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Angie McMahon

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And She Is A Woman: Angie McMahon On 'Salt' & Arguing With Men About Gender

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Ahead of her set in L.A., McMahon sat down with the Recording Academy to talk about her debut LP, processing her experiences through writing and attempting to argue about gender with men
Rachel Brodsky
GRAMMYs
Jul 26, 2019 - 9:11 am

Folk-pop performer Angie McMahon has a remarkable voice. Yes, she sings for a living, but the Australian singer/songwriter's trill is immediately captivating, deep and husky and reminiscent of everyone from Danielle Haim to Fiona Apple to Florence Welch. It's also quite unexpected coming from someone with such a slight frame and unassuming presence.

To American audiences, the 25-year-old may appear to have come out of nowhere, but McMahon, who releases her debut LP, Salt, today via Dualtone, has been in the game for the last six years or so, playing around Melbourne with a local soul project called The Fabric. She's also no stranger to playing to massive audiences: In 2013 she won a local songwriting competition to open for Bon Jovi on the Australian leg of their Because We Can tour, and as of now, in addition to playing the festival circuit (she's heading to Newport Folk Festival this weekend), she's currently prepping to go on tour with GRAMMY nominee Hozier. Her music, meanwhile, covers tried and true topics like relationships, but also looks at major themes of the day: On recent single "And I Am A Woman," she tries to communicate the nuance of a woman's experience to the opposite sex.

Ahead of her set in L.A., McMahon sat down with the Recording Academy to talk about her debut LP, processing her experiences through writing and attempting to argue about gender with men. 

I imagine the first thing most people think when they hear you is, “Wow, what a voice!” Is that something you get a lot?

I do. Sometimes if people haven't heard me sing and they hear me speak first, because my voice is kind of nasal. I think I speak like a kid sometimes, and then my singing voice is different. But yeah, I think I just shaped that around singers that I really loved, and I didn't even really notice that I was doing it when I was younger. k.d. lang is a really big one for me, the deep vocal work that she [does], and the deep emotion that she can bring up. I think when I started listening to her, I was just like, "I want to be able to do that." 

Did you grow up singing?

Yeah, sort of. I grew up playing piano when I was quite young, and then that turned into really loving covering pop songs and singing to myself. I didn't really learn singing, [or have] singing lessons, until I was maybe 18. 

I was always singing along in the car when we were going on family drives and stuff. We'd go out into the bush for a bit and listen to CDs. I was just constantly singing along, and constantly making my mom replay [songs, saying] “It's my favorite song.” I was like, "Again!" Even driving up and singing. I was probably pretty annoying as a sibling.

Did you start playing guitar around the same time? 

Yeah, I started playing guitar. It comes back to covering pop songs, and wanting to have the option of performing, picturing myself as a performer and starting to think about talent shows and stuff, maybe like 14, and not wanting to take a keyboard everywhere.

So I started learning guitar based off of my piano skills, and YouTube and stuff. I can't remember exactly why, what it was that triggered it, but I think it was probably the music that I was listening to, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen my dad was playing in the car. It made me want to be able to do that instrument. I still listen to those records, and want to be able to play the way that they play. I want to learn harmonica so I can play, just reach that sound space. But yeah, that's where the guitar came into it. I haven't had guitar lessons ever, and I'm really not very good. I'm not saying that out of humility. I know that my skill level is at a certain level, and I really would like to excel.

How many years were you playing around Melbourne before you started touring internationally?

I was always doing solo gigs here and there, but not very seriously, just whenever they would come up. That was probably from when I was about 17, 16 or 17. I'm 25 now, so maybe there was five years before I was looking to start the band. I was also in another band [The Fabric], which was a really good way for me to build experience and to keep singing, and to learn how to interact with boys in a band, and be in a band space. That was a soul group, so there were nine of us. There were eight boys and then me singing, and that went for three years from when I was 18 to 21.

Did you go to school for music?

No, I didn't. The uni that I was at had a music school that I didn't get into. I was doing English there and literature, [but] my extra subjects were music stuff, which is kind of the best way to go about it because I got to do the fun songwriting [classes] without having to do the assessments and intensive jazz training. It basically was a jazz course, and I can't sing jazz. I'm just not adept at that technique. I mean I had really good teachers at school, really good. I had a trumpet teacher who was a really big mentor for me in high school, and I had my piano teacher who was always really patient and lovely. All the teachers that I had mentored me in such a lovely way, but I didn't have a specific music course that I completed or anything.

Do you intend for music to be a living?

Yeah. I'd never really thought of it financially, but as a pursuit, just the way that I want to spend my time. It's always been what I was thinking about. It was kind of a source of an existential crisis, because my work ethic for a lot of my life, a lot of my teen years, was just not very good. It was this thing of always picturing myself on stage, and wanting to perform for my life and write songs, but not having done enough of the work for that to materialize.                                  

When I was finishing my degree and stuff, I'd gone through my whole English degree, sitting in every lecture theater, just picturing myself doing music and writing song lyrics in my notepad and stuff. It was just this fairy land, and then I finished my degree. I was faced with nothing that I wanted to do except music. I had to give myself a pep talk, several pep talks over the years, and some from my parents as well. But basically switched into the mode where I was like, okay. I have to look at the business side of the industry, and I have to understand what I'm willing to work at, and what I want to achieve. 

I know that you're about to put out your debut, Salt. It features a lot of tracks that were on your EP, A Couple Of Songs. What was the thinking in including most of the EP songs on the LP? 

Well, we were ready to put [an LP] out, and then we met Dualtone and wanted to have a chance to release it probably in America. It's such a big country and such a big industry over here, so we really wanted to work with Dualtone. They were so great, but we had to figure out a way to promote the singles that have already been released across the world. That's where the Couple Of Songs EP came in.

It's interesting for me, because these songs on the record, they are on the album, so it's almost like, at this point, a lot of the album has been released. I guess that was for the sake of having a way to kind of push it into this market, and we just kind of came out with a couple of songs EP on the fly. I was like, "Well, why don't we do a little EP?" That's where that kind of came from, but I'm glad we did it that way, because I feel like the songs have their own individual life.

I remember there was an artist who I loved when I was younger, who put out an EP that I was just obsessed with, and I couldn't wait for his album to come out. When his album came out, it wasn't nearly as exciting to me as the songs on the EP were. I just wished that those songs had been on the record. It was just one of those things where I watched that happen as a fan, and as an artist, I just want to put out an album. I just want that to be the first collection of songs.

