All Around Sound-Off: Sondre Lerche

Since his auspicious debut as a teenager in the early aughts, few artists have been able to mix casual reinvention with the clarity of purpose and narrative voice like Norwegian singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche. Going from lounge rock wunderkid to art-pop troubadour, Sondre Lerche has marked his over a decade long career by constant instances of pushing his sound ever forward. And yet it wasn't until Please -  Lerche's seventh studio album where he completely upended listeners expectations. It was a record forged in the crucible of personal tumult that revealed deeper emotional layers to the already winningly sincere man that pushed Lerche to newfound creative peaks. Pleasure, its follow up, finds Lerche once again at the height of creative potency, delivering another masterful and incredibly unexpected leap forward in sound. I had the honor of chatting with Lerche the day after is initial date of his US tour mere days after completing an incredibly ambitious 40 something date Norwegian tour. It's a show that almost didn't happen due to Lerche's fellow Norwegian bandmates' last minute visa denial but Lerche is noting if not resilient and also skilled at improvising. After getting up to speed on the fate of the US Pleasure tour more or less saved by Lerche's drummer Dave Heilman,

Dante (All Around Sound): You've mentioned there being a bit of an overlap between Please and Pleasure - songs that didn't quite fit on Please ending up on the new record. What was the timeline between them? I know you've been playing "Violent Game" as early as 2013 which is before you ever put out Please. 

Sondre Lerche: That's the thing. In a sense they share a timeline because the first recordings I did for both Please and Pleasure were "Reminisce" and "Lucifer". I think we started recording those on the same day. They share a timeline in the sense that they start in the same place but then some songs weren't ready and didn't find a natural place in the narrative context of Please. And I kept working on them. And then, you know, "Violent Game" was going to be a Please song and I couldn't really get the recording I wanted and in the end I didn't need it because I had a lot of other songs that formed a theme - a narrative that I recognized myself in. I started realizing that these songs were just for the future. Even a song like "Despite The Night" which involved sort of the gap - its a song that sort of ties Please to Pleasure. There's also the song called "Bleeding Out Into The Blue" was written at the time of Please that I never got around to recording. I didn't feel like it was ready. There's a lot of overlap.

You mentioned "Reminisce" and "Lucifer". I think for the first time you reuse melodies. How did you decide that that was what you wanted to do; to use those same melodies again? Was it a way of linking the narrative or did you just feel like it wasn't done?

There's some songs that feel like they have a kinship. There are maybe two angles of the same idea whether it's lyrically or a musical idea like "Crickets" and "Serenading in the Trenches" mainly share musical fixations. Same with "Lucifer" and "Reminisce" their whole chordal and rhythmic vibe. I guess I've grown more and more interested in the secret relationships between the songs and that the songs can have individual relationships with each other and reference each other or mimic each other. I do like that. It's not something that I'm completely unfamiliar with. There is that overlap between Faces Down and Two Way Monologue where the last chord sequence on Faces Down is the first chord sequence on Two Way Monologue. I have always enjoyed creating little bridges and little secret languages between the songs that sometimes only I can appreciate. It's fun of course when others can partake in the wild goose chase.

*laughter*

Your normal method of songwriting is you write 20 songs between records and take which ones you think are the best and fit within a narrative idea...

The ones that fit the mood of the hour. The ones that feel the most important to me in a given period or a given context. As you know there are songs that were written last year that could've been on this record but they just feel like they don't belong. At least to me.

Did you feel like your songwriting process changed between records? 

Yes. I've enjoyed tremendously just recording - writing and recording freely and loosely instead of just writing and writing until I have plenty that I think are good enough and then recording and recording and editing which I did up until the self-titled record. Everything sort of changed with Please where I just threw myself into as many different collaborations and different songwriting processes and I decided just to collect recordings of songs and then see if anything belonged together. If there was an album here; maybe they were somewhere else. And that was tremendously freeing and I think that's a process that Pleasure continues and that will also bleed into whatever the next thing is. It just makes for this surplus of energy and music because you're always in something. If you're at the end of one process you're always at the beginning of the next instead of these long album cycles where you just start from scratch and then have to come up with so many songs which just becomes tiring. I'd rather be in the music all the time and have something cooking. Things at different levels of completion that excite me. Because now I feel like I have all these secrets still that I'm excited to share at some point.

You did take a break though, right? Last year when you were doing the more intimate, smaller shows you had said you wanted to take a break and kind of experience life. On the other hand you did feel like you needed some sort of a break to recharge: to live your life and have other things inspire you? 

When I say take a break I usually just mean a break from traveling and performing and usually when I take breaks from doing those things I'll write and get to compose and sort out my head and formulate music - formulate ideas and shape them into songs. So I didn't take a break from making the record. I think I just needed to be in one place in order to achieve a certain kind of focus that I need to complete a record; to know do I have everything? Last spring while I was doing those solo shows is also when I was writing the final two songs for Pleasure. Because I knew that I needed the entrance in a sense - I needed a way into the record. Which literally means I needed track 1 and 2. I didn't have the opening. I wrote "I'm Always Watching" and "Soft Feelings" and recorded them in the Spring in Bergen with Kato [Ådland]. And so I needed just a little bit of clarity and quiet to see the big picture.

So you wrote the songs for Pleasure on the guitar but there's not a lot of obvious guitar on the record. What was the reasoning there? 

I guess it's not something I think too much about. The guitar is my instrument so it's where I work on chords, it's where I work on the structure. Some of the Pleasure songs are very sort of natural songs for me. Songs that I composed fully and completely on the guitar. Of course there are some that are installations - production installations like "Hello Stranger" and "Soft Feelings" to a certain degree. They're songs where I just worked on different parts and I didn't actually sit and sing it like some singer/songwriter in the room. I just looped chords with different melodies and different layers on top. The other day I did this Paste session where I played "Soft Feelings" solo. It is a song -  and I think I could potentially play "Hello Stranger" at some point solo on the acoustic guitar. There are parts that I don't think would be so good but there is a song there and I think that when I'm working on something like that that's not like a traditional, classic song structure what I'm trying to find out is: is this just an installation or could this potentially also be a song? That's the thing that drives me to sort of find out.

The thing that leads there to be less guitar on this record is just that - and it's not a conscious decision - we would put guitar on some of these songs and I would just ask "well what if we mute the guitar and hear the rhythm section, hear the bass". I didn't want a lot of subtlety on this record so I didn't want layers and layers of things that are barely functional. I didn't want there to just be guitar because I play guitar. I wanted this very essential thing to be there. And sometimes I would get a kick out of getting rid of the chords. Which 10 years ago I would be so enslaved to the chords. I wanted the chords there all the time because they were the map of the terrain in a sense. For me it was liberating now just to get rid of the chords. Not even establish the chord sequence until maybe later in the song or never, you know? I hear the chords inside me and I didn't always need to share it with the listener. Maybe they make up their own chords. It's sort of liberating to mute stuff and to see how much we can do without. We put all these thing in here but how much can we do without?

A lot of the time I found it liberating also to just sing songs without being the sort of rhythm guitar player that I am for myself for a lot of the songs. In a way I feel like this is my first crooner album - legit crooner album. This guy is not a slave to the acoustic guitar. Just entering the studio with the tracks all ready and he's shining a light on them. I feel like this is the real crooner. Duper Sessions that guy could barely sing but this guy he's got some promise.

*laughter*

Was there a particular song that went through a huge transformation between your demos and actually making it onto the record? 

I think the biggest surprise, well there were two where we had done recordings that I thought were really good but I had some issues with the songs for different reasons. One was "Reminisce". That was the first one that we started recording but the last one that secured a place on the record because I didn't enjoy listening to the lyrics at all. The song - Matias [Tellez] did a good job just I didn't feel connected with the lyrics so I gave it a try and wrote entirely new lyrics to the song while we were mastering the record. I wrote the lyrics and recorded them the same day with Kato, actually. Who had nothing to do with the rest of that track. He just happened to be in my way and he helped me record it and then sent the mastering engineer the vocal track and he very creatively put them in replacing the old ones. And I still didn't know if it was worth it. We mastered two versions of the album: one with "Reminisce" and one without it and of course that pushed another song out that maybe you'll hear some other time. But that one needed to justify its place on the record just lyrically and thematically and emotionally and I felt that was missing. I was very proud when I managed to make ["Reminisce"] relevant again.

And then for a long time "I Know Something That's Gonna Break Your Heart" - that one was out for the longest time. Originally it was very long - six minutes long. I had this feeling. There was something that bothered me about it. The recording was good, the mix was good that Matias did. The performers were extraordinary: the bass and drums and vibraphone. But I thought something about it was off. While we were mastering the record I had a very creative mastering engineer and he helped me edit the song. We took the song down from six minutes to what 3:47? And once we had done that I thought it was perfect. Then it was back on the record and of course pushing out another song. There's always a push and pull. But those two were not supposed to be on this record when I made the final tracklist in August. But by September they had come back in. And Matias of course was very happy about that.

