Beach House

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, it's justin Richmond. Today we have Beach House on the show. The Baltimore indie band known for their cinematic, psychedelic songs. They're one of those bands that manages to envelope you in a sonic landscape when they play, You'll hear exactly what I'm talking about. In the title track for their new album, Once Twice Melody, Victoria La Grand and Alex Scally have a very special musical chemistry. Their two thousand and six self titled debut was a moving collection of lo fi songs built around Victoria's dreamy vocals and synth based loops, topped with Alex's lush guitar riffs. The songs have since been sampled by artists like Kendrick Lamar and The Weekend, and Kanye West even recently posted a picture of himself collaborating with them on Instagram. The band's new album debuted at number one, and it's their first entirely self produced album and also the most dynamic in scope. They tell Broken Record producer Lea Rose on today's episode about the inner workings of their unique creative partnership. They also talk about how the warmth of Bob Marley's music has directly inspired the band, and they explain why sometimes you have to just get over yourself for the sake of show business. This is broken record liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Lea Rose with Victoria La Grand and Alex Galley of Beach House. So thank you guys so much for doing this. I guess by the time this comes out, you guys are going to be back on the road, which must be super exciting hopefully and not terrifying. What's it been like being off the road during the pandemics. You guys have been on tour for like fifteen years straight, pretty much, right, Yes, it's been totally strange to not be out in the world, but I think everybody can relate to that. But touring has been a huge part of our career and you know, inspiration and all that stuff. So we're very excited. Yeah, Like humans are really inspiring, strangers are really inspiring, and like the situation of shows, both as playing and as in spectator is just so beautiful, you know. So it's been it's been I think everyone feels the way, it's been insane not having that as a regular part of life for two and a half years or three years, however long it's been that we've been in this fugue state. How are you thinking about the live show now that you're about to go back out with the new album out. Have you made any big changes to the show? We're kind of picking up where we left off from the seven tour because it was just such a what we really liked where the show, how it developed over the tour, So we're picking up there, and we just spent a lot of weeks actually in pre production with our whole crew. It was really really fun, and so yeah, it's basically an advanced level of the last show, but we've spent a lot of time because we didn't want it to have to develop on the road. We wanted it to be like the fully realized version of itself at show one. How do you guys get in the mood to play a show once you're out on tour and you're in the thick of it. If you wake up and you're just kind of feeling off, like physically off or mentally off, how do you get yourself in a place where you're ready to stand in front of a crowd and do what you have to do for an hour and forty five minutes. It's called you have to it's called grow up, it's called it's show business. It's called Look, it's not anyone else's fault. You stayed up till five in the morning. Get yourself together and do it. It's like you have a job, but it's not like a nine to five job. But it's a responsibility and you have, you know, worked your butt off to put this thing together. And we're lucky people who get to have people come, you know, see them, listen to them. Yeah, but just from like like the specifics point of view, you know, like one thing you have to remind yourself on the road, and we do remind ourselves of this is like, yes, this is your third show in a row, but this is the first time you've played in Cincinnati in five years. And clear and be in the moment and realize that this could be a special night for some of your fans who have never seen you before. You know, it's just like get out. It's like, go beyond yourself. It's not about you, you know. It's like that's what I was trying to say, is that it's it's a show and it's other people, you know, and it's not about you. And there is something like militaristic in the sense of like touring is. You know, you do like wear your body down and you do lose sleep, and you do like feel crazily destroyed at the end of it. But it should be because you gave all of yourself to people, and that's that's what it should be. Like. Yeah, and and also you know, like we we listen to music, We have various things we do before the show to get into that, to get into the moment. You know, do you guys play the same show every night? Is it the same set list? No, we vary it for Sanity, Like it's just always been that way for us. And so you know, our set is usually about an hour forty five minutes, and that for us is usually between eighteen and twenty songs. And as the tour goes on, usually because we're still learning, the first week will be kind of similar sets, but then we start to really start peppering in deeper cuts. And we have a thing on our website called the set list Creator where you choose the date of the show you're going to and then you can enter your top three choices. Oh that's so cool. Yeah, And it was just something we've always wanted to do. And it's really fun because we consulted daily, and you know, obviously their songs will play most nights, but for like maybe like the deeper in our catalog song, we'll use that to find which song it should be for a given show. So I want to talk about the band's formative years. And you guys have been making music together now for close to twenty years. Well, we met in two thousand and four, and our first song was written in two thousand and five, so I guess about seventeen years. Seventeen years, I guess when you guys came