2023 Let’s Gooooo
What’s New?
Ok, soooo… more than a year after posting “An Effort To Be Back”, we’ve done a few things:
- Released a new song, “Monoliths”
- Wrote very few blog posts
- Realized we needed to get more organized & methodical about how we’re making and releasing music
As a result of #3, we’ve taken some steps forward.
For starters, we recorded a couple of new tracks with the idea of seeing how quickly we could write and record. This was a mildly failed experiment (we couldn’t keep the pace we were hoping for) but led to a couple of positive outcomes:
- Discovering fun new sounds
In order to save some time in the studio, we started doing more self production in the demoing phase. As a result of this, we have gotten waaaayyy better at fleshing songs out prior to stepping in to record, which has had the positive effects of both reducing studio time & giving us more liberty and control over how we explore our sounds and creative flow.
2. Sticking to a system
We are in different creative head spaces right now. Kids, work, priorities… you know, life. I have been less able to find the time to sit down and work on starting new song concepts, but have been able to easily dive into production & arrangement on Suzie’s songs. Suzie has had more time to work her way through core song structures. As a result, our system looks basically like this right now:
Suzie writes a song -> Sends a basic demo to Jesse (side note: she’s very good at writing good drum programming!) -> Jesse adds 1000 tracks of bells and whistles -> We get together, listen, and flesh out any last minute ideas -> We step into the studio with our favorite boy toy Bryan Russell at Red Wire Audio, record vocals, and put on some finishing touches.
This system has resulted in us currently having about 4–5 good (we think) songs in various stages of “finished” which we realistically believe we’ll release in 2023. And we plan to release more than that.
But What Do These New Songs SOUND Like?
We’re super excited about them. I think they still draw on our claaaassic late 90's/early 00’s indie & emo influences (Let’s say.. Jimmy Eat World), while taking a lot of instrumental inspiration from late 70’s and 80’s jams (I’ve listened to waaayyy too much Phil Collins the last 10 years), and throwing in a splash of more modern effects and ideas inspired by the likes of brilliant acts such as Bon Iver & Beach House.
Oh, and guitar solos. I’m basically working in guitar solos wherever I can. Because, you know… let’s bring guitar solos back.
They’re cohesive (so far). They feel like they belong together, which is maybe a first for us? And we’re excited about that. Our previous records often spanned a range of influences so wide you can feel it almost viscerally in the diversity of the tracks. While we love this about our history, we’re so happy with how these songs are feeling like a body of work which is focused yet doesn’t sacrifice our desire to adventure towards new sonic experiments.
They’re chill. They’re songs to drive to. Or to lie in your bed with while you play them on your Walkman and stare at the ceiling, thinking about your boyfriend’s boy friend.
In The Meantime… New Songs, Now!
We’re releasing a song on 10/14!
It’s an acoustic/folk jam called “Little Boys Break Hearts”. On the back of releasing “Monoliths” we tried to cut a couple of tracks that fell into that same realm of sound. This track is the second in the trio, and we’ll release the third shortly after (it’s already finished, woo hoo!).
We love how these songs came out, and don’t want to take away from them with our excitement over what’s on deck. We hope they’ll meet you at a point in your life where you can cherish them.
But then we are going to rip off their fucking faces, and grow new faces where those faces were.
See you in 2023!
Jesse