What's the thought behind the name Salt?

I don't have one answer for that, but I always knew that that was what I wanted to call it. I tried to come up with other names that made a bit more sense where they were from the album or something, but nothing else quite fit. I went with that word because to me, it represents a feeling of balance. Looking back on the songs, which are this collection of experiences that I had, romance and friendship and growing up, up until I was 22... To me, it looks like what is left after all of those experiences. It's the remainder of what I went through growing up.

It's similar to the way that salt is what's left over when water evaporates. Then it's like salt is in your tears. It's like salty tears, and salted wounds. It can sting, and it can bring out taste, and it can cleanse things. I think a lot about the ocean, and the way that it's terrifying and also so liberating to swim in. It's just all of these kind of metaphors that circle for me around salt as a mineral.

I'd also love to get your perspective on your most recent song, "And I Am a Woman." What was the thought behind that title?

There's no single thought for me behind this song either as well. It's such a big concept to tackle. It's just something that I'm being more and more interested in as I grow up as a songwriter, and as a person. It's maybe the moment you are content.

That was the most recent song that I wrote for the record, even though it was two years ago. The whole song came from this heated conversation about women's bodies in public spaces, and a real disagreement with this person about what we're entitled to with equality, and all that kind of stuff. I was so frustrated, and the lyric about being in my home is very much about being in my personal space, and in my body, or in my safety, or whatever. Then I guess the second half of the lyric, "and I am a woman," it almost felt like the most obvious thing.

How am I going to word this? You know when you're having an argument with someone? Arguing with men about gender, or discussing the misunderstanding of something that to you is so obvious. It's so frustrating, and you're just like, "To me this is the most obvious thing. Based on my experience and my life, you should focus on the standards," and they just don't. "And I Am A Woman" just feels like this really obvious thing to say, that carries so much weight, but is also really simple.

It's interesting. So much of the music industry and live industry, it's just male-dominated. I love the boys that I work with, but sometimes things just happen where you just need someone who shares this experience to understand why this affects me, and why it's a manifestation of how many times this has happened to me over my life. Things are just becoming louder now, and we're understanding what we are entitled to more and more, what we shouldn't lay down for. So it's the frustration at that same time is building, because the change is so small. I want to be more fluent in that discourse, and I want everyone to be more fluent in it so we can talk about it more and more.

I did also want to ask you a bit about the song "Pasta." I have to admit that the name reminded me of Courtney Barnett's song about ramen.

Yeah. I love her. She's an inspiration for my songwriting, for sure. She captures this humor and kind of relaxed personality type that I really relate to. Maybe it's a Melbourne thing, or maybe it's an age thing, but basically her music is awesome. I also think the tone of her songwriting has inspired me. There's a realness to it that is so exciting.

When you're writing, are you interested in projecting a tone of honesty?

I think it's more satisfying for me to write something to complete a lyric or whatever that is really honest, and with rhymes, and says what I am feeling or going through without realizing that's what I was feeling or going through until I wrote it down, so the satisfaction that comes from that. Then if I'm able to lace in humor or a double-sided metaphor or whatever, those kinds of things, it's just so satisfying. For me, [songwriting is] very much a way that I process my own experiences. Until this point, and it might change, but all the songs basically have been autobiographical. I think that that will keep developing. I have a long way to go in my songwriting, which is exciting for me. 

What's next for you? Are you working on future recordings? 

I find it hard to [write] well touring, and it's been a lot of touring in the last year, so I haven't completed a whole bunch of new songs. I would really like to be able to take the time to do that. It's basically the next year, I guess, is going to be balancing how much touring we can do, and how much time I can take off to write, so that's just something that I'm figuring out. It's also you can't force it. Just because you take the time off doesn't mean that's when you're inspired. The rest of the year we're touring the album in Australia, and then I'm coming back here to tour with Hozier, and then that basically brings us to the end of the year. So hopefully after that I can take some months. I'm really feeling like writing again. I think it's got to do with putting out the first record. It feels like a clean slate. I'm ready for the next thing.

CHAI On Redefining "Cute," Subverting Uniformity & Tasting American Ramen

The Futureheads

The Futureheads

Photo by Paul Alexander Knox

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The Futureheads' Barry Hyde On The Band's Reunion, 'Powers' & Facing Down Mental Health Taboos

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Back together for their sixth studio album—their first since 2012's 'Rant'—the U.K. post-punk revivalists are in fighting form
Rachel Brodsky
GRAMMYs
Aug 27, 2019 - 12:20 pm

When The Futureheads disbanded in 2013, one year after their fifth studio album, Rant, came out, they didn't make a big deal out of it. There was no announcement, no reunion tours. They, as some meme-loving folks would say, "Homer Simpson'd into the bush." 

According to singer Barry Hyde, who initiated the split, the rest of the U.K. post-punk quartet were very understanding. They had to be: Hyde had just finished his third stint in a psychiatric hospital. He physically could not contend with being in a band anymore. "I just simply couldn't do it," he tells the Recording Academy over the phone. "I wasn't capable of creating for The Futureheads, with The Futureheads, and doing the gigs and stuff like that. It became very taxing for me."

In the six years since their split, Hyde made it his first priority to get healthy and figure out what his professional life could look like outside of music. He trained as a chef, then became a music teacher. He got his MA and released a solo record called Malody. He does public speaking engagements where he talks about mental health awareness. The rest of the band, who had been playing together since they were teenagers, also found new lives outside of The Futureheads, which blew up in the early '00s with their landmark self-titled debut featuring a series of twitchy, "paranoid-rock" anthems like "Decent Days And Nights," "Meantime" and a now-classic cover of Kate Bush's "Hounds Of Love." Bassist Jaff Craig also went into teaching. Brother Dave Hyde (drums) went on to release two albums as one half of Hyde & Beast and trained as a tiler. Guitarist/vocalist Ross Millard joined the band Frankie & the Heartstrings. Now, the crew has joyfully reunited for their sixth album, Powers, which arrives on Aug. 30 via Nul Records. 

Futureheads fans will be pleased to hear that the group has barely deviated from their trademark layered harmonies and fidgety guitar-work. Powers is a propulsive look at the personal and political. Songs like "Electric Shock" and "Headcase" plainly deal with Hyde's psychiatric history ("When I got my electric shock, it tasted bittersweet," he chants). Other tracks, like "Across The Border" and "Listen, Little Man!" consider the xenophobic rhetoric, regressive thinking and power imbalences in the U.K. 