*laughter*

He produced both of them and at some point he asked me - and of course I'm working with different producers. He asked me at some point "so how many of my songs are going to be on this record?" and I said two. And he was like "What the fuck?! We recorded like six or seven songs and you only have two?!"

*laughter*

You never know. With all the producers I worked with, we feel like we're doing so much work and then everybody's hoping their songs make it on the record. That their songs should be at the forefront. I curate the whole thing so they never know. The most fun I have really is when the album is done and I invite Kato and Matias and the musicians, if they're around, and they get to hear the whole record because at that point they still have no idea if all their songs or productions or just one made it and they get to hear the sequence and pat each other on the back. It's a very fun session. Kato and Matias are two very particular characters. They know each other but they work in complete isolation. I'm the only one who knows and decides. It's a really cool dynamic.

There's a lot of film references - Hitchcock in particular in the music videos and there's even the snippet of "Strangers on a Train" in "Siamese Twin". Was there a big influence of film on this record? 

I guess it's something I think more about when I start thinking about videos and the visualization of the music. It's something I had rarely any thoughts about years ago. I'd be open to anything and that's why I've had terrible music videos through the years.

*laughter*

I had some good ones but I wouldn't visualize my music. I'd just be happy to show up and do my thing and plug in. I didn't think about lights or backdrops; videos or cover art really. It was just a necessity. It's only over the last five years that I've gotten a kick out of visualizing my music both on stage and in videos and such. And also because both Please and Pleasure are so much more directly connected to my own life, the things I go through that it's easier for me to think of these ideas for the video inspiration. Cause they're all my original ideas and then I develop them with the video directors. It's much easier for me now to think of the philosophy and symbols. And when it comes to the human condition Hitchcock is always fun to go to. His films are full of symbolism and visual clues and colors that mean things. So I always thought of "I'm Always Watching" that video as sort of modern "Rear Window" type scenario with voyeurism and the new tools we have for voyeurism.

And "Soft Feelings" I imagined that - originally I wanted a reverse "Vertigo" where the woman is asking the man to change. In "Vertigo" he needs the woman to change. It's a pretty bizzaro thing but I thought it'd be interesting to do that and just reverse the sexes. Have a man trying to live the woman's fantasy both sexually and visually and sentimentally. But it ended up just being a portrait of this guy on the verge of a breakdown in LA. It still has a couple "Vertigo" vibes.

Even though it's probably your least subtle record you play a lot with the idea of what is actually happening- what is real, imagined, and fantasy. Was the surrealism on Pleasure planned? Or was it kind of a natural process for you? 

It's so strange that I'm often the last to see the patterns and the big picture in a sense. I'm often reminded when I read what somebody's writing or thinking about and I'll have friends that'll be like "you mention this lyric a lot of times. Why?" Very often I haven't thought about it, you know? I think an album like Pleasure which is so concerned with the body and physicality and the here and now, the moment. I think it's only natural that fantasy plays into it and in this haze of confusion most of the album exists in it may be hard to see what is real and what is fantasy. It's not all entirely real. This guy is not really committing to anything but the moment he is in. That means it isn't really maybe real. It could just be another moment of fantasy. I know there's all these absurd objects and really concrete physical things - shoes and jackets. I was drawn to a lot of physical metaphors that are not poetic at all. I remember feeling a need to go into stuff that wasn't so poetic. That was so blunt and objects that were not poetic but still had poetic meaning in a sense. Drawn to things that maybe don't look so pretty on paper but have a certain blunt effect that I liked for a lot of these songs.

One of the things that kind of got me to look at the record differently was - I think it's an ab lib, on "Hello Stranger" at the end you sing "atone for the pleasure" and it made me think the pleasure that's being sought on this record is sort of a double-edge sword. That there was some kind of fallout from trying to achieve pleasure.

Oh yeah. To me I think that's very important. It's easy to just think of carefree pleasure. As fun as it was making this record and hopeful it is to listen to - it's not a very carefree record. To me at least. It's very aware of the limitations of this phase. Of where it is. And also the fact that there are consequences to some of these things. I didn't want to be too moralistic about it but there are certain moments where I try to atone for the pleasure.

*laughter*

Some people know the Prefab Sprout reference there. They're alert to Prefab Sprout references because there are so few. But to me there a lyrical reference to the song "Alfie" by Burt Bacharach and that's also a song that I always comes back to. It's just a beautiful song but it's very concrete and really hard on the guy Alfie. It's asking him all the questions he doesn't want to hear or be confronted with. And I thought that character was interesting. So when I say "what's it all about, baby" It's my little reminder of "Alfie". "Is it just for the moment we live". I think that song is just one of the greatest song. It's a little reminder that probably means more to me than anyone else. I thought it'd be fun to bring "Alfie" to the mission statement of "Hello Stranger".

So with Please you started soliciting remixes. Did you feel like it was the kind of record that needed to me examined by other people in that way? 

Most remixes you don't really need. Sometimes a good remix can surpass the original but most remixes are not needed. I think it's more of a bonus. I get kick out of - you know you send x amount of tracks to someone and give them a freedom just to see what pops up. I get a kick out of that. I just felt like a lot of the material on Please was the first time I actually had some ammunition and tools to someone who was good at remixing. I enjoy the playfulness and also I enjoy that it doesn't involve me. I've done my thing and send it off.

We did the Despite the Night EP. One of the remixes there barely uses any of the original tracks. It's completely something else. I'd like to see more remixes of the Pleasure songs. But because I've been sort of rolling this out over time I wanted people to get to know the songs first. But there's actually a remix coming out tomorrow.

What compelled you to revisit and rework "I'm Always Watching You" to "I'm Always Watching You Too"? You kind if remixed yourself. 

That one was just - we were at a crossroads when we were making that song. It was very clear where it could go and obviously it's inspired by - the sounds you hear in it are obviously inspired by that New Edition song "Cool It Now" so I knew where to go and the song is a pretty natural song. It didn't have to be reinvented but I had this dream the night of the recording and, you know, I take my dreams seriously.

*laughter*

I recorded this whole thing I dreamed at night and I took that into the studio and showed it to Kato. We talked about it and how it'd be fun to do this but we decided to follow the first one and let the song be. When we had done the original version we decided to keep on trying to fulfill my dream and then I came up with this; that because the song is mainly from this guy's perspective but there is a shift in the third chorus where he says "I know you're watching" and it's clear, hopefully, to people that it's a game. It's not just him being creepy. It's a game that two people play. In the video it's illustrated that she knows that she's being watched by this guy when she's intimate with this other guy. She actually is enjoying being watched. He's probably enjoying being watched by her. If anything it's not as creepy - some people find that song creepy but to me it's a very romantic song. People who are watching each other.

I thought it'd be interesting to have this second version which then can be seen as a response from her "I'm Always Watching You Too". I just enjoy that idea of a dialogue between songs and maybe that helps bring these two characters closer to each other in the narrative of these two songs. Because they're sort of saying the same things to each other. And he is involved with other people but bored by other people and hopefully he's imagining that she is with other people and she is bored too but he'll settle for the fantasy of watching her watch him while she's with someone else. Wow. That's very complicated. Very freaky.

*laughter*

But I felt a little evolved having two songs with parallel narratives. And Kato did a phenomenal job making that happen.


Much thanks to Sondre Lerche for discussing his stellar new record Pleasure. The record is out now on his own imprint PLZ and make sure to catch him on his upcoming world tour - the US dates have already started.

Also here's the aforementioned "Violent Game" remix by Ice Choir:

All Around Sound-Off No. 5: Cemeteries

My introduction to Cemeteries came more or less by strange chance as I found myself sweet talked into attending a Portals x Stadiums & Shrines CMJ showcase that ended up being the then Buffalo based musician's last stop for CMJ before hopping back in the van and headed back home. It was a serendipitous set - with me so enthralled by Cemeteries that I looked him up and struck up an online correspondence.

Soon after I started getting occasional updates from Kyle Reigle about a new record he was working on. Little breadcrumbs here and there until finally, three years after those first cryptic messages about the album, Reigle finally released Barrow, the follow up to his 2012 debut album The Wilderness.

An album whose period of gestation seemed to encompass their very length of our friendship, it seemed only right to reach out to Reigle in his new Portand digs to sate my curiosity about it and after a bit of missed connections, we finally arranged for a perfect time to have a talk the new album and catch up.

Dante (All Around Sound): I saw you for the first time in October of 2012 and we started talking after that. So pretty much for as long as I've known you you've been working on this new record.

Kyle Reigle (Cemeteries): Yeah because that was when The Wilderness first came out. It was in October of 2012 so pretty soon after is probably when I started working on it, yeah.

Do you think you could take me through the timeline of this record? Because you've been working on it for three years.

