00:04There's a few Matthew harmonies like left on the record.
00:07Very few and only low ones that were like too low for me.
00:11Just texture, right?
00:22I think like every song on Luck or something started with kind of just like
00:29the themes that I wanted to talk about on the record and starting to like hash out
00:35what those were and what I was like comfortable to talk about. And obviously we
00:41could push those boundaries between the two of us and then figure out if it's like something
00:46we're sharing with the world or not. But the track stuff is like all you.
00:52You make beats.
00:53I don't make any beats. I just-
00:55You make all the beats.
00:56I'm a bossy, I'm a beat hater. Like I just, I just have a lot of opinions about the way
01:02the beat
01:02sounds until it sounds right. The great thing about being married to this guy is that he can
01:08speak the language that I speak when I'm like, I don't know what that is. What is that horrible
01:11sound? I like to edit, edit, edit, edit. And he just has to keep building, building, building until
01:16I'm like. The service job. I love working with you. I love working with him too. Really. It's, it's,
01:22it's not such a like juicy topic because we've worked really well together and we had like zero
01:30arguments. And I think one, we had one argument early on because he was like big timing me with
01:37his like studio lingo. And I was trying to explain something that I like imagined for it. And he was
01:45like, well, people don't do that. And I was like, well, I want to. And he was like, I'm just
01:52not clear
01:52on what you're wanting. And how do you like, he just kind of like went in on me. And I
01:56was like,
01:56okay, I just want to let you know that I haven't done this in 12 years. And I need you
02:01to like tone
02:02it down. You do this every single day. I know what I want. I just can't explain it to you.
02:06And I need
02:06you to help me like get there. And that was our one rub and you called and apologized before I
02:10even
02:10got home. I've always like described it as like you're an interior designer. You'd like know if
02:15you walk into a room, if it's right or if it's not right and what it needs or what it
02:19doesn't need.
02:20And I think of a really quick and good instinct on if something feels like it resonates with you
02:24or it's just not the thing. I wanted to make this record with him who knows all of my stories
02:31and all of my history. I felt like you would come with ideas and you'd come with the big themes.
02:35And then I'd kind of audition ideas for you. Yeah. Like how do we fit that into a box that
02:40maybe
02:41makes sense for you to sing. And I feel like that was our process was you sort of being like,
02:46I want to talk about this thing, or I had a lyric idea, or I thought about a way to
02:50frame this feeling.
02:51And then I would kind of cook something rough to say like, what about this? And you would very
02:56quickly know whether or not it was something. It was that or not.
02:59The first thing you hear is this drum thing. And I've gotten super into, I don't know why,
03:08I just really like the movement of like having a delay on a drum. So I'll do drum loops a
03:13lot and
03:13just kind of track really super organic sounds. And then something about just like throwing on
03:18a little saturation and a little bit of a delay just makes it feel like it has some life and
03:23movement.
03:24I think honestly, this song's production was so heavily inspired by Brandon Flowers' record
03:28called The Desired Effect. It felt so spacious and I just love that record. And I feel like that was
03:33a
03:33big reference point.
03:37It's pretty much one key thing from, I think it's that Super 6 just through,
03:44I want to say it's a chroma console, I think is what we used.
03:48It's pretty boring, but it does the job. It's the driver. It's sort of the main theme.
03:55There's two basses going on. There's a normal old root note bass and then there's a fretless bass.
04:04So this is a fretless, it's over, just normal root note, which is weird. It's like we wouldn't
04:09necessarily put two or three basses at the same time and it just sort of worked on this thing.
04:16This stuff doesn't do anything for me. I'm like a lyric melody girl. I don't, I like the feeling
04:23that it evokes, but like I love like strings and stuff like that. That kind of is something that
04:28I'm like paying attention to. Strings don't really happen until chorus two. I get really stressed that
04:33Matt like sits and does this all day or he'll be like comping vocals and he's just like slowly
04:38like hunching over more and more. Yeah, my posture just gets toad. I get so stressed about it. There
04:43you go, there's some strings. Cynthia Tolson, she's a rad string ranger and player and typically
04:54we'll have Cynthia come in and track live strings over it and it just kind of does a thing.
04:58But it's funny, sometimes like the idea of organic strings just, it doesn't,
05:02sometimes it's really beautiful for ballad, but for something like this. It's like not,
05:06it's like too serious? Yeah, it's like there's something about the cool cheesy
05:09strings from a bad plug-in that just like did a thing.
05:17They're happening in the chorus and then they come in again in the bridge and then
05:20it gets like a little Phil Spector messy.
05:36It starts to get like pretty stacked is what I mean, like by the time the last chorus is happening.