Prior to unleashing Powers, Hyde called up the Recording Academy to discuss The Futureheads' reunion, his new role as a teacher and public speaker, the subtle cultural differences in how Americans and British cope with mental-health issues and more. 

Before we talk about the new record, I'd like to talk about the day you decided to discontinue the band. Would you say that it came as a surprise to the rest of the members? Or would you say that this was something that was kind of roiling openly for a little while?

Well, I think the fact that I was in a psychiatric hospital for the third time, having been in and out a couple of times, it wasn't so much a surprise. I think that Jaff [Craig], our bass player, was probably pleased that he didn't have to think about the band anymore. And I think it was a bit harder for Dave [Hyde] and Ross [Millard], because I think they always felt like there was a chance that the band could continue. But I just simply couldn't do it. I wasn't capable of creating for The Futureheads, with The Futureheads, and doing the gigs and stuff like that. It became very taxing for me. And it seems almost absurd that it got that way. Because, ultimately, it's just a band, at the end of the day.

After a certain point, I realized I had to clear that part of my life in order to stand a chance of not having to come back in the hospital in six months. So they were very supportive of that decision. And it was a hard decision to make. But it was an instant thing. As soon as we had this discussion, there appeared for me a space, a gap in my life which I could grow in, if you know what I'm saying. And it was a kind of unfortunate release, you might say.

Yeah, from a fan perspective it never seemed clear why The Futureheads weren’t around anymore. There was no announcement or news around the split.

Yeah, we didn't do like a farewell tour. We never announced that we'd split up or even that we're having a break. Yeah, the candle just kind of died. And we had no idea, actually, for quite a lot of that time, that six or seven years, that it was ever going to [reemerge]. It wasn't like we stopped working together for like 10 or 15, 20 years. We have made very different proposals to kind of get back together. But it did happen in an organic way. And as much as I was able to regain my creativity back, make my solo album. And then, yeah, called Malody. Which was almost like a chronicle of some of the things I'd been going through.

Because really what matters is that you want to pick up your instrument. You want to play the guitar. You actually want to enjoy the simple act of practicing your skills. And I went into the world of piano, and teaching, and orchestration, and all of that stuff in the meantime between stopping the band and getting it back together. And that was enough of an escape for me to be able to start to fondly remember this band that we created very innocently at the very beginning of the 21st century.

Given your backstory, to what extent are you comfortable talking about what you’ve gone through, mental-health-wise?

Yeah, I would say I'm comfortable enough to have spent time traveling around the United Kingdom giving talks on it. I've become somewhat of a, well, I would say minor, spokesperson for mental health and creativity. And I was able to use that experience as a way of sorting my own head out and I think, in some cases, opening up the discussion for other people as well. Because it is still a major taboo. And I think that's one of the differences, actually, between your country and my country. Is that in America, I think, people are a lot more open, perhaps, to talk about their emotions. Whereas the Britishness is kind of like get on with it. It's a cliché. But the kind of stiff upper lip. We beat the Nazis, so why do we need to talk about you? It still lingers on, especially in men. And I know there's lots of macho men who are incapable of expressing their emotions in America, as well, and all over the world I guess.

Yeah, so I'd say I was fairly unique. And also, in releasing Malody, that was the context of the album. So it'd given me the opportunity to perform in those songs. It's my opportunity to kind of relive those emotions. And I wanted to sound trite, leave them on the stage. And it's kind of like a publicly funded CBT session.

I’ve spoken to musicians for this site before about how the negative stigma around seeking mental healthcare is changing, thanks in part to the Internet and social media. To what extent have you seen positive change around this, even in Britain?

Yeah, we are kind of getting better at it. I feel like few extremely high-profile people, much higher profile than I am, for example, Prince Harry, talking about how he felt after his mother died, Princess Diana. And there was definitely a moment, or a period in time, when it became a lot more accessible to discuss these things.

But the truth is, when you're that way, you really don't want to talk about it. It's usually after the fact. And that's the hardest thing. Because you don't want to become that person who, when someone says, "How are you doing?," then you give them a massive diatribe on your inner psyche. Because, ultimately, it is inner. And sometimes, you can end up exacerbating the problem by focusing on it. So it's kind of a bit of a risk to then be seen as this person who has these problems. Because it does affect how people see you and treat you. And I certainly experienced that when I had kind of been in and out of hospital. And news got around town, because it's a small town. And certain people were very keen to try to help me. Or some people would stay well away, as if it was some kind of contagious thing. And I don't blame them. Because they, obviously, are not able to discuss their own inner world. And I respect that.

What made you want to actually go and speak publicly about your experience?

Well, I like to talk. I'm a teacher. I'm a peacock. I was a very shy child, actually. And through being a performer, I learned how to communicate on the front line in front of increasingly large crowds. And that's going to have an effect on you, and not all those effects are positive. But one of them is knowing how to get your point across. And knowing how to choose your words. So you're not just a rambler. You can be selective about what you say. And, perhaps, say the right thing at the right time. And that's a very powerful thing.

It sounds like there's a sort of a connective tissue between Barry the speaker and Barry the performer. Someone who knows how to conduct himself in front of a lot of people.

One of the dangers of becoming a performer is that it's very easy to stop practicing the generation of self-esteem. Self-esteem is so important. That's what allows you to walk down the street confidently and know what you're doing. And when you're getting rounds of applause, you can become intoxicated by it. And you lose those functional skills of how to actually define yourself without that crowd, without those reviews, without the interviews, without the privilege. And then, if you find yourself on a downturn in the music industry, which happens to everyone. People think about the Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones haven't made any true contribution to music since probably the early ‘70s, but they're still carrying on, doing their thing. Right? But people say, "Well, they should stop." It's like how dare anyone tell a performer that they should not perform. It becomes part of your DNA. It becomes why you exist.

So when you guys actually decided to head back into the studio and record again, had much changed in terms of the band's chemistry?

It was a case of remembering than discovery. It was remembering how to be in the creative unit with these people that you've made lots of records with.

The hardest challenge, actually, was scheduling enough time. And we realized this when we started to rehearse. It was like, okay, we've been able to rehearse once a week, and then, maybe, the next week we couldn't. So we just thought, you know what? We just best start going whenever we can get together. We should be in the studio rather than a rehearsal room. Because at least, then, we'll have some kind of artifact, hopefully, at the end of the day to build upon. So it was very drawn out. Because we're used to hiring a studio for two, three weeks and making an album. This took maybe 30 sessions over the course of about six months. So the challenge was getting together into a room and whipping up that creative spirit on the dot. Like whisking an egg. Because you don't want to waste a day in the studio.

