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thekillerssluts · 4 years

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The Story Behind Every Song On Will Butler’s New Album Generations

Will Butler has a lot on his mind. It has, after all, been five years since his solo debut, Policy. A lot can happen in half a decade, and a lot has happened in this past half-decade — much of it quite dire. Butler was in his early 30s when Policy came out, and now he’s closing in on 40. He’s a husband and father. And he’s shaken by the state of the world, the idea of being an artist and a soon-to-be middle-aged man striving to guide his family through the chaos.

At least, that’s how it comes across through much of Generations, his sophomore outing that arrives today. Generations is a big, sprawling title by nature, and the album in turn grapples with all kinds of big picture anxieties. Mass shootings, the overarching darkness and anxiety of our time, trying to reckon with our surroundings but the system overload that occurs all too easily in the wake of it. Then there are more intimate songs, too, tales drawn from personal lives as people plug along just trying to navigate a tumultuous era.

Butler is, of course, no stranger to crafting music that seeks to parse the cultural moment and how it impacts in our daily lives. Ever since Arcade Fire ascended to true arena-rock status on The Suburbs 10 years ago, they have embarked on projects that explicitly try to make sense of our surroundings. (Not that their earlier work was bereft of heavy concepts — far from it — but Reflektor and Everything Now turned more of a specific eye towards contemporary ills and trials.) But as one voice amongst many in Arcade Fire, there is a cinematic scope to whatever Butler’s playing into there.

On Generations, he engages with a lot of similar concerns but all in his own voice — often yelping, desperate, frustrated then just trying to catch a breath. Butler leans on his trusty Korg MS-20 throughout Generations, often giving the album a synth-y indie backdrop that allows him to try on a few different selves. There are a handful of surging choruses, “la-la” refrains batting back against the darkness, slinking grooves maybe allowing someone the idea of brief physical release amidst ongoing strife.

Ahead of Generations’ arrival, Butler sent us some thoughts on the album, running from inspiration between the individual tracks to little details about the arrangement and composition of different songs. Now that you can hear the album for yourself, check it out and read along with Butler’s comments below.

1. “Outta Here”

I think this is the simplest song on the record. Just, like, get me out of here. Get me fucking out of here. I’m so tired of being here. No, I don’t have another answer, and I don’t expect anything to be better anywhere else. But, please, I would like to leave here.

I can play plenty of instruments, and can make interesting sounds on them, but kinda the only instrument I’m good at is a synth called the Korg MS-20. That’s the first sound on the record. It makes most of the bass you hear on the record. It’s a very aggressive, loud, versatile machine, and I wanted to start the record with it cause I’m good at playing it and it makes me happy.

2. “Bethlehem”

This song partly springs from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats: “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Like a lot of folks, I woke up after the election in 2016 mad and sad and scared and exhausted. This song is born of that emotion.

My bandmates Jenny Shore, Julie Shore, and Sara Dobbs sing the bridge, and it’s a corrective to my (appropriate?) freaking out — this isn’t the apocalypse. You’re misquoting Yeats. Get your fucking head on straight. History has not ruptured — this shit we’re in is contiguous with the shit we’ve been dealing with for a long, long time. But still, we sometimes do need an apocalyptic vision to make change. Even if it’s technically wrong. I dunno. It’s an ongoing conversation.

There’s a lot of interplay with backing vocals on this record — sometimes the narrator is the asshole, sometimes the backing vocals are the asshole. Sometimes they’re just trying their best to figure out the world. This song starts that conversation.

3. “Close My Eyes”

I tried to make these lyrics a straightforward and honest description of an emotion I feel often: “I’m tired of waiting for a better day. But I’m scared and I’m lazy and nothing’s gonna change.” Kind of a sad song. Trying to tap into some Smokey Robinson/Motown feeling — “I’ve got to dance to keep from crying.”

There’s a lot of Mellotron on this record, and a lot of MS-20. This song has a bunch of Mellotron strings/choirs processed through the MS-20. It’s a trick I started doing on the Arcade Fire song “Sprawl II,” and I love how it sounds and I try to do it on every song if I can.

4. “I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know”

This makes a pair with “Close My Eyes” — shit is obviously fucked, but “I don’t know what I don’t know what I don’t know what I can do.” I’m not a proponent of the attitude! Just trying to describe it, as I often feel it. In my head, I know some things that I can do — my wife Jenny, for instance, works really hard to get state legislatures out of Republican control. Cause it’s all these weirdo state legislative chambers that have enormous power over law enforcement, and civil rights, and Medicaid, and everything.

The image in the last verse was drawn from the protests in Ferguson in 2015: “Watch the bullets and the beaters as they move through the streets — grab your sister’s kids — hide next to the fire station…” It’s been horrifically disheartening to see the police riot across America as their power has been challenged. I’ve got a little seed of hope that we might change things, but, man, dark times.

More MS-20 bass on this one, chained to the drum machine. This one is supposed to be insanely bass heavy — if it comes on in a car, the windows should be rattling, and you should be asking, “What the heck is going on here?” Trying for a contemporary hip-hop bass sound but in a way less spare context. First song with woodwinds — rhythmic stuff and freaky squeals by Stuart Bogie and Matt Bauder.