Kyle: Yeah. I knew after The Wilderness that I wanted to do something different with more synths which is why I think I ended up doing Camp Counselors. Basically The Wilderness came out and it turned out to be more of a rock record than I wanted it to be so I wanted to do something more laid back, a lot of synthesizers, a little more eerie and stuff which eventually turned into Huntress from Camp Counselors. But I just kind of hacked away at it for three years. The difference between Camp Counselors and Cemeteries is Cemeteries is mostly live instruments, Camp Conselors is mostly synthesizers and computers and stuff like that so that was really easy for me to make at the time I made it. It was really tough for me to do another Cemeteries album because I didn't really have the equipment or anything. So I just started writing it - I wrote like 10 songs probably starting in November of 2012 and I had them all ready and when I finally out here [to Portland] I got a practice space and everything and thought I finally have enough equipment to make it. So I started working on it and half of those songs I scrapped and I wrote new ones here.

You scrapped half of them? So what are the ones you had from New York and what are the ones you wrote in Portland?

Kyle: "Sodus" was one of the first songs I wrote. I wrote that I think in November right after The Widerness came out. "Our False Fire On Shore", which is the last song, I wrote around that time. And "Can You Hear Them Sing?". I think the rest of them I had actually written in Portland.

So all the synthier songs you wrote in Portland?


Kyle: "I Will Run From You" I had written a version of that in New York and it was a lot more fast and punky in a weird way.

*laughter*

So that changed a lot and I rewrote the whole entire last half of it. But only really three songs made it from back then and the rest of them I wrote out here. Or at least changed older songs and made them...better.

You've been posting B-sides and demos lately and I was wondering if any of those songs morphed into the songs from Barrow?

Kyle: Yeah, I did that little EP over last summer, I think, and that had a few songs on it like "Iroquois" and all that. The only one on that that was actually going to be on Barrow was the song "Heathens" - that kind of acoustic-y song but it didn't really fit and I didn't want to do something acoustic and folky really. Because The Wilderness had some folk vibes, there was some acoustic guitar and things like that. I didn't really want to do that with Barrow. I kind of knew immediately I didn't want that on there and so I just released it. The rest were kind of like I was bored and made random songs.

So "Sodus" was the longest song you had from that period that actually made it onto the record- 

Kyle: Right after I did CMJ and The Wilderness came out and all of that I basically - Jonathan, my other friend Andrew and I went to a cottage in Fair Haven which is a big inspiration for the record. We stayed there for about a week. I went up there with the idea to write some songs and that's when I wrote "Sodus" and "Our False Fire on Shore" was there.

How many iterations did it go through before it ended up album ready?

Kyle: That song? I definitely had the intro and the verse. How they are on the album is how I wrote them. I recorded a demo of it - I think I just did it on my phone so it doesn't sound very good or anything but it was originally just kind of a verse-chorus-verse-chorus-ending kind of thing with it. But then I realized I really liked the verse, didn't really like chorus, so then it kind of turned into how it is now where it's kind of two songs. Like the first half is that repeating verse and the bells come in and everything and the last half is that different part which I added later. I don't remember when.

While you were recording this record - you mentioned that [The Wilderness] didn't really come out the way you had wanted it to - you started Camp Counselors. Was Camp Counselors how you had intended The Wilderness to sound like or was it a way to free yourself up creatively so you go back to this record? 

Kyle: It was kind of a way to free myself up. It was kind of a lot of things. I did The Wilderness - I didn't even intend to really make a record with that. I had done a few little things like that cover of that Neon Indian song which got me a little attention and then I made "Summer Smoke" which really isn't that rock-y, it's just kind of low and drawn out but people picked up on that a little bit and that's when Lefse [Records] contacted me and wanted to do a record. And I was like "Yeah! Yeah...I mean I'm working on stuff." And there was a lot of songs on this other record that I put other that I liked, well that I liked then I don't anymore, called Speaking Horrors. I redid "Leland" from that and "Young Blood" and a few other things.

Speaking Horrors isn't online anymore, right?

Kyle: Yeah, I took that off. I'm not really happy with that anymore. So The Wilderness ended up really cohesive for a first official record. I'm happy with that aspect of it but it had three older songs, some new songs, it didn't totally really all fit. And the single "The Wilderness" and the song  "Roosting Towns", it's definitely like a more upbeat record. So when I finished that I was like I want to do something a little more laid-back, slow burn which Huntress ended up being. But Huntress was also the result of not having the equipment to a new Cemeteries record and my friend Seth had passed away and I was going through a really weird thing and I wanted to just make songs. So I made that really fast as a kind of little intermission thing I guess. Then the tour happened because of that which took up more time and it ended up taking three years to finish this other album.

I mean the tour wasn't all bad though. Did it help you out in any way?

Kyle: Oh yeah, the tour was amazing. It was one of the best times in my life. I mean you and I had been friends so at that point you knew that I was kind of miserable in New York and everything so to get out and do that was really helpful for me. And then to move out here has been ten times more helpful. I'm definitely just in a better place.

It's weird that you say The Wilderness was upbeat because it was inspired by all of this wanting to move out of your super small town, right? 

Kyle: Yeah. I guess just making that album was a coping mechanism for the boredom that I had there. The cabin fever I was getting.

So that's been weird because The Wilderness I wrote under those situations and here I like where I am now. It's been weird to write ...happy? I don't know.

*laughter*

My music isn't any more optimistic or anything.

No, it's darker. 

Kyle: Yeah.

But strangely not. The subject matter is darker. There's brighter synth tones and stuff.

Kyle: Yeah, there's a lot more piano and I didn't want it to sound super dark or creepy. Even though it does at times. I feel like there's moments that are really light.

I feel like it's more eerie than dark. Like eerie is "I feel uncomfortable" and dark is "Oh no, things are bad".

Kyle: Yeah, it never gets bad. If anything it's like something's not right.

There's always this kind of menace that creeps in except like "Sodus". I'm pretty sure people die then, right?

Kyle: In "Sodus"? Yeah. I know I said The Fog by John Carpenter was an influence and that song is essentially a remake of that movie but in song form.

*laughter*

So you're working on this record and you did Camp Counselors but then you started Snowbeast [Records] and you started doing your Halloween compilations and then after you moved you started helping out with Track and Field [Records], right?

Kyle: Right.

You've been putting out songs pretty consistently while you've been working on this record.

Kyle: Yeah. Consistent for me at least.

How did you balance having to finish this record with creating new songs that are completely out of the realm of this record that you're working on?

Kyle: Yeah I just put off a lot of stuff. Barrow was originally supposed to come out...I mean I kept telling Jonathan, my roommate and who I run Snowbeast with, "Yeah it's gonna be out in May". *laughs* Like last May not this May.

I've been hearing that it's almost done forever.

Kyle: Exactly. Well, it was almost done back then but I was like "You know what if I took this long I'm going to take a little more time with it.". Which I'm glad I did. There was a version of it that was done in November that I sent out to some people and everyone really liked it but the more that I sat with it I was like "I can make these changes". I'm glad I did that because some of the songs changed completely.

So you thought you were done with it last November and you've been working on it since then?

Kyle: Yeah it was done last November and I basically went back and worked on it this winter a little more. I finished it, I think, in April. And I had to get it mastered and figure out what I was doing with it and everything.

Was there a specific moment of "Oh my god, this record is done. I have to get it out!"?

Kyle: Yeah. There was a moment - because I mixed it all too. Produced and mixed and everything. The only thing I didn't do was master it. Warren did that. But there was a point where I was working on it after it was all recorded trying to get the final mix and I would be like "Yeah this is good but this one guitar note is a little loud" or "This is good but this drum part isn't as effective as I want it to be". So there was definitely like a month of me combing it and combing it and one day I was just like fuck it I need to get it off my hands because it was putting too much stress on me. And that's when I gave it to Warren and he did the master for it.

Well it ended up turning out that you're really proud of it so it's good that you took it out of your own hands.

Kyle: Yeah. So I have a tough time listening to anything that I do...

*laughter*

I've listened to it a couple times: when we got the test pressings in on vinyl I listened to it again on that, we just got the tapes in and I listened to those to make sure everything sounded good. And I'm still like "Oh yeah, this part is really cool". Or this or that. I like it a lot.

So before this record, before Barrow, you had this distinguisher that Camp Counselors was kind of your dancier, synthier project that was inspired by horror movie soundtracks for Huntress and Cemeteries was kind of a dream pop thing. But Barrow kind of dips into all these things I thought of as Camp Counselors stuff - especially like "Empty Camps".

Kyle: Yeah. "Empty Camps" - that pulsating synth line is very Camp Counselors. Oh there's a lot of moments on the record that are pulled from that. I think because when I made The Wilderness I hadn't really dipped into that yet, I didn't really know how to, I hadn't really worked with programming synthesizers or things like that. I was just like "Oh I'm gonna make a guitar album". But when I worked with Camp Counselors it was like "Oh I really like doing this" and to like throw in the guitar and live stuff over it like I did on Barrow is a nice little blend. I think I'll keep kind of combining the two. I'm still going to keep doing Camp Counselors stuff.