together and formed the band. What was the original thought for the aesthetic of the band. I don't think we were going for an aesthetic. I think that our becoming a band was like really about two people who met each other and immediately started making music out of like necessity. I was introduced to Alex through a friend that I had met in college who was a musician who lived in Baltimore, and then I meet Alex and then pretty much from that moment start playing music with him, and then a couple months later, he and I are hanging out and we are like making Saltwater from the first which would be, you know, the first song we ever wrote together and also on the first record, So the aesthetic of what we're doing is not the first thing that happened. So this, this journey started because of you know, music first, and then as we made sounds and made songs, we started to discover the you know, the look of the first record. But but just just to like give you an idea of our creative process. So the sound of Beach House when we started was Victoria had two keyboards and she liked the way they sounded. Why did she find those keyboards? We don't. It's like it's like you're naturally drawn to things. They were nothing special. I had, you know, a guitar I was borrowing from someone, and these organs that I was collecting, and we used a four track tape machine, which I had been using since I was twelve years old. I like love four track tape machines. So we just had these things. They were our inherent interests and there was no like, I think we should sound like this, like there was no option. There was zero option of what we would sound like it was just like so natural and there was no like we're going to be a band, Like there was no forethought, no pretend, no vision. It was just just one foot going in front of the other and it felt very very natural. Yeah, it seems like that's the way that you make music as well. It's like you don't think about a project before you start it. A project just starts and then you just sort of keep up with a momentum and it evolves into what it evolves into. Yes, that's a good way of looking at it. And you know, I think that it was natural how we started working together. But then I think a lot of the things we made were out of necessity too, because like we of what we had around us and it was all just kind of sitting right there. It's so telling like how you approach art, because if it were me, I feel like I would be so conscious of every single little thing and I would be like, you know, really thinking about the cover art, the name, the way the name looks in the font, Like everything would be so overly thought out. So it's so cool for me to hear that. It's like, oh, you just you have your instruments that you have access to two keyboards. That's all it is, and you sit there and it just happens. Yeah, it's that, but but we do pay a lot of attention to the details, like the fonts and the album art. So it's we're kind of two sides, you know. It's generated from within. Yeah, the whole universe of our esthetic, which is an interesting word, comes from the inside. It comes from the hearth, right, so like the heat that is inside of the thing that creates the music. And it started from the first record. It was like, okay, this music, how does this make us feel? That's how we got our band name. The word beach house came out and there were other words attached to it and other types of words, and we were floating them around, but it came from what is this feeling that we're creating. That's where we got beach House. And then it was you know, what are the colors are the what are the textures of this record? And the first record had all the jewels on the cover and like the tones and what was and then the font of the band name on that cover is my handwriting. I made that thing, and you know, and then every album since then has been the same type of process, Like we get our visual language from the music, and that isn't itself intentional because it's we're careful about it and extremely thoughtful sot the esthetic world and all the details and all the care comes from the music. I love hearing people try to describe your music, Like The New Yorker recently said that your music they describe it as twilight mysticism. Cool, and I'm just curious, like does that feel accurate? That feels like somebody was using language in a very creative and imaginative way, which is super exciting because twilight and light and that thing that the world gives to you as a human, Like we live in the world and all we have to do is look at it to get an infinite amount of inspiration. And yeah, I love that. I mean, that person is accessing that part of living where they see something and it makes them think about something larger. I mean, I don't know if anyone who's not moved by twilight is essentially insane, because it's it's just it's like, so it's like, you know, the world that we see all day long just becomes this incredibly beautiful place for a short amount of time, and it's just really really wonderful. What were some of like the foundational albums for you both, Like what were you listening to in high school? Like the first album where it's not something that's like playing in your parents' car or like an older sibling is listening to, it's like your album. Me and my like high school crew got really political, which was awesome, and like you know, it's like part of our the way we were like becoming adults informing our identity. But we got really into Bob Marley and just reggae in general, and I learned I learned every every baseline. I was a bassist first. I learned every baseline to every Bob Marley record at age fifteen or sixteen, and it was so huge to us and the political side of it, and it was so funny when I got to college, and it was shocking to me when I found out how a lot of people perceived Bob Marley as kind of playful, non serious music, because I had had such a like kind of like formative political relationship with it and found it so crucial to like my identity