5. “Surrender”

This song is masquerading as a love song, but it’s more about friendship. About the confusion that comes as people change: Didn’t you use to have a different ideal? Didn’t we have the same ideal at some point? Which of us changed? How did the world change? Relationships that we sometimes wish we could let go of, but that are stuck within us forever.

It’s also about trying to break from the first-person view of the world. “What can I do? What difference can I make?” It’s not about some singular effort — you have to give yourself over to another power. Give over to people who have gone before who’ve already built something — you don’t have to build something new! The world doesn’t always need a new idea, it doesn’t always need a new personality. What can you do with whatever power and money you’ve got? Surrender it over to something that’s already made. And then the song ends with an apology: I’m sorry I’ve been talking all night. Just talk talk talking, all night. Shut up, Will.

Going for “wall of sound” on this one — bass guitar and bass synth and double tracked piano bass plus another piano plus Mellotron piano. The “orchestra” is about a dozen different synth and Mellotron tracks individually detuned. And then run through additional processing.

6. “Hide It Away”

This song is about secrets. Both on an intimate, heartbreaking level — friends’ miscarriages, friends’ immigration status, shitty affairs coming to light — and on a grand, horrible level: New York lifting the statute of limitations on child abuse prosecutions, all the #MeToo reporting. There’s nothing you can do when your secret is revealed. Like, what can you do? You just have to let the response wash over you. If you’ve done something horrible, god-willing, you’ll have to pay for it in some way. If it’s something not horrible, but people will hate you anyway, goddammit, I wish there were some way to protect you.

This song has the least poetic line on the record, a real clunker: “It’s just money and power, money and power might set them free.” But it’s a clunky, shitty concept — the most surefire protection is being rich and knowing powerful people. But even then, shit just might come out. Even after you’re long dead.

Came from a 30-second guitar sample I recorded while messing around at the end of trying to track a different song. I liked the chords, looped them to make a demo. And the song was born from there. This is the one song I play drums on. Snare is chained to the MS-20, trying to play every frequency the ear can hear at the same time on some of those big hits.

7. “Hard Times”

[Laughs] I sat down and tried to write a Spotify charting electro-hit, and this is what came out: “Kill the rich, salt the earth.” Oh well. Written way before COVID-19, but my 8-year-old son turned to me this spring and asked, “Did you write the song ‘Hard Times’ about now, because we’re living through hard times?” No, I didn’t.

In Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, the narrator is a real son-of-a-bitch—contrarian, useless. Mad at the strong confident people who think they’ve got it figured out. And they don’t! And neither does the narrator — but he knows he doesn’t, and he at times yearns for some higher answer, and he’s funny, and too clever, but still knows he’s a piece of shit. I read Notes From Underground in high school and kinda forgot how it shaped my worldview until I sat down with it a couple years ago. The bridge on this song is basically smushed up quotes from Notes From Underground.

I was asking Shiftee, who mixed the record, if there are any vocal plug-ins I should be playing around with. He pointed me toward Little AlterBoy, which is basically a digital recreation of the kind of pedal the Knife use, for instance, on their vocal sound. It can shift the timbre/character of a voice without changing the pitch. Or change pitch without changing character. Very fun! Very much all over this track. Tried to make the bridge sound like a Sylvester song.

8. “Promised”

Another friend song masquerading as a love song. I’ve met a handful of extraordinary people in my life, who stopped doing extraordinary work because life is hard and it sucks. People who — I mean, it’s a lottery and random and who cares — could be great writers or artists, who kind of just disappeared. And it’s heartbreaking and frustrating. I don’t blame them. Maybe they weren’t made for this world. Maybe it’s just random. Maybe they’ll do amazing work in their 60s!

We tracked this song before it was written. Julie and Miles came over and we made up a structure and did a bunch of takes, found a groove. Which I then hacked up into what it is now! The bed tracks are lovely and loose. Maybe I’ll put out a jammier version of this song at some point. The other big synth on this record is the Oberheim OB-8, and that’s the bass on this one (triple tracked along with some MS-20).

9. “Not Gonna Die”

This song is about terrorism, and the response to terrorism. I wrote it a couple weeks after the Bataclan shooting in Paris in 2015. For some reason, a couple weeks after the shooting, I was in midtown Manhattan. I must have been Christmas shopping. I had to pop into the Sephora on 5th Avenue to pick up something specific — I think for my wife or her sister. I don’t remember. But I remember walking in, and the store was really crowded, and for just a split second I got really scared about what would happen if someone brought out a gun and started shooting up the crowd. And then I got so fucking mad at the people that made me feel that emotion. Like, I’m not gonna fucking die in the midtown Sephora, you fucking pieces of shit. Thanks for putting that thought in my head.

BUT ALSO, fuck all the fucking pieces of shit who are like, “We can’t accept refugees — what if they’re terrorists?” FUCK OFF. Some fucking terrified family driven from their home by a war isn’t going to kill me. Or anyone. Fuck off. Some woman from Central America fleeing from her husband who threatened to kill her isn’t going to fucking bomb Times Square. You fucking pieces of shit.