Yeah, it sounded like you guys started the process like a year ago, almost.

We did. I spoke to Ross on the phone two winters ago. We said, we're going to get together and do some stuff. And Jaff was like, "I'll only do it if we make a new album." And then, actually, we realized we couldn't really start it for another seven months. And that gave us time to get material together. Well, the writers in the band, predominantly myself and Ross. We're able to kind of scratch away at- Well, it's rock music. So, basically, riffs. Guitar riffs. And loving that. I've got three children now. And I work as a lecturer, and do commissioned work in private tuition. It was a juggling act for all of us in different ways.

Well, we got there. I'm really proud, actually, of this album. Because I know what it took to make it in terms of commitment and beliefs. Because, you know what, your album doesn't sound very good until it's mixed. And that happens at the end. And you've got to hold onto that confidence and regenerate it every time you go in. To know, actually, you're going in some kind of correct or authentic direction.

Moving into Powers’ track list, you guys also delve into the very relevant issue of changing British politics. Which tracks do you feel best illustrate that conversation?

I can only speak to my own songs, really. When I say my own songs, I mean the songs that I've brought. Obviously, these are our songs. I was the principal writer on this song called "Listen, Little Man!," which is about the kind of imbalance of power in society whereby the general population are placated into being and doing by the pressures of the world. And, meanwhile, there are a group of people who are just watching it all and manipulating it. Without wanting to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist or whatever. But it's true. We have the political class who are, in my opinion, absolutely embarrassing, right now, in this country. Self-obsessed careerist people with no social wisdom at all who've, generally, come from immense privilege and wouldn't know what it's like to make toast. And never mind balance a household. Then, come with no inheritance. Then, come with no privilege. Everyone else. You're talking about a very small amount of people with that privilege. They are kind of playing the tune.

And I don't want to sound cynical, because I think our duty as people is to find meaning in our lives regardless of the political situation or regardless of when we're born into history. That's always been the same. And we find meaning, often, to making things happen despite the odds. And that's where we gain our power. The album is called Powers also because this is an example of us using all of our powers. All of our musical power. All of our powers of friendship. Powers of commitment. Powers of schedule. And carrying it through to the end. When the album's out, then, we'll be able to be truly proud.

Palehound's Ellen Kempner Is Learning To Love Herself

GRAMMYs

PJ Harvey and John Parish perform at Primavera Sound Festival in 2016

Photo by Jordi Vidal/Redferns

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PJ Harvey's Lost Album: John Parish Discusses 1996 Gem 'Dance Hall At Louse Point'

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On the occasion of its recent reissue, we tracked down John Parish to talk about 'Dance Hall At Louse Point' and his earliest memories of meeting PJ Harvey as an ambitious teenager
Zach Schonfeld
GRAMMYs
Nov 10, 2020 - 10:19 am

PJ Harvey rarely looks back. The songwriter’s career has been defined by a restless sense of reinvention, each album cycle accompanied by a fresh persona—the blues roar of To Bring You My Love, or the glossy alt-rock romance of Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea—ready to be discarded at the next creative whim.

But 2020 has been an exception. Harvey has spent much of the year rolling out a vinyl reissue series of her back catalog, along with some accompanying demo albums. The latest vinyl reissue is something of an outlier: Dance Hall At Louse Point, Harvey’s abrasive 1996 collaboration with ex-bandmate John Parish. Harvey and Parish had first met in the late 1980s, when she joined his band Automatic Dlamini. In 1996, they combined Parish’s musical demos and Harvey’s lyrics on an album that would plunge the singer-songwriter into an avant-garde realm of disturbing monologues and banshee-wail vocals.

Credited to John Parish & Polly Jean Harvey, Dance Hall was largely overshadowed at the time by the immense success of To Bring You My Love. In retrospect, it’s an underrated gem and something of a lost album in Harvey’s catalog; as Harvey herself later acknowledged, "People don't even count that, yet that's the record I'm really proud of."

On the occasion of the album’s recent reissue, I tracked down John Parish to talk about the album’s unusual backstory and his earliest memories of meeting Harvey as an ambitious teenager. Since then, Parish has co-produced most of the singer’s solo albums, and in 2009, the pair reunited for a second collaborative record. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

At the time you made Dance Hall At Louse Point, you had already known Polly for a number of years. What was your first impression when you first met her in the '80s?

She was like 17 when I first met her. She was coming to see my band, Automatic Dlamini, whenever we played in her local area. We all got to chatting after a gig. A mutual friend introduced us, and then she gave me a couple of cassettes of some of her early songs she’d been writing. They were kind of like folk songs at that time, really. But her voice—it was already there. It was fully formed at that age.

I just thought, "That girl’s got a really good voice, I’m gonna see if she wants to join the band." So I just asked her. When she finished school, she came and joined the band and she played with us for the next three years, before she formed the first PJ Harvey trio.

Was there a moment when you first realized, "This person is extraordinarily talented, oh my God."

I mean, I obviously saw something that was really good there; otherwise I wouldn’t have asked her to join the band. You can’t possibly predict how somebody’s going to develop as an artist. I could see that she had the potential to be great. If I said, "Oh, I knew she was going to be a star"—obviously nobody can know those kinds of things.

Do you have any favorite memories of working with Polly in Automatic Dlamini?

She came in at a point when the original lineup was kind of falling apart. I was rebuilding a lineup, and she was an absolutely fundamental part of that. She’s always had an old head on young shoulders. She was somebody that you could talk to and discuss pretty serious issues. As a teenager, she was very serious. And was quite capable of being able to offer good advice. We started relying on each other.

Was she nervous performing onstage with the band when she first joined?

The first couple of shows, yeah, really nervous. As you would be. But no, she got used to it pretty fast.

Tell me about the origin story for Dance Hall At Louse Point. My understanding is that you wrote those songs while on tour with Polly for To Bring You My Love?

That’s semi-right. It was Polly’s idea. It was after Rid Of Me, before she had started To Bring You My Love. I was teaching a performing arts course at a local college. I’d written some music for a theater production, and Polly came along to see it. She absolutely loved the music, and said afterwards, "Would you write me some music in that kind of vein? That I could try writing words to?" I said, "OK, that would be great."