and various things, and found his calls to be so beautiful and worthy and yeah, and then just the sonic aspects of reggae and all of those Bob Marley records had a massive effect on the way I saw music and the way I heard it put together, and the warm tones mixed with the super serious message felt so powerful to me. Where did you go after reggae? Well, yeah, I mean that's just one step of things. But I also explored very heavily. I'm thinking of ones that where I like learned every aspect of the music. I got really really into all the Stevie Wanda records from the seventies, the ones that he self produced. It's just such a great array of musicianship but great songwriting, and it's eclectic, and I mean those records are just incredible intervisions talking book songs in the key of life fulfilling. This is first finale that kind of stuff. And then Victoria, what about you? What were some foundational or just early albums that you really gravitated towards. You know, it's funny there. I think that this might be like one of the things that maybe when Alex and I like started making music, we didn't realize that we probably just we shared some total overlaps of what we were attracted to, because I was going to say that, you know, there's your childhood music, but then I think for the albums that you fall in love with when you're a teenager, really I think are some of the ones that profoundly affect you, you know, as the beginning of you becoming an adult. So like I was obviously into like Nirvana and Whole. I loved Whole. I still do too. I like Smashing Pumpkins, Um Siamese Siamese Dream is an amazing record. I also fell in love, you know, with somebody, your first like fall in love, and it was there was like rasta man vibration and you know, like just uh, that whole reggae world was part of my life too, and you know Rabbi Shankar and you know, like that song I Miss You. I mean there's so many albums, so yeah, I think that there's some there's some sharing of the glowing, warm, romantic, melodic, you know, the feelings all in this like kind of beautiful alchemy. What did you especially like about Whole About Courtney Love, I'm just curious. Um, just it's it's a power. It's just a powerful it's a powerful thing like if you're a young girl and you're listening to that, you're just like this, this woman, you know, this this like force of nature. Yeah, it's it's just like once you hear it, you're kind you're just not the same, you know, And that's there's a lot of artists that are like that. You know, Nirvana's like that, and you know, there are a lot of people that once you hear hear them, you're not the same. Bob Marley yay, you know, um, there are a lot of people that are you know, they just change you quickly. But yeah, her screaming, her voice, it's like there's just a unique quality to it. And also the music, the song is really great. Yeah, the songwriting is incredible. You know, live Through This is an incredible record. People are going to copy that for the rest of time, you know, and everything talk about aesthetics, I mean that whole thing is just like, yeah, that is an incredible force of inspiration. The baby doll, the makeup, the you know, and it's coming from punk and post punk and all that stuff, which also was a huge part of my upbringing. So there was a mixture of like the warm, gooey, the velvety layers, the velvet underground, and then there's also the reggae and then yeah, it's just a whole combo of things. That's that's how my brain works, the kind of all combines into one. It's all one album. Just kidding. We'll be right back with more from Leah Rose and Beach House. After a quick break, we're back with more from Beach House and Leah Rose. Let's talk a little bit about Victoria, about how you have evolved as a singer over the years. How would you say that your voice has changed as your career has progressed. There's a whole scientific way of talking about voice. That's one way of looking at it, and it's very factual, you know, like people's voices continue to change until they're like mid forties and then obviously past then. But in terms of like people who use their voices in specific ways, I have always when I start singing or I'm writing or all of that, I'm always just going from a place of what is comfortable to me. So it's not very like super self conscious. But there are definitely things that I like to do with my voice and the way that it sounds, and I work from just that in out world, you know, when I listen to my voice over in you know, the past and various Beach House albums like there are definitely like a range of vocal worlds all over the records, and I just feel like I continue to just kind of build on that, you know, and go with the float. But I do technically have classical training, and I you know, I don't lose my voice very often at all. For whatever reason, I don't have problems with that, probably just jinx to myself. Some singers do a lot of warm ups and you know, two hours, and I don't know how I can't do that. I'm very much like a shot of tequila, you know, and that's that's my warm up. Not to sound like I'm such a rocker, but that is a kind of my attitude with it too. Who were some of the first voices that you were really attracted to or really moved by early on in my life. I was attracted to Michael Jackson. I was attracted to musicals. I was attracted to the official fan of the opera musical, Sarah Brightman. You know, obviously everybody has loved Stevie Nicks. At some point I loved Chris Bell's voice, you know, in my twenties, I've loved Tom Petty's voice. I've loved a lot of male voices actually, and I'm you know, of course forgetting them now because it's the it's the video store effect where you go in and you're like, wait a minute, what's my favorite movie? I don't know, was there a period of time when you started out where you were emulating other people's voice. I think that, like just very subconsciously. I think I was probably all the men I've ever listened to, like in my life, of any you know, artist, was probably