In November/December 2015, the Republican primary had already started — Trump had announced in June. And every single one of those pieces of shit running for president were talking about securing our borders, and keeping poor people out, and trying to justify it by security talk. FUCK OFF. You pieces of shit. Fuck right off. Anyway. Sorry for cursing.

I kind of think of the outro of this song as an angry “Everyday People.” Everyday people aren’t going to kill me. Lots of great saxes on this track from Matt Bauder and Stuart Bogie.

The intro of the song we recorded loud, full band, which I then ran through the MS-20 and filtered down till it was just a bass heart-pulse, and re-recorded solo piano and voice over that.

10. “Fine”

I kind of think that “Outta Here” to “Not Gonna Die” comprise the record, and “Fine” operates as the afterword and the prologue rolled into one. An author’s note, maybe. It was kind of inspired by high-period Kanye: I wanted to talk about something important in a profane, sometimes horribly stupid way, but have it be honest and ultimately transcendent.

In the song, I talk semi-accurately about where I come from. My mom’s dad was a guitar player who led bands throughout the ’30s and ’40s. In post-war LA, he had a band with Charles Mingus as the bass player. Charles Mingus! One of the greatest geniuses in all of American history. But this was the ’40s, and in order to travel with the band, to go in the same entrances, to eat dinner at the same table, he had to wear a Hawaiian shirt and everybody had to pretend he was Hawaiian. Because nobody was sure how racist they were supposed to be against Hawaiians.

Part of the reason I’m a musician is that my great-grandfather was a musician, and his kids were musicians, and their kids were musicians, and their kids are musicians. Part of the reason is vast generations of people working to make their kids’ lives better, down to my life. Part of the reason is that neither government nor mob has decided to destroy my family’s lives, wealth, and property for the last couple hundred years. I tried to write a song about that?

Generations is out now via Merge. Purchase it here.

https://www.stereogum.com/2098946/will-butler-generations-song-meanings/franchises/interview/footnotes-interview/

#Arcade Fire #will butler #generations #interview #hq

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gwhiz-138 · 4 years

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Added Track Descriptions on Gerard Way’s Soundcloud:

Phoning It In:

Phoning It In. I’ve always loved the phrase and I was just inspired to write a song with it. To keep in spirit with the title of the song, I made sure not to try too hard on any one element. I wrote the riff quickly, wrote the lyrics quickly, we got the guitar sound quickly, and there was no overthinking or really changing anything. My only complaint about it is that I think it is a little too fast, so it forces me to sing harder to keep up, and it doesn’t fully sound like I’m phoning in the vocals. So I thought about slowing it down and delivering a more load back vocal take. Just ever so slightly. I played the guitar, sang, No bass yet. Doug programmed the drums. Every once in a while we will have someone play drums on the songs, but usually only when we are finishing something for release. Otherwise, all the drums in the demos are programmed by Doug, and I think he does a really good job of making them sound kind of real and natural. I get attached to them. All of Hesitant Alien started as demos with programmed drums by Doug. He and I have a cool relationship, and have evolved together over the years since he engineered Black Parade, Danger Days, and engineered and produced Hesitant Alien. We work in the same space, the studio at my house, called Milk Friends. I just let him have the space I’m not using and he brought in all of his gear and works on various projects, recording, and mixes, and I would be in the other room, the office, writing comics. And every so often, when neither of us is too busy, we record things. I like sharing artistic spaces with people, especially Doug. It’s nice to have a friend that can record you when you have an idea, because I’m terrible at recording and I barely even know how to use Garage Band. So all the singles you have gotten from me over the last couple of years have been done with Doug and I, and then various musicians who would replace certain things, making them real, and sound better.

Crate Amp:

This is one of maybe five tracks of me messing around with this Crate amp I got off of Reverb for cheap. It has a mysterious stain on the front that looks like someone had put a candle on top of the amp and the wax just dripped down the front. In the listing, the stain was described as “a stain that mostly comes off”. One of the things Doug and I were experimenting with for the last three months was how bad we could get stuff to sound. That’s not me trying to diss on Crate amps, as the very first amp I had— the one I wrote Skylines and Turnstiles with— was a Crate amp with built in distortion. But they do not have a reputation for being high quality amps, at least in the musical circles I was in. A lot of people get kind of snobby about them. But I think a lot of metal or thrash metal musicians swear by them. They are very crunchy, so I think that is why, since some metal has a lot of crunchy distortion. But we would turn the amp distortion on, and then run a distortion pedal through it, to see how fucked up we could get it. I’ll probably put the rest of the jam tracks up, but I think it’s a lot of the same riff over and over, since I didn’t know when Doug was in record-mode and I wanted to make sure I got the two or three parts down once I discovered them. This is just me playing guitar meandering through ideas, sloppily. Maybe some of these riffs will become songs.