Have you thought about what they mean separate from each other? What kind of makes them unique now that you're blending? 

Kyle: Yeah. I feel like the vocals are pretty different on both of them.

They're both pretty indistinguishable...

Kyle: The Wilderness definitely started with my vocals as part of the instrumentation. There would just be a lot of "ooo"'s, a lot of holding notes out. I definitely explored that more with Camp Counselors. I added a lot of echoes and did a lot of effects on my vocal and made it kind of this other weird thing. And then Barrow, I think I tried to tone that back a little and do more melodic stuff like "Empty Camps" is probably the most straight-forward vocally that I've ever done. It's got this melody, I'm really happy with how that one turned out. So I feel like Cemeteries is going to start going more into melodic songs and Camp Counselors will still be this weird shit that I don't know if people are going to like but I do so I'm just gonna keep making it, I guess.

So the record's done. It's done, it's out there, it's over. What are you doing now? You're probably super burned out from working on a record for three years, right? What's your game plan?

Kyle: I can't stop working on stuff. I'm still working on a lot of stuff.

...You're working on new songs?

Kyle: Yeah. The reason that Barrow took so long as it did even when I moved out here - because when I moved I wasn't lined up with a job or anything so I worked on it a lot when I first got here but we also didn't have a practice space so I didn't have a place to record drums or loud guitar. We lived in an apartment in the city so you can't really record that stuff but around May of last year we got this space and I started putting the final touches on it. But then I found a job - a 40 hour a week job, so I was trying to finish it while working that But I basically set it up that I'm not working right now. I'm about to go on another tour with Jamison for Teen Daze. Yeah, I stopped working like a week, week and a half ago. I'm leaving for tour September 1st I want a month off, I put my two weeks in and left my job right around the time I released Barrow so I'm just gonna celebrate that and work on some other stuff. But yeah all I've been doing the last week and a half is writing and recording new stuff. It's not gonna be another three year wait basically on any another project. If anything they'll probably be a couple records in the next couple years from different projects that I have.

You have more than two now? You have more than two? Did you start another one?!

*laughter*

Kyle: There's a third thing that I'm working on. It's not just a solo thing.

Well that's a way to distinguish it. Is there another Camp Counselors record in the works?

Kyle: Yeah. I've been working on, just over the last couple years, songs for that. The cool thing about that is once I get an idea for the songs I can just kind of finish them on my laptop. That's why I like that project so much. It's a lot easier to make and to complete. So I'm probably just going to work on that on tour when I have nothing else to do but read books and look at the road for 8 hours.

Question from pretty much anyone who knows you: When are you going to make a horror movie soundtrack?

Kyle: *laughs* Whenever I make a horror movie or whenever somebody asks me to. That's the dream. That's what I want to do.

You're pretty much there. Barrow is pretty much a horror movie soundtrack over 8 tracks. 

Kyle: Yeah, that's kind of what I was going for. I even threw around the idea of filming a short 49 minute thing to coincide with the record but that was just too much work. Someday maybe.

In Barrow the songs are kind of self-contained. Well there's kind of weird stuff that happens in a song and a different weird thing will happen in another song. Is there a particular way you got to have those little stories being told? Did you sit down and think of what this story would be or did it just kind of come when you were working on the songs?

Kyle: You mean how I like call back on other stuff in other songs?

Yeah. I mean there's this overarching story but each individual song calls back to that sometimes but not all the time. There's different stuff that happens. 

Kyle: Yeah, I could definitely map out the story. And I kind of explain the story from different perspectives. The whole basic idea is that this witch was burned in this small town and then 100 years later she's returning to punish the sins of the people's forefathers that killed her. In a weird way that's kind of the overarching thing but I also don't really like to say that because there's so many other little ideas in there.

Oh yeah there's definitely different things happening.

Kyle: Yeah there is. The first song "Procession" is an instrumental and goes into "Nightjar" which is essentially about this woman. But then it goes into "Luna" where there's kind of this idea of these people know this happened to this woman and they're sacrificing things to her in the lake because she kind of embodies the lake around this town now. And if they don't keep doing this she'll return in some form whether it's like a storm and drown out the town so they're trying to keep her at bay and keep her happy. That's what "Cicada Howl" is about too. About these young kids that are recruited into this. But then then there's "I Will Run From You" and "Empty Camps" which is kind of its own separate story still set in the town but has nothing to do with anything else.

So it's like a little vignette. This town is just plagued by many, many, many dark things. 

Kyle: Right. Yeah. It's basically like something happened 100 years ago. Some people know about it, some don't but other things are happening as a result of it. There's definitely like the main storyline but I didn't want to do 8 songs all about the same thing. So I kind of introduced different ways and different perspectives to the story.

I kind of got that feeling. Did you sit down and physically map it out? Or was it just kind of the lyrics that you made drifted that way?

I changed a lot of the lyrics over the course of it. That's another thing I did differently. I spent a lot more time on lyrics this time around. Usually those are more of an afterthought for me. Just "this word sounds cool or that" but I actually wouldn't like certain things and would rearrange them and map it out and try to figure out references - there's references to other songs in other songs. I think in "Sodus" I say "Can you hear them sing?" and there's the song "Can You Hear Them Sing?"

And in "Empty Camps" you have a reference to "I Will Run From You". With one of the lyrics actually being "I will run from you".

Kyle: I know you've been asking - I'm going to post up the lyrics at some point soon.

I tried to sing out a little more on this album and pronounce words better. There's a delay on the vinyl and that's mostly because of the plant that's doing the vinyl.They have a huge backup but I did get everything in a little later than I should have because I just wanted to make the packaging perfect but the back - there's no insert but the whole back cover has the lyrics on it in a really cool way. I'm really excited about it because I didn't really get to do that with The Wilderness.

When is the vinyl copy of the record coming out? Do you know yet?

Kyle: They don't know yet, we've asked them but there's the delay. It's probably gonna be Fall. I'm hoping by the time I get back from tour in October. It shouldn't be any later than November.

It's a Fall record anyway. That's fine.

Kyle: Yeah. I'm definitely going to try to do something special for at least the people that have pre-ordered because I've been getting a lot of pre-orders for it and I feel bad making people wait that long. So I'm definitely going to make it something cool. I don't know what yet. Locks of my hair or something.

*laughter*

Or candy like how you do with Snowbeast. 

Kyle: Oh yeah, we're still doing that. We're still sending out candy.
  
Have you been on working on any of these songs with Jonathan? Have you tried to work out a live setup yet?

Kyle: I'm trying to. It's tough to get all of us together. We haven't even practiced in a couple months and he's busy working on his own stuff. He's got some pretty cool stuff coming out soon actually. I do want to. That's kind of why this third project is happening. I want to do stuff with other people but it's hard for me to do that sometimes. As much as I want to make music with another person I'm like "UGH but I like it this way".

Well you were a solo musician for so long.

Kyle: Yeah. It's kind of weird to not be like "Yeah do it this way or that way". It's definitely something that's bound to happen even if it's just a song or something but right now I'm just working on some other stuff. When I get back from this next tour I'm just gonna focus on live shows and writing new songs and getting a legit band together to play some shows.

Thanks so much to Kyle Reigle from Cemeteries for agreeing to sit down and chat cross-country about his brand new record, nearly three years in the making, Barrow. If you haven't yet you can check out my review of it here as well as stream/download it via Bandcamp or pre-order a physical copy in the form of vinyl or cassette from Snowbeast Records (fog grey LP/black and white cassette) or Track and Field Records (lake green LP)

All Around Sound-Off No. 4: ARMS

A little known fact is that in addition to giving the All Around Sound-Off its name, Todd Goldstein better known as the frontman of Brooklyn indie rockers ARMS was actually the first interview I ever did right around the release of the band's sophomore record Summer Skills. The interview was lost forever into the ether and while it's been essentially a long-standing inside joke between Todd and I that we would replace it with another, the news that ARMS would soon be recording/releasing a new EP seemed like probable cause to reach out to Todd Goldstein again to see if he would finally be game for another chat. Thankfully he was and we met outside of Pianos after one of their sets earlier this year to continue a conversation that had started nearly two years prior.


Dante (All Around Sound): I'm really excited about your new EP...like SO much. What can we expect from it?
Todd Goldstein: Well, we recorded it ourselves which was a not new but a return to that from working on a big studio album. That was in part because of resources and in part because I really missed the feeling. The home recorded stuff just sounds a lot closer to what I'm hearing in my head and I have more control over it and part of that control is giving up control to like shittily recorded tracks and first takes and just kind of leaving it as it is and just letting the magic of it, if it is in fact magic, be there. It's five tracks and it was most of what I wrote in the last year after Summer Skills. I don't know, it's just kind of in terms of - I was thinking this, because you know I'm an ex music writer and all that stuff, in terms of adjectives: If Summer Skills was - someone described it as sinewy once which I really liked. It's sort of moody and sinewy  then this new EP is sort of careening and expressive. It's really high energy and it's really rough around the edges and it's a lot more fun than anything.

