In addition to Nye (who has followed Classical Notions of Happiness with the EP Something to Say and has a second EP … To You scheduled for release in December), a variety of rising artists, including Christian Lee Hutson (Beginners), Anjimile (Giver Taker), Bartees Strange's Bartees Cox Jr. (Live Forever), and Nation of Language frontman Ian Devaney (introduction, Prescence) all sat down to discuss the unusual and inopportune circumstances of releasing a debut record during COVID, and what it takes to make the best of an impossible situation. Do you have any favorite memories of working with Polly in Automatic Dlamini? I saw some bands, put some records out that were really good in February and January who had huge tours booked all summer. "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. Don't take it at a shallow base value." And they were like, "This is weird, but we an tell people about the band for when things open back up. It's hard to sometimes. It's not like, "Oh, no, all this money I usually make is gone!" I just thought, "That girl’s got a really good voice, I’m gonna see if she wants to join the band." Jordana Nye: I was going on my first tour. Anjimile: At this point, in the year, I have a lot of songs written, some which I think might be good. a valentine for elliott and the grammy's. A decade on, unanswered questions still cast shadows over it; did he commit suicide or was he murdered? I can't wait. It's bullshit music. Bartees Cox Jr.: I'm glad that we put Live Forever out now, instead of right at the beginning of the pandemic, because I don't think people knew what the f**k was going on in March. But it's that last 40 that are painful. I went to a very conventional fine arts school as a really fringy person and learned that photography is called bottom weighted. When she finished school, she came and joined the band and she played with us for the next three years, before she formed the first PJ Harvey trio. There's a missing reel somehow. In his brief and sprawling career, Elliott Smith released a trove of music that enchanted, soothed, and devastated listeners. So I was very disappointed that that didn't make it onto the album. He was like, "Are these something?" And we were there, we played the thing, and we were all like, "Dang, this looks like it's gonna get really serious." For the song "I Believe In You" 2005 Nominee Grammy: Best Dance Recording. ", Christian Lee Hutson: I think everyone was just flying by the seat of their pants, like, "We'll do the best that we can do and we're just gonna do everything that we can as we think of it." Hopefully people can sit at home and watch. It seems both incredible and unlikely that it’s been ten years since the death of Elliott Smith. The track "Dead Already" was later featured in the 2005 film Madagascar (which was also a film from DreamWorks Pictures). If you get a slightly better tape head or a tape player, maybe the tape player plays the tape more steadily and there's less flutter. /*-->*/. I don't try and explain it, I just show gratitude by continuing to care for it like my mama taught me. Finishing vinyl was a manufacturing process: you send the lacquer to a place that would make the negative, and then they would press the vinyl and you’d need to check it out to make sure it sounds right. I was just documenting the whole experience. It's one of the few cases where we just don't have the masters. Were you hearing her lyrics while she was writing them? The latest vinyl reissue is something of an outlier: Dance Hall At Louse Point, Harvey’s abrasive 1996 collaboration with ex-bandmate John Parish. How Blind Melon Lost Their Minds & Made A Masterpiece: 'Soup' Turns 25. 5 for a little magazine called Snipe Hunt that was going then. It was my business, but I told him if he wanted to bring gear down and help me build the studio, he could work out of here for a small fee. I was writing the music for Dance Hall At Louse Point at the same time she was writing the music for To Bring You My Love. I go with certain panning schemes and certain affects usage that made sense to the way Elliott worked. It will always exist." So I think it probably enabled her to be a bit more wayward than she might have been. Christian Lee Hutson: It's like, for debut artists, what do you have to compare it to? That’s how we had the idea for the album. You can get the sense that they are ready to just throw us intensely on the road, and we are ready to do that as well. Bruce Elliott-Smith Read more about this and other GRAMMYs news at GRAMMY.com "They have one of the more insane vintage synth collections of any studio I've worked in," she said. Or maybe the different brands of four-track cassette recorders have slightly different gaps between the tracks on the heads, so they follow it differently. What was your first impression when you first met her in the '80s? "What about fanny packs?" I was supposed to on it right now, actually. And not to sound like a f**king music industry business guy, but content is helpful, and so I'm just trying to create chill content without losing my mind. I really wish you could hear this photo. Had it been down to me, I would have said "Put the demo version on the album" when the record came out. The expanded release allows those closest to Smith to share intimate memories and experiences with fans, and for fans to understand the real person behind the music. I mean, I'm actually kind of encouraged by the response to the album just in general, because I feel like it's such a weird time for music to come out and I'm happy that anyone has found it at all considering it's come out in the most turbulent year in recent memory. There probably wasn't much to do. Grammy Awards. Look at my calendar and make sure my schedule is realistic. She does plenty of other kinds of art, but she hadn't done a portrait in like a decade. Anjimile: It feels surreal, but at the same time I've released music locally in Boston over the years. I'm still in touch with Neil [Gust]. It was initially done because they needed it for this film [Basquiat]. Merch fulfillment! 