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

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

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The Las Vegas-born, Philly-based D.I.Y. luminary speaks to GRAMMY.com about managing his own music career and "reintroducing myself in an accessible way"
Rachel Brodsky
GRAMMYs
Oct 6, 2020 - 11:39 am

When Shamir Bailey first showed up in music circles, he was barely out of his teens. The year was 2015, he was living in New York and interning at the "indie-major" label XL Recordings, where he'd even been signed. "I was on a fast track of being a major mainstream pop star," he tells GRAMMY.com in a phone call from his home in Philadelphia. That year, Shamir released the critically beloved debut, Ratchet—a bouncy-ball collection of electro-pop cuts, all topped off with Shamir's cheeky, countertenor vocals. 

Five years later, Shamir is in a markedly different place—musically, spiritually, emotionally. Splitting from XL in 2017, citing creative differences, Shamir self-released a handful of genre-jumping records: 2017's Hope and Revelations, 2018's Resolution, 2019's Be The Yee, Here Comes The Haw, 2020's Cataclysm. Last year, he launched his own label, Accidental Popstar, which incubates and develops burgeoning talent and is home to D.I.Y. performers Southwick, Grant Pavol and Poolblood. 

Now, Shamir has released his latest work, a just-released self-titled album, which serves as a re-entry of sorts into the mainstream music zeitgeist and is, as he said in his publicity materials, "the record that's most me."

Borrowing influences from a range of genres—punk, country, dance and, of course, pop—the self-released Shamir brings the 25-year-old's career full circle with its instantly catchy arrangements, authentic artistry and candid indifference for whatever the music industry thought he should be. 

GRAMMY.com called Shamir up to chat about his latest release, what going independent has taught him as an artist and the best advice he received from one of his heroes: Mandy Moore.

I love the new album, and I'm excited to talk to you about it. You had gone back to Vegas, but now you're in Philly. Is that correct?

I went back to Vegas for... I want to say four months after New York, because I didn't like it. But other than that, I've been in Philly since 2015. I was just basically homeless most of 2015 because I was touring Ratchet nonstop and didn't have a break until the end of 2015. But most of 2015, I knew that I was going to be in Philly. I just loved Philly. I've been here ever since.

I've the always gotten the sense that Philly is a little bit more of a rewarding community for artists and musicians, where New York can be… Well, it's its own kind of stress. Did you found that to be the case?

Yeah. When I came to New York, I was definitely welcome for the music scene. I was living and working at Silent Barn, but I just like how casual the Philly scene was, and how no one was trying to be famous. Everyone was just trying to have fun [and] share music, and it there was no pretension behind it at all whatsoever. And I'm like, "This is me. This is where I'm meant to be."

In many of the interviews I’ve read with you this year, you’ve spoken about being introverted and how that factors into quarantine life. When you look ahead into spending the coming months in quarantine, as a musician, how does that sit with you?

I don't know. I really want to tour. I often like to give myself hiatuses between touring, just to preserve my mental health. I was really ready to go back on the road this year. This is the longest I've ever gone without touring at all. It definitely just the longest I've ever gone just a show, because I still did one-offs last year. But other than that, I'm chilling, like I said. It's really not too different from my normal life, especially since all of my closest friends live in different cities and states, maybe countries. I’m still staying up in their life, digitally.

I’d love to spend some time talking about your transition from working with a major indie label to releasing music independently. What has been the most profound thing that you’ve learned from that journey?

I don't know. I think it's harder for me to say, because I've always felt it was deeply important to be as savvy on the industry and business side of music, as that's the most important for me. From the beginning, I worked on things behind the scenes. A lot of people don't know, during the Ratchet era, I was managing a band and interning at XL as well.

I think if anything, because of that, it made the transition fairly easy for me. I think, for me, it was just better once I started to do things independently in a way, because it's not playing a game of telephone. I think working with a label was like playing a game of telephone, and it's constantly having to explain yourself and set the truth and try to get everyone else on the same mindset that you're on. Which I'm better at now because of the years of experience. But I think, at the beginning, that was just very hard for me. And also, I was just very young and not confident. So, if I wasn't heard, I would just stand down.

Other than that, I think I've had a bit more freedom, and it's been easier. But it's obviously a lot more work, because you're doing everything yourself. You're doing the marketing. I have a publicist, thank God, but you're finding the right publicist for you. But, like I said, I was lucky to have a lot of those connections and understand a lot of that, but I made sure I could.

