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Evanescence

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Evanescence's Amy Lee Talks Musical Evolution, Growing Up & Life Under Quarantine

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The frontwoman opens up to the Recording Academy about the hard-rock mainstays' forthcoming album, 'The Bitter Truth' and its lead single, "Wasted On You"
Bryan Reesman
GRAMMYs
May 28, 2020 - 9:56 am

The current coronavirus quarantine has turned out to be a mixed blessing for Evanescence leader and singer Amy Lee. While she is elated about the new music her band is producing for their first album in nearly nine years, they have to figure out how to finish the project being apart. They also had to postpone touring Europe with Within Temptation and cannot interract with their fans anytime soon. That feels ironic given the anticipation for their new release. At least Lee did not have to face being separated so soon from her five-year-old son Jack and explain why his mother had to go away on tour, and she got to jam virtually with Lzzy Hale on the Halestorm song "Break In." At the same time, Lee admits, her immediate family members are driving each other a little bit crazy. That's to be expected.

Lee and her bandmates have been adjusting to the circumstances. They decided to change the choice for the lead single off of their forthcoming album The Bitter Truth by swapping it out for the song "Wasted On You." Thematically, however unintentionally, it feels like now and features all five band members in their own homes engaging in various activities from contemplation to playing music. The video is very fitting for a band whose singer frequently channels inner emotional turmoil that people struggle with alone. Thus the clip feels like a natural extension of their work.

"Yeah, this is the place I always put myself in," concurs Lee, speaking on the phone to the Recording Academy from her home in Nashville, which fans are seeing for the first time through that video.

"Most of us in the band are very private," notes Lee. "Showing my home is a big deal for me. Just being our real selves without makeup, just living in real life, not acting. What's powerful about that is that everybody around the world is doing the same thing. The idea behind it was to show that at our core we're all still connected even though we're not physically together."

When she saw the first edit of the clip from director P.R. Brown, whom she praises highly, it made her feel very connected to her band. "I missed them," admits Lee. "I pulled the trick on myself, feeling all these emotions about being close to you guys and how we're going through the same stuff. I guess it was going to be effective because it totally worked on me."

Given how depressing life feels for many people right now, Lee believes that new music is extremely necessary, and there are new Evanescence songs still in the making. The Bitter Truth is not actually finished yet, and Lee is not sure how many songs will make up its entirety. Individual tracks will just be released when they are and eventually be collected as a cohesive whole.

"I like living in the moment, and I don't have it all planned out," says Lee. "And that's beautiful. We always wanted to do it this way. It's lucky because we got to continue down our path. We went in for the first batch of songs with Nick Raskulinecz in the beginning of February. We have that batch, but I'm not sure exactly when we're all going to be able to get back together again since we live all over the world. Jen's in Germany. But whether we're going to have to do some things remotely, we still have to get together to some degree."

Usually, the band records new music and it takes a year or so for it to reach the public's ears. They started working on "Wasted On You," a break-up song of sorts about freeing oneself from routine and toxic patterns, the day before New Year's. Sharing it with fans and getting feedback so soon after it was completed feels like a gift of instant gratification that they find special and rare.

Naturally, many fans have been anxious for a new Evanescence album, but they have continued to snap up concert tickets and have remained loyal throughout the near decade-long duration. "It's not like they got pissed off and left," remarks Lee. "They still want it whenever it's going to come, and that's a huge gift. Especially now. There's just so much music out there that you can only find if you're searching for it."

Lee has continued making new music over the last nine years. Following her emancipation from her previous label Wind-up Records in 2014, she jumped into many new projects. The first was the Aftermath album that served as the soundtrack to the movie War Story starring Catherine Keener as a war zone photojournalist. That was done in collaboration with cellist Dave Eggar, who also worked with her and producer/composer/drummer Chuck Palmer on music for the 2015 short film Indigo Grey: The Passage by Irish/hip-hop dance troupe Hammerstep. The musical trio further collaborated on scores for the documentary short I Am Her (2016) and the feature film Blind (2017). In 2016, inspired by the birth of her son two years earlier, Lee did an album of children's music songs entitled Dream Too Much.

Such diversity should not be surprising considering that at the core of Evanescence swirl goth, metal, and pop sounds that commune without overriding each other. This makes the band less easy to tag and simply reflects Lee's diverse musical tastes. Last year, they released a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain."

"I like a lot of pop music," says Lee. "I like a lot of dark, trippy, trap-pop weirdness. Even if that just comes out in the way that I'm crafting a melody, it's there for me enough that I feel it in the way that I want to feel it. Then all those other elements that play a role, like cool guitar riffs and things from other genres, it's when it all blends together that it really sounds right. That's a picture of who we are."

While she knows people certainly expected certain new music from her, Lee has needed to scratch that creative itch that led her to such outside explorations. She felt that denying herself these opportunities would make her feel like she was not being true to herself, even though her fans craved a new Evanescence album. Lee felt compelled to work on that "weird song idea" or collaboration with a cellist. "If I don't let myself do it, then I get frustrated," she concedes. "There was something else I needed to get off my chest first."

The singer and pianist mentions that when she was pregnant, she thought her mom phase would outweigh work, but her need to create only got stronger because it was such an emotional time for her.

"Up until the week before Jack was born, I was working on that Aftermath album which was so great because it was moody and weird and creative, and it didn't all rely on the same old tricks," recalls Lee. "A lot of it was instrumental. People want me to sing a ballad. I actually wanted to play the piano live with Dave [Eggar] and write as we play and record that, then create the song that's totally weird, electronic, Africa-inspired. There's all kinds of weird stuff on there."

Ten months after Jack was born, a lot of emotions were welling up inside of Lee, which naturally led to Dream Too Much. "I just felt like I had a whole new chamber of my heart that started up that I didn't know about before, and I needed to express it," she elaborates. "Weirdly, becoming a mom made me need to create a lot more. There hadn't been an all original Evanescence album until now, but it's just been everything else." She chose to jump onto all of those "someday, I want to do..." projects.

When Lee did return to making music with her main project, it was for 2017's Synthesis album featuring Evanescence songs reworked with a full orchestra and electronic music elements along with two new songs and three instrumentals. She notes that many people thought that that release was a clue as to where the band's music was heading, but in fact, it was the opposite.