Sweet. I've heard some of the songs live so is it kind of a similar thing to that or did you make any changes to the songs when you brought them in to record?

TG: No, it's similar to that but you know, there's more layering and atmosphere and all that. It's just a lot more fun - they're fun songs that I had fun writing and I have fun playing them.

Hah. I wouldn't have used that adjective to describe you guys ever. I mean, you know... 

*Laughter*

When we talked before, long long ago, you mentioned that Summer Skills actually got its initial inspiration from Kids Aflame. Was there any pre-established inspiration that you drew for this one? 

TG: No. Which was sort of the scary and interesting part of doing the EP. I felt like I kind of exhausted this huge creative well with Summer Skills. I basically poured every little piece of whatever I had into it and I started with pretty much a blank slate writing afterwards which is something I hadn't really done before. I think that's in part why it's kind of taken awhile to get the motor revved again. We're in to writing another full length right now because I've kind of got the groove going but the inspiration for making these was that I just needed to find a new way to write that wasn't based on concept and let the concept become what it was going to be. Just writing some songs was the thinking. I've been happy to find since finishing the songs and hearing them together that they're definitely a piece and there's definitely some throughlines and all that stuff but the inspiration was really just writing more about myself.

For this EP was there more of a conscious effort to return to writing or did the songs just kind of come to you naturally? 

TG: It was like a real conscious effort. I really had to push it. Songwriting doesn't come easily to me like ever and with these five they really had to be ...I had to sort of force myself to write this stuff because I was like 'I need to make more stuff. I need to get past that record'. I needed to find a new voice after I had done that. That was sort of the way Kids Aflame worked and I was thinking of that kind of relationship where the songs themselves are very tightly constructed and very carefully put together but the performances are very loose and kind of tossed off, you know, in a good way. In the good attitude.

Last year you resurrected a bunch of Kids Aflame songs that you hadn't really played in awhile. Going back to those was there any kind of new revelations that you got from going back to these old songs that you wrote? 

TG: Yeah. There was an attitude I had when I was writing those that I had gotten really far away from and that i really wanted to get back to. I don't think we're a band that's been around long enough that the idea of returning to your roots is like a last ditch effort at anything, it was just kind of trying to recalibrate where I was at and just think about things differently. I really like those old songs because they're really direct and they're all kind of trying a different thing and there's a sense of innocent exploration that I had going on at that time that I couldn't get back to completely but tried to think of things that way like 'What if I wrote a song like this?' and not try to fit it in to anything larger or make it mean anything larger. It's just like a self-contained little world and that was kind of something that I learned from them - that I could go back to those songs and playing them realized I wrote some songs that I really love from that time. I don't write song like that anymore but I totally still could if I want to.

I kind of already kind of the answer to this question but who are some of your favorite songwriters? Do you feel like any particular songwriter really influenced your writing?

TG: I feel like I've gotten to this point where I don't even listen to songwriters anymore. I listen to mostly ambient music, jazz, electronic, and minimalist classical stuff and that's sort of where I hang out most of the time. I mean, you know, if I listen to my stuff there's Mark Kozelek in there; Neil Young and maybe a little bit of Elvis Costello and a little bit of Elliot Smith. Ted Leo? I don't know, I listen to all sorts of stuff. When I'm writing songs I'm just writing songs I know to write. What are your guesses?

I mean I knew about Kozelek. I know you have like moodier songwriting likes and whatnot. So for this round was there any change in what you were listening to versus what you were listening to before that you felt defintely impacted what you were doing?

TG: I think I stopped listening to indie rock. That's actually a pretty big thing. I mean, I listen to it still because it's like happening and I like to keep up on things but I stopped kind of strong identifying with it for whatever that's worth. What I play is definitely indie rock, there's no question but I just kind of stopped. On one hand I stopped really giving a shit about indie rock aside from what my friends are doing which I think is cool and picking and choosing here and there but while I stopped caring about it I think I wanted the stuff I was making to sound a little more like it. I was like 'Fuck it.' I made an art-pop album that was maybe a bit impenetrable tone-wise to some people and I kind of want to make stuff that people listen to and I want my stuff to make sense with the stuff that other people are doing so people have a door in. So I switched up the approach a little bit to make it a little more like the stuff I listened to when I was growing up. Just like 90s indie rock; Pedro the Lion and Pavement, Built to Spill and stuff like that. I can say that's like a big influence.

For Summer Skills you said some of the influence came from really intense movies like Brick. Was there any particular mindset you tried to get into when trying to write these songs that you attached to? 

TG: Yeah. I feel like this is a little bit more influenced by some books. I'm trying to concentrate a little more on smaller moments and intimate details. I read this book by Lorrie Moore called Birds of America. Every story is really beautiful and kinda sad and about very real people but it's just like so perfectly observed and I kind of wanted to do something that was more impressionistic and intimate. It was less about the widescreen mood and concept.

So it was about two or three years ago when you recorded your other EP, was there any particular way you went about it this time on this new EP? 

TG: No. More mics, better mics. We got someone to mix this album. We worked on all the tracks ourselves and got this guy Jason Finkel to do the mixing.

I know him. 

TG: You know him? Of course! Through the blog world. He's a really awesome guy and we totally get along and he just gets how to make all this stuff kind of work together. It sounds fucking great - it'll be done by the end of next week. We recorded it the same but I think the years of difference just in terms of how our views have changed and our sensitivities and stuff and the fact that we got someone to really put it together is going to make a huge difference.

 Much thanks to Todd Goldstein for sitting down with me (again) to discuss what's one of my most anticipated released. The new EP, aptly titled EP2 will be released September 10th on Paper Garden Records.      

All Around Sound-Off No. 3: Young Man

My introduction to Chicago based band Young Man happened surprisingly enough from a suggestion based purely on my love of Sondre Lerche. I hadn't ever heard of Young Man but man if I wasn't intrigued. I came for the pop jams but stayed for the thoughtful attention to detail and the interesting concept. Where nowadays it seems like lady singer/songwriters get all the fun with creative, atypical, or even just unashamedly intellectual songwriting, I was drawn to Colin Caulfield's arresting, well utilized plainspeak. Vol. 1 reminded me in a rather odd way of Laura Marling's I Speak Because I Can. The two were certainly different and Caulfield strayed toward poppy accessibility and universalness but the idea of young people growing up and learning about life was their common thread. It wasn't exactly I Speak Because I Can from a male point-of-view but it was close enough to pique my interest and make me explore the rest of the Young Man canon. 

Caulfield's always been rather open about the fact that after the release of the final album of his coming of age trilogy, the band Young Man was over. With the release of Beyond Was All Around Me creeping ever nearer until its eventual release and what I could only assume was the band's final tour together it only made sense to try and sit down with Caulfield and discuss the end of the project. Which Caulfield obliged by inviting me to chat right before their headlining set at Glasslands in the front of the band's tour van.   

Dante (All Around Sound): So thanks for meeting with me today. Let’s just dig right in, alright?  

How exactly did the Young Man trilogy start? Did it kind of evolve from the Boy EP?

Colin Caulfield: I wrote a bunch of songs – like the first Young Man songs I wrote, some of which are on Beyond Was All Around Me like “School”, “In Time”, and “Unfair”, I wrote those before Boy and then I started writing Boy. I started to realize the songs that I had written would be better for a full band so I wanted to do something before that kind of as an introduction to the project. But kind of concurrently during the writing and recording of all that I continued to write so all these songs happened in the process of the last four years.

Did you write the whole song cycle at the same time? Or has it taken the whole four years to write all of this?

Colin: The songs that are on this new record that are old have gone through so many different variations. I mean, I wrote versions of them a long time ago but started really drafting them and stuff.  

How was it going back to these older songs? Did you have different feelings about them? Did you have to update them?

Colin: Mm. Yeah, definitely. I mean “Unfair” especially went through a lot of changes but it didn't feel that weird because they were always so new – they always felt so new because we were doing these different versions with the band and stuff.  It was like new territory for me. Even though we were playing songs that I had written prior to that point it was very, I don’t know, exploratory because I didn't know what I was doing with the live stuff yet.

You play a number of instruments; you play guitar and drums and piano, right?

Colin: Yeah.

What made you decide to go with a guitar as basically the main instrument of Young Man?

Colin: I guess the songs that I started writing for Young Man I was writing on guitar and the guitar and voice combination is just very natural for me. I guess it just made sense. I’d love to be a drummer in a band that sings but for this it just wouldn't make sense if the lead singer was the drummer.

