If you don’t know Wishes and Thieves then you clearly didn’t read the article I posted about them before. We at the blog are all big fans of these guys. I’ll leave any more exposition to the previous article, and get right down to the questions. At the end I have some links to some goodies the band showed me during the interview.
Lighthouse has some heavy nautical themes throughout it that work well with your sound. Do you foresee exploring this theme more in future releases?
We'll have to see. When we recorded Lighthouse we never discussed a theme or direction for the entire EP, but listening back now, it is easy to see that visual element in the music.
The album cover and the design of your website, it really fits the music, who did it and was that something that came before or after the songs were recorded?
The album artwork is a painting by our friend, Steve Raggie. We sent him our rough mixes of "Lighthouse EP" and he came back to us with this concept for a scuba diver searching underwater. We wouldn't have come up with the idea ourselves but we all loved it and his sketches were dope. The front and back cover are actually one image. If you put two EPs together, one facing forwards and one facing backwards, you can see how the light that the diver is holding continues and at the bottom of the "ocean" there is a woman sleeping. That image is around. It's currently our Facebook profile pic, for example.
Lighthouse sounds very well produced. We had a hard time telling if some of the bass were a real bass heavily distorted or electronic noises like at the beginning of Lighthouse and Radio which did you use?
Thanks. There is some synth bass on "Lighthouse EP," but not in either of those tracks. It is all Joe playing his electric bass through various effect pedals. That is one thing we really gravitate towards. Big, dirty bass sounds… and drums.
How was making Forest Fire different than creating Lighthouse?
When we recorded "Lighthouse" we had the instrumental parts of the songs pretty much done when we started writing and recording the vocal parts. When Jolanda came in and we began working on lyrics and melodies we were working collaboratively with two, three, or four of us in the room tossing around ideas, but we had never actually played the music together. It started as a recording project and then once we finished we had to learn our live show. From the beginning, our concept was to be able to recreate nearly everything on the recording in real time, without playing to a click or having anything prerecorded.
When we were working on the music that became our "Forest Fire EP," we were often coming up with instrumental and vocal ideas at the same time. One of us would bring in a sketch and we would start playing through it. Mike might throw up a mic in the room to record us or Jolanda would just record it on her phone while we tried out different stuff. A lot of the melodies developed from stuff that Jolanda just made up on the spot. It definitely made a big difference to have a song written in full, prior to recording a single note of it. It's not better or worse, just different. As we continue to record new material, we are sort of trying a combination of the two.
Do you feel like you’ve evolved musically since the start of this project?
More and more each of us are finding our roles in the group. We're learning more specifically what everyone brings to band and how to capitalize on that. It's great to work in an environment where everyone is encouraged to do what they do best.
How did you come up with the idea for the Forest Fires video?
It was really just the product of brainstorming amongst ourselves and with Mike and Meghan, the directors. The song is about being purged of all the material things that weigh us down in life. We tried to make the video a metaphor for that. Fill up the room, until there isn't an inch to walk on, and then let loose and let shit go! It wasn't in our budget to light anything on fire, but Mike Rodgers (director, DP) took footage of a bonfire when he was on a shoot in Mongolia. The nights there were pitch black. When you see the sparks in our video, it is that footage overlaid.
How much fun was it to make that video?
It was crazy fun. I hope it was as much fun for the filmmakers whose house and possessions we were tossing around haphazardly. It did take a couple hours to fill that one room with stuff and then it took about 5 seconds to wreck it all. Thank god for slow-mo.
You guys seem to be one of the few bands where every member gets their own moment in the sun on the track, but can still come back and make an amazing song. How difficult is it to write like that?
Honestly, we think that is completely incidental. When we're writing we are considering how we are going to play the song live. Joe might have to play a keyboard with one hand while he pedals open strings on this bass with the other hand. But most of the time it isn't practical for someone to play more than one instrument simultaneously, so we need to get a lot of mileage out of just three instruments and voice. We hope, that whenever one of us is playing anything, it is worth listening to and not just background.
Now that you guys have had some time to think about it, what genre or genres would you classify yourself as?
Alternative, indie, electronic. That stuff all works. One early review of "Lighthouse" call us "Electronic-Induced Pop." We all really like that one. Sadly it's not a standard iTunes genre.
You guys get compared to Bjork, Portishead, and Radiohead a lot, and have mentioned that they have inspired you. Anyone else influence your sound?
Very early on in the band's history, Joe and Mike were listening to Nerve a lot. Nerve is Jojo Mayer's trio that plays live dubstep and drum and bass. They definitely are a good indicator about what one can accomplish with three live musicians in a genre that is pretty skewed towards DJs. Other than that, we share a lot of new music we find amongst ourselves. We are big fans of Miike Snow and Little Dragon. Both groups have influenced our sound.
What can we expect when your first album drops?
Well... we already have a couple tracks recorded that will definitely be on the album. But, from what we have so far, we're not making much of a departure from our previous EPs. The goal is to write songs that the four of us like and hopefully a bunch of other people like too. Also, since the album is work-in-progress, even we're not completely sure what the final product will be. Til that release though, folks who want to hear new material should come see us live - we're always throwing new songs in our sets. Plus, after SXSW, we're hoping to do a ton of shows outside NYC.
Do you guys think you’ll be coming to Philly soon?
Hopefully so!
DID YOU HEAR THAT PHILLY?! They might be coming soon…maybe…hopefully! Anyway I wanted to thank the band again for taking the time to answer our questions. They just finished rocking SXSW if any of you guys got a chance to see them.
Here’s the press release and the album stream for their new ep Forest Fire. Check out their website, and finally I’ll leave you with a great live version of the title track. Enjoy:
Check out our other interviews with Brad Sucks and Hungry Lucy
No comments:
Post a Comment