"Because we got to do that very different thing, I felt so motivated and inspired to run the other direction and really dive headfirst into the rock part of our music and our current sound as a band," says Lee. "I think allowing yourself to do all the things that your heart wants to do as an artist is just healthy. It's not like there won't be more fuel inside you that's going to want to create more the next day."

Read More: How Evanescence's Best New Artist Win Championed The Outcasts

The long break between albums certainly helped feed her fire for the band. Further, Lee's artistic life has been augmented lately by two special musicians. The first is aforementioned cellist Eggar, whose resume includes The Who, Josh Groban, Beyoncé, Carly Simon, Bon Jovi and Manhattan Transfer, has been a great collaborator for her.

"He's just got such a bright energy and is so encouraging but also really, really talented," enthuses Lee. "He pushes me to the next level without it being painful, if that makes sense. We were talking about wanting to make a documentary of his life because you just sit down and listen to him talk about stuff like living on a beach in the south of France and playing a million dollar cello."

On the recommendation of Eggar, Evanescence guitarist Jen Majura came into the fold back in 2015 following the departure of longtime member and songwriting collaborator Terry Balsamo. She is the other key player.

"What I've learned over the years is the harder thing about finding a person that's going to be in your band family is the way they fit as a person," explains Lee. "There are a lot of people that can play amazingly, and Jen is a great musician, but for somebody to really fit into your family dynamic is hard. I called her and flew her to New York, and we just spent time together. We went to guitar shops, went to lunch, got drunk, and had conversations about music and jammed a little bit. But mostly it was just becoming friends, and it happened really quickly. It just felt right. We knew that. I knew that I liked her, and I could see things in her that reminded me a little bit of myself. It's been really nice to have such a cool jolt of positive energy that she inserted when we needed it a lot. Now we can also have background vocals. We've never been able to have that before with me being the only girl, and I wanted it to be a female voice."

Circling back to the new song "Wasted On You," there is reference to being "six feet low" that reminds one that on first two Evanescence studio albums there was one song apiece that referenced Lee's late sister, who passed away at the age of three when the singer was six. It turns out that Lee recently lost her younger brother, who died at the age of 24.

"It's really hard," says Lee, turning somber for a few moments. "This has been a crazy time, the last few years. A lot has happened to us within the band. Since the last album, there's a lot to say. We are still who we are, but there have been things that have caused us to change our perspective, and the way that we see the world, the way that we see other people, and the way that we think because of the losses that we've suffered. I'm speaking in plural because our bass player Tim just lost his stepdaughter."

Lee adds that this has been a time during which, in so many ways, she had to grow up and didn't want to. "I just want to be a kid again," she concedes. "I just want to be a kid with my siblings and my mom and dad, and somebody else I know at the end of the day is going to take care of it. Somebody else is going to be the dad, somebody else is going to be in charge. It's a really shitty thing that when you grow up, you have to be the one who does that. You have to be the one to make everybody else feel okay. And sometimes it's not okay. That's the bitter truth."

This moment dovetails into the Recording Academy's recent conversation with Tori Amos about how one does not really understand another's pain unless they have experienced it personally. And a person does not need well-meaning but cliched platitudes from others to deal with pain. They just need to process it in their own way.

"That's a huge part of this band and making music for me from day one," declares Lee. "I just need to process the fact that I hurt right now, and not say, 'But it's gonna be okay.' I still have hope after all, but I think it's important sometimes just to say, 'Hey, I hurt' and let that be the message because other people are hurting too. Instead of being fixed immediately, we need to process our pain, we need to feel the pain. It's important. It's part of what is eventually going to let you get through it. The only way out is through."

That concept might seem anathema to many people caught up in a social media and mass media world where everyone wants to put on a happy face and does not admit to feeling wounded or defeated.

"Right, we don't show the pictures," acknowledges Lee. "I don't Instagram when I'm having a horrible day. We're just showing little clips of life when something was awesome, so when you look through that window into somebody's life you're not getting the full picture. You're just getting the highlight reel. That isn't real."

Funnily enough, the music and videos of Evanescence represent the opposite aesthetic. They show when they are not having a good day.

"That's true," concurs Lee, laughing out loud. "You just listen to my album, and you hear how horrible everything is."

At least that emotional sincerity has allowed her to produce some timeless tunes, with more on the way.

Tori Amos On Maintaining Faith, Vision & Conviction In Troubled Times
 

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Joan Osborne

Photo by Jeff Fasano

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Joan Osborne Talks Getting Political On 'Trouble And Strife,' Singing Jerry Garcia Songs With Phil & Friends And More

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The GRAMMY-nominated "One Of Us" singer opens up about the "all-hands-on-deck moment" that led her to address current events on her latest LP
Will Schube
GRAMMYs
Sep 17, 2020 - 9:18 am

Joan Osborne is one of those artists you’ve heard before even if you’ve never actively searched for her music. Her song, "One Of Us," written by collaborator Eric Bazilian, is one of those songs that transcends time, space, and individuals. It’s catchy and powerful, and landed Osborne three GRAMMY nominations. Not bad for her first single from her debut LP. Though Osborne, born in Kentucky but residing in New York, has never penned a song as culturally captivating as "One Of Us," her career is a sterling example of craftsmanship and dedication to superior songwriting.

Osborne plays with a number of genres, and on her new LP, Trouble and Strife, she bounces from Americana to bar rock to pop with ease and style. Though the album is her boldest political statement to date, she wanted to blend the serious moments, like the powerful immigration tale, "What’s That You Say," with moments of optimism and celebration. "I really wanted to make this record a fun and joyful album and something you could dance to," she explained to GRAMMY.com. "It's about staying connected with your joy and allowing that to lift you up," she added. As the world continues to crack and we fall under the weight of it, Osborne hopes to be a source of positivity and hope. Though songs like "Hands Off" deal with the prevalent corruption of our modern era, "Never Get Tired (Of Loving You)" is a heartwarming ode to her daughter, and "Boy Don’t You Know" wraps themes of female empowerment and misogyny in society around warm piano chords and silky guitar runs.

Though Osborne's songwriting is subtler and more nuanced than her defining hit, her voice continues to be a revelation. From her days of singing Jerry Garcia songs in the Grateful Dead after the legend passed away to her Bob Dylan covers album from 2017, Osborne continually displays why her vocals are some of the most iconic in modern rock ‘n’ roll. Trouble And Strife is another example of her power and dexterity, a beautiful encapsulation of our times, warts and all.