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. I felt unprepared. But I remember seeing Heatmiser and thinking, "Oh gosh, another guitar band. Today, we have a special bi-costal edition, with Brooklyn-based Rosehardt and Los Angeles-based Lauren Ruth Ward, two artists featured in Dr. Martens Presents: Music & Film Series, sharing their Quarantine Diaries. But no, she got used to it pretty fast. Harvey and Parish had first met in the late 1980s, when she joined his band Automatic Dlamini. Or they could be read in a personal way, couldn’t they? It's as bad as listening to Foreigner or something. We started relying on each other. I don't think he did. Anjimile: It definitely changed the scope and nature of the promotional cycle. The Dandy Warhols are fun, but it's just lightweight, fluff music. And then when we opened the studio, we spent weeks building the walls and wiring things up. And was quite capable of being able to offer good advice. ", 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. During this period, Polly was also becoming successful very quickly. Nov 15, 2018 - Next Los Angeles models Lucky Blue Smith and Shaun Ross connect with John Elliott + Co for the brand’s spring 2015 lookbook. See the complete profile on LinkedIn and discover R Bruce’s connections and jobs at similar companies. Which is why those cities are referenced on the album sleeve. Some of the titles she used; some she didn’t. Crane: If you went to my mom and gave her a two-inch reel of my old band or something, she'd go, "What do I have to do with that?" They were dating at the time and she worked at a venue called La Luna as a bartender. I put thank you letters and pressed flowers go into every package (I love this part). I want to try and create content that folks can engage with at home. Jordana Nye: Going on tour, getting experienced would have helped my career a lot in way. Anything you can do, you just have to do it. And I feel like everyone has a label and Phoebe and me and my management, everyone has been pretty good at just being like, "Alright, we're just gonna roll with it.". I'd hear them as they were coming in. The 25th anniversary reissue of his self-titled album, due Aug. 28th via Kill Rock Stars, aims to bridge that gap. Join to Connect ArchangelUK . I've been touring with other people or just on my own for the last 11 years in my life. My understanding is that you wrote those songs while on tour with Polly for To Bring You My Love? If you listen to "New Monkey," it actually refers to that. 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. So I gave her the title "Taut." musician’s life. Most people aren't really equipped to do incredibly deep, critical listening. [6 p.m.] Pandemic life: make dinner, sometimes simple, sometimes elaborate. There are ones that I find the most dear, like the photo of Elliott with blue hair and he's doing the devil horns and he's holding a cup of coffee. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. But we need to get those backed up now." You will get to play the record for years. The final result, pitched as a synth, can be heard in the melody that ends "Good Grief.". That photo and then also the cover of Roman Candle are very popular. You can't have one be shockingly blue, and the next one be suddenly shockingly yellow or your brain will just go, "This looks like shit." "I've been playing Between the Bars live for a while now, ... All Night sees her tackling one of the standouts from Beyonce’s Grammy nominated Lemonade. [8:15 a.m.] Check in. But back at that time when CDs first came out, especially for independent artists, it was really confusing what the mastering process was supposed to be. I think they didn’t really know what it was. We put it in the archive, but I don't think he even quite knew what they were. Some articles I’ve read state that the record label, Island, was uncomfortable with the album and believed it to be "commercial suicide." And to me they've always been sort of one of the gatekeepers of like, "Oh, I'm in this level now. But I think everything that was unavailable is being made available. We're just trying to be as creative as possible. Obviously he had a lot of clout and a lot of credibility with Island. 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. That was absolutely her call. I feel very grateful for that. I’m referring to "Taut." JJ Gonson: We were all very tight. Since his untimely death at 34 years old in 2003, Smith's closest friends and family have seen his masterfully empathic songwriting give that intimate companionship to countless fans. I'll have a little something and then exercise! The vocal performance on "City Of No Sun" is also quite extreme and very jarring. The 1998 Oscars telecast featured musical performances by … Jordana Nye: At least I have my job back in Wichita. I feel we always end up saying, "There's a whole person there. It used to be you’d go downtown or to a few places on the East side to see shows and there weren't even that many bars or pubs that weren't working class, blue collar, working dude bars. It was after Rid Of Me, before she had started To Bring You My Love. I told you I was giving Polly some of the songs I gave her with titles. I have given a lot of my memory, but the biggest thing about the photos really has to do with feeling like it was okay. The muffins were made. And this was when the shit was really going down in New York. For "Slow" 2004 Winner Grammy: Best Dance Recording. We're about to have a contest. Company Website. Do you think those factors contributed to her desire to separate herself from the PJ Harvey that people knew? I studied filmmaking and I always equate it with a good transfer of a film, where you don't see the hairs caught in the frames, and there's not jumps where the reels change. Read More: Anjimile Opens Up On 'Giver Taker,' Sobriety, Identifying As Trans & More. It's humbling. Jordana Nye: I'm still just making music and content, and it kind of tells me that I can pretty much do anything that I set my mind to, which is comforting, especially in dire times when I feel like I'm not doing anything at all, and I feel like I'm a loser. People will be at home wearing them." Also hella tasty. Ian Devaney: In a strange way, I'm glad we're putting music out now. And hopefully, in a world where we're safer, those things can still happen. He would stop and start songs and chat with the audience. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } I'd drive around town, borrowing four-track cassette players from different people and doing different passes with noise reduction on and noise reduction off. But he had already written a lot of the stuff that would be the second album. They're not just what I call happy snaps—though those do still have a lot of merit. I went to different digital audio tapes it was mixed to and listened to them all back to back against each other. And then I would prep the files before mastering, cleaning up the subsonic information, removing tape hiss. I'm like, "Oh, majorly. We then DM everyone their tracking number along with another thank you. Do you think it’s overdue for more attention? The reissue is a document of Smith's heart and mind, but also of the tight-knit community surrounding him. 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. It’s like, "Oh, PJ Harvey and some bloke" kind of thing. She hit the chorus; she had two or three go’s and she kept getting it wrong. And so when it became clear that we weren't going to be touring for a long time, I was like, "Oh, I guess we're doomed. I was told there was gonna be hotels. 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