Success!:

Back before Hesitant Alien was a thing, and before I wanted to pursue a solo career, I wanted to start a band and just sing and play guitar, after my chem broke up. The name of the band was going to be Baby Animal Hospital (the record label hated the name, especially since it included both the words ‘baby’ and ‘hospital’ in the same phrase), and I did a bunch of rough graphic design for it, but in the end, it really felt like a solo thing, so that’s what it became. But when it was Baby Animal Hospital (I wanted something that sounded warm and fuzzy and loud, like the tones) I recorded this track with Doug for the opening of the record. The lyrics/sounds are just the word BAH over and over again, which where the first letters of each word of the band name, but that wasn’t intentional, I just liked the sound. And this was us really messing with auto-tune to try and make it sound like an instrument. It was supposed to be this track as track one and go right into Action Cat. Later on, I figured I would just make a zine with the name Baby Animal Hospital, but I didn’t get very far with it. Still like the name, and may do something with it in the future. Maybe one day I’ll share all the graphic design I did for it when it was a band, a lot of which was cut and paste by hand.

Welcome to the Hotel:

This was something Doug and I threw together for the release of Umbrella Academy Volume Three: Hotel Oblivion. Just something short for an instagram video. We did this really quick, didn’t give it much thought other than trying to make something that sounded a little like The Stooges. A few months later, I actually wrote a verse and some new lyrics and a new vocal melody for the verse, and then I kind of wanted to finish the song. Someday. Like most of this stuff, it’s me playing guitar, bass if there is bass, doing the vocals, and Doug programming the drums.

#he also changed the titles of Phoning and Crate Amp but they sound the same #gerard way #hesitant alien #soundcloud #phoning it in #crate amp #success #welcome to the hotel #hotel oblivion #my chemical romance #mcr

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jim-reid · 6 years

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The Jesus and Mazzy Chain

Matt Hendrickson / Rolling Stone 06.10.1994

If it had been up to William and Jim Reid, the brothers who front the Jesus and Mary Chain, they wouldn't have chosen "Sometimes Always" to be the first single off their new album, Stoned and Dethroned. "It was a surprise to us that people thought it should be a single, because the demo was so bleak," says William. "Even after we recorded it, it still didn't seem like a single." "I've given up guessing what could be a single or what couldn't be," says Jim with a sigh. "Whatever song we think will be a big hit, it never is. What we do now is just make the record and listen to other people's opinions." "Sometimes Always" features the hypnotic voice of Mazzy Star lead singer Hope Sandoval. She's rumored to be the girlfriend of William Reid, to which he curtly replies, "We're just good friends." The song is a gripping tug of war between Sandoval (the jilted girlfriend) and Jim Reid (the repentant boyfriend). The Reid brothers had been waiting for more than three years to record with Sandoval. "We always really liked her voice," William says. "But we didn't have the song that could work until 'Sometimes Always.'" "They sent me the song, and I thought it was really good," Sandoval says. "[Mazzy Star] were in London, touring, and I went to their studio and met them for the first time. The recording took two days, and it was really difficult. They produce their own records, so they were really picky, which is totally understandable. The fun part was having wine and talking and laughing." Originally when we conceived the record, we were going to have many more guests on it," says Jim. "But for various reasons, it didn't work out, so we just asked people we really liked." Former Pogue Shane MacGowan also appears, handling the vocals on the harrowing lament "God Help Me." Stoned and Dethroned is the Jesus and Mary Chain's sixth release (counting 1988's B-sides compilation, Barbed Wire Kisses). It was originally planned as an all-acoustic album, but the band scrapped the idea after a few months of recording. "Everyone thinks the band is all guitar and feedback," Jim says. "It's quite easy to plug a guitar into a fuzz pedal and make some interesting sounds. We were trying really hard not to use electric guitars, and it got to the point where we said, 'This is silly. Let's just make a record.'" The band is hitting the road with Mazzy Star this October and is looking forward to a tour more suited to its tastes than its difficult stint on 1992's Lollapalooza tour. "Lollapalooza was a big, big mistake," William says with no hesitation. "Aside from the fact that we hated playing in the daylight, it was supposed to be a meeting place for people who were different. But we felt different from all the people who were supposed to be different. It was like everyone was trying to be a professional freak or weirdo." "We are freaks and weirdos," Jim stated matter-of-factly. "But we don't make such a big deal about it."

#interview

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houseofloveconcerts · 5 years

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Ana Egge

What’s most immediately striking about Ana Egge’s latest, Is It the Kiss, is its rich sonic coherence. Ana’s at the center, but the term singer/songwriter doesn’t cover it. This is much more than words and tunes — the whole is informed by her deeply-rooted musical intelligence. It’s only because she defies category that she usually winds up in the folk bin, but from the beginning she’s been inspired by the raunchy warmth and laid-back intensity of singers such as Etta James and Ann Peebles, while emulating the strangely sturdy crystalline quality, real and true, of Dolly Parton. As a guitarist, early on, Ana dug into the picking patterns and driving right hand of Big Bill Broonzy, Mississippi John Hurt, and Elizabeth Cotten, while also absorbing the swinging, behind-the-beat phrasing of Django Reinhardt. The country side of things is well represented on the album by pedal steel (Matt Davidson) and fiddle (Alex Hargreaves) and by the songs “Cocaine Cowboys” and her affecting duet with Iris Dement on a cover of Diana Jones’ “Ballad of the Poor Child.” But, actually, this is something of a soul record. The tracks are grounded by the Brooklyn indie all-star rhythm section of Jacob Silver and Robin MacMillan, the slow grooves are sweetened by horns like molasses (Cole Kamen-Green and Adam Dotson), and at the center of it all is Ana’s guitar, which sounds like it knows something about how Steve Cropper and Curtis Mayfield could delicately, but determinedly, provide a sweetly beating funky heart. Plus there are alt-guitar flashes by Buck Meek (Big Thief), and the whole is pulled together by arranger/producer/instrumentalist Alec Spiegelman (Cuddle Magic).