What is it like releasing a political (and fun) album in this particular cultural climate?

Because of the pandemic, the process that we would normally be going through to release a record and support a record is, of course, different because we can't do any live shows. We can't go to any radio stations in person, and we're limited with the amount of stuff that we can do to promote the record. We're, of course, doing a lot of phone interviews and Zoom interviews and things like that remotely to be safe, but it's not the same as going on a tour and playing your songs in front of audiences and stuff like that. It feels a little weird, a little abstract in that way.

This is not a good thing, but I feel like the record, being a very political record or at least the most political record that I've ever released, it feels like there's an audience that's going to be receptive to it. That's the response that we're getting. People are saying that they're happy to have music that is addressing what's going on in the world. It makes them feel less alone and it can be a useful thing to help to navigate this particular moment. That's gratifying. I'm not happy for the reasons behind it being so relevant, but I'm happy that people are responding to it in that way.

When you are interacting with moments to inspire your songs, like "Hands Off," is it draining being inundated by negativity and awful things happening all around us?

It can be very difficult to navigate a time like this. Every day seems to bring some new crisis and some new disaster. If you have kids, you're thinking about the world that you're going to leave to them. That's a difficult thing just as a person and as a citizen. But as a writer, it lights a fire under you and gives you a lot of energy to put the things that you're thinking and feeling into your music. There's a real urgency that I've felt about having songs like this that address this current moment. It gives you a real push in that direction of trying to wrestle with this moment in a creative way.

Having the platform to be able to illuminate a story like on "What's That You Say," is so important, too. Can you talk about how that song came about?

I'm dismayed by the immigration conversation that's going on in this country right now. I believe that America is great because it's a country of immigrants and because of the mix of all the different cultures and artistic traditions that different groups of immigrants have brought with them. That's why American culture is so fascinating. People bring their different traditions with them and then those different traditions and styles have mixed together and created brand-new forms of art in this country. I think that's part of what makes us an amazing country.

I wanted to write something about a person who has come here and brought the best of themselves to this country and really contributed. And so I wrote this song, "What's That You Say," about this character. There were these moments in the song that were instrumental passages that didn't have lyrics and there wasn't singing. I kept hearing a spoken voice in those passages. I thought, well, why don't I turn the mic over, so to speak, to someone who has actually lived this immigrant journey? That's another thing that frustrates me so much about this issue, is that we talk a lot about immigrants and immigration, but I don't hear a lot of people listening to actual immigrants. I don't hear their stories that much. That's very frustrating for me.

I felt like this would be an opportunity to allow somebody to talk about their experience, someone who's actually lived this experience. I can come at it from an artistic perspective and try to have some connection to someone else's story, but no one's going to tell it like someone who's lived it. That's when I approached this organization called RAICES. I've been aware of the work that they're doing at the southern border, trying to help people who are attempting to immigrate to the U.S. from Central America and Mexico and people who are trying to navigate this really dehumanizing system that is in place at the border and helping them with their legal applications for asylum and things like that.

I called them up and I said, "I'm really a fan of the work that you're doing," and I told them about the song and I asked them if they knew someone who might be interested in telling their story to become a part of this song. They introduced me to Ana Maria Rea-Ventre. She is very much the kind of person that this song is written about. She's someone who came to America as a child and has lived the rest of her life here and has been someone who's contributed to her community. She's this shining light to the people around her. She agreed to tell her story.

When your songs began to take a political angle, did you watch what was happening in the world and think to yourself, "I need to make my next album a certain way"? Or had you already started writing and that's just the way that the songs were taking shape?

It's a little bit of both. I wrote these songs in a big rush in 2018. It was before the most recent disasters, but this has certainly been a rough four years. These things were on my mind and a lot of ideas for songs about the current state of our country and of the world kept coming to me. I feel a responsibility as a citizen, a parent, and an artist to try to do what I can to effect some positive change. As they say, "It's an all-hands-on-deck moment." None of us, I don't think, have the luxury to just sit back and watch it unfold. We have to participate.

There’s a cautious optimism that prevails over the entire album. Is that something you really had to work towards? Or is that your MO as a person?

I've been reading a lot of this writer, Sarah Kendzior. She was one of the people who believed that Donald Trump was going to win the presidency. She's an expert on authoritarian governments and she's brilliant. I don't think I can quote her directly, but she said something about, "I'm not an optimist and I'm not a pessimist. I believe that we have to do the work that we have to do, whether we know what the outcome is going to be or not. There's no guarantee that the work that we have to do is going to bring about the change that we want, but we have to do it anyway."

With the revitalization of the Grateful Dead in this modern era, your time playing with Phil & Friends is particularly relevant. Do you have any fond memories from that era?

I was able to work with the Dead after Jerry Garcia passed away and went on a big tour with them. Then I went on a bunch of tours with Phil Lesh & Friends since then and have a real lengthy connection with those guys and with that music. It's a really interesting phenomenon because you have the Grateful Dead and you have their fan base and then you have this larger jam band scene that has spun off from the Dead and from that world.

I have so many memories. I think I was very nervous before my first handful of shows because I sang a lot of the Jerry songs and I felt like, "Wow, is this audience going to accept me? This girl singer doing these songs or are they not going to accept me?" But the audience was very welcoming. I remember it was my birthday and we were playing part of a five-night stand at Red Rocks in Colorado. I got to sing "Stella Blue" in that beautiful setting. There was this gorgeous moon and it was a clear night and it was just one of those moments where you could have heard a pin drop. The song is so delicate and so emotional and it was this moment that's now frozen in my mind. It's this pure, beautiful moment of being on stage with those guys and performing that song in front of that audience in that beautiful space. It was really transcendent.

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Future Islands

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Future Islands Can't Quit You

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Ahead of their sixth studio album release, the Baltimore synth-pop favorites open up about creating 'As Long As You Are'—and coming to terms with the legacy of that "Letterman" performance
Rachel Brodsky
GRAMMYs
Sep 15, 2020 - 8:23 am

One of the most painful losses of the COVID-19 era has undoubtedly been the total and complete shutdown of live music—something synth-soul kingpins Future Islands, who are arguably best known for their hyper-vigorous, electrifying shows, mourn at their core. For years, since their 2006 inception, touring was practically all the Baltimore four-piece did—a cycle that only intensified after their 2014 network television debut on "The Late Show With David Letterman," where they made headlines with a stunning, viral performance of their breakout single, "Seasons (Waiting On You)." 

