Hi there, I’m Olivia Foster, and I’m here with Vanessa and Ryan from LOVECOLOR. Do you guys want to share what LOVECOLOR is about?
Vanessa Silberman: I can start, and then Ryan can maybe add some stuff. LOVECOLOR—the whole message, really—is, lyrically, themed about exploring the different facets of love and, I’ll definitely say, really emphasizing on love, especially right now in our world. We need more of that than anything, y’know? So many different things happening, hardships happening. It’s kind of like adding more good to the world than not. Ryan, you have some other thoughts you wanna share?
Ryan Carnes: Yeah, I’ll speak to the music aspect, because that relates to what LOVECOLOR is about as well. Vanessa and I both came up loving rock music—loving hard rock, loving grunge, that kind of vibe. I think that’s probably the biggest influence—at least the earliest influence—on both of us, musically. When we decided to form LOVECOLOR, we did so because Vanessa and I had been talking about it for several years, creating some sort of side project separate from Vanessa Silberman, her solo material. What we were doing a couple years ago was starting to really stray quite a ways from what she had been doing. So, that’s why we decided to form LOVECOLOR, in a more so logistical/creative manner. At the same time, we wanted to do something different, but something also we thought would resonate with the current landscape of music—without the old saying “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” without getting rid of an excommunicating some of the sounds and some of the energy of the music that really helped us fall in love with music in the first place. So, it’s really an amalgamation of the positive message, the exploration of love and all its facets—ugly, pretty, beautiful, romantic, terrifying, all those things—combined with, hopefully, the roots of the music we fell in love with, as well as a present sound.
I love that. I know that you guys really incorporate a lot of 80’s synths into your music—things like that—and I know that you’ve also been compared to, say, St. Vincent, CHVRCHES, so on and so forth, but who specifically are some of your biggest influences? Ranging from back to where you started, and maybe more so where you are now.
VS: We have a lot of influences. And, kind of going back to what Ryan said, the thing about us is we love heavy, hard rock, but also love pop, and synth pop. I’ll give you some examples: M83, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, more stuff like that is probably the influences [that] are more showing up in our current music and in our newer songs. But also, you feel some heaviness where some of the grunge stuff is kind of felt too, with some of the heavy guitars or the heavy drums. I feel like, as a band, we really like Phantogram and Metric and CHVRCHES and—Ryan, you wanna add some others?
RC: Yeah. In one of the tracks on our new record, called “Love Held My Body,” I don’t know that Vanessa really set out to do this, but one of the bits of feedback that we’ve gotten about that song—by the way, interestingly, surprisingly to us, that song that I’m referring to, I would say, over the course of the time that we’ve toured, about eighty percent of the time people say that’s their favorite song of the set when we play live. And, that song—I don’t mean to overshoot here—people have said to us, “Yeah, it’s got kind of like a Led Zeppelin thing going on.” There’s lots of strings in it, a la “Kashmir.” It’s a longer song. It’s a bigger song. It’s a louder song than some of the rest of our tracks. I would even say, Led Zeppelin is one of my favorite bands of all time, which I know many, many people can also say, but our references go back to other bands that don’t really fit into some of the other categories that we commonly refer to—or other people refer to—as sounds that they think of when they hear us.
VS: Yeah. And even to that [effect], I’ve spent years growing up, listening to a lot of grunge bands, as Ryan mentioned—some of which, for example, Silverchair, if you listen to some of their later records, like Diorama, there’s all kinds of horn and strings sections, and that was a super big influence on me. And I think with “Love Held My Body,” it was kind of like, “Let’s just add every kind of creative, fun element that we love and have fun with it, and carry those inspirations in our own way.”
RC: And I’ll add one more thing to that, Olivia, and that is that alt-J is one of my favorite bands. I just think that they’re brilliant. There’s something about what they do that really inspires me, and really keeps me entertained and intrigued and curious as a listener. And there are certain sounds that I would say—we’re not trying to duplicate anyone. We’re not trying to be anyone. We’re trying to do LOVECOLOR. At the same time, of course, it’s impossible not to have inspirations and influences. And with alt-J, I would say that there are certain things that I’ll hear, that I’ll pick out, and I’ll go, “Man, I’d really love to do our version of that thing.” Whether it’s like, y’know, the bass-synth sound in “Tessellate,” which is one of my favorite sounds on a song ever, or whether it’s some ear candy that they layer in. It’s a thing that they do oh-so well, is building a track and adding layers over the course of the song. And so, even things like that, we love to bring to the writing and recording process, things that we hear that we love, no matter where they’re from.
I love that. How was the writing and recording—I guess the more “creative” process—for your guys’ recently released album?
VS: Well, that’s interesting. I think we can both answer to some of that. I mean, the album, I would say, is definitely kind of like a chapter cycle, kind of a completion. Some of the songs on there were originally demos that I wrote—particularly a song called “Self Love”—during the winter of 2020 in New York, in the pandemic. Some of the other songs were gonna originally be Vanessa Silberman solo songs, and then turned into, “This is so different from my solo stuff,” and then us just saying: “Yknow what, forget it. Let’s just do a band.” And y’know, typically the way we work—which is interesting, because we were working this way before even the pandemic, but, initially, with my solo material and Ryan and I starting to collaborate would be me taking a song or a demo that I was working on and being like, “Hey, what do you think about this? You got any thoughts or ideas?” And I think that’s kind of how our creative relationship really expanded, and a lot of these songs are kind of like demo ideas. Like, “What do you think about this? Should we work on this?” We just decide to work on what we love, and usually it’s a demo. Sometimes, I’ll have an intro verse and a chorus—or sometimes a lot more—and then if we both really like the music, we’ll start to expand. Ryan might be like, “Hey, what about this melody?” or “Let’s add a drum fill here,” or more specifics, but it’s a fun creative process. You wanna add some stuff, too?
RC: Yeah, it’s a really collaborative process, and that’s one of the things that, early on in working with Vanessa—especially when we started to work together in a more collaborative manner—I was really impressed by her [because] there’s no ego. Because, I went from being Vanessa’s drummer who would weigh in on things once in a while to a full-on bandmate. And in a space where there was a lot of collaboration needed, and in the beginning I was very trepidatious about certain things, and overtime I realized