If you didn't go into artistry itself, what side of the business was interesting to you?

I think A&R and artist development.

That’s really interesting. Starting out as young as you did—that can be an age where you can envision yourself doing multiple things in an industry. You’re just trying to figure out what works for you.

Yeah. I realized artist development worked best. At first, I thought maybe managing, but I was managing up-and-coming artists, and I realized that I was mostly developing them, and the managing side of things, I actually hated. So yeah, even just less than A&R-ing, even though A&R-ers typically are supposed to help develop an artist.

I think because the industry wants fully formed artists these days, A&R is just maybe fewer artists, it's a producer or two, and help with the funding of the record and making sure all of that is intact. But I also like just working with raw material and just helping the artists build off of what's already within them, but just put it in a pretty bottle.

So, when you're developing artists via Accidental Popstar, what do you look for when you bring someone into that network?

First, I'd have a relationship with them, realistically. Everyone that I work was on the label, I have a really deep relationship what. Grant Pavol, I've known him since he was 16. I've been friends with Southwick for the longest, before we started working together, and actually met Paige five years ago when she was interning at NPR. You can actually see her at my Tiny Desk session, when everyone was sitting around me, and then we reconnected a few years later. I was just like, "Hi, nice to meet you." She was like, "We've actually met."

So yeah, I think I have to know the artists inside and out, not even just as an artist, but as a person as well, just so I'm aware of their boundaries. I think the industry in general, when working with artists, doesn’t try to do the work to understand the artist as a person. And so, because of that, they have a very one- or two-dimensional idea of the artist. And I think you have to know the artist as a person as well to get a full scope of who they are as an artist.

To circle back to something that you talked a little bit about in your Billboard interview, you said that were definitely open and hopeful when it comes to perhaps joining a major in the future, now that you have a more well-rounded idea of how the machine works. And part of that is because you want to see a more diverse, intersectional artist roster. Are there any majors—or really any labels at all out there—that you think are doing something right in terms of artist diversity?

Well, I'm not really sure. I have friends that work at majors, but I think for the most part, just being in Philly also has kept me in this bubble away from the majors, which was kind of the point. I came here to focus on myself and my art, and I just also love it as well.

I think now I'm really planning to get an idea of all of the different majors and specifically what they can offer, and specifically what they can offer me. Right now, I'm talking to someone from a major label, and she's been answering every question I have and letting things work, and blah, blah, blah. So, I don't know, I can't really say off the bat specifically any names, but I'm definitely in that process of dwindling down what makes the most sense.

Yeah, we’re living in a time where the industry at large is promising to do better, from a diversity standpoint. Have you seen anything from anyone—whether it’s a company or a specific person—that inspires confidence in you?

Yeah, I'm taking everything with a grain of salt. That's the only reason why I'm even caring about or coming back to reintroducing myself in an accessible way. At the beginning, I was on a fast track of being a major mainstream pop star. But that wasn't necessarily my dream at the time. Maybe not even still now. I just guess I feel more well equipped for it now. But I was like, "I'll step down, and then there would be another black, queer, genderqueer pop star." Right? There has to be. I made such a huge mark. People are literally copying me. People are literally ripping me off. It must happen. And it didn't, and that frustrated me. And so, it's like, "You got to be the change you want to see in the world." I was blessed with this platform, and it never really wavered. So, it would be selfish of me, at this point, not to fully go for it. Do you know what I mean?

Yes, absolutely. Switching gears to the album itself—Shamir experiments with dance, pop, grunge, country, punk. And you’ve said that this the truest representation of you, musically.

Yeah. I finally was able to mix all of those genres in. Does it feel like you're getting whipped?

No, it feels really balanced.

Yeah. That's what I'm most proud of, honestly. It's not so much that it's so different than anything that I've been doing—it's focused, it's super highly focused to the point where I'm able to hit every element without it feeling overwhelming. And I think that's just really it. And so, in that way, it just feels the most me, because it's the most digestible me I think I've been since ever, honestly. I think even in a lot of ways, it's more accessible than even Ratchet, because I think a lot of weird-ass heavy electronic production looks weird in Ratchet.

It's hard to strike that balance, but you make it look easy.