"I'll take all of that you got!!" exclaimed the talk show host after Future Islands' groundbreaking set, which featured frontman Samuel T. Herring's now-famous head-bobbing shuffle, chest thumps and Sam Cooke-meets-Tom Waits growl. And so would the rest of the world: Following their network television debut, the band embarked on 22 straight months of touring. They dove in so hard, Future Islands (a.k.a. Herring, keyboardist Gerrit Welters, guitarist William Cashion and drummer Michael Lowry) barely had time to asses the changes their group had undergone in such a short amount of time. On their follow-up to Singles, 2017's The Far Field, the band wrote and recorded quickly and aimed to stick to a peppy Singles formula they knew worked. "I had misgivings about the release of that record," Herring tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom. "Going into The Far Field, we tried to act like nothing had changed. We were like, 'Let's not think about how everything has changed and just try to be the same band.' But really what we should have done was be like, 'Everything has changed and this is weird and we should write about it.'"

Today, Future Islands are doing exactly that on their sixth studio album, As Long As You Are (out on Oct. 9 via 4AD), which finds them honestly processing their evolution as a band—and as individuals—in the way they might have liked to do on The Far Field. Synth-laden lead single "For Sure" breathes a sigh of relief at being able to truly lean on a partner ("When you say 'us' / You make me trust"), while opener "Glada" ponders new beginnings and whether or not Herring is worthy of love ("Who am I? / Do I deserve the sea again?"). 

Meanwhile, from an arrangements perspective, while The Far Field made a point of sticking to the pop-minded Singles blueprint, As Long As You Are frequently shifts to a more meditative, atmospheric mood, not unlike their third release, 2011's underrated On The Water.

Calling GRAMMY.com from Sweden, where his partner lives, Herring joined the rest of the group from their respective Baltimore homes to talk about the life-changing events leading up to As Long As You Are, being unable to perform in the Covid-19 era and the emotional catharsis Future Islands want to create in their music.

Sam, how long have you been in Sweden now?

Samuel T. Herring: I've just been here for four weeks on this trip. Me and my partner were separated for the first five months of the pandemic as far as the March lockdown because of borders closures and stuff. Then a loophole opened and I was able to get back here, but I have to travel back in a week to do the album release. So, I'm hoping that I can travel back without issue when it's time. It was hard to be apart for that long with everything happening in the world.

Of course. Putting aside the pandemic release timing, when did you start thinking about writing As Long As You Are?

Herring: We were already talking about this album when The Far Field came out and we were on tour. I had misgivings about the release of that record and definitely my contribution, I felt that I didn't work hard enough and I was a bit unhappy with that record. When we did Singles, the album before The Far Field, there was, we were on tour for 22 months. And then when we got off the road...we took ourselves off the road. We had offers that we left on the table because we're like, “We've been on the road 22 months for this record. If we don't get off, then we're just going to keep touring. And then we don't, how long will it be until we write the next record?”

But we never really had too many conversations about what happened to us in that 22 months with the exposure and the growth of the band. We hadn't adapted. We were still adapting to how big this thing had gotten for us. Something that was our baby, that we had slowly seen grow over time and worked so hard to get there... it just like exploded through Singles. The stages were bigger, the shows were bigger, the crowds were bigger. There were just more things, more responsibilities. And going into The Far Field, we tried to, I think, act like nothing had changed. We're just like, “Let's not think about how everything's changed and try to be the same band.” But really what we should have done was be like, “Everything has changed and this is weird and we should write about it.”

I think when we released [The Far Field], it was like, “Oh no, this is the wrong record or at this time.” Because I still think that record, in time, will be a classic part of our oeuvre. It's an important step for us and this album we had to make. Because sometimes you just have to release, you just have to put out what comes. But at the same time, I felt that we could have dug a little bit deeper and I, personally, could have dug a lot deeper.

So, we were already having this conversation in 2017. And then in 2018, still touring on The Far Field, we started to write on the road for the very first time. We would set up for sound checks and we were pretty streamlined at that point.

The thing is, when you're writing a record, it's the creative process. And when you're on tour, it's the business—a machine cycle, you know what I mean? Touring is the business: get to work, be on time, knock it out and then, do it again and do it again. So, you're constantly going from this tour cycle, which is machine work to then creative work and it's really difficult. And in the old days, we didn't have time to cut off between records. We couldn't afford to do that.

So, we would do two months of touring. We'd have two weeks off and we'd write a song or two, and then we'd take it out on the next two months’ [tour]. And if it survived, then it stayed in the set. And then once we had five or six songs after a year, a year and a half of touring constantly, then we would record an album and then keep touring, in between tours and then keep going.

We did that for five years, 2008 to 2012, until we wrote Singles. And what happens when you write songs like that, as we capture these tensions that are happening in [our] life at the moment. Not so much with Singles, but with The Far Field, I felt like we got off this turbulent tour, this long tour, we were just burnt out and we start writing. And the first three or four songs were just filled with so much emotion because of all of what we've just been through.

So really, As Long As You Are was... We just wanted to take our time and create a more balanced record.

Yeah, I can’t really begin to imagine the explosion of opportunities that must have hit you all after the "David Letterman" performance. And if you’re a band that hasn’t really seen that level of opportunity yet, maybe you just go has hard as you can, while you can. And you have to mindfully, intentionally make yourselves stop and reflect, or else you burn out. Do you remember if or when that moment came for you?

Herring: Definitely for me. But I felt that at the end of 2012—at the end of five years of touring—I felt burnout, and like, I don't know if I can keep doing this. And then we write our most accomplished record at the time after that, and then we do it again and then it's like, Oh, I don't know if I can do this. And then you do it again because the fact is you can't, I can't quit you.

It's a great love in a sense, this thing. Our friendship as a band that we've seen the world together and been through so many things in our lives together. Me and William and Gerrit have been playing since the beginning of 2003. So, it's like, 17 and a half years playing shows and being in vans and backstages. All of these cycles and becoming a part of people's lives, the audience, the people that have supported us. There's not a big difference between the people that have been there since 2006 and the people that have been there since 2016. The people that support what we do, they're a huge part of the equation that allows us to live our lives and to make this art.