In and among those grooves is the mind and heart behind Ana’s song-stories. She says that writing slows her down, that she has to figure out what she’s feeling, that she can write herself into an understanding, and that she feels a mystery to herself and the songs provide a window in. What we see through that window is an embrace of life in all its complexity and ambiguity. The heartbreak of “Teacake and Janey,” the study in struggling and suffering that is “James,” the western noir that is sketched in “Chasing Rabbits in the Sun” are all told with clear-eyed elliptic precision, without judgement, as part of the necessary sorrow of the world. It’s a hard world she sings about, but not without hope. “Sometimes the work will be hard if it’s ever gonna work at all.” (“Hurt a Little”) “Don’t fall for anyone’s reasons to hate someone. There’s something in us that’s never been lost.” (“Rise Above”) “How do we love? We dream of what could be.” (“What Could Be”)

On the making of Is It the Kiss, Ana says:

I wrote these songs in a bit of a fever. They came into being all in a rush. My wife and I have a five-year-old daughter and in many of the demos I made while writing these songs you can hear her and her friend running through the hallway, playing with their dolls. There’s been a change in me in the past two years. And in many people I know. There’s an uneasiness and a deeper need for connection. I’ve also felt the shift in my audience. People are listening like they never have before. I too, am listening. Like I never have before. That’s where these songs come from.

Steve Earle has said, “’Ana Egge plays on a guitar she built with her own two hands and sings like she’s telling us her deepest, darkest secrets.” If soul is bearing up with gentle grace in the face of harsh realities, if soul can be possessed by a blond-haired, white-skinned, six-foot tall lesbian of Norweigian extraction — Ana’s got it.

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mastcomm · 4 years

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What Is ‘Dance Monkey,’ and How Did It Take Over the World?

“Hello.” “Hello.” “Do I call you Tones or Toni?” “Tones. I can’t even believe that this is my life sometimes. It’s going number one in so many countries. “‘Dance Monkey.’” “‘Dance Monkey.’” “‘Dance Monkey.’” “For anyone that thinks that I’m, like, an overnight success just doesn’t know about, like, the hard yards I’ve already put in. I used to work at a surf shop on Bourke Street, which is really the busiest part of Melbourne. And there was like, you could busk on Bourke Street. I really, really wanted to busk. I couldn’t even play an instrument at this point. One of my friends was like, you should come to Byron because you can literally just park up and busk out of the side of your van. And I was like, OK, I’ll give it a go. So I bought a van, moved to Byron Bay and started living in my van.” “What was your impression of Byron Bay when you first got there?” “I said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to fit in here.’ There’s a lot of buskers in Byron, but very acoustic guitar. It’s very, like, bohemian. So probably the first time anyone’s pulled out a keyboard on the street, let alone, like, the drum pad, the synthesizers, and the loop pedal and the harmonizers.” [singing] “I stumbled across her when she was busking in Byron, in September 2017. It was the very first time she’d tried busking. I heard that, and I said to my wife like, ‘Whoa. That was pretty cool.’” “He gave me his card — said ‘entertainment lawyer’ on it. And I said to him, ‘I don’t have any legal issues.’” “Tones was my first management client. She came in, and lived with me and my family for a while after there, and worked out of my studio a lot in that first year while she was busking.” “I’d go up every Monday, Tuesday and stay there, write music, go busk for the week. I was busking day, day, day, day — in the winter, when no one else would busk. In the rain, when no one else would be busking, I would be busking. It wasn’t about the money. It was about, no matter what, being able to get more fans. So there might be 20 people that night that would otherwise never know who I was.” “When did it hit you that your busking was becoming a thing, that you were an attraction?” “I know that there was a point where I realized if I posted on my social media, and said I was busking somewhere people would come. Other buskers started getting angry at me. Some started a Facebook group. And were, like, we’re going to run Tones out of town — like, for no reason. They just hated how big the crowds were getting.” “People don’t walk past Tones. No one does. By the second song there were always like 10, 20 people. By the fifth, the crowd was hectic every single time.” “I love busking. There’s so many good, amazing people on the street. It’s the reason that I’m here. But there was one night that was very frustrating. And I wrote a song about that. People grab my hands and be like, ‘You know you stopped me dead in my tracks when I was walking by.’ [singing] ‘Just sing one more song, just one more song.’ ‘I’m just going to get my husband.’ I’m literally just repeating what people tell me. That’s why if you replace ‘dance’ with the word ‘sing,’ it’s just about me busking. [singing] I always wanted to do a song with a bass drop chorus. I really like that song that’s like, ‘You just want attention. You don’t want my heart.’ I loved how it was like — So I played some bass, and I kept that loop. I put the other loop down. I sang what I’d already written. It just felt so right. I wrote ‘Dance Monkey’ in half an hour, and then it was done.” [singing] “Just watching her busk with it, early on, people just loved it. And we’re like, this is going to be a cracker. Like a proper cracker.” “You guys basically specialize in buskers at this point?” “Essentially —” “We just like working with buskers, that’s the thing, we like working with people that want to create art, and tour and make their life music, and buskers do that.” “Did Tones have original music when you guys first made contact with her?” Yeah, yeah, absolutely. ‘Johnny Run Away’ was the most developed demo, and that was the first release we put out. [singing] That caught a fire real quick in Australia, crossed over to commercial radio, which was huge.” “In Australian terms, ‘Johnny’ — it doesn’t get any better than that for a debut.” “Even though, like, my song was getting high rotation on like, all the mainstream radios, that does nothing. You have to keep busking, and I didn’t want to work at Woolworth’s.” “So when did you first hear the demo for ‘Dance Monkey?’” “I never heard a demo. She came into the studio, and played me the song how she played it. And then it was sort of our job in the studio to make it, I guess like, radio friendly. Just about that bass drop, making sure that it was not too straight, that it really swung.” “We set up ‘Dance Monkey,’ and were going to release it. I was like, ‘Look, maybe it’s just a live track. Maybe it’s just a banging live. Maybe it doesn’t do as well as ‘Johnny,’ and I was trying to just, I don’t know, just keep expectations in check.” “Dave said to me that, ‘Don’t be upset if this song doesn’t live up to ‘Johnny Run Away’ because that song is probably more of a radio hit, which is apparently everything that matters these days.” “Now she forever tells a story that, ‘This is the song that my manager Dave said was probably not a radio song,’ and it’s like the biggest song in the world right now.” [singing] “In Australia, it’s broken the the record of any female artist ever. Any Australian artist ever, and any song at number one, the most consecutive weeks.” “A lot of songs become big in Australia. Some of them cross over to the U.K., and other European countries, but not all of them can make the leap to America, like, what does it mean for your song to break in the U.S.? Is that meaningful to you?” “That is like another whole universe in itself. It’s like, breaking the U.S. is like re-releasing ‘Dance Monkey’ again to the world.” “Do you ever feel guilty that the song that helped you make it is sort of complaining about the very thing that helped you make it?” “No, I’m writing it about the girl that knocked over my keyboard, and the guy that tried to steal my money and the two guys that were literally yelling out ‘Again! Again! Again! Again! Again!’ right in my face, and the guy that walked past me and said, you’re [expletive] — all in, like, 30 minutes.” “Have you been back to busk since ‘Dance Monkey’ hit number one?” “It’s very hard to do. I want to dress up as Old Tones from the ‘Dance Monkey’ film clip and go busk. People ask me how I feel. I get a little bit frustrated because I don’t know how I feel, but like sometimes I have those small moments when you’re driving in your car on your own, and you just think to yourself, ‘Holy [expletive], I have the most streamed song in the world right now.’” [singing]