On Beyond Was All Around Me and Ideas of Distance you have these pretty beefy string arrangements how much say did you have in that? What’s your musical background?

Colin: I took some theory classes in college. I didn't major or minor in music but I know a good bit about part-writing and stuff like that. But I had help on both of them; especially with the new one. I flew to Boston and did all the arrangements with this string arranger named Ben Talmi who goes to Berklee. He might be graduated now actually but I went there and I spent a week with him and we just sort of workshopped everything in his apartment. I wrote all the lead melodies and then he would write the accompaniments and we kind of just went from there.

Since Boy you’ve pretty much released all of this stuff on a pretty consistent basis of about an album a year. Was there any particular reason why you wanted to get the music out so fast?

Colin: This has been very much a learning process for me, this project. My best album is definitely still in me maybe even in me right now. Songs that I’m writing now are just better; they’re just all around better songs. I think just because it’s about youth and coming out of youth, because I feel like I have done that now, that now I just don’t want to be treading over that material for too much longer. So I felt this compulsion to get everything out really quickly and I think that’s just in my nature too. Hopefully now that I've gotten that out of my system the next release I do, whatever it is, I’ll be ready to really milk that one release, you know? And take it one at a time instead of thinking about the next record.

I mean, it doesn't come across like you just trying to get these songs out of the way. It definitely feels like you've spent time on them.

Colin: Yeah, no doubt. I did and we've spent time working on them but still once they were done I wanted to be like “Okay, let’s do more.”

How long was your recording process?

Colin: We were here for three weeks tracking and then I came back for a week of mixing. So it was like a month.

Each album kind of has a different method that you went through. Ideas of Distance was mostly self-mixed and produced, right?

Colin: Mhm.

And then you had John McEntire on Vol. 1 and then… so is there any particular reason why you went through all these methods and didn't just stick to one producer or one way?

Colin: Well I moved on from doing it myself because I can’t record a full band. I don’t have the equipment to do that and so that was an obvious step. With McEntire it was a good experience but it just didn't gel perfectly, you know? So we started thinking about other people and then Nicolas [Vernhes], yeah I would make another record with Nicolas.

Yeah, everyone pretty much goes to him.

*Laughter*

Colin: Yeah I know, he’s awesome. But yeah it was just kind of out of necessity.

Beyond Was All Around Me is way more band-centric than Vol. 1 was that kind of the intent going into it? Did you want a more band-centric album?

Colin: Yeah. I wanted to somehow balance it being like really personal music with the fact that it was a full band. I mean it got to be weird this dynamic of being the main songwriter in a band that like the live show is like so original in terms of original from the source material. We’d take the songs in such different directions and stuff so I wanted the record to reflect that more instead of just being a representation of me.

I also read that around the recording process of Vol. 1 you were listening to a lot of ambient/electronic music and that kind of comes out in it. Was there any specific thing that you were listening to going into Beyond Was All Around Me that might’ve inspired it?

Colin: I can’t really think of anything to be honest. Beyond Was All Around Me felt the most like a culmination of everything, of all my influences and stuff like that. So there wasn't necessarily one thing.

So if you had to pick three tracks from your whole works that summed up what you were trying to do with Young Man, what would they be?

Colin: Hmm. That’s a good question. I think “Enough” off of Ideas of Distance or maybe “Felt”. Man, that’s a tough question ‘cause there’s so many songs.

I mean if you want to go more than three feel free.

Colin: “Felt”, the closing track on Ideas of Distance…

Which actually counts as “Enough” because there’s the whole it comes back in it…

Colin: That’s true. Good call. So “Felt”, man this is hard. It’s a hard question. Good hard question. Um “Waterford”! Yeah “Waterford”, off the new album, lyrically I think is really strong in terms of that and I think “Five” off of Boy is really clever and deals with the idea of growing up and that  transition really well. Those three: so “Five”, “Felt”, and “Waterford”.

And I’m sure everyone wants to know, what are you doing after this?

Colin: I don’t know. I’m moving to New York but I’m trying to just give myself some time. By the time we’re done with touring with this record, I will have another album done if I want to record it but I don’t want to jump into it too fast and make sure I really really really want to put it out, you know?

Are you planning on going in like a radical new direction?

Colin: I don't know. I've demoed a couple things that could be considered very different. Who knows though. It's so hard to decide on one thing. That's kind of the reason I want to wait and make sure the direction I go in I want to commit to it. 

Thanks again to Colin Caulfield for agreeing to sit down and chat as well as to Hannah May at Sacks & Co for helping coordinate it. If you haven't heard it yet, listen to arguably the best Young Man record to date (and ever, so it seems) Beyond Was All Around Me.  My review here. 

If you have the opportunity to see them on this, their final tour as a band, do so. It's an experience I couldn't recommend any more highly. Dates here. 

All Around Sound-Off No. 2: Lands & Peoples

photo by Na Kim

A little more than a year ago, I stumbled upon Baltimore experimental pop rockers Lands & Peoples in a fit of ARMS-lust. Scouring Youtube for as many live videos I could find to tide me over until the release of their much anticipated sophomore record Summer Skills, I was intrigued by a Big Ugly Yellow Couch Session live from SXSW featuring an interestingly named band performing a cappella with a set of ginormous windchimes.

As I resolved to write about them, I ran into a snag: Their FB page had little to no information for the feature I intended to write about them. From a simple getting to know you email, an unexpected friendship between the band and I formed as I conspired all ways and forms to actually see them live (and most times failing), it wasn't until last year's CMJ when I finally succeeded in my goal and actual meet the band properly and the rest is somewhat history.

The road towards the interview between Lands & Peoples and I was an adventurous one as the out of town band and I, unfamiliar with Brooklyn in any helpful regard, set out to meet each other in a more or less noteworthy location but turned out to be Bushwick's small Maria Hernandez park not on any map of note as Caleb Moore directed me to them via brief telephone conversations and purely informative texts messages. The rather intrepid and ridiculous nature of our meeting set the tone for our chat as we found ourselves distracted by all number of things from a squirrel with a watermelon, a dog with a very large branch, and random passerbys trying to bum cigarettes, it gave a look into the fun-loving guys who form the intricate well-run machine of Lands & Peoples.

Dante (All Around Sound): I’m here with Lands & Peoples so tell me, who are you? When’d you form, how’d you form? All of that good stuff.

Caleb: I’m Caleb.

Beau: I’m Beau.

Charlie: I’m Charlie.

Caleb: So the question was how did we form – like all the way back?

That’d be nice.

Caleb: It was originally…I put up two or three…two songs on MySpace as Lands & Peoples and one of them was like really ambient and I was just getting into doing production stuff. I got compliments from my friends so I figured I should keep doing it. Then Amanda started playing with me for a brief spell – Actually it was like 6 months. It was just me and her as a two-piece and then Beau was living in New York when that was happening and ended up moving down to join the band basically. I don’t know if we were like – well actually it was like “You’re coming to play music, you’re going to be in the band.”

Beau: Remember when we had that show at home in Oxford over Christmas –

Caleb: It was like a little house show in an apartment.

Beau: Yeah and pretty much after that I decided to move down. I was unhappy in New York and wasn’t doing what I wanted to do and wasn’t happy in general. Had a sort of crappy living situation and was making a lot of music too which was a completely different thing from what we’re doing – what Caleb was doing. I just moved to Baltimore on a whim basically.

Caleb: And Beau – we had a history playing music because we lived together in college. He was one of the first people I played music with so it just kind of made sense.  We’re best friends. So then it was the three of us. We did that tour as a three piece – our first tour ever. And then, I don’t know, I guess some people said that we could use bass and I probably got really offended when they said that but then it made a lot of sense actually. So we found Brian and he was really nice – he was really into the music, pretty eager, and came up with some awesome shit. So then for a while there were four of us. That was probably the longest incarnation so far. We did another tour with that and recorded that whole album Pop Guilt with the four of us. And after the last tour we did with them which was to South By, right?

Beau: Yeah. That one was to Austin.

Caleb: It was our second time going down to South By and we got back and I think things weren’t really gelling that well with Amanda creatively. Like we’d kind of always been on different planes a little bit.  We ended up talking to her and kind of deciding that we should go our separate ways and Brian actually ended up leaving the bands with her sort of because he didn’t feel like it’d be the same vibe. That was his main reason.  So then for a while it was the two of us…I don’t know if you wanted all this history.

It’s all good.

Caleb: Well, that was really fun.

That was right about the time I discovered you guys.

Caleb: Yeah! Yeah, it was cool ‘cause we were just like “Fuck it! We don’t have to worry about ‘Oh I don’t know if Amanda would be into this’”. Like none of that. All that went away. And then we just got really weird and tried a bunch of new ideas and it was pretty fruitful in little time. We probably wrote like – this was like over a year ago but we probably wrote half the songs that’ll probably end up being on the next record. Like in that time. Maybe a third of them or a fourth.