And that's part of what the performance is about every time. Giving people what they came to see. That's what, that's a big thing about what Future Islands is about. It's about sweating for it.

Sometimes literally!

Herring: Yeah, very literally. But yeah, the burnout comes just because... I've said this in a few interviews, it's like you don't eat for a few years and then when you're in front of a buffet, you don't stop eating when you're full. You keep stuffing your mouth until you're sick and then you shove food in your pockets for later. And that's part of what you will always do. It's hard to go against that human instinct, but I think, we're getting older.

There's a maturing process, which I think is a big part of taking a step back and looking at what we've accomplished in a positive way. I used to worry that the “Letterman” performance put us into too much of a box, that it would make people think about us a certain way forever. But maybe its lasting legacy will be positive in that it makes people think about us at all.

"You don't find truth when you're writing that for someone else, you find truth when you're writing for yourself." — Samuel T. Herring

What would that box look like, you think?

Herring: Well, part of it is sound. I remember when we put out our third record, On The Water, I was like, “This record's going to be great because it's not going to allow anybody to generalize or think that they know what we sound like. Because In Evening Air, which is still such a great record to me, was a little bit more propulsive. And then On The Water was a reaction to that. It's like beautiful and ambient and swelling sounds and slow sounds. And so it was like, yeah, this will allow us to do whatever we want. I feel like The Far Field was us writing for the person that loves “Seasons,” like writing a record for them. Here's some other songs that are like “Seasons” that we wrote for you, unwittingly.

I just think we were writing great songs that were like, “Oh, people dig this vibe, we can do that.” You don't find truth when you're writing for someone else, you find truth when you're writing for yourself. That's the stuff that is going to resonate with people. When you're finding truth in yourself and sharing that truth in your art. That's what's going to resonate with people. And it may resonate with fewer people than if you're trying to reach a bunch of people, but if it resonates, but it's going to resonate very deeply with those fewer people. And that's more important than trying to reach a larger a crowd with something that could ring hollow in time.

To me, As Long As You Are kind of sounds like a nice mix of more ambient On The Water energy, and then also there are a few fast-paced Singles-esque songs. Was striking a career-overview balance something you were thinking about?

William Cashion: I think we just wanted to make the record have a more varied sound than The Far Field did. And then I go back to some of the ghost and the dust that we had on records like In Evening Air or On The Water. These little experimental, weird, distorting sounds. We wanted to experiment in the studio. Just kind of push the edges of what we do. And part of that is the approach to the songwriting. From The Far Field, every song on that record was written with me, Sam and Gerrit in a room jamming. And that was something I remember we talked about. “Seasons” was written like that.

That song really did something special. We [thought], that's a good formula. Let's not mess with that. But in doing that, we kind of ignored other aspects of our writing. So, we have songs on this record that were written with all of us in a room, like “The Painter” and “Hit the Coast” and “I Knew You.” But then there's a song like “Thrill.” That's a song that Gerrit brought forth to the band, and then “Born In A War,” that came from me, and Mike worked on an idea and brought it to the guys. And then there was a couple of old ideas that I brought to the band back in 2015, like “City's Face.” But the version that's on the album is nothing like the original demo of that song.

I’m sure you’re going to be asked many times, so I apologize in advance for the repetition. But as a band that has built such a huge following around your live performance, how is the prospect of not touring this record sitting with you—aside from the "A Stream Of You And Me" show in October?

Cashion: Well, we're trying to figure out new ways to get out there. Because that's really what we understand the best: touring. And so, if we can't do that, we're talking about starting to write the next record. After this record comes out, we've already got a couple of songs that were recorded for As Long As You Are, and at least one of them we think might be on the next record. But who knows what the next batch of songs will sound like. We keep talking about it, but we can't really focus on it, I don't think, until after October 9 when the record comes out. So once it's out, then we'll try to think about writing and performing again, because it's looking like it might be another year before we can tour again.

It would be nice if we had another release [by then]. I don't want to put pressure on ourselves by saying we're going to [release something else]. We don't want to pressure ourselves by forcing ourselves to do another record in a year. But that would be nice, or maybe an EP. But our records have this pattern, starting with In Evening Air, when we took all the time in the world. On The Water was made really quick, in like a year. And then we took our time with Singles and then The Far Field was really quick, like in a year. And so As Long As You Are, we're continuing the pattern. We took our time with this record, and I'm really hoping that we don't inadvertently continue the trend and make the next record really fast simply because we want to get the record out in time for whenever we tour next fall or whatever. If we tour then.

Herring: Do you guys, do Gerrit and Mike, do you want to talk on that? Being off the road?

Mike Lowry: It's a huge bummer. I'm all about being on the road and playing shows and I feel like I still hadn't really accepted the reality of our situation until a couple months ago. Still, every day is an exercise in accepting that it's just not going to happen and there's nothing I can do about it. And that's definitely been a challenge because, for me, performing live is a big part of how I, especially being a drummer, share my art with people. It's extremely disheartening. I'm kept up at night sometimes thinking about, “Maybe we could do this,” and there's just no way around. The whole world is going through this thing. It is just f**king driving me crazy, honestly. But I'm trying to use the time wisely and try to work out some things in some other areas, musically.

Do you guys remember Dan Deacon’s Baltimore Round Robin shows? Maybe it’s time to get a livestream going with every still-active Baltimore band.

Herring: At Le Poisson Rouge! I'll text Dan Deacon right now about it.

We only have time for one more question, so I’ll leave you with this: All of your records, in their own way, thoughtfully blend themes of internal pain and optimism. As Long As You Are is certainly no different. How do you all stay hopeful in 2020?

Herring: Well, I've been asked about optimism in the new album and then talking about optimism in our past songs, even in darkness. And I think as much as it's something that I personally, lyrically and emotionally, as a performer, want to share with an audience, it's also something I want for them, for the audience to be able to feel strength in vulnerability, to be able to be emotional and open with the people around them, the people that they know, their friends and family, but also the people they don't know. The way we lack empathy in our society at times, the way we misunderstand or mischaracterize one another... But I think some of the optimism that's inborn in Future Islands' music is my own hope for myself and my hope for the guys and their families and my own fears. My own fears of what my dark mind creates, like my own battles with depression and my own understanding that I also need to hear it.