like in my own abstract way, like embodying all of the male voices that I was either subjected to or like bombarded with or really loved. When you start doing something, you're kind of just processing all of your inspirations all in one kind of like if you okay, that's gonna this is a really crazy thing that just came into my head. But people who like make pasta, you know how like when pasta comes out in all of the holes and it's like all of the noodles, the desire to like make sound come out of your mouth, You're you're making something right, But then the all of the things you ever heard come out in all of those like strands, and that is your voice. Like your voice is like made up out of all of the things you've ever loved or been attracted to, like how hard you want to be or how soft you want to be, or like you want to be like a man and a woman. You know, you hear a lot of people, you know, even male artists today like that kind of like sing and then you kind of can't tell if it's a girl or not, you know, and that you know that's probably always existed. There are male singers who want to sound more like a woman, and there are female singers that don't want to sound like a and they want to sound more like a man. So it's just my descript my description of the pasta is is just more like about the shapes of things that are invisible. It's a pleasing image. Yeah, it's it's the processing of like all that comes before and then the transference through something and becoming like multiple things. Was there a moment when you knew that you found your voice? It seems like a really really hard place to get to, But do you remember when you sort of realize like, Okay, this is me. I mean I honestly think that, like when Alex and I made Saltwater, like the very first song, Like, I do feel like the beginning of me and like my identity as a singer definitely is in the first album. But everybody's albums that come before them, they're younger. It's that Mitch Hedberg joke, like what is this is a picture of me when I was younger? It's like, yes, every picture of you is you when you were younger, and so every album is you when you were younger. But yeah, I think that it started right at the beginning. I feel like there just was the desire and the you know, the four track and the you know, the crappiness and just the kind of like innocence. Do you revisit the old albums ever? I mean, I know you're you're playing songs when you're on tour, but do you ever sit down with the old albums, listen to them and sort of like think about them and how they sort of like fit into your evolution as a band. That To be very honest, no, we don't sit and listen to our albums because we kind of know what we did, and so it's like it's it's in there somewhere, and you know, they're the things we like and they're things we don't like, and we just kind of move on. But every once in a while we'll hear our songs somewhere, like, you know, years ago we heard a song from the very first record and I didn't even you know, people are talking and it was a dark, crowded bar. Didn't recognize ourselves. And sometimes that's a really cool moment where you hear something that you did and for a brief few moments, you just don't. You go out of your body and you're not you anymore and you're just you're hearing your thing for the thing that you made it the way other people hear it. Did you like it? Yeah, I mean I did and at first, and it made me revisit a song that I hadn't looked at on a record. It was I think it was Home again from the first album, second album. See this is this is a proof of memory not working from the first record. Um it's from devotion. So yeah, it made us. It made me made me revisit it, not the whole thing, but that song, So that that does happen. But sometimes it's just a song and like or you'll see something like on the internet or something and I'll be like, oh that song. Oh and then you remember that or you listen to it. But as far as listening to a whole album, I think we'd have to get pretty drunk for that, well, like just just to like, you know, lighten the fact that it just brings a lot of I think it. You know, nostalgia is a really crazy thing. All humans experience it, and it feels like almost sickening. You know, when you're with like a friend and you can't stop thinking about the beautiful moments that passed. It feels it's like it's like trapp like you want to keep going there, but then it's dark because it's not life anymore. Brings to mind the Great Gadsby, you know, like what do you mean you can't repeat the past? Of course you can that urge that we all have to go back, but it's never coming back, you know. So it's there's this thing that like there's it's a scary place to go revisit your past self because you can get lost in dark things. Was I better than was I? Was I more purer was I, or or even the opposite thing, I was terrible, Like I can't believe we put this out, you know, like things like there's just so many scary feelings that can come back. I think having too much self awareness. There's the there's the good kind of self awareness, like you know, am I being kind? Am I? Kind? Am I? You know? But then there's the bad self awareness that could be crippling. And if you're too self conscious, then you won't be able to move forward, you won't be able to plunge into something new. You'll just be so mentally conscious of I did this, and then this, and this is what I look like and and then you're just like trapped in your own hell. And I think the whole idea is that it's about risk taking. Yeah, and it doesn't. And it's not about like I made this huge risk and I it's it's like risks can be really small moments, you know, It's like a small little pivot and there you went, you know, and you just let go. And I think it's just like you did the past, You did the things, but you let them go. And putting out a record is that it's like at the end of the day, like we decided that it is finished and it is gone, and you know, the release date comes and it's like the bird flies out of the