortress” and “Like A Knife”, but a few heavy doses of reverb later and you’ve got a raucous, tumbling psych jam like “Pillar to Post”. “Almond Man” has a bit of a groovier feel, but stays alert and snappy with energetic “hey heys” and touches of sitar. No one song follows any formula, from the churning and lysergic “Plague Ride” with its spiraling guitar work, to the scorched haze of “This Evening’s Arms”, giving the album great depth and a texture. Each instrument gets its moment as the tracks unfold, every note imbued with a singular quality, and it never wears thin, even when tracks like album closer “Run Slow” extending over nine minutes.
There are very few bands who can pull sounds like this together, but Prince Rupert’s Drops do it with aplomb both on the album and in a live setting. We’ve been bowled over every time we’ve had the pleasure to see them perform, and were pretty, well… psyched when they agreed to do an interview with us. Their words give us insight as to how the band came together to make the kind of magic we hear all over Run Slow.
AF: Leslie and Bruno, you met while working together at Kim’s Records in NYC. Was there an immediate connection or collaborative spark?
Leslie: I think most people have an immediate connection to Bruno, he’s a popular guy! We were fast friends and spent a lot of time hanging out. He needed a place to live at the same time I needed a roommate so he moved in. After that we would spent many nights in collaborating on drawings and making odd little songs just for fun.
AF: Can you talk about Brad Truax and the role he had in helping to form the band?
Bruno: Brad was really the one who made it a proper band- previously, Leslie & I had played music together a fair bit & made up weird songs with her acoustic guitar and small keyboards, but nothing structured or that was ever played twice. Brad & I had played in the Broke Revue together, as had Steve briefly, and this was also an opportunity to continue playing music with them. He also kindly gave me a guitar on my birthday around then, which has been very helpful. I very much doubt we’d have got our act together had it not been for him.
AF: Not many people realize that Prince Rupert’s Drops formed in 2005. That’s an incredibly long gestation for a band these days. Was that timing part of a conscious effort to develop a distinct sound and working relationship?
Steve: It wasn’t a conscious effort. We just kept doing it (except for about a year off), having a good time, playing shows (some good, some bad), and just followed the path the band took, curious as to where it would go. The sound has changed a bit over time, but our earliest stuff is still recognizably ours. Leslie once described us years ago as “the least ambitious band in the world!” We didn’t even consider having a Facebook page until late last year. That’s all changed, and now we want a #1 record. Anyway, by playing together for a while, hopefully a distinctive sound has emerged, and we know each other pretty well. Our working relationship is, for the most part, really solid, really relaxed. We are all good friends, which helps.
Leslie: I think we’ve always been ambitious musically… Bruno writes these complicated songs that threaten to implode at any moment, I always try and sing better than I can. In a way we write above the level of our talents.
AF: How was taking that time valuable in launching the band? Is the record’s title a nod to that?
Steve: No, the record title is just taken from the longest song on the LP. Somehow, that made sense—it sounded like a good record title.
Bruno: It’s probably helped us to solidify our sound a bit- the songs are a lot longer these days too, mainly to accommodate all the soloing that wasn’t there at first.
AF: All of you have played in other bands. How do you approach collective songwriting?
Steve: We all write songs, but the vast majority are by Leslie & Bruno. Some come in practically finished, some take a lot of working with ‘til they sound right played by this band.
Leslie: I used to write parts for the guys for my songs until I wised up and realized they are all better musicians than me. Now I just come in with two or three parts and they help me shape the songs. Bruno’s really good at writing these awesome little leads that accentuate the way I sing, Steve and Chad are really the ones that are good at structuring songs. When Chad writes songs he generally thinks about the strengths of each member and writes around that.
AF: How did you meet Mike Newman at EVR? Did you feel any pressure putting out the first release on his Beyond Beyond Is Beyond label?
Steve: We met Mike through our mutual pal, Chris Milstein (he plays drums in Psychic Ills and is a longtime friend), who recommended us to BBIB. Mike and his partner Dom saw us live at 285 Kent, and asked for some recordings. They then got us really drunk, outlined a complex, air-tight, 20-point plan for world domination by October 2013, and put a contract under our noses and a pen in our hands. We signed it.
Mike puts a lot of pressure on us—he’s pretty ruthless. He’s a Record Man of the old school, like Syd Nathan or Morris Levy. There are always these hired goons lurking over his shoulders during meetings in his office, giving us the evil eye.
AF: At a time when more artists are bringing electronic elements into their production and stage show, you’ve remained true to a more traditional approach. Do you think that’s given you an advantage or changed the sort of audiences you attract?
Leslie: We’ve never really considered adding any electronic elements. I’m personally not opposed to it, good music is good music and it can be made any which way, but we already have a lot going on with five members, so I think we are sonically set for now.
AF: You have a great reputation as a live act. What’s the best thing about playing live?
Steve: Thanks! I guess seeing friends and strangers both having a good time, looking up and seeing folks nodding along trance-like. That’s all pretty nice, but drink tickets rule! But most venues are so stingy with them these days it’s horrible.
Bruno: I’d say the best thing about playing live, aside from seeing other bands for free, is just the playing itself- if it goes well. It’s obviously good to be in the same room as the audience, though, since you can have some idea of how the songs are being received, and can then hopefully act accordingly.
AF: Do you have favorite venue to play here in Brooklyn (or beyond)? You’ve shared a bill with lots of great acts, especially of late – who would you love to play with next?
Steve: Playing parties at Wild Kingdom is always great. We played Bowery Ballroom recently, and that dee-luxe stage was a nice change of pace from the usual DIY dumps. The act I vote for is ZZ Top!
Leslie: I like playing the Cakeshop because we had our first show there and to me it feels like home. I want to open for Tame Impala, I love them.
Steve: We hope/plan to, but lately day jobs keep conspiring against us. If you’re reading this, and are in a popular band looking for an opening act on an American tour this summer, let us know!
AF: What’s next for the band? Will it take another seven years for a sophomore release or are you already working on new material?
Steve: We are always working on new material, and have tons of old stuff that isn’t on “Run Slow.” Our next release should be a boxed set.
Leslie: Yeah, I was talking to Mike about this recently and he was maybe thinking next year for another release which would be great and totally feasible.
AF: I also wanted to mention Leslie’s brilliant comics project, Eye of The Majestic Creature! Do your instruments talk to you? Will you write a comic about your experience in PRD or will the band make an appearance in your graphic work?
Leslie: They just talk to me in my comics, I am quite sane! Actually Bruno, Steve, and Kirsten are already characters in my comic, but the band hasn’t shown up as a whole yet. It’d be fun to do an issue where my imaginary instruments have to deal with real instruments. I bet the band stuff would mostly be boring stuff like us going out to eat after practice and naming movies that have baby bandits in them and talking about making a Ray Milland looped tape to play behind us at shows. Y’know, all the obvious stuff.