I need to speak it because that gives me hope too. It's inborn of something that I need to hear, and that I need to tell myself to keep me going. Because I think it's really easy to forget about all the people who care about us in our lives, especially at a time like this, where we're so overcome. And I think even going through being away from my partner in this beginning of the pandemic, I didn't feel personally slighted because I knew the whole world is affected by this. So I'm like, well, at least I'm not alone in that. But, I have friends also say, "Yeah, but you can still feel that." I think it's just important to look out for one another.

Future Islands has always been about that catharsis. We've always wanted to create that in our music and in our live shows, which unfortunately we can't do right now. But we are about keeping people moving, whether their hearts or their feet.

Yeah. "Balance" in particular has always, well, balanced me out when I’m stressed.

Herring: It just takes time.

Dan Deacon Talks 'Mystic Familiar', Meditation & Befriending Val Kilmer

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Doves

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Doves On Their First Album In A Decade & Why They’re Still Trying To Stay Patient

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"We always joke and say there's a curse on Doves," guitarist/songwriter Jez Williams tells GRAMMY.com of the Manchester indie stalwarts
Laura Studarus
GRAMMYs
Sep 10, 2020 - 9:22 am

Jez Williams is calling from his studio in the Manchester countryside. The area is currently experiencing a downpour of Biblical proportions, but the Doves guitarist isn’t terribly bothered. As he explains, accidently hitting a cymbal on the drum kit he’s perched on while trying to emphasize a point, music as always been a comfortable place for him. And returning to Doves, the three-piece he’s been a part of since 1998, was a homecoming, especially since it meant working with his brother Andy Williams, and frontman Jimi Goodwin.

After a decade, apart, the band's first official meeting took place over dinner—a working meal that Williams describes as feeling a bit like both a Tinder date and meeting with an old flame. Inspired by the loss of David Bowie, carnivals and desire in all its forms, the band’s fifth album, The Universal Want, carries a similar tension. Going into the studio, they had one rule: no nostalgia. And while the release is unmistakably covered in Doves' fingerprints, including arena-worthy choruses, crackling electronics and lyrics written through smudged rose-colored glasses ("Old friend it's been a while/We're just prisoners of this life."), it also reflects the excitement of musicians still happy to be doing what they love.

Ahead of the release, Williams spoke with GRAMMY.com about taking time to cosplay as a band at the beginning of their journey, dipping into their childhood memories and why he’d be super down for an alien abduction.

It seems like a terrible irony that Doves is putting out a new album in a year when nothing is happening.

We always joke and say there's a curse on Doves. We haven't done an album for 10 or 11 years, and we finally finished the album, we can't tour. I remember when we were cutting the new album in March, and we were so excited. Like, oh my god, we were just so amped to get the album out. And then literally I was in London cutting, and then the next day, the COVID thing really ramped up. There was a lockdown. I had to get from London back to Manchester literally the next day. You could not make this up.

On the bright side, you get to dodge bad tour bathrooms for a while longer.

You know what, I miss everything about it. Sure, we did some festival gigs last year, but we'll miss the real proper gigging where you're on a tour and with the same people in a room for three months. I absolutely love it. And I’m just really just itching to get back to that place—if we ever do.

Other than the occasional show, what has the last decade looked like for you?

Me and the singer Jimi put out a solo record, and me and my brother put out another project called Black Rivers. And then Jimi put out a solo album. It was interesting, starting a new band from scratch. It was almost like going back to when we started in a van, rather than a tour bus, and you're doing these kinds of sweaty clubs. That was cool. And you had to load your own equipment back into the bus, so not much of a crew. It was pretty much back to grassroots kind of fun.

That's interesting that you were able to put aside the privilege that comes with already having an established project.

It was really good fun, because it was different to Doves, it was something we've not experienced with Doves, because we've been together for a long time. Doing something outside that Doves was, I think was much-needed. It bought a lot of much-needed energy back into Doves. I just think we were so desperate for a break.

So, what was that first reunion like when you came back together, not as three dudes who are fond of each other, but as a band?

We met in a curry house. It was kind of freaky and strange and a little bit surreal, because we've not really seen each other. A little bit nervous—the meeting had all the emotions. We just wanted to know if there was something still there. We were checking out how each is feeling about the potential of us doing something new. We always said, if we are going to come back, it's got to be with a new album, not just to play the old songs. We're older, and maybe not any wiser, but we're definitely a little bit older. So, we had that curry. And then about a week later, we went to a little studio, and we literally just played the old songs that we haven't played for years. And that was freaky.

Muscle memory is so fascinating.

That's exactly what it was, it was some weird freaky muscle memory, your hands knew where to go. Jimi just immediately went into the lyrics. There was no "I forgotten that lyric." It was the strangest thing.

The track "Carousels" features a sample from Tony Allen. Did your band have a relationship with him?

That was a song that I personally had written. It was knocking around for years. And then I took it in a different direction. I slowed it down. Then I found this album that Tony Allen did of drum samples. And then once I had that in place, it's certainly quite good, and I took it to the band and they really liked it. And they went on from there. We've been aware of Tony Allen for a bit. I love Afrobeat, so it was such an honor to have them indirectly playing with us. And obviously, it was so strange because he passed away this year and made it all the more sort of poignant.

It is a really beautiful little hidden tribute. It's interesting because you did mention that you didn't want Doves to be based in nostalgia, and yet carnivals from your youth also came into play.

They were a little bit menacing, a little bit scary. Exciting. There was danger in the air, but yet magic in there. So, it had all these wondrous kind of mixed emotions. This is when we were kids just mucking about. There's all the bad boys and the people from the other side of the tracks. It had all these emotions mixed up, so I guess we were kind of reminiscing about that kind of feeling of when you're a kid and your eyes are opening up slowly to this sort of wonderful dangerous world.

That's such a beautiful filter.

Oh, yeah, I like that. We sometimes reminisce about things like that. Lyrically. And this just seemed to feel natural.

The Universal Want feels like an incredibly provocative title.

What summed up the album for us was this kind of misguided wanting. It was interesting to us that people sometimes are so programmed to think what they want is the newest this and that. This kind of consumerism, that's just gone into what people think they want, but they're not actually getting. This kind of a yearning for something that's perhaps misguided.