cage, is freed and hopefully you know, it was a beautiful bird. It was an intense bird. You know, it required a lot of like special seeds and flowers and things. But it's got to go. And that is a small movement, but it is a large liberating one. And I think that's kind of a way we've been rolling. Is that process at the very end a tough one. Does It take a lot of time and thought and energy and sort of like an executive call to be like, all right, we're calling it. This is the end of the album. It's done. The end stage of an album is like the most difficult one because it is like the the labor that lasts an under You know, you don't know how long it's gonna last, but you know that you want it to get out, and it's it can be quite painful, quite challenging. You can become sick of yourself and sick of and board or whatever the thing. So it's it's the hardest one, but you really it's it takes endurance and commitment, and you just and belief and just face a lot of faith because there's a lot of like moments where you've been working eight hours and you go, I hate it, I hate this. This is terrible, and you have to know that it's just your brain just like malfunctioning, and you have to you know, get through to the next day, wake up with a fresh mind, and start again. You know, it's like kind of you know, it's just so intense, but but really beautiful. Yeah, you try to make the best out of what you can do and work on something a little bit every day, and then with time, maybe it'll grow into a you know, maybe it'll grow into a beautiful flower. You never know. It might take it might take three days, it might take six months, it might take fifteen years, and it might take your entire life to make the thing that you maybe are the most proud of. Cool and The New Yorker called the new album your most ambitious and dynamic. Is that something that you agree with? Thank you New Yorker for saying that it's nice. It's nice to hear. Do you feel like that's a fair assessment. Yes, yeah, I mean it's just you know, we we try to have it be this really big, open world that you could really enter and get lost in. So I think in that desire there is some more ambition than perhaps or is that what is that what they said? Ambitious, dynamic and ambitious. Yeah, so I think the dynamic refers to there's a lot of different song types like there are, Yeah, we've got really into production. It's just I think this is a representation of the skills we've developed over many years and perhaps like a beginning of like pushing more in various ways. So you know, to hear the words dynamic, to hear the words ambitious, those are true. You know, we were like very ambitious about the quantity of songs we started with, and you know, once we started it, there were times maybe we were like in over our heads, but we kept we kept going, And I think that, you know, ambition is tricky because it starts you off, but then you there's a sense of like completing what you've started and you don't know where you're going to end up. So I think that we are They're not wrong about describing it that way. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back with more from Beach House we're back with the rest of Leah Rose's conversation with Beach House. How do you guys feel about interviews generally? Do you kind of like dread it or like, what's the overall feeling? Just curious? The overall feeling is a it's not something we take for granted. It's it's very like, you know, the best interviews are a conversation. You are a little awkward at the beginning, and then you kind of warm up and then you're you're flowing together. I think the hardest part about interviews is the and not all of them, but sometimes when you're you've made something like a record over three years, and then suddenly suddenly you the artist, are like, Okay, well, how will I explain in like a couple of sentences years of my life? That's the hardest part. I think it's like how to articulate hours, days, months, years of like like the worst day of your life or the you know, the best day, And I don't know how to I don't say package it, but how to how to relay that, how to convey that and not feel like you're leaving out something that is crucial you know that somebody would find interesting but we're very lucky to be doing interviews and very grateful. Yeah, I mean, I think that we cherish it because you know, we just we don't take it for granted and we're grateful that people care at all. And but but I think we also take it take it as an opportunity to hopefully clarify some of our thoughts and visions for some people who might care. You know, I don't think we necessarily see it as like like an exposure thing, just because we're not that commercially driven. But we see it as a chance for more creativity and cool things to happen, you know, And there are there are artists who and like you know, every artist has the right to decide like how they're going to relay or describe their career or their art that they make. Some people don't like to do them at all. And for us, we're not really comfortable with not doing interviews at all because we think that for what our for how we are as people, we don't want to be cold, and we're not cold, and we don't want to block people out. We want to have a conversation. And it is, like Alex said, an interview is an opportunity to explain, you know, and it is it is an opportunity and it's best form to like clarify things and to like if there was something, you know, let's pretend that there was something like a rumor, right or somebody was like this, this person did this thing. If you didn't do interviews and you just were like living on social media, you're not able to like defend yourself or something. You know, you can't. You're just kind of like out there and then other people are writing about you or you know, or you're like publicly feuding through words that people are seeing. But an interview is a conversation and you can get through any kind of like disagreement or confusion, but in a peaceful way. And I mean it's