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theseventhhex · 6 years

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Eleanor Friedberger Interview

Eleanor Friedberger

Photo by Chris Eckert

Two years on from the release of ‘New View’, Eleanor Friedberger is back with a new album. ‘Rebound’ was mostly recorded alone by Eleanor with assistance from producer Clemens Knieper. It sees her going in a bit of a new direction, swapping live instruments for electronic drums, synthesisers and more muted guitars. It also takes inspiration from her time spent in Greece, immersing herself in the culture. Melodically subtler than Friedberger's past albums, ‘Rebound’ still swings thanks to her innate, and often-overlooked, knack for songwriting resulting in Friedberger's finest and most dazzling solo album to date… We talk to Eleanor about a prized keyboard, selling alternative merchandise and finding therapy in nature…

TSH: In the lead-up to ‘Rebound’ you came across a 70s Casio keyboard. How beneficial was this instrument in giving you direction for the album?

Eleanor: The Casio keyboard was really important. Life is made up of happy accidents and stumbling upon this keyboard was one of them. I actually walked into a music store in Brooklyn looking to buy a guitar pedal just to fuck around with and play on. You know, I think it’s important to find a new toy or tool to inspire you and this keyboard was just sitting there...

TSH: You’ve mentioned that it became like your ‘new best friend’ after you turned it on...

Eleanor: Haha! Well, I messed around with it and instead of buying a guitar pedal I walked out with a keyboard instead. Initially I was thinking if I just wrote one song on it then it would be worth it, but I ended up writing a ton of songs on it.

TSH: Also, having felt so angry in the wake of the elections, did you feel like expressing your thoughts in a certain way?

Eleanor: I didn’t do it so deliberately. I felt like I wasn’t capable of writing something overtly political because it was too radical a shift for me. However, I think subconsciously the election result was just completely pervasive and the feeling of disappointment therefore comes out in some ways on the record. I don’t think most people set out to make a disappointing sounding record, but it happens.

TSH: Were the cinematic and meditative qualities that came into play on this release ones you had in mind initially?

Eleanor: Yes, they were. But again, those sounds were due to that keyboard, which was the starting point for such imprints. Also, I was working with my producer Clemens who I’d recorded my previous album with and he was really interested in pushing me into new directions with my songs too. His father scored music for movies and TV and we were trying to do something different, which I think worked out well.