05:41She loves that she could be your daughter.
05:50These weird trumpets come in for the last chorus. That's not happening
05:53in the rest of the chorus. Who names them all this? Is this like you're like shopping?
05:57Are you like shopping in the app and then you're like dirty guitar, buzzy?
06:02No, we kind of just label them so we label them what's appropriate like cars guitar. That's,
06:06I don't even know what it is and I'm sure it's going to be like
06:09Why? Or Rick Okasik super tight. Yeah, exactly. Because it sounds like the cars.
06:14Got it. So you guys are giving them all the names?
06:16Yeah, it's a little bit of a map for ourselves.
06:19Nasty clap first.
06:20You want to hear? Well, let's hear the nasty clap.
06:22Where is it? It is a nasty clap.
06:24It is a nasty clap. Listen to that.
06:39Some sort of like ooh pad. It's happening.
06:48Usually they'll like comp something together and I'm like,
06:50oh I think I can get that word better or I can get that thing better. I don't like that
06:54way I sound on
06:55that. There's usually like a first pass and then kind of I'll go in and punch some things. But I
07:00probably do it about five times to get warmed up and then. Yeah. And then we go like section by
07:06section usually and just try to find. I feel like so much of what we decide on in terms of
07:12comping and selection, it's like after you can hear it in a couple of different contexts. So we
07:16usually like to get like some different spirits and some different versions of it. I think because
07:22we're always like producing it as we go and also writing it as we go. It's just it's nice to
07:27have
07:27options so you can kind of see where the production lands and what feels appropriate.
07:30I suppose you don't like to hang out here very much.
07:32Yeah, I try not to have you come back to like re-sing it six times. So we try to
07:35cover a lot of
07:36bases. So we'll do it like 15 times or something, wouldn't you say?
07:45Again, a very Brandon Flowers era desired effect kind of throw reverb thing. I love this
07:52Echoplex thing that I have back here. It's been like my go-to for delay throws for the last two
07:58years. I feel like I get a toy and then I just get, I put everything through it. So it's
08:02drums,
08:02it's vocals and... When we're hanging out at night and I'm like scrolling or shopping or something
08:08like that, he's like shopping for gear. Yeah, always. And that's, it's been an obsession and
08:14there's just like new shit coming to our house nonstop. It's just, you're just looking for toys to
08:18keep yourself excited. But then we'll be like in some obscure city and he's like,
08:22I can't wait to get on Facebook Marketplace and look for them. I'm like, you're such a nerd.
08:26I've been to some really like sketchy places. Like we have to, we're going to dinner, but we have
08:30to stop by this guy's house and pick up some shit. Then we'll be like on a back road and
08:34I'm like,
08:35you have two minutes, two minutes. Remember that guy's house you thought like I got taken?
08:39Yeah. I don't even remember what I bought. And we were like sitting there with our kids in the car.
08:42Facebook Marketplace is just, that's where all the good stuff's at. That's like some weird post.
08:49I can't remember exactly what it was. I feel like it was that Farfisa and then just kind of messed
08:53up
08:53through some pedals. I really like putting synths through pedals. It just gives like some sort of
08:59texture that's not easily duplicated with plugins that everybody has. I think that was also a big
09:05thing with making this record was like not using splice and not using just stuff that everybody has access
09:10to, for better or worse, just so it sounds like something that was made in this room using these
09:14tools. That was a big kind of production north star of just like how we approached making stuff.
09:22Okay, I'm looking for your bridge. Sorry.
09:24Listenin' to Strawberry Letter 23. Hit my car at Carbon Beach so I wasn't seen at yours.
09:31There's a few Matthew harmonies like left on the record.
09:34Very few and only low ones that were like too low for you.
09:38Yeah, too low for me.
09:39Listenin' to Strawberry Letter 23. Just texture, right?
09:42Hit my car at Carbon Beach so I wasn't seen.
09:45My favorite part about this song is the double bridge. I hate when a bridge is like thrown away.
09:51For me, I feel like you like, I want to highlight the bridge. It's a build up. Yeah.
09:57Matt keeps using the word north star. I feel like this was a very, this was one of the songs
10:02we got pretty
10:02early on. It was just like, oh, whoa, this, this is going to be something real. It helped to ease
10:09the
10:09like subject matter. The fact that it was like, it's such a good pop song and it's such an interesting,
10:14cool direction, but it feels attached to my old music in a weird way. Like it was a nice thing
10:22to
10:22get early on to kind of help skew us in the path and the direction.
10:26It definitely represents like that pop rock thing that I feel like is so synonymous with
10:31your earlier music, which is so cool.
