Photo by Bee Vivian.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n—<\/p>\n
YM:<\/strong> \u00a0Since you mix\u00a0genres so effectively and all these different aspects go into it, when you have an idea for a song, how does that become a collaborative effort?<\/p>\nCC: \u00a0<\/strong>Well, it actually changed substantially for this record. Especially with The Morning Benders, probably because I was younger and scared of letting go of total control, I wanted to wear all the hats and try to engineer it, mix it, produce it, and direct everyone exactly how to play things. \u00a0With this record, and with my brother in the band, and Julian, who I’ve known for half my life, I really trust them. \u00a0I’ll still write the core of a song by myself, and they give me very honest and merciless feedback. \u00a0They’ll often be like, “We don’t like this,” and I’ll trash it, or, “The chorus is working, but the rhythm in the verse isn’t,” something like that. \u00a0They help curate the songwriting even though they’re not writing lyrics or melodies that much. \u00a0Then from a production standpoint, everyone plays. \u00a0Julian is just a natural drummer, and as he’s playing drums, he starts guiding a song in a certain way from his style and his idea of what he likes. \u00a0So yeah, I think this is the most collaborative record we’ve ever made.<\/p>\nYM:<\/strong> \u00a0Does that have to do with it being recorded in the apartment?<\/p>\nCC:<\/strong> \u00a0Yeah, that’s a huge factor. \u00a0I get kinda stressed out being in a studio. \u00a0I mean, you can find a great studio and make it warm and cool and if you can kind of bunker down for a month or something and you can feel comfortable there, but it’s just harder and harder to do that these days…I just always felt, especially with vocals and things that I wanna do in a really heartfelt, personal way, it’s kind of odd to do it in a studio where you don’t know the space or you don’t know anyone. \u00a0There’s assistants standing around, staring at you or whatever. We just liked kind of being at home and having the freedom to really be patient. \u00a0If I wanted to geek out over a certain way I sung a line or something for a couple hours, I could do that, whereas in a studio, you feel bad because you’re having an engineer do this thing over and over, and you just wanna get on with it.<\/p>\nYM: \u00a0<\/strong>So did you not bring too many other outside people into it?<\/p>\nCC:<\/strong> \u00a0No, no. We ended up having a couple of people mix it, so we sent it off for that phase just because we thought it would be nice to get some clarity. \u00a0We ended up spending so much time on this record that we all felt like we were too close to have clarity on organizing sound. \u00a0But we produced everything and played everything ourselves.<\/p>\nYM:\u00a0<\/strong>So\u00a0in the last three years, it wasn’t like a, “We spent most of this time writing, most of this time recording…”<\/p>\nCC:<\/strong> \u00a0That’s the thing with being able to record at home now, it’s all much more ambiguous and those lines don’t really exist. \u00a0When we did our first record, it was all the tape and we knew that we’d be going into the studio with not much time so we’d learn all the songs really well, went in and banged it out, and made a record. \u00a0But with this it’s just everything is a moving part. You’re not committing something to tape where you can’t change it…The songwriting, and the recording and production are all intermingled. \u00a0And some songs, we’d be fully recorded and go back and rewrite the chorus or a lyric or something. \u00a0There’s substantial changes to every facet of a song.<\/p>\nYM: \u00a0<\/strong>So how does that process reflect in the title of the album being\u00a0Souvenir?<\/em><\/p>\nCC:<\/strong> \u00a0We named it\u00a0Souvenir\u00a0<\/em>for a lot of reasons, but in regards to that, because we took so much time and spent these years making this record, and it really felt stretched out across those years, it wasn’t like we did a couple of months and then vacationed for six, we were really tinkering with it. So I think it feels like a snapshot of what we were going through during those times. \u00a0We liked the idea of having a souvenir that we could hold onto and keep with us going forward.<\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
At this point, Jon, Chu’s brother and bandmate, pops in, waiting for a lull in the conversation. \u00a0I turn to ask if he wants to add anything.<\/p>\n
“Oh no, sorry to interrupt,” he says,\u00a0“We just didn’t submit a guest list.”<\/p>\n
Soon, drummer Julian Harmon comes in too, reaching for the beers and taking a seat on the couch with a few other people. \u00a0There’s an air of ease in the room, no tension despite there being an interview going on and show time in around fifteen minutes.<\/p>\n
“I thought Christine would’ve done that, but I will send it to you,” says Chris<\/p>\n
“I’ll send that to you now,” says Chris, and Jon thanks him and apologizes again. \u00a0“Okay, I sent it to both of you guys.”<\/p>\n
“Are you guys doing an interview?” Harmon asks.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, and we’re recording,” says Chris, jokingly adding, “So get the beers, and go.”<\/p>\n
They leave the room and I get\u00a0nervous, as it seems like I’m intruding on their time to hang out before the show.<\/p>\n
“I mean, the only other thing I was wondering was…” I begin.<\/p>\n
“It’s fine! \u00a0Take your time,” he reassures me. \u00a0“Don’t worry about them, there’s always something going wrong.”<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
YM:<\/strong>\u00a0 What kinds of things do you want new people who are discovering your music to draw from?<\/p>\nCC:<\/strong> \u00a0That’s a good question. \u00a0I don’t know.<\/p>\nYM:<\/strong> \u00a0Not that you have to peg it for anything specific.<\/p>\nCC:<\/strong> \u00a0I mean, obviously we put so much time into this record, I hope that people connect with it. \u00a0In the same way that it’s a souvenir for us and we have it for these times, I like the idea of people having it — and for me, this is how music works in my life — as I’m living and listening to a record, my life experiences get kind of wrapped up in that, so ideally, that was what would happen. \u00a0It could be a souvenir for other people.<\/p>\nYM:<\/strong> \u00a0Yeah, definitely.<\/p>\nCC:<\/strong> To bring it full circle with what we were talking about early on, I really want fans to know how much we appreciate them caring about what we’re doing. \u00a0I would like them to connect with us, especially with all the social media ways you connect with fans directly. \u00a0I really think that it’s a blessing that we get to make music all the time for a living. \u00a0We really do believe in that exchange and we’re feeding off the energy of our fans. \u00a0Their support really does affect us and our music.<\/p>\n[fusion_soundcloud url=”https:\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/243311674″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” \/][\/fusion_builder_column][\/fusion_builder_row][\/fusion_builder_container]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[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”] The dimly-lit green room at Music Hall of Williamsburg smells of cigarettes, but in an unassuming way, perhaps because Chris Chu of POP ETC kindly apologizes\u00a0to my plus one, Caroline, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":13737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[573,305],"tags":[2716,284,32,3976,1686,1160,477,111,1864,1105,550,3971,673,3642],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/POPETC_crop.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13161"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20984,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161\/revisions\/20984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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