I think that every single person in the world, individual artist, it doesn't really matter, I think, once to control the narrative of who they are, you know, so just in like a very natural way, Like if you see yourself represented in a certain way, you want to say, well, that's not who I am. I know who I am, you know, So I think that but that's just a part of life. It can't be avoided. But I think being able to control our narrative through our honesty is also something that we enjoy. It seems difficult, though, especially when you're talking about your creative process, because it seemed like we were sort of talking about earlier, like if you're not really intellectualizing creativity, then it's like what is there really to talk about? In some way, it's true and in a certain regard, and there are people who are like really good. I've heard other people's interviews and they're so good at like intellectualizing what they do and it's really interesting. And they have like, you know, a million books and they remember all the lines of poems they read that like had a huge impact on them. And their voices are great, and they're you know, like they're speaking, voices are great, and it's like you're just in their brain and their world. But I think we're more like children who have, you know, a lot of intense feelings were adults. But we also have huge, huge kids inside of us, you know, and we think about what we do, but we also are kind of just super instinctual, a little impatient and forgetful, like we do like not remember every single moment that had a profound impact on us. It's almost impossible. It's like in order to live, you kind of just have to live and like break through the walls, and like I can't write everything down, and I wish I had a better memory. I really do. And just like another way of thinking of interviews, I just thought of this, you know, like your first question, what were you guys going for when you made your first record, and our answer of we weren't going for anything. We were just being ourselves and letting whatever was there come out. If one person listens to this and that changes their artistic approach, then the interview was completely worth it. Yeah. And then with the new album Once Twice Melody, you released it in four chapters. How did that all sort of take shape? Generally, when we, you know, are finished a previous record and we're starting into a new world of things were inspired by we have a lot of little things laying around, their little blips recorded here or there. So this time we had a ton of these little things, maybe thirty, and we just naturally started working on them and having them evolve into the into various songs. So it was so much material, more than we're used to having. And somewhere along the way it became the twenty two best songs, that kind of thing, and we were working on them steadily over a couple of years, and as we started getting closer to the vision of the whole record. At one point we went to narrow it down to like a normal record length, maybe you know, forty five minutes or something like that, by choosing just the best I'm doing air quotes, the best songs. But when we did when we did that, it didn't feel like the record anymore. It didn't have the facets that delivered the vision, and it didn't feel like a true measure of the kind of artistic space we were in. So that's when we started to think, oh, this is a double LP, which we've never done before, and that was really exciting to us. So as we started to refine that and start and try to make sequencing is something that's very very important to us, and we spend a long time on sequencing. As we started to make the sequence, we started really thinking of it in record sides, because we're big Vinyl fans, so we started thinking, Okay, side A, side B, side C, side D and thinking of it as that, and when you do that, you want each one to be between eighteen and twenty two minutes long for sound quality, so that these became the kind of navigating limitations, and we started to think of each side as having a start and an end, and then once you had to start in the end, you sort of filled in the middle, and these kind of certain these kind of individual little stories came out of it. And then that one day became the chapter idea. Oh, let's call them chapters because it's it's very interesting and that it was all evolving at the same time, so okay, So that came first, so that we eventually had our songs selected and these chapters selected, and then later on we had the idea, because of streaming being the dominant way that people listen to music, now, oh just let's release them one at a time, so it almost feels like a periodical in the roll up to the final physical release. And it just felt really exciting to us, and it felt like it was also true to the development of the record in a way. Yeah, I've seen some other groups have been doing that too, like Brockhampton did that Denzel Curry, where people are putting out projects and sort of like chunks instead of one full project is after it like people's attention spans, Like what's the thinking Like as far as streaming platforms, the streaming allows you to put the music out quickly, quickly, and it allows you more liberty so you don't have to wait as long. The other thing is that we don't see them as chunks like EPs, even though like Spotify says EP, we don't think of it as EP. But there's no like chapter word for that platform or side. You know, every platform, Apple, Spotify, they all have different little things they can provide for you, and they're not you know, they're not doing it the same way. So this was just really about being more creative and more filmic and more cinematic and more literary and all that. So it's just been yeah, you know, Alex's explanation is great, but there's also the side to it where it's just kind of something we've always wanted to just be able to put something out and this was one way of being able to do that. Was this the first album that you guys produced, Yeah, that's it's