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Matt Berninger

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Matt Berninger's Optimistic Malaise

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On his solo record, 'Serpentine Prison,' the National frontman's introspection belies optimism
Caitlin Wolper
GRAMMYs
Sep 24, 2020 - 9:07 am

Matt Berninger is a self-proclaimed optimist—which, given his songs, might come as a surprise. Best known as a vocalist and songwriter for GRAMMY-winning indie-rock standard bearers the National, Berninger’s lyrics are often mired in reptilian fantasy or drunken exploration; there’s a flickering television or a stiff drink, a miscommunication or a revelation. Similar malaise follows in his side projects, from the band EL VY to the score for Mike Mills’ short film I Am Easy To Find.

To harp on those examples, though, would ignore Berninger’s witty, sardonic, self-mocking tendencies: there’s nothing quite like hearing "It's a common fetish for a doting man/To ballerina on the coffee table, cock in hand" or "I’m a perfect piece of ass" wedged in an otherwise morose track. 

Berninger tells me he always feels optimistic, "even in the worst." Right now, he feels hopeful about America and about art, more than ever before—though "it’s probably going to get darker before it gets brighter...somehow I actually am genuinely optimistic." He points to recent releases, from Bright Eyes’ Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was to Cardi B’s "WAP" to Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters to Taylor Swift’s Folklore (produced by National bandmate Aaron Dessner) as proof that songwriting is at a peak.

"Artists I know are making their bravest most interesting, most honest work right now, and that's what artists do: when everything is chaos, they interpret the chaos," Berninger says. He adds, genuinely: "It’s not a political song that’ll change the way someone votes: a love song will."

But you can’t reckon with global issues before you reckon with yourself: that’s what Serpentine Prison, his first solo album, tries to do.

"Everything I’ve ever written—at least, the good stuff I’ve written—I’m always reckoning with myself, and that's political: reckoning with my own fears and reckoning with my own desires and my own problems," Berninger says. "Mostly, when I write, I'm just trying to sort myself out."

All the same, he calls Serpentine Prison the most collaborative album he’s worked on. Produced by Booker T. Jones (a GRAMMY-winning record producer and musician), Berninger brought in a number of artists, including Scott Devendorf, Walter Martin, Matt Sheehy, Gail Ann Dorsey, Sean O’Brien, Harrison Whitford, Hayden Desser, Brent Knopf and Mike Brewer. His wife and frequent collaborator, Carin Besser, wrote alongside him.

At first, when Berninger went into the studio with Jones, it was to make a covers album. He wanted to record songs he loved as a way to get out of his own head.

"I started sharing some originals [with Jones] that I’d written with a bunch of different people, sort of orphan songs," Berninger says. "By the time we went into the studio to make this covers record, we had more originals than covers." (The covers will be included in the album’s deluxe edition.)

The originals that make up Serpentine Prison are true to name: labyrinthine explorations of the psyche, they oscillate between pleading and desire, between dependency and assertion. Even the somewhat silly-lined opener "My Eyes Are T-Shirts" ("My eyes are T-shirts, they’re so easy to read") quickly turns into a paean ("When I see you, something sad goes missing"). 

The hypnotically meandering "Silver Springs" is a duet in parts; "Distant Axis" worries over timing and communication; "Oh Dearie" wallows, warning others away so they don’t get dragged down: "Name the blues, I got ‘em/I don’t see no brightness/I’m kinda startin’ to like this."

On The National’s 2005 album Alligator, Berninger sang, "I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain/It went the dull and wicked ordinary way." Serpentine Prison seizes on this image, combing through depths for quotidian answers.

In an interview with The Creative Independent, Berninger said all good songs are either about love or fear: on his title track, that fear seeps over love. "Serpentine Prison" is deeply overwhelmed and exhaused, grappling with global disaster, mental health, and identity: it’s a winding self-exploration. The song’s biggest concern? Passing on these worries and this instability: "I don’t want to give it to my daughter."

It harkens to Berninger’s hypothesis about human interaction: We’re all water, and any moment you meet a person, whether they say hello or curse at you, that affects your own water’s color. Your identity, your life, is altered; in the tiniest ways, we’re constantly changed by the touches of those around us.

"You always have to be writing about your own water, and, in doing that, you’re writing about everyone that’s made you you, and you’re writing about your world, you’re writing about your politics, you’re writing about your history, you’re writing about your future," Berninger says. "All of those things are ideas and you do manifest whatever it is, but it's all you. It’s all you, and you’re everything."

Bright Eyes Usher In A New Apocalypse

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Slow Pulp

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Slow Pulp Find Serenity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Was it nostalgic to be back in Madison, Wisconsin?

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

How does mental health tie into the record?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Massey: He knocked it out of the ballpark.

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

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Shamir

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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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Sad13 Details The Ghosts And Gear Behind 'Haunted Painting'

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Ahead of her second solo album, the Speedy Ortiz frontwoman talks to GRAMMY.com about her "most maximal" work to date, drawing influence from David Berman—and sampling Elliott Smith's broken microwave
Zack Ruskin
GRAMMYs
Sep 27, 2020 - 4:00 am

For Sadie Dupuis, Franz von Stuck’s portrait of the dancer Saharet was a face that launched a thousand plans.

While the painting, which Dupuis saw one evening at Seattle's Frye Art Gallery, immediately gave the artist the name for her second solo album, the rest of the work would fall to her. Fortunately, as the creative center behind the Boston indie rock outfit Speedy Ortiz, Dupuis is well-versed in the D.I.Y. musician’s life.

While 2016’s Slugger contrasted with Speedy’s sound as a more pop-forward vehicle for Dupuis, Haunted Painting (out Sept. 25) takes the project to another level entirely. As Sad13, Dupuis has already proven it’s possible to write a feel-good bop about consent in "Get A Yes," so perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock that "WTD?" manages to blend shimmering synths with a message decrying eco-fascism.