Beau: Yeah. A lot of the time having more people in a band allows you to do more things but for us for whatever reason feeling like we needed to make everybody happy or making sure that everyone was into it. It just put restraints on I think Caleb and I mentally. Most of it in our own heads.

Caleb: Yeah. They were great.    

Beau: Yeah, they were totally great but like, you know –

Caleb: Me and him, I think we had developed a lot but we had never like us two really got together and puked out a bunch of crazy ideas. It was a pretty thrilling time for us.  As far as our creative process and writing goes.

Beau: Yeah and we did that for about 8 months and then we decided that…

Caleb (jokingly): All the fire just dissipated!

Beau: Well, you know, the same thing with having multiple people allows you to do different and more things is totally true because when you have two people and each person is in charge of their own instrument and singing you only have a limited number of limbs. You can only use a loop pedal so much.

Caleb: Yeah, we really didn’t want to be like an all the time looping or like every song is a loop song. We’re trying to figure out how to do that tastefully. It’s been done really horribly. It’s been done really amazing too. I think we’re just trying to figure how to do that subtly.

Beau: We were kind of playing with a few people. We tried to get a buddy of ours, Micky, to come in and play. We got this guy Mike from Sri Aurobindo, which is another Baltimore band

Caleb: Like psychedelic rock.

Beau: Yeah. He played bass with us one time and I had been playing in another band with Charlie in Charlie’s main project Raindeer. Just kind of was a guitar player for a little while and we asked to come in and play with us and we totally mixed really well and it was awesome. And that’s how Charlie came into the fold.

Caleb: How long has he been with us now?

Beau: Since this winter. It’s been like 7 months, I think.

Caleb: That’s crazy.

Beau: I mean, we’re in the 8^th month of 2012…

Caleb: It’s been really gradual. ‘Cause he has been…well at first I think you were focused more on doing Raindeer shows and stuff. I feel like just now he’s starting to sink into the fold a little bit better. It’s becoming more…good. For all of us. More satisfying. And that’s where we are.

Beau: That’s where we stand.

So you all have side projects and other bands – is it difficult to juggle them? Are there ever Lands & Peoples songs that started out as songs for Dead Drums or Zu Shapes or vice versa or do you have a very distinctive idea of what is what?

Caleb: When I make music I try – like at home when I’m messing around with the computer or whatever or at the space, I’m try to at least not think about that at all and just somehow get something good. And then we bring it to the table. There haven’t actually been any songs that have ended up sticking… I’ve tried that with a couple songs that were sort of just mine or felt like Dead Drums. Probably you saw one of the sets where we played a couple that were like ukulele based and more fluttery, maybe had some more ambience to it. But it didn’t quite sink in. I don’t know, I think it didn’t. It felt weird; didn’t feel as collaborative as it should’ve been. Even though Beau has been really open to trying ideas out. We got them pretty far along and it sounded cool but it just felt a lot better when we were writing songs completely together and like doing it that way. Also, Dead Drums is so much about sound design and the feel of the recording that it’s – Like, I’m much happier writing songs and songwriting, that’s what I get out of this.

 Beau: And I think that like the sound designing aspect and the feel of the recording is what all of us – all three of us in our own separate ways are really into. It’s true. I guess it’s true that Dead Drums is kind of… (to Caleb) I mean would you say that  Dead Drums is a recording project more than a performance project?

Caleb: Yeah. I mean right now all I do is improvise some synth stuff and it’s like really awkward and I’m just like thumbing through presets. It’s fun. When you do it every now and then it’s like exhilarating.

Beau: It’s not awkward at all. It’s very great. It’s really good! Don’t down-talk yourself.

Caleb: It’s weird. I don’t know…

Beau: I mean we’ve had this conversation recently because when I do Zu Shapes stuff, which hasn’t been all that much. I haven’t really been focusing on it a lot but I am working on it –

Caleb: We both kind of decided to make this our thing at least for a while. Until we need to get a break.

Beau: I have really crazy hours for work like Caleb has a regular job, you know? The hours in my job I could be there anywhere from 8 in the morning til midnight. Just my hours are really crazy so I end up having these weird, free spans of time where I just go and sit and be in our practice space and start recording stuff on the loop pedal and transferring it to a computer and messing around with it. I am currently trying to work on some Zu Shapes stuff. But everything I try to share with Caleb. We had this conversation recently about how anything that we make let’s at least share with the other person. So that if the other person’s into it – and not to call you out on record here Caleb but Caleb’s opinions, his tastes, tend to be a lot more hit or miss; it’s like “I don’t like that at all” or “I really do like that”.

Caleb: Yeah, that’s pretty true.

Beau: Whereas I –

Caleb: Beau’s just like much more open to trying anything.

Beau: I think that it may be coming from a theater background and having to exist in an art form with other people like there’s no choice you have to be with other people and no one likes just somebody standing up there doing monologues, you know? Although it can be great, it can be compelling and emotional. But at the end of the day when you’re in a theatrical group you’re a group of people so you learn to collaborate and commiserate and to compromise. That’s 3 C’s. Off the top of my head.

 *laughter*

I think that’s just something that I out of habit do, just like “Ok, how can we make this work so that we’re both satisfied?”

Caleb:  I think it’s going to be really interesting to see – I want Charlie to eventually if he has a song idea and for whatever reason it doesn’t feel like Raindeer, that’d be fun to do.

Charlie: Right now I’m just kind of feeling out their vibes and trying to get on board.

Beau: And he’s doing a great job.

Caleb: Totally. But I think me and Beau are just in the mindset right now whereas whatever we make if it feels like it would work we’re totally into trying it out as Lands & Peoples. Because that’s really ultimately what we’re going for is Lands & Peoples. The most. The hardest. We’re both going to record some new solo stuff eventually in like a year or two.

This year you released your debut full length which is actually a collection of old songs. I wrote about it twice and kind of never ever addressed the fact that I actually had no idea why you choose to release it now.

Caleb: When should’ve we? That’s my question. We couldn’t really figure out a better option. Well, Jimmy – we were talking to this label and our friend Jimmy was like “You know, maybe you should just wait on it and release some new stuff and then release that as a retrospective like ‘This is what we used to sound like’” and that felt really weird to me. Maybe it would’ve made sense but I don’t know.

Beau: I think that for us it felt like we needed to get it out there, you know? Because it had taken us so long in the first place to get it to a point where we were ready to release it and all four of us were ready for it to happen and ready for it to be out there.

Caleb: We were already sick of the songs. Like we’d been playing them for like a year and a half or a year at least. Not sick of them in a bad way.

Beau: We were just ready for them to be out. Out from our heads and our computers and our own personal computers. We just wanted them to be out and take legs and hopefully walk and have people listen to them and whatever. It just needed to happen.

Caleb: To move on.

Beau: It might not have been the smartest idea in terms of what we’re doing now and if anybody comes and sees the shows and are like “Oh, you guys don’t play anything from the record.” Well, we didn’t. I mean, we’ll play like one song from the record or whatever but I don’t know, it’s going to sound different from the record anyway. The record it’s so much about the space where the notes aren’t falling, the quiet times. So much of the record is about that. It feels about that and it wouldn’t sound the same if we were playing it anyway.

Caleb: I imagine…like the way I see it is if they came to our show and really liked us and then bought the vinyl, I think that’d just be a really nice treat. But also, it’d  be nice to have both.

Beau: Records cost money, man!

Caleb: It’s just as interesting and as good as what we’re doing it’s just a little different and more chill. And I think they like this stuff they’d like that too.

I did. So, when you released Pop Guilt you got the opportunity to kind of revisit all of these old songs, did you have a particular favorite? Did you have any tracks that you wish you could incorporate into your live set?

Caleb: I think we talked about doing “Kalimba” er not “Kalimba” but “Stiff and Crooked” because that one was the most just me and Beau out of the whole record. So it would make sense in our set maybe to try that. We haven’t gotten around to it. We’re just so excited about working on new songs. My answer to the other question is: I like “Don’t” a lot because for me, it felt like the most fully collaborative song. I feel like everyone brought something really nice to the table. I mean “In Living Color” too in the same way but that one was like a hit. And “Don’t” was –

Beau: *laughs* A “hit”.

Caleb: A “hit”. Whatever. People liked it.  And “Don’t” is sort of our little thing. No one’s even written about it or whatever.

Beau: I think in terms of like song layout and the way everything just kind of came together I think “In Living Color” is probably quote unquote the best song on the record. For me, I personally like “Stiff and Crooked” or “Sexting” those are the big ones that appeal to me. If I would’ve bought that record and had I not played the songs, those would be the ones that I like kept to myself. Those are the songs that I take away from the record. You know, you’ll get a record and put songs on a mix cd and someone’ll be like “Who’s this?” and you’ll be like “It’s actually this person. You should go out and get that album”. Those are the songs that I would put on a mixtape.