Yeah. So much of our want is out of our control and shaped by influences.

Exactly. Some people might spiritually want some something more than just the latest iPhone or whatever. But things are sort of degrading in society where people are just programmed to want these consumer things. I just think that's a sort of erosion.

Your cover was created by Maria Lax, a photographer from Northern Finland who shoots UFO sighting—which might be the best collection of words ever. How did you guys stumble across her work?

Well, in fact it was Jimi. He bought this book that she had done. She did a real limited run. Maria Lax made this beautiful book that had been hand-bound and she puts little bits of notes in personally, so it is very personalized. Jimi bought a couple one for me one for Andy for our birthdays. I was just I was just stunned by the beauty and the noir-airy look to it. It just spoke out to me, and I just thought, this absolutely marries with this album. It was just, for me it was, it was just so obvious that the two must go together.

Have you had any close encounters with aliens?

Not personally. I've always been obsessed with them. I was brought up on E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And I loved the late-'70s fascination with UFOs. It's almost like Maria's photos look like it's either about to arrive or it's just left. It's very eerie, but no, I haven't personally seen them. Not yet, but still open!

Do you foresee more music from Doves in the future?

I don't see why not. There's no reason for us not to do another album. At the moment, we're just desperate to get out there and gig. We understand why we can't, but it's at the forefront of our minds.

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Bill Callahan

Photo by Hanly Banks Callahan

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Bill Callahan Leads With Life's Little Moments On 'Gold Record'

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The onetime Smog singer speaks to GRAMMY.com about viewing songs as living things, looking back at his younger self, re-recording "Let's Move To The Country" and more
Emma Madden
GRAMMYs
Sep 4, 2020 - 8:51 am

If the songwriter’s job is to explain life as he sees and feels it, then understanding, and making peace with death, is an essential part of that task. Bill Callahan, who’s been releasing music for 30 plus years—first under the moniker of Smog, then with his own name—has achieved just that. While his earlier work may have been death-driven, more prone to chaos than clarity, more tormented than tender, when he emerged after a rare five-year hiatus in 2019 with his 17th album Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest, he returned with a passion for humanity. Following the death of his mother and the birth of his son, on Shepherd he not only managed to reconcile that new life with death, but he did what only the very best songwriters and sages can do: he made his listener thankful for life, while giving them a newfound appreciation for death. "When we let go," he sang, "Our arms are open, and our hearts are exposed."

Callahan, once the drunken uncle at the wedding, has now become the world's godfather. His voice, stolid and baritone, immediately puts you at ease. He counsels you like a patriarch. He tells jokes. He recites your anxieties back to you so that they don’t sound so bad anymore. When he picks up the phone to this call, the clucking of his teeth and tongue blends into the sound of the rattlesnakes in his backyard, while birds sing above, uneaten and free.

On his new album Gold Record, Bill’s world grows smaller and smaller. It’s filled with acts of daily trivialities and grievances—getting work done, not getting work done. Seeing eye to eye with others, not seeing eye to eye. Motiveless domesticity. Everything exactly how it is. The sound of a man settled down. The sound of a man who’s moved to the country.

GRAMMY.com spoke to him about his change in focus, viewing songs as living things—and Harry Styles.

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

I had some gluten-free toast with almond butter and raspberry jam.

Do you have the same thing every morning?

I guess I go through phases of fixating on one thing, but it’s actually pretty varied.

Is your general routine as varied?

No, I have a kid and that kind of regulates my world. He comes into the bed around 6:30 in the morning and then we get up and make his lunch and his breakfast, get him dressed. Feed ourselves, take him to this little camp he goes to. And then at 9 a.m. I’m free to do as I please.

Does that mean music or do you have a routine outside your kid and outside music?

Yeah, now that my time is limited I’m more kind of disciplined about when I work. Usually mornings are the most creative and energetic time for me so I usually either start playing guitar or start looking at notebooks of words.

You said you look at notebooks, what do you mean by that?

I just have a notebook with unfinished songs in it.

So do you write songs that might go onto a record from those unfinished songs?

Yeah.

Have you kept up to date with other music released this year?

Yeah a little bit.

Has there been anything you enjoyed or anything that’s annoyed you?

There's always stuff that annoys me but I try not to talk about it just ‘cause what does it matter? I liked the Harry Styles record a lot, I was surprised by how much I liked it.

What did you like about the Harry Styles album?

It’s just real, powerful and absorbing songs, surprising arrangements. Seems to be off on his own path. There’s kind of a trend in music now of disaffection and really it seems like depression and heartbreak and not in the traditional girl-breaks-your-heart [way], but like, life has broken a lot of people's hearts right now. And that’s valid but it’s not all there is. It’s a very uplifting thing to listen to I think.

What do you intend to give to the world as an artist?

I’m not really sure. I guess the thing I do is try to do my best and to really consider the listener, which I think maybe a lot of people don’t really do somehow. That’s kind of my pledge to anyone who wants to listen, is that I care. Some people will make music just because they can, they have the skill. I don’t really have the skill, but I care.

Did you consider the listener as much when you were starting out?

I don’t think I did, I think I came to value it maybe about 10 years ago, or maybe less than that. Especially when I put the Shepherd record out because it’d been five or six years since I’d done anything except tour. When people still cared, it just kind of warmed my heart. I was able to take five to six years off releasing anything and people were still anxious to listen and critics were still willing to write about it and talk to me. That was a good jolt for me.

When you start off playing music and no one knows who you are, especially back then in the early '90s, there would be at least four bands on every bill, sometimes five or six. If you wanted to play a show, you’d have to be first on a bill of five bands and no one’s heard of you, which is fine, but coping with the fact that no one gives a shit... So to not give a shit about the audience is kind of the only way you can make sense of what you’re doing. And then that became the way that I related to the audience because that’s how it was from the beginning. At some point I realized, well, these people, now they’re listening and now it’s changed my attitude because people are actually caring.

You said that change happened eight years ago. Why?

I was talking to this journalist who had interviewed me pretty early on a couple times and wrote some nice articles about me and then I didn’t hear for a while, and then they kinda popped back up on my radar and said she wanted to talk to me about whatever new record I had out at the time. She was remarking on how I'd played a show the night before that she was at, how different it was to how people were listening, and she started to cry, which really struck me that someone would be that moved by my success or whatever you want to call it. I was telling her how my attitude was changing just from taking a step back.

