March 14, 2010

Interview With the morning benders

Illustration: Mary Machin

the morning benders’ Chris Chu is quickly becoming one of the most distinct voices to emerge from this Spring’s blogosphere buzz cycle with his (as Betty Draper would say) ”velvety” vocals powerfully commandeering his band’s latest effort, The Big Echo. We were recently able to catch up up with him to talk about Joanna Newsom, working with Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, and the hilarity of “Horse Moth.”

From what I have heard on the new album, Big Echo, it seems like some sort of epiphany must have happened in your song writing since your last effort, Talking Through Tin Cans. Listening back to your older albums, the qualities I love about songs such as “Excuses” seem to be present, but Big Echo seems to have added a whole other layer of, to put simply, “emotion,” that seems to beautifully haunt the new tracks. In the last year have you noticed some sort of change in your songwriting, or can you recall some sort of major influence you may have experienced that led to this “deeper” sound?

Chris: Writing songs is sort of mysterious for me. I don’t really know where they come from a lot of the time, and sometimes the meaning doesn’t became clear until way after the fact. So as to how my songwriting has changed, I’m not really sure. I know that as someone making music, I want to change what I am doing all the time. I get bored of writing the same kind of song, or being in a band that has the same kind of sound. I hope to be able to explore something new with every song, and every album. So I guess the changes for BIG ECHO just came from that desire…

What inspired the beautiful album art that you’ve released for Big Echo and the single “Promises”? It seems vaguely reminiscent of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea but crossed with an impressionist’s interpretation of a beach vacation in the 1950s. Perhaps that is a remotely close interpretation? I can definitely see these becoming the wallpaper on a lot of bloggers Macbooks.

C: That is quite an appropriate description! The art was done by a friend of ours, Hannah Hooper. Besides just thinking her art is beautiful, I did think the impressionistic style fit the sound of BIG ECHO rather well. There is a washiness and nostalgic quality that they share.

How did the idea of creating an “indie wall of sound” to back the song “Excuses” come about, and how would you describe the experience? Looking from the outside in, it certainly looked like you all were having a great time.

C: For the recording of the song on BIG ECHO, we wanted to mix the Phil Spector-y wall of sound type song with more modern sounds and textures, loops and delays and such. But for the live version we recorded we wanted to try to recreate all the parts with actual people. An organic, real-life version of “Excuses.” The result was something that sounded more like a recording from the 50s, because there was less affecting. We all hung out after playing the song, it was a really great time. It was cool because all of those people sort of know each other, either personally or through mutual friends, but we rarely would all be in one place, together, at the same time. That’s special.

The video for “Excuses” went fairly viral around the internet, at least on the music blogosphere. Are there any recent “viral memes” that you have particularly been a fan of?

C: I really liked that youtube video called “Horse Moth” It went “pretty viral” a few years back. I’m not sure about recent memes. Things are at least twice as viral in retrospect.

How was working with Chris Taylor in producing Big Echo? Do you feel like he had a substantial influence in the direction of the album and how it ended up turning out?

C: Great! He definitely had an influence on the sound of Big Echo. We tracked the album in SF before going to NY to meet up with Chris to mix the album, so a lot of the sounds were already recorded to tape, but it was surprising how much we ended up tweaking the sounds after that. I think he helped a lot to focus the arrangements and sounds. The songs ended up being a lot more powerful because of Chris.

Are there any bands in your home San Francisco local scene that you feel deserve some extra recognition?

C: The Mumlers.

Besides your own, are they any albums you are excited for in 2010. Has there been any particular albums that have been released recently that you particularly enjoyed?

C: Pretty excited about 2010, there are so many good releases! Really stoked on the new Gorillaz and Joanna Newsom right now. The song “In California” is so perfect, and making me really homesick right now on tour.