TSH: Does it remain a key factor to think of forming an album as one big piece that you can listen to throughout?

Eleanor: Yes, this is key and it was also the case with the records that I made with my brother as well. I like to think of an album as a whole piece, which is how we would play live too. I guess this record feels short, but I wanted it to be something that could be played on a loop.

TSH: Being situated in Athens prior to forming ‘Rebound’ was very formative too, especially given the dark contrasts you experienced...

Eleanor: Athens was so vital for this album and I experienced so many cool contrasts, mostly at night time. I’d hate to hype it up too much because my Greek friends will just make fun of me for it, but it’s such a romantic type of place and I’m fortunate that one of the big benefits of this job is that I can take trips like this. Being there especially bearing in mind how terrible things are in the US felt so liberating. It reminded me of how I romanticised about the New York of the 70s before I got there - Athens feels like this still - for better or worse.

TSH: What are the origins of the track ‘Make Me a Song’?

Eleanor: It’s funny because that song started off as a big rock song and the demo had these really stupid big drums which I took away. I thought I wanted it to be more of a blues song in the way of a Captain Beefheart song, but I started adding tons of little three note guitar licks that I kept layering which took the drums away completely, and then I played it to Clemens and he really liked it. We wanted the chorus to be really big and we recorded my voice as a scale which was hard to do. When the voices come in at certain points it was supposed to sound very ethereal - it was just all of my voices turned into chords.

TSH: Was ‘Rule of Action’ identified early on as the album closer?

Eleanor: To me, that was a very special song, I have a particular affection for that one and it was the most meaningful and personal song in some ways. We ended up using the demo for it. There are two overdubs, but the rest of it is my original demo and so it sounds so different from the other songs. But yeah, that song made no sense as the first song and it didn’t work in the middle either so had it be at the end.

TSH: You’ve always been a keen admirer of the fact that one’s tastes grow as we get older. Is it constantly pleasing for you to switch it up and approach music from different vantage points?

Eleanor: Yes, I think so. A part of me thinks that it’s wonderful to think this way, but I also don’t want to fall into phases of delving into new genres that become laughable - which has been the case for other artists. I don’t want to go into the pitfalls of that type of route, but I admire artists that have this real and strict consistency throughout their career. I haven’t done that because the kind of band that I had with my brother wasn’t a real band in a sense - we were just playing with a million different genres and ideas all of the time. I guess that’s kind of just stuck with me.

TSH: How have your recent live shows been panning out?

Eleanor: I enjoy playing live a lot. I enjoy it most when I forget that the audience is there to be honest. I prefer a show when I can’t see the audiences faces at all, but I don’t want to sound too melodramatic about it. I play pretty small shows but if I have some sort of transportive experiences with my audience, then I’m happy.

TSH: During your limited windows of time whilst on tour, do you still look to visit museums or find good food?

Eleanor: I love museums! On my last European trip to Portugal and Spain I went to quite a few. Normally, I just wander the streets, which is my favourite thing to do. Finding nice food is always a big deal. Also, finding little treasures to bring home is something I like to do too. Sometimes I’ll bring home a bag of potato chips, or a bottle of gin, or even some cotton pyjamas.

TSH: Speaking of clothes, your mother knitted you an awesome sweater for your birthday…

Eleanor: Oh my! Yes, she’s incredible. My mom is knitting sweaters constantly and I’m so grateful for the one she gave me recently. She actually made a sweater for ‘Rebound’ too.

TSH: I understand that for a recent show in London your merchandise sadly didn’t make it, therefore you decided to sell your mobile phone case, handwritten lyrics and your Superga sneakers...

Eleanor: Haha! Someone ended up buying the sneakers! I also ended up selling most of the handwritten lyrics and I sold the mobile phone case at another show too. It was cool to take a new approach to selling merch, haha!

TSH: What’s downtime like for you?

Eleanor: I live in the countryside 75 miles north of NYC and the huge benefit of being out here is knowing that nature provides so much for me. I love hiking, cycling and swimming. For some being alone in the woods can exasperate some of the anxieties that you have, but I think it does the opposite for me. I‘ve never done any meditation or therapy, but for me, all the physical activities I just mentioned are like therapy for me.

TSH: Looking ahead, what is your biggest drive?

Eleanor: Just to be able to keep doing it, which seems to be getting harder and harder. I hope that I’ve proved myself worthy enough to keep on doing this for a long time. I mean it’s hard to get people to come to shows and follow you on Instagram, or whatever success is measured by these days. I can have a lot of critical success but it may not translate to anything commercial or monetary. All in all, I just hope that I can keep amusing myself and make others happy too.

Eleanor Friedberger - “Make Me a Song”

Eleanor Friedberger - “In Between Stars”

Rebound

#Interview #eleanor friedberger

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mastcomm · 4 years

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What Is ‘Dance Monkey,’ and How Did It Take Over the World?