not the first one we've produced, because we've been essentially producing Beach House from the beginning. Not to sound totally, but that is the truth and We have worked with producers, but our relationship with them has always felt like like Chris Cody or Sonic Boom. It's it's the feeling is co production because there they have their own skill sets and their wisdom and there and we get things from them. But ultimately I do feel like we've always been at the helm. Well yeah, I mean like just from like a like a logistics standpoint, we've no one has ever had influence on our arrangements, the instruments we use, the arrangements of the songs, the lyrics, the sounds, it's all completely ours and we never wanted anyone to have any say on that kind of stuff, you know. So production has always been something that comes in right at the end and just really helps us get across the finish line because it's just having another voice, another person there is really helpful and really lovely, and so us producing by ourselves this time wasn't so much a like definitive choice. It maybe would have happened without the pandemic, but it was also like the pandemic was like, look, no one can travel, no one can get in a plane. Just just do it ourselves. The best part about working with other people is like the contributions that they bring to you that are their own, things that you would never think of, right. So, like it's little, it's like we don't want to be told things by somebody about things we deeply know and we're not going to mess with, you know, like for example, like the arrangement of something, or the lyrics or like like Alex said, there's things that are not quite up for question, right. But the times we've worked with other people, you know, great things came out of those little moments because they brought something that we did not and could not do ourselves. And that's the best moment in like working with a producer or co produce, you know, whatever you want to call and however you want to use the word produce whatever that means. It means something different to every artist because some people don't know at all what they're doing and they need help, and so it's just everybody's different. But our best times with other people have been where we didn't think of it ourselves. And thank you for that help, you know, thank you for teaching us about this new new microphone or new like gear. You know, like Sonic Boom has an incredible life experience and knowledge and made beautiful records and was such a wonderful person to work with on seven, you know. And Chris Cody the years we spent with him, you know, he's amazing at recording. It's just you get knowledge from people, and that's the most beautiful part of working with somebody else. It's less about like the producing that they do. It's more about like the the energy and the information and the knowledge that they bestow. So it would be sort of like choices about gear and possibly choices about performance. Is that how it would work, Like when you're working with another producer, it's like it's like smaller and like more like instantaneous things that occur, like oh we should use like I don't know, I think honestly, it's hard to sum it all up. Every record is really really different, you know, so we'd have to go record by record. I mean, we didn't have a producer on our first two records. So actually, that thing in our bio is wrong. It's just one of those sentences. It's just one of those sentences we wrote and like we probably should have just like not written duh or something, you know. Yeah, And also but also the word producer is another one of these words. Produced or a producer is one of these giant words that means something different for everyone and for every situation. So it's kind of an annoying. It's an annoying word not because producers are annoying, but because it's very confusing what you're talking about exactly. Yeah, I'm just always interested what goes on in what a producer actually does, And I know there's a whole range, Like in hip hop, a producer is just is the person making the beat. Oh yeah, it's it's different in every genre, or I think it's the world by the genre. I think it's just it's just down to the person and to the situation. It's different. You know, there should be other ones like um, you know cha chair sitter, food bringer. Sometimes like the best thing a producer can do is nothing, you know, like recognizing that they don't have anything to offer and something's already perfect, you know, rather than having like an ego and thinking they have to add something. You know. So it's like the role that is played is even different down to the minute. And I think that is probably like our best combo with a person with the P word would be like they're either going to be confirming something we already know or like enabling us to have Yes, you guys are right, you should probably do that. Like so you know, it's just that little bit of a bouncing board, and I think that's the best. I think we could probably just leave it at that, Like, I think that's the best way it works for us. The P word, the P word. Well, thank you guys so much for taking the time for talking. It was so much fun. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks the beach Outs for breaking down their creative partnership and the inspiration behind their new double album, Once Twice Melody. You can hear the new album and all of our favorite Beach House songs on my playlist at broken record podcast dot com. He should a subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast, where we can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced a helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Bent, Holiday, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chaffey. Our executive producer is Minia Lobell. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others from pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, wait and review us on your podcast app Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.