That’s how we had the idea for the album. I was writing the music for Dance Hall At Louse Point at the same time she was writing the music for To Bring You My Love. I then became involved with [To Bring You My Love], which was obviously a big record. And it involved a big tour as well. Took 18 months of our time. While we were on tour for To Bring You My Love, that’s when Polly wrote all the words. She already had a cassette of the music for the Dance Hall record, which she carried around with her on the tour and then wrote lyrics in different cities. Which is why those cities are referenced on the album sleeve.

Were you hearing her lyrics while she was writing them? Or were you both working in your own separate worlds?

She would sort of drop a cassette into my hotel room and say, "I've got some lyrics for this song." I'd hear them as they were coming in. It was always kind of, "Here you go, here's the lyrics." And it would always be completely done. It was very exciting.

I was reading some old interviews with Polly. There’s one where she describes that record as being a huge turning point for her. What do you think she meant by that?

It’s always difficult to talk about how that is for somebody else. My take on that is—and I know this from myself when I’m writing in collaboration with somebody else—it’s a certain freedom you have that you don’t give yourself if you're writing entirely individually, because you have the weight of the whole thing. When you can share the weight, it eases you up to do things you might be nervous about doing yourself, because you’re not sure whether you’ve gone off a stupid tangent and you’re not seeing it.

You can try those things that might seem kind of wayward. And you have another person that you rely on say, "Oh yeah, that’s great. Push it a bit further." Like I said before, she approaches most things very seriously. Writing particularly so. So I think it probably enabled her to be a bit more wayward than she might have been. When I first heard her vocal idea for "Taut," I mean—the entire delivery of the song was kind of extreme.

Which song are you referring to?

I’m referring to "Taut." Which is quite an extreme performance. A lot of the songs, I would give her a title. So I gave her the title "Taut." She didn’t have to use it if she didn’t want to. Some of the titles she used; some she didn’t. But I think it was also quite freeing to suddenly have a word or a line and say, "What are you gonna come up with for that?"

I’m assuming Polly thinks the same. She might have a totally different reason for saying that was a turning point. It could also be that, up until that point, the lyrics she had been writing—you know, Rid Of Me and Dry—were very personal lyrics. Or they could be read in a personal way, couldn’t they? Louse Point was very much stories and scenarios. You weren’t imagining that Polly was talking about herself in the bulk of those songs.

The vocal performance on "City Of No Sun" is also quite extreme and very jarring. Were you taken aback by her approach to singing this material?

I was a bit surprised. In a good way. I thought it was really exciting. I remember the performance of "City Of No Sun" when we were in the studio. She said, "OK, I’ll record the quiet bits first, then I’ll do the loud bits." So she had the engineer set the levels, doing the quiet bits. It’s quite strange timing in that song, to get everything to line up. She hit the chorus; she had two or three go’s and she kept getting it wrong.

At one point, she got it wrong again and she was so annoyed that she just went straight into the loud bit anyway. We had the mic set to be recording this really quiet vocal, so all the needles shot way into the red. It was on tape, which can really compress those kinds of things.

Is that the performance that is actually on the record? You can hear how it sounds a bit distorted.

Yeah. Because it’s absolutely pushing everything. She didn't mean to record it like that, but it just sounded so great. Of course we kept it.

Whose idea was it to cover "Is That All There Is?" by Peggy Lee?

It was initially done because they needed it for this film [Basquiat]. We really liked the way it came out, so we thought, "Oh, it kind of fits on the record." The recording that’s on the album is actually the first time we’d ever played that song. There were no rehearsals. We didn’t really know what we were going to do. Mick Harvey played the organ, I played drums, and Polly sang.

Obviously, most of her albums are credited to PJ Harvey. On this album, she's Polly Jean Harvey. What do you think is the significance of her changing her billing?

That was absolutely her call. I think she was quite protective of me. She very much said, "I want it to be called John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey, not the other way around." It’s difficult, isn’t it, if you’re an established artist and you suddenly work with someone who’s unknown, or de facto unknown. It’s like, "Oh, PJ Harvey and some bloke" kind of thing. I think she was trying to find the best way of making people realize that it wasn’t another PJ Harvey album. I know that later on, when we did the second collaboration, it was PJ Harvey and John Parish. It in some ways made more sense, but you’re never quite sure how you should go about those things when you’re doing them.

Some articles I’ve read state that the record label, Island, was uncomfortable with the album and believed it to be "commercial suicide." Is there any truth to that?

I’m sure there were people at Island who were a little bit unnerved by it. And by the fact that it was coming out not as a PJ Harvey record, but under a different name, when To Bring You My Love had just been such a relatively commercial success for PJ Harvey. Probably somebody said it was commercial suicide. If they really thought that, I doubt they would have put it out. I think they didn’t really know what it was.

I have to give quite a lot of credit to Polly’s manager, Paul McGuinness. I think if he hadn’t been behind it, perhaps Island Records wouldn’t have gone for it. But Paul heard it and he was like, "This is a really good record." Obviously he had a lot of clout and a lot of credibility with Island.

During this period, Polly was also becoming successful very quickly. Perhaps she was overwhelmed by the expectations from the record label or the degree of media scrutiny. Do you think those factors contributed to her desire to separate herself from the PJ Harvey that people knew?

You’d probably have to ask her. My take would be that it’s not quite as thought-through as that. She doesn’t like to repeat herself. The last thing she would have wanted to do at that time would have been To Bring You My Love 2. Her gut reaction is to try and do something different each time. Which is why I think she’s had such a long, successful career. I think there was a lot of pressure after the first album, Dry—the record company didn’t like Rid Of Me. They didn’t want to have this Steve Albini-recorded, very hard-hitting album. They were hoping for something more commercial, like I would have said Dry was.

If you are able to reinvent yourself each time—which, obviously a lot of artists just don’t have that facility—if you can, it sets you up for a much longer, more interesting career.

The album title refers to a painting. How did the title present itself to you or to Polly?

I was, and I still am, a very big fan of the painting Rosy-Fingered Dawn At Louse Point by [William] de Kooning. I told you I was giving Polly some of the songs I gave her with titles. One of them, which she ended up not writing any lyrics to—the title track from the album—is an instrumental. That was just a title I gave it. There was something about a place called "Louse Point" that sounded sort of desolate and rather unappealing, and I just thought a dance hall—I just liked the atmosphere that the title [suggested].

How would you describe this album’s long-term legacy in Polly’s career? Do you think it’s overdue for more attention?