Yet it isn’t one standout but the quality of the album as a whole that solidifies Haunted Painting as one of Dupuis’ most significant releases to date.

From the mischievous and prescient "Ghost (Of A Good Time)" to the sweeping, contemplative "Take Care," this record finds Dupuis working towards what she’s previously described as her "most maximal" work yet. In part, Dupuis credits her mode of songwriting to the late David Berman, whom she noted was a master of walking the line between bouncy and bleak.

"I think that with both Silver Jews and Purple Mountains," Dupuis said, "as well as in his poetry; David Berman rode that line really, really well. Some of his saddest work is also his absolute funniest. As a guiding figure for me in my writing, I'm always trying to be conscious of that line. If a song feels like heavy subject matter, I'm trying to bring levity where it's possible, because I think the art that I admire most tries to strike that balance."

Striking a balance is nothing new for the 32-year-old, who in addition to touring relentlessly prior to onset of COVID, also runs her own music label, Wax Nine, as well as a poetry journal of the same name.

Though she may have a lot more time on her hands these days, last summer, Dupuis found herself booking local studio time during off-days from touring with Speedy to get her next solo project done. Never one to arrive unprepared, she also wrote every song on her new album specifically for each studio's gear list.

Prior to a session at San Francisco's Tiny Telephone, for instance, Dupuis wanted to be sure she could make full use of the studio’s legendary synthesizer collection.

"They have one of the more insane vintage synth collections of any studio I've worked in," she said. "My first instinct is piano, but I'm not good at it and I haven't reliably played it since I was a little kid. I knew there were all of these expensive synths at Tiny Telephone that I wanted to get on the record, so in the time leading up to being there, it was me just sitting at home with a little tiny practice keyboard, trying to be able to play those parts correctly."

Commitment to vision is another thing Dupuis takes quite seriously.

After hosting a panel for Sonos focused on women in audio engineering, Dupuis went through her own album credits and realized that she was the only woman credited as a producer on her work.

"I had this awareness of all these awesome engineers," she explained, "but I hadn't worked with any of them, so that was part of the reason for me wanting to hire strictly women on this project."

As a result, Dupuis worked with only female audio engineers on Haunted Painting—eight in total—including Emily Lazar, Sarah Tudzin and Lily Wen. The latter of the three was actually once under the care of Dupuis when the artist worked as a summer camp counselor. Last year, the two joined forces at Figure 8 in Brooklyn to work on new Sad13 tracks featuring woodwinds and strings.

At Elliott Smith’s New Monkey studio, Dupuis teamed with Tudzin—who records and releases music as illuminati hotties—to figure out a way to sample Smith's microwave as means of incorporating his spirit into the recordings.

"When we were at New Monkey tracking ‘Oops...!’ and ‘Good Grief,’” Tudzin recalled, "we were perpetually in search of any instrument or sound that was unmistakably Elliott. There are a lot of beautiful instruments and pieces of gear there that belonged to him, and after pestering the staff about the story of the studio, we learned that even the furniture and decorations were his, including an essentially non-functioning microwave that no one wanted to get rid of."

Read More: He's Gonna Make It All OK: An Oral History Of Elliott Smith's Darkly Beautiful Self-Titled Album

The two joked about sampling the decrepit appliance before actually deciding to give it a shot. The final result, pitched as a synth, can be heard in the melody that ends "Good Grief."

The ways in which the experience of creating Haunted Painting are reflected in the finished product don’t end there.

Upon arriving at La La Land (an analog-only studio in Louisville) following a gig in Chicago, Dupuis discovered a block party borrowing power from the building had caused a fire to start. As a result, she altered some of her lyrics for her sessions there to refer to smoke. At Tiny Telephone, a broken harpsichord required Dupuis and engineer Maryam Qudus to "layer chains and ping pong balls on piano strings" to create a worthy substitute.

In one key area, however, Dupuis opted to cede control. Though she has done her own artwork for all her releases to date, she tasked the design of Haunted Painting’s cover to her mother.

"My mom, for most of my life, was a portrait painter," Dupuis explained, "but she stopped doing it as her main work after her car was hit by another car maybe a decade ago. She has chronic pain from that, so it's difficult for her to do portraiture, which is so detailed and time-intensive. She does plenty of other kinds of art, but she hadn't done a portrait in like a decade. The fact that she was even able to do this one, let alone that it looks so incredible, after 10 years away, is amazing. I think the world of my mom. She's a really cool artist and I probably wouldn't be doing any of this stuff if I hadn't had her as an example of someone doing creative work, so it's really nice to have her involved."

From sampling Elliott Smith’s microwave to teaching herself how to compose for strings and woodwinds (again), Dupuis’ emphasis on Sad13 as a project solely of her own creation is undercut only by a seemingly inextinguishable desire to give back.

Be it writing artist bios for projects from Tudzin and Qudus as they worked with her in the studio or also finding the time to put together a heartfelt compilation honoring the late Adam Schlesinger earlier this year, Dupuis has often used any focus on herself as an opportunity to refract attention onto those she cherishes.

This time, however, the spotlight shines solely on her, and with good reason. In trying to summarizing all the countless elements that came together to create Haunted Painting, Dupuis once more turns to von Stuck, the painter who started on her on this project.

"One of the cool things about him," she recalled, "is that he would build the frames himself and that he considered the frame as part of the artwork. As someone who likes to play all of the instruments and use production as part of the song itself, I can relate to a perspective of wanting the whole thing to be one product."

Molly Tuttle & Producer Tony Berg Discuss the Cross-Country Making Of Her New Covers Album

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