Thank you. Again, this is the longest I've ever worked on a record. Normally, as you've seen in the past, I like to just write the songs, record the songs, put them out there. And this was the first time... even since Ratchet. Ratchet was done very quickly. This is the first time where I wrote the song and let them breathe for a year.

There’s a line that stuck out to me in the single "On My Own." The refrain, "And I don't care to feel like I belong, but you always did." Is that referring to feeling fundamentally out of sync with a partner?

Exactly. I think the song is very generalized, but I think that one specific line is just to that person. To the person, I was like, "Yes. You." They weren't necessarily vain, and I don't think they necessarily felt they need to keep up with the Joneses, but I think they felt the need not to stand out. You know what I mean? And I don't like that. I think that's worse to keeping up with the Joneses to me in a way, because I think... The person was white, I'm just going to say that, but I think there is a certain amount of privilege to being able to still be taken seriously, but also being modest. I think I don't have the privilege [to be] modest, because then I'll just be not heard. You know what I mean? Therefore, I can't be modest, and I think a lack of modesty probably was a lot for that person. 

That's frustrating. And then you might not feel seen.

Well, it's not so much that not even just don't feel seen; it's just like, "This is how I have to navigate, I'm sorry. I've gotten everything that I've gotten right now because I have to navigate like this." I'd rather not. I just think that I'm a low-key person, I'm super introverted, I'm laid-back. I'd rather not, realistically, but I have to.

I was curious—you put out another record, Cataclysm, in March of this year. How did those overlap with each other in terms of the actual writing and recording?

I think Cataclysm, honestly, is very not pop production-wise. It’s very grungy and very fuzzy and very all of those things, but I think some of the best pop songwriting that I've done. There are some songs on there I think that are even poppier than stuff that's on Shamir, but that was the point of Cataclysm. It was supposed to be this very dirtied pop record, because the songs were so very pop and straightforward. So, in that way, that's how they coincide. And often, everyone's just really gravitated towards it as well, because I think I've made the record to sound like the end of the world. I think a lot of people are resonating with that, and I wanted it to sound like an old tape that you found in the ruins of the mess.

Cataclysm wasn't supposed to come out, and when lockdown hit, I was like, "I guess the world needs it." I actually had shot Cataclysm, and I think no one really got it. It's supposed to sound like this. Also, the record is completely a mono as well. It's so weird production-wise, and I'm like, "Yes. It's supposed to sound monochromatic." Yeah, I think it was just timing. I think the universe was just like, "Now. It's supposed to be for now."

On a lighter note, I was excited that you got to interview Mandy Moore for Billboard.

Oh my God!

How did that come together? Did the editors set you guys up, or had you put in a specific request?

No, the editors set us up. I've been talking about how much I love Mandy Moore my entire career, first and foremost. It all started with the Pitchfork Over/Under piece.

Yeah. It's so funny, and honestly ridiculous. But when they came up with the questions, they have to have gone through my Twitter, which I think I've mentioned in the video, because right before that, I had talked about how much I loved Mandy Moore and specifically Wild Hope. I'm not sure if I single-handedly helped us, but at the time, it wasn't on streaming, but then magically, I want to say two years later, it was. So, I don't know if I single-handedly threw the first brick, but I like to think I did.

And I just didn't think anything of it. And then because they mentioned it in the video, everyone started talking about Mandy again, and then she got on that huge show, on This Is Us, and then there was this whole new resurgence of Mandy Moore. And during that time, we actually followed each other, because she had saw the video, and she's like, "Oh, I don't know." So, we had already been internet friends, at least, for the longest. And then she actually specifically hit me up when "On My Own" came out, and was just like, "I love this song," and everything. Actually, we were DMing yesterday. I love Mandy. She's just the best, she's so sweet, and is just genuinely invested in my career.

Has she given you any career advice, whether in the interview or outside of it, that’s really stuck with you?

I can't even really pick out anything specifically, because that whole specific interview was just giving advice to younger people in the industry. I asked her about balancing acting and music, because I definitely want to get more into acting. She kind of confirmed what I [had] already been feeling. A lot of these things, you just have to go with the flow. You can't do it all at once. Just really, really pace yourself. That's what I've been trying to do. As much as I want to like do it all, I have to cut out time and pace myself.

Quarantine Diaries: Peppermint Is Releasing "Best Sex," Filming 'A Girl Like Me' & Staying In Touch With Fans

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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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