Vents MagaZine Music and Entertainment Magazine
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1. Hi guys, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?
Pretty good! It’s been an exciting time for us as a band!! The world is terrible though, so I feel sort of guilty about that.
2. Upside Down We’re Flying feels almost like a love letter to late ’80s and early ’90s indie rock—what draws you to that era, and how do you reinterpret it for today?
Well there’s something about it that feels more real, maybe it’s just that music was more limited. Now I’m not against people getting access to music, but I am against music being so devalued that basically no one but the super successful can make a living off of it. It’s like they said about movies – movies killed the local stage actor. Streaming music kind of killed the local/indie musician, or at least delivered a heavy blow. Not that it was ever easy, Music is very difficult the 20th century too, and in many ways its a lot easier to get your music out there now. But but that doesn’t have the fact that we wish that it would have those sort of 1000 true fans effect, because everything is decentralized through the Internet, you don’t know who your local musician is so you don’t know how to go stream their music, at least most people don’t.
To be honest I don’t know if that is actually WHY I like 80s aesthetics though – I think I like the 80s.90s golden age of alternative rock because that’s what I was listening to in the car when I was a baby, there’s a lot of foggy nostalgia associated with that. But then again, I don’t like EVERYTHING from that time period, or everything I listened to as a baby. So maybe there is something special about it.
There’s this song called Echo Beach by Martha and the muffins, that I DIDN’T grow up with, but it is kind of like song lost to time, remembered by some but maybe not even enough to be a one hit wonder. I’m obsessed with things like that, and I feel like we try to give each song an edge of mystery like that, an emulation of the grain that the decades leave on music.
3. You emphasized recording the album live as a band—how did that approach shape the chemistry and overall sound of the record?
Well we just practiced it a lot before we tracked it, so we had a really tight live recording after our initial sessions. We wanted it to sound like something that had been played in front of audiences, which it has, but sometimes that doesn’t come through If you do it in the computer. In addition, we wanted to track some vocals from every band member, so we could literally have a blend of our creative voices make up the soundscape. A lot of those back up vocals were also tracked live, with two people singing in the room at a time and capturing the live blend.
4. There’s a balance between raw, organic instrumentation and heavily processed guitar textures—how do you decide when to lean into each side?
It depends on what part of the song you’re at, I think the rawness serves the quieter moments, but the processed, heavy guitar works as a contrast to that, and also adds color to the distorted parts of the record. We didn’t want to just have plain old distorted guitar, we wanted to add a psychedelic edge to that.
5. “California (She’s So Royal)” is incredibly hook-driven but also this experimental edge—how did you approach building something so immediate yet unpredictable?
Thank you! I think that it just came about naturally from finding catchy moments and putting them in – the song has a really simple chord structure so there were a lot of places to do it. The part with the solo in particular was fun to create, the monologue was a spontaneous add to what had normally been a quieter part of the song without much going on, plus we got to add some fun synths and noise, and a harmonized solo, which me (Peter) and Claire like to do a lot. It’s a maximalist production.
6. “In Flames” seems to tap into a darker emotional space—what inspired that shift in tone compared to your more melodic tracks?
I think we wanted something with more edge. Somebody at one of our shows said that we made very “life affirming” music, which is a great complement, but I also thought, hmmm, I never thought of it like that, maybe I need to make something more deliberately dark.
7. Many of your songs seem to explore longing, missed connections, and emotional ambiguity—do you see the album as a cohesive narrative or more of a collection of moments?
It’s a collection of moments for sure but I see it as moments from a single story, or at least some of the songs are.
8. How do you typically divide songwriting and arrangement duties?
I (Peter) will usually do all the vocals and lyric writing, but for arrangement and instrumental songwriting, we split that up on a case by case basis – usually someone will come in with most of a song, or just a single idea, and we as a group will sit together in practice and figure out how to make it into a full song.
9. The album features this great layered harmonies rather than polished studio vocals—why was preserving those individual voices so important to you?
Because nobody does that anymore, or at least I don’t notice it as much. Its something I think was lost in the transition to digital, where you can perfectly clone the lead singers voice – you loose the reality of the band as a group of people, and then it becomes like a lead pop star and a backing band. We didn’t want it to be like that.
10. “Eta Carinae” closes the album on a cinematic and tragic note—what made you want to end the record this way?
I think placing Eta Carinae at the end was inspired by Coldplay’s Amsterdam, which has a similar build. But also, it feels nice to suddenly switch to piano right before the end, it feels like something’s changed in the album’s narrative, a page has been turned and a new reality lies ahead. The song itself is a sad story but it’s also hopeful to me.
11. You’ve described yourselves as “out of time aesthetically”—do you see that as a challenge in today’s music landscape, or as your greatest strength?
I think it can be both. It helps us stand out from other bands but I do think we’re swimming upriver in terms of the style of music we make. But there are still tons of people who want music like ours and I think we’re finding more everyday. There’s a bit of a starving audience, you can see that with band like geese and big thief, that don’t conform to one genre or style and instead jump around. I think that’s our sensibility that is the most “out of time”, as it doesn’t go well with the modern idea of selling a band as a brand, focusing on narrowing your image. We do still have a cohesive mission statement, it is storytelling and adventure through music, but we don’t wanna limit ourselves to one specific niece of rock, we want to try our hand at as much as we can pull off.
LISTEN “In Flames,” “Red Thread,” and “California (She’s So Royal)“