(To Charlie) Do you have any favorites from the record?

Charlie: I like “Ghosts” a lot.

Caleb (jokingly): He’s never listened to it.

*laughter*

Charlie: I haven’t heard it ever. I’ve been meaning to get around to it…

Caleb: I’ve been meaning to send it to you, send me your mediafire and maybe I’ll get to it.

Charlie: But like “Ghosts”, I like “Ukulele” a lot. I think “Don’t” was another one I brought up that we should play.

Caleb: It’s fun. Beau challenged me a lot of drums on that song which was cool. In a good way.

Beau: Yeah, that’s true. “Don’t” definitely has a lot of connections to kind of some stuff we’re doing now. Mostly in terms of the rhythm ‘cause it has these like “1,2,3, 1,2,3, 1,2,3,4, 1,2,3” and we do a lot of that with our songs now. We don’t have like standard “1,2,3,4, 1,2,3,4” rhythms. We’ll mix up the rhythms a lot. I never really thought about it that way.

Charlie: I actually always remembered “Ghosts” kind of standing out the most when I used to watch you guys.
Caleb: Yeah?

Charlie: It’s the one I would remember. Like I knew you played that song.

Beau: And that’s a good point because that’s the one that we play now and I think that still –

Caleb: We still get good reactions to that one.

Beau: Yeah, we get good reactions from it and it feels powerful to play because…maybe because it’s just so simple and so straightforward. It’s like two chords the whole song.

Just from my point of view I think it comes from it being an opportunity to really display your vocal chops and that impresses people.

Caleb: Like constant harmony and not trying to belt it out. Yeah, I think you’re right on that. And it’s rocky and has a groove. Pretty easy groove.

You guys have played music for a while together, did you have any bands that you guys got really excited about that made you want to play together?

 Caleb: Good question. (To Beau) Let’s think back to our college when you were showing me music and stuff like that.

Beau: You remember Elbow?

Caleb: I really liked Elbow. We both really liked the first Arcade Fire LP.

Beau: Oh. My. God.

Caleb: Like a lot.  Like as far as emotionally it was powerful music.

Beau: I remember sitting in the Square, ‘cause remember Hot Dog Records was still around? And Becky used to work there and I used to hang out with Becky all the time; Becky was this girl that I had a relationship with and we were really good friends but we broke up but it was a really emotional time for me.  She gave me that record or I bought that record, I can’t remember but I just sat in this place called the Square in Oxford and I listened to that record in a parking space in its entirety sitting in my car just looking at our town square and then started it over like immediately. That record was really big in my eyes.

Caleb: Another person I know that we both really connect with was Andrew Bird. You can hear that sort of on the record, I think, at times. We saw him together. I saw him for the first time, and I think it was your first time too, in Memphis?

Beau: Yeah at the Hi-Tone.

Caleb: And that was cool. It was like one of our earlier hangouts and he was definitely inspirational.

Beau: We took a picture with him!

Caleb: Yes! We have this really nerdy, amazing, painful to look at ‘cause it’s so uncomfortable-

Beau: It’s a really weird picture. I asked him if he’d take a picture with us and he’s like “Yeah, sure”. He’s like really soft-spoken and like frail man even though he’s not. He’s like tall and whatever but…So I was like “Can we take a picture like we just conquered the word and this is the picture that we have to commemorate the fact that we just conquered the entire world”. He was like “Uh…” and I was like “Yeah!” so we’re all doing this, we all have our fists raised to the sky. It’s so funny to go down the faces because it’s like my face which is like super –

Caleb: Into it.

Beau: Yeah!

Caleb: There might be a hint of like “This is a little weird”.

Beau: Caleb’s face is like “Yeah, okay, I’m into this but this is a little strange”, kind of even peeking at Andrew Bird out of the corner of his eye. And Andrew Bird’s just kind of like “What?” It’s just kind of funny. Really good picture though.

Caleb: Yeah Andrew Bird probably more than Arcade Fire. I just know that we both really liked that record. And then we had a bunch of friends that played music in Oxford, in our hometown, and I think at a certain point we were like “We do this all the time why the fuck aren’t we just doing this? We’re not that bad”. Then that’s how we started playing- through friends.

Beau: We just kind of threw together a band. Me and Caleb and our friend Chad and our friend James. I think in like two weeks we wrote six songs and we got really good feedback and we played another show a couple weeks or a month later. I think we played one more where Crystal Fever came and played.

Caleb: Oh, yeah.

Beau: Oh man…but then you know we both moved to different places. He moved to Baltimore and I moved to New York and then that was about the time that Baltimore was blowing up as a music scene and I think that that’s been our inspiration from then until now. Just like having friends in Baltimore who are incredibly amazing musicians. Like Lower Dens, Wye Oak –

Caleb: Wye Oak especially. Like watching them onstage and just like her presence and how super confident they are that was an influence. They’re sort of role models. Lower Dens too, we love them so much.

Beau: I don’t mean for it ever to sound like “Oh, these are my friends” because they’re not my friends like that in any means but I have the opportunity to not only enjoy their music but I get to see them and I get to talk to them about it and they’re the nicest people in the world. That’s been such an inspiration for me as a musician. Having moved from a small town in Mississippi where you know everybody to a bigger city like Baltimore, even though it’s small in terms of big cities –

Caleb: Yeah like Weather Systems by Andrew Bird is like one of the most amazing records ever. So good. If you haven’t heard it, it’s really good.

*laughter*

Beau: I’m sorry were you cutting me off? Was my answer too long?

Charlie: It wasn’t a short answer…

Caleb: Nice and short. 

Beau: Well, that was a good question!

Funny that you mention Lower Dens and Wye Oak because that’s kind of my last question. You guys have had the opportunity to play with some pretty awesome bands and do multiple shows with pretty great bands like Secret Mountains. You guys are like band bffs forever; you’ve played a lot of shows them. But you played shows with Nat Baldwin from the Dirty Projectors and Lower Dens and Wye Oak, was there any particular show that was your favorite to play?

Beau (to Caleb): I know what you’re going to say. If you say this one I just want to remind you of how tense it was at the time.

Caleb: I’m not saying anything yet. Thinking about it. Do you mean like favorite show out of bigger people that we’ve played with or just in general?

Just like favorite show.

Caleb: We played this one, this one at a place called Grandville House on our first tour ever and first stop on the first tour ever and it was like in front of a trailer out in the woods in Pennsylvania and made a pretty decent recording of it and that was back when it was just the three of us. That one’s one of my favorites just because I can listen to it and I feel like I’m there almost. There were cicadas chirping in the background, we were outside.

Beau: I thought you were going to say the blackout show.

Caleb: That’s just the biggest, most intense show we’ve ever played.

Beau: But I was going to remind you of – remember how we had that whole fight while Lower Dens were playing? Not fight but – sometimes when you’re onstage and you say things to try to make the show keep going but they’re completely misinterpreted.

Caleb:…Are you answering the question? Or are you digging up old wounds?

*Laughter*

Beau: My favorite show – that’s what I do man, I remind you of where we came from. Can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re from! But, my favorite show would probably be that one we played with Celebration before Charlie came into the band. It just felt –

Caleb: The vibes were perfect.

Charlie (jokingly): And then it went all downhill from there?

Beau: No, no. We’re going to play more amazing shows than we’ve ever played.

Caleb: It was just a really nice crowd in Baltimore and everyone loved Celebration and everyone was amped up and just really receptive.

Beau: The way the show started and ended was like perfect. It started up on this slope and it like, it started with “Based Jam” and came up on this slope and we just like rode it all the way to the end. We played perfectly, it was awesome. Probably my most favorite show ever.

Was there any band that you wanted to play with next?

Caleb: Yeah, a bunch probably. I’m obsessed with John Maus but I don’t know if that’d ever happen. Our music’s different. I’d like to play a show with some of these Baltimore people that we’ve just never –like that we’re kind of friends with. It’d be cool to play a show with Dan Deacon somehow, someway.

Beau:  It’d be cool to play a show with Dope Body.

Caleb: Ed Schrader. I like that guy a lot. I’ve been wanting to play with Twin Sister for a while but I don’t really know how to work that out. I really like them, they’ve influenced me a lot just like production-wise. I think they’re pretty amazing. Elvis Costello…No, now I’m just naming names.

Beau: I think I would like to go on tour with one of our friends again. I really like that. I’d love to go on tour with like Lower Dens or something. That’s more important to me than just playing this awesome show with this awesome band one time. It would be going on tour with a band that we really respect and love and we’re already kind of good friends with. Get to know them even better. 

Much thanks to Lands & Peoples for providing not only an entertaining chat in Maria Hernandez Park but also a pretty exceptional concert later that night at DelinquencyNYC. Make sure you catch them on tour.

If you haven't already, make sure you check out the band's exceptional debut Pop Guilt as well as other recordings on Lands & Peoples' Bandcamp.