I mean, I know it’s seemed like there’s a hardcore group of fans that like it very much. In the U.K. and Europe, there were a lot of people [who] liked it pretty much straight away. Perhaps in America it took a little bit longer to find its home. Obviously we never came over, played any shows, did anything in the U.S. at the time of its release. A lot of people talk to me about it 23, 24 years after its release and say they love it very much. I guess it has its fans for sure.

Once this reissue campaign is over, do you think we can expect a new album from Polly next year?

Umm… I don’t know. I can’t really answer that.

Are there any more previously unreleased demos, like the Dry demos, that fans can look forward to as part of this reissue campaign?

Nearly all the albums will come with accompanying demos. Probably the only ones that won’t are our two collaborative albums—the demos would all be instrumental versions of the album, because that’s how we went about it.

What can you tell me about the demos for Is This Desire?

Well, there’s a demo version of "The Garden," which I really, really love. Had it been down to me, I would have said "Put the demo version on the album" when the record came out. Because I just think it’s one of Polly’s greatest demos. Generally, I like the demos for Is This Desire? a lot.

And the b-sides from that record as well—"Sweeter Than Anything," "Nina in Ecstasy." I think there are some really extraordinary songs that didn’t make it onto the proper album.

You and me both. I think "Nina In Ecstasy" should have been on the record. That was my favorite track of the whole set of demos. So I was very disappointed that that didn't make it onto the album.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that track should have been on there. Will those b-sides be included with the reissue package?

Not the initial reissue package, because it’s literally the album plus demos of the album. I might be wrong, but I think there might be some kind of b-sides and rarities thing to come out as another package at some point down the line.

Will you also be reissuing the more recent albums, like Let England Shake and The Hope Six Demolition Project?

I think Hope Six is still available anyway. So I don’t think there’s any point in reissuing that. But I think everything that was unavailable is being made available.

Has Polly herself been very involved in preparing these reissues and overseeing everything?

No, I think she’s delegated to people like me or Head. And she’s delegated the artwork; it’s all the people that did it originally who are working on it again. She’s very good at [delegating].

I’ve always gotten the sense she doesn’t like to dwell on her past work. She’s more interested in doing something new.

As all creative artists should be, I think.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Honorable Music Lover

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Slow Pulp

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Slow Pulp Find Serenity

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The Madison-born, Chicago-based shoegazey quartet open up about the trying events that led up to recording their tranquil debut album, 'Moveys'
Danielle Chelosky
GRAMMYs
Oct 7, 2020 - 11:31 am

Slow Pulp aren’t sure how to sonically categorize themselves, so they jokingly offer: "cow rock," "slowcore" and "not emo, but emotional." They’ve been labeled as shoegaze before, but they think the reason for that is: "We’ve put out such a little amount of music that people don’t know what to call it yet."

The group is based in Chicago, but the four of them are from Wisconsin. Three of the members—Alexander Leeds (bass), Theodore Mathews (drums) and Henry Stoehr (guitar)—have been playing together since sixth grade, and Emily Massey (vocals/guitar) joined in 2017. Moveys is their debut album, arriving via Winspear on Oct. 9.

Moveys follows a crazy series of events involving a depressive episode, a diagnosis and a car crash, but the record glows with an aura of serenity and weightlessness. It’s different from their past material; it’s more focused and cohesive. It’s naturally packed with inside jokes, eccentric sound effects, infectious indie rock riffs and sprawling folk ballads. Read our chat with the band about the making of Moveys.

While all of you were working on this album, Emily, you got diagnosed with Lyme Disease and Chronic Mono and then your parents were involved in a crash. Could you take me through this timeline?

Massey: Where do we begin?! Last year we all lived together and we were touring a lot and trying to write music. I was experiencing a lot of fatigue. I was sleeping most days and feeling really depressed and confused about my health. My motivation level was really low and my [self-esteem] was really low. I was in a big time period of questioning whether or not I was capable of being in a band and writing. When we started writing a lot of the songs on this record, I started feeling a little bit better in terms of my mental health and desire to get better. I went to the doctor in the fall of 2019 right before we were going on some other tours. I got my diagnosis. It was really validating in a lot of ways because it was another piece of my health that was causing my fatigue and my anxiety and getting sick a lot. That’s kind of when we really started writing the record—after that diagnosis.

I started getting a lot of tools to take care of myself and then my parents got into a car accident on March 1 of 2020. My mom broke her neck and my dad fractured his neck, so they both had pretty serious injuries and were in the hospital for a while. I came back to Madison, Wisconsin, to take care of them. Then, a couple weeks later, COVID hit. I remember I came back to visit Chicago for a day and that’s when it really dawned on me how serious it was. I asked the boys—Henry, Teddy and Alex—if they wanted to hang out and they were all like, Um… I don’t think we should do that. That’s a bad idea because of coronavirus. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that’s a real thing. The next day my mom was in the rehab hospital terminal and I couldn’t even see her for three weeks because they wouldn’t let anybody in. That was really crazy and I ended up getting stuck in Madison partly because of COVID and my parents needed a full-time care taker. There was no one else to do it, except for me and my sister. Because of coronavirus, we couldn’t have family friends coming over or anything like that. It was a really strange time to be dealing with all of these things in what felt like an isolated and lonely way. There’s just a lot going on—drama with family friends. It was a very difficult time. We finished a lot of the record during that time [laughs]. It was kind of a whirlwind.

But my dad is a musician and he engineered my vocals on the album. In a way, working on the record was a nice reprieve from being a care taker and dealing with grief. Weird juxtaposition finishing a record and writing about being emotional and sad and dealing with a lot of difficult things but also using it as a thing to help me through it.

Was it nostalgic to be back in Madison, Wisconsin?

Massey: It was a nice time to be there, I think. I hadn’t been there in a while, and I think after this time I have a new appreciation for it—for the city. I grew up there and before I moved to Chicago I lived there my whole life. My parents actually are moving away from there this fall, so it was my last time being in Madison as a home base. My mom put it in an interesting way—since my sister and I moved out of the house, it’s was the last time that we would really spend time as a family like this, unless the pandemic gets worse and everything fails and I don’t have any money and I have to go back [laughs]. Which is highly likely, but it is an interesting time to reflect. I’ve been in Madison during tough times and I’ve found it to be a very healing place. There’s a lot of lakes and it’s really beautiful to walk around. That helped me a lot.

How does mental health tie into the record?

Massey: When we started writing this record, I was at a low point within my own mental health. I was having a really difficult time explaining it or communicating about it especially to my bandmates. I was—for a while—unable to write. I was really self-conscious about writing and was very self-deprecating all of the time. That’s difficult when you’re a musician because you have to believe in what you’re making, and I wasn’t in a space to do that.