Hello. Hello. Do I call you Tones? Or Toni? Tones. I can’t even believe that this is my life sometimes. It’s going number one in so many countries. Dance Monkey. Dance Monkey. Dance Monkey. For anyone that thinks that I’m, like, an overnight success just doesn’t know about, like, the hard yards I’ve already put in. I used to work at a surf shop on Bourke Street which is the really busiest part of Melbourne. And there was like, you could busk on Bourke Street. I really, really wanted to busk. I couldn’t even play an instrument at this point. One of my friends was like, you should come to Byron because you can literally just park up and busk out of the side of your van. And I was like, OK, I’ll give it a go. So I bought a van and moved to Byron Bay and started living in my van. What was your impression of Byron Bay when you first got there? I said, ”I don’t think I’m going to fit in here.” There’s a lot of buskers in Byron but very acoustic guitar. It’s very like, bohemian. So probably the first time anyone’s pulled out a keyboard on the street, let alone like the drum pad, the synthesizers, and the loop pedal and the harmonizers. I stumbled across her when she was busking in Byron in September 2017. It was the very first time she’d tried busking. I heard that and I said to my wife like, “Whoa. That was pretty cool.” He gave me his card said entertainment lawyer on it. And I said to him, I don’t have any legal issues. Tones was my first management client. She came in and lived with me and my family for a while after there and worked out of my studio a lot in that first year while she was busking. I’d go up every Monday, Tuesday and stay there. Write music. Go busk for the week. I was busking day, day, day, day. In the winter when no one else would busk. In the rain, when no one else would be busking I would be busking. It wasn’t about the money. It was about, no matter what, being able to get more fans. So there might be 20 people that night that would otherwise never know who I was. When did it hit you that your busking was becoming a thing, that you were an attraction? I know that there was a point where I realized if I posted on my social media and said, I was busking somewhere people would come. Other buskers started getting angry at me. Some started a Facebook group. And we’re like we’re going to run Tones out of town. Like for no reason. They just hated how big the crowds were getting. People don’t walk past Tones. No one does. By the second song there were always like 10, 20 people. By the fifth, the crowd was hectic every single time. I love busking. There’s so many good amazing people on the street. The reason that I’m here. But there was one night, that was very frustrating. And I wrote a song about that. People grab my hand and be like, you know you stopped me dead in my tracks when I was walking by. Please just sing one more song just one more song. I’m just going to get my husband. I’m literally just repeating what people tell me. That’s why if you replace dance with the word sing it’s just about me busking. I always wanted to do a song with a bass drop chorus. I really like that song that’s like You just want attention. You don’t want my heart. I loved how it was like [sings] So I played some bass. And I kept that loop. I put the other loop down. I sang what I’d already written, it just felt so right. I wrote Dance Monkey in half an hour and then it was done. Just watching her busk with it early on people just loved it. And we’re like, this is going to be a cracker. Like a proper cracker. You guys basically specialize in buskers at this point. Essentially we just like working with buskers that’s the thing we like working with people that want to create art, and tour and make their life music, and buskers do that. Did Tones have original music when you guys first made contact with her? Yeah. Absolutely. “Johnny Run Away” was the most developed demo and that was the first release we put out. That caught fire real quick in Australia, crossed over to commercial radio, which was huge. In Australian terms, “Johnny,” it doesn’t get any better than that for a debut. Even though like my song was getting high rotation on like, all the mainstream radios, that does nothing. You have to keep busking, and I didn’t want to work at Woolworth’s. So when did you first hear the demo for “Dance Monkey?” I never heard a demo. She came into the studio and played me the song how she played it. And then it was sort of our job in the studio to make it I guess like “radio friendly.” Just about that bass drop, making sure that it was not too straight, that it really swung. We set up “Dance Monkey” and we’re going to release it. I was like, “Look maybe it’s just a live track. Maybe it’s just a banging live. Maybe it doesn’t do as well as ‘Johnny.’” I was trying to just, I don’t know, just keep expectations in check. Dave said to me that “Don’t be upset if this song doesn’t live up to ‘Johnny Run Away.’” Because that song is probably more of a radio hit, which is apparently everything that matters these days. Now she forever tells a story that “This is the song that my manager Dave said was probably not a radio song.” It’s like the biggest song in the world right now. In Australia, it’s broken the record of any female artist ever. Any Australian artist ever and any song at number one, the most consecutive weeks. A lot of songs become big in Australia. Some of them cross over to the UK and other European countries, but not all of them can make the leap to America. What does it mean for your song to break in the U.S.? Is that meaningful to you? That is like another whole universe in itself. It’s like breaking the U.S. is like re-releasing “Dance Monkey” again to the world. Do you ever feel guilty that the song that helped you make it is sort of complaining about the very thing that helped you make it? No, I’m writing it about the girl that knocked over my keyboard and the guy that tried to steal my money and the two guys that were literally yelling out “Again! Again! Again! Again! Again!” right in my face and the guy that walked past me and said, you’re [expletive] All in like 30 minutes. Have you been back to busk since ”Dance Monkey” hit number one? It’s very hard to do. I want to dress up as Old Tones from the “Dance Monkey” film clip and go busk. People ask me how I feel I get a little bit frustrated because I don’t know how I feel. But like sometimes I have those small moments when you’re driving in your car on your own and you just think to yourself “Holy [expletive] I have the most streamed song in the world right now.

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#Entertainment

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