Sometimes you’re in a situation and you don’t really see where you are because you have tunnel vision, 'cause it helped you get things done by blocking certain things out. I think for whatever reason around that time I took a step back and realized that there wasn’t a reason to be angry at the audience, but I don’t really know what triggered that.

Is it because you sensed that the audience were finally listening?

I don’t know, I think I just started to feel kind of ridiculous.

When you re-recorded "Let’s Move To The Country" did it feel like you were in conversation with a past self?

I guess so, because it has some unfinished sentences in it. It’s kind of an unfinished song, which was the beauty of it at the time, but then I thought it would be a good idea to finish the song. I finished the part that was unfinished but then added more unfinished chapters to it.

Do your other songs feel finished to you?

I think pretty much every song is either unfinished or proves to be inadequate or lacking in some way. And that’s the whole reason for me continuing to make music—because there’s always room for improvement. And then having a listener and/or critic really helps finish the song but they point out the holes that songs have on purpose. I think songs are probably supposed to be unfinished so that each listener can finish them in their own personal way and that’s why people are so passionate about the music that they like, 'cause something in their psyche has finished the song, so they feel like it’s a part of them.

How do you choose which moments to capture into song?

Anything that I hold in my mind, any exchange I had with a person or a physical space that I keep returning to in my head or a line I read in a book or a movie. I assume that everybody is like this but I have recurring things that keep coming back to me randomly—sometimes it’s just an intersection I was at on tour. Like, why have I  been thinking about that time let alone a stop light in Ohio when nothing happened? Something important must’ve happened then. But that's kind of a more abstract… Anything that sticks in my head, I think it must have some significance even if I don’t know what it is until I start writing about it. Like with the song "The MacKenzies." I bought my first car from this couple, and they invited me in and gave me a cocktail and chatted for a while, but that was like 30 years ago. I’ve thought about them ever since. So I was like, let me try to turn them into a song. I think the moments choose me and they keep showing themselves in my consciousness.

Most of these memories and encounters on the album seem to take place on the road, in cars.

I love cars, I love driving. I think a lot of my songs are about movement. With cars, there’s an inverse feeling of potentiality, so that’s probably why they appear often.

As a songwriter, you seem to have developed a more superficial appreciation for these things, whereas before it felt more existential.

I think with Shepherd I tried to cover all bases like the tangible and intangible parts of life and the physical and immaterial parts. But I think with Gold Record I’m more rooted in the everyday interactions of life.

So are you trying to narrow your focus?

I think I was trying to because Shepherd was kind of all about me and I wanted to make a record that was more about other people and other lives. I haven’t really had any complaints about it but I do wonder with a record like Shepherd, like what if you’re not married or don’t have a kid, are you gonna give a shit about this? People not in that situation still seemed to get something out of it.

Has your perspective changed since making that album?

I always feel like I’m expanding as a human which could just be a psychological trick our brains play on us as we get out of bed in the morning. I do think being married and having a kid pushes me into all sorts of places that I would never have gone if I was single. And also watching a kid develop and seeing all the levels of how complex humans are because every couple of weeks there’s another layer of onion skin that my kid has on him that he seems like a complete human but then he develops some other trait that’s part of being human. So seeing that and just having to counsel him and guide him with his newfound complexity, that’s always a lesson for myself. But probably my general perspective is pretty much the same. And I think the Covid thing is really gonna change things for a lot of people. What can we really think in the face of this type of death that’s just sweeping across the world. We have to realize that there’s a natural thing that the biological world brings on us every 100 years or so.

Now that you have such an interest in humanity, I wonder how you look back on your younger self?

It depends how far back I’m looking but if I look all the way back, I mostly feel like shame. If I look at the time as a whole, I’m proud of the fact that I was so prolific and adventurous, I tried to change the sound of each record or just to make a different feeling thing for people to listen to. In some ways I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of my time back then but on a generous day, I just look at it as if I’m grateful I had that time to just make music without very many other concerns at all. I think I spent that time fairly productively. Now that I have more going on in my personal life I realize that you can do both, but you might have to relearn how to do music.

Why don't you see yourself in the books you read anymore?

That was just a feeling that overcame me a while back. I think when you’re in your late teens, early 20s and you discover the books that complete you or speak for you, say the things that you want to say but just can’t say it. That feeling when you’re reading a book like I could’ve written this, I should’ve written this but really you couldn’t have written it. Those books kind of become your skeleton to form the body that you present to the world. After 10 or 15 years of seeking out all the books I should read there was a point where I kinda felt like I’d read all the books that were gonna affect me. I guess having bad luck, a string of trying five or six different books and them not speaking to me, but I think that’s kind of a signal that you’re ready to start writing your own.

Would you write another one?

Yeah… I love writing prose, I just need to get into some kind of groove with it, songwriting always kind of blows it away just because it’s something I know how to do a bit easier and quicker. I do wanna say that eventually I was able to find books again that are a very important thing to be reading, it just took a while.

I noticed there are fewer epiphanies and aphorisms on this album compared to your previous. When you do include them how do you know whether they’re "important advice or just preachy as hell?"

Yeah totally but usually if I’ve gotten to a point where I think that I have some advice that should go into a song, if I believe in it that strongly then I’m usually pretty confident that it might hold some value for somebody. At least for a year or two. I tend to revamp my world view every couple of years.

Have you always been that way?

I don’t think so, I don’t think I was that complex as a youth, as a 20-something, I didn’t have the complexity, the vision. You tend to be rather self-centered when you’re younger I think, maybe reactionary, you might see things with a very narrow vision. You see your parents from a childlike perspective only so when you grow up you can see things like your parents and other people from a more nuanced perspective.

Did you think about death from a young age?

I didn’t really get into reading novels until I was 17 or 18. I associate novels with thinking about death just because a book is like a little tomb, it’s got all these lives in there and they’re kind of trapped by a book or a story. Kind of like they’re dead but also like they have immortality at the same time. I’m not sure exactly when I started incorporating it, pretty early I guess in my songwriting.

And you view songs as living things?

I do, yeah. I mean you can listen to a song by anybody, someone dead, and the song is still alive.

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