Mental health isn’t something where you wake up and you’re like, "I’m better and good!" It’s something that comes and goes, at least from my own experience. Throughout this record, I was learning a lot about myself, about my body with my diagnosis, about myself as an artist, about myself as a human who was growing. It was at the forefront of my mind, and lyrically it came out. For me, it was a way to understand it. I was having trouble understanding how it manifested in myself. It’s a weird position to be in when you’re a performing or touring musician and you feel so against yourself. I felt like I hated myself and was being [disingenuous] to people watching me, like I was pretending and putting on a facade of being confident and like I knew what I was doing. I needed to step back, and I’m still figuring it out. I don’t have the answers at all. I feel lucky to have gotten out of the place that I was in, but the pandemic and all of the other stuff doesn’t make it easy to continue on the right track [laughs]. It’s a process of figuring out how to care for yourself in the best way. I think this record helped me do that, or at least move forward in doing that.

The press release says the title Moveys is an inside joke. What’s it about?

Massey: [Laughs.] It’s kind of funny that they called it an inside joke. Henry had written the last song on the record, "Movey," and I thought it was funny. I liked the word a lot. A lot of the songs also started with names that were related to movie titles. Like, "Whispers (In The Outfield)"—Henry, correct me if I’m wrong—but that’s related to Field of Dreams.

Stoehr: It was actually Rookie of the Year. [Laughs.]

Massey: And we had another song that started out with the title "Evan Almighty." Just random things. For "Track," at one point, we had talked about The Wild Thornberrys Movie as an inspiration. And the way that we communicate about music is very visual. Sometimes Henry will try to be talking about a song and he’ll set up an entire scene to describe it rather than I want it to sound like this. So, I think in that way it’s an interesting tie-in to the title. I also have a history with dance; I used to be a ballet dancer, and I’m a ballet teacher outside of being a musician. That plays into it. We’re just connected to the word in many ways. Movement in terms of health and mental health. I think Alex said something earlier about motion and movement within yourself and your growth being transient and that changing.

There’s a bunch of weird noises and bits throughout the record. Where did these come from?

Stoehr: The sound in "Idaho" is from Teddy and I recording at the same time. I had done this delay effect with guitar pedals, and it was just in the scratch take and I left it in there. For most of the other sounds, we branched out and did some different textures and song environments. I found this keyboard in an alley when we started recording it and it has a lot of cool sounds on it.

Where did the piano instrumental on "Whispers (In The Outfield)" come from?

Stoehr: I had just been playing more piano in between working on the other songs and recording. I had this chord progression going and I’d been fine-tuning it over the course of writing and recording the album. It was one of the last ones that we figured out. I was thinking about this one song that I recently found from this baseball movie used to watch when I was a kid, and I didn’t realize I was thinking about it necessarily at the time. I think I was trying to capture this big baseball energy but in a nice piano song. [Laughs.] I couldn’t play it exactly how I was imagining it, because I don’t play all that much piano. And Emily’s dad is a professional piano player so I sent him a video of me just playing the chords and then we talked and he sent back a couple versions of him playing it. He shredded it.

Massey: He knocked it out of the ballpark.

Shamir Talks New Self-Titled Album, DMing With Mandy Moore & Being The Change He Wants To See

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Will Butler

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Nostalgic For A Different Future: Arcade Fire's Will Butler On How His New Solo Album Finds Healing In Community

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Butler talks to GRAMMY.com about his sophomore effort 'Generations,' how it fits in with an upcoming Arcade Fire album and the healing power of community
Lior Phillips
GRAMMYs
Sep 29, 2020 - 9:17 am

When Arcade Fire released their very first single, it came with a B-side that hit very close to home to brothers Win and Will Butler: a recording of a song called "My Buddy," credited to their grandfather, Alvino Rey. In fact, several generations of musicians line their family tree. While those historic echoes provide joy and solace for younger brother Will, the world tipping into pandemic and protests over racial injustice reinforced life’s darker cycles. On Butler’s second solo album, Generations (due Sept. 25 via Merge), he explores the ways in which we come together in community both because of and in spite of those ripples.

The video for early single "Surrender" represents that duality perfectly. The clip opens with studio footage of Butler’s band recording the jangly anthem, complete with call-and-response vocals and gospel falsetto. But much like 2020, things devolve quickly, with closed captioning-style subtitles mourning the deaths of Black men and women killed by police, calling for sweeping political change, and insisting on prison reform. Though written long ago, the album holds a special ability to tap into something boundless and timeless while simultaneously feeling entrenched in the tragic pain of the present.

Butler spoke with GRAMMY.com about the album’s similarities to Fyodor Dostoevsky, the ways in which songs take on new meaning over time, how Generations fits in with an upcoming Arcade Fire album and the healing power of community.

Did you have any hesitation about releasing the album in the midst of the pandemic?

I'm sad to not tour it. If I could wait four weeks and then tour the record... but that's not going to happen. It's actually kind of a good time to put out music. It feels morally good! People want music, so let's put out music. I've experienced that, where people put things out and it feels generous.

It truly does. You've compared this album to a novel and your debut before this to a collection of short stories. Is there a particular novelist that you feel would be in tune with your work? Do you take inspiration from fiction in that way?

It's not Dostoevsky. [Laughs.] But it is weirdly more inspired by Dostoevsky than it ought to be. It's the tumult of the 19th century, the next stage of the industrial revolution and the gearing up of socialism and anarchism. It feels related to the pre-revolutionary thing happening in Russia. [Laughs.] It's not a one-to-one comparison by any means, but it’s just the deeply human things happening in a context of the whirlwind.

Was there an experience that led you to the feeling that it was the right time to deliver such a politically driven album?

Partly, I went to grad school for public policy. I explicitly went as an artist wanting to know what's happening and why it's happening. I started the fall of 2016, which was a very bizarre time to be at a policy school. But I had a course with a professor named Leah Wright Rigueur, a young-ish professor, a Black woman, a historian. The course was essentially about race and riot in America. And since it was a policy school, the second-to-last week on the syllabus was talking about Hillary Clinton and the last week was talking about Donald Trump. It was a history class, but in an applied technical school, so it's like, "What are we doing with this history?"

We read the post-riot reports of Chicago in 1919 and the post-riot reports of the '60s, the Kerner Commission and after the Watts riots, and we read the DOJ reports after Ferguson and after Baltimore and Freddie Gray. And then Donald Trump got elected at the end of the semester. This course really trained my eyes at this moment of time, just being in that state of thinking about what's going on and why it's happening.

Right, and the album's title feels like it encapsulates not only the history that you were learning at the time but also your personal and familial ancestry.

Yes, very much so. My mom's a musician, and her parents were musicians. My grandmother grew up in a family band driving across the American West with her parents before there were even roads in the desert. Her dad got arrested a bunch of times for vagrancy or for not paying off loans. There's something very beautiful about being in the tradition of generations of musicians. That's a positive thing in this world. It's no coincidence that I'm a musician. There are, however, many more poisonous things that are also not coincidental that are rooted in both personal and political history. All of political history in America has been geared towards making each generation of my family's life better insofar as they're white men. It's been very good to my family, but that is as much of an undeniable generational heritage as music, which is this beautiful and faultless and glorious thing.

Do you see that musical tradition in your family as storytelling?

It's never been explicitly storytelling, though that is part of it. It's more about building community or building a society through entertainment. Entertainment is almost too light a word. My grandfather and grandmother did all these broadcasts during World War II, and some of it's jingoistic, some of it's incredibly moving, some of it's just dance music for people who don't want to think about the war for a minute. It's all these emotions, but still with this aim of trying to get us all in it together–which in a war context is fraught. But there's that element of always trying to make a family, make a community, learning how to bind us all together.

That reminds me of the call and response vocals you've got throughout the record. It has an especially gospel-y feeling on "Close My Eyes," which is such a clever way to paint a song about surrendering to something bigger than yourself, that communal feeling. What was the impetus for that narrative voice?

Part of it is just rooted in Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. [Laughs.] Years ago, someone mailed us the complete Motown singles on CD, just every single starting from day one. Even though there’s some garbage mixed in there, it just feels so human with those gang vocals and great singers that sometimes they just pulled off the street. You get the sense of humanity. Having backing vocals be so integral instead of just having my voice layered feels like having a community and feels very natural. It's hard for me to not just rely on that every third or fourth song. [Laughs.] It just feels like that's how it should be.

Those multi-part harmonies must be especially potent live in a room. Do you write in a way where you’re already picturing these songs live?

We played almost every one of these songs live before we recorded them. My solo band played "Surrender" live on the Policy tour for years. But even before we went into the studio last summer, I booked a weekend of shows. We did the Merge 30th Anniversary festival just to have us feel it live and have that communication. And then we went down to the basement to try to iron it out.

Speaking of "Surrender," that song took on an entire new life in the video. It starts out with videos of your band in the studio, but then quickly and powerfully gets replaced with messages mourning the deaths of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor and emphasizing the need for prison reform. You never know what life a song will have when you’re writing it.

That song is very nostalgic in a certain way. It’s looking towards the past, but not wishing to be in the past. It's wishing that we were in a different present because we had already chosen a different past. So when I was editing the video, I started it as a "making of" video. But the footage is from January of this year—five, six months old. There's this feeling of nostalgia, but also 2019 was not good enough to look back at. [Laughs.] 2019 was also horrible.

It's not like I want to go back to 2019. I want to play music with people. I want to be having fun with my friends. I want to be making a record. But I don't want it to be 2019. I'm nostalgic for a different future. And as I'm editing the video, there have been six weeks of protests of people trying to build something, and it just felt crazy to not acknowledge that. It was what people were focused on, at least the people around me.

Do you feel like you'll be infusing more overt social and political commentary into your music going ahead?

I think so. It's important that it's organic. It's part of the world I live in, part of my family and my friendships. Before the coronavirus hit, I was very much looking forward to touring and had vague plans to do town hall meetings and discussions. It felt like a rich time to do that around America, and around the world. I'm sad to not get to do that, but I think it will happen someday.

You produced the album yourself in your basement, so were you writing with the production choices already in mind or were you writing while in the studio?

I had the band come down and record for a week. And at the end of that first week, we had seven or eight songs that could be real. Some of them were clear. Some of them are simpler, like "Surrender." Others were trying to figure out where they would go. "I Don't Know What I Don’t Know" was more trial and error, trying something crazy. We'd turn everything off for two days and then come back to it and try something else. You try to be surprised by it.

I love revision. Well, I don't love it. I hate it. [Laughs.] I love the process of editing, of making a version of something and then finding something that's either better or worse. It's fun when you work with an editor that you trust, but when you're just doing it yourself, you drive yourself batty after some time. But I still love versioning it until it makes sense.

It feels like you're not too precious. You just want to service the song at the end of the day.

Yeah. I try to not be precious. I feel like the songs mostly came out with a fresh spirit. I didn't massage any of them too much. I'm very conversational in how I think of the world. Nothing is the final statement. You say something and then someone says something else and then you say something. And you have to finish what you're saying in order to hear what the other person says. So if that means putting it out into the world without rounding everything off, to me that feels right.

The record begins and ends on the same burning synth tone, like history ready to go around the loop again. What does that synth tone represent for you?

Not to get too mystical, but there's something about the bass that is so embodied. There's something about a really powerful bass that is fundamental, something that just gets to the core. I wanted that core to feel a little uneasy. It's not like the hit at the end of "A Day in the Life" where it’s this clear conclusion. It's a little bit gnarly. It's a little bit not in the right key for the song. It’s something disturbing at the very core of everything.

What has writing and producing this record taught you about yourself?

I found that while I still prize quickness and thoughtfulness and conversational life, this record took longer and took more effort than Policy. It was way less casual. It was not casual in a very good way. I realized this shouldn't be a casual undertaking—even though it can have lightness and humor and breezy elements. Even then, the whole undertaking can still be serious and grounded. It can even be quick without being casual. In the past, I've fallen into thinking, "Just do something first before you think about it too hard." But this was a reminder that you can do something more thoroughly.

Were you writing these songs while working on the next Arcade Fire album? Speaking about intention, how do you compartmentalize those two sides of your creativity?

Yeah, Arcade Fire is always very cyclical. We record for a year and a half, we tour for a year and a half, and then we're off for a year and a half. I was very conscious to do this in a moment when I wasn't distracted by something else. I wanted to focus on this.

I'm still figuring it all out. Right now I'm making a video for the song "Close My Eyes." I have children, two-year-old twins and an eight-year-old, so the spring was just complete family time—net positive, but total chaos. [Laughs.]

On 'Transmissions,' Beverly Glenn-Copeland Looks Back On A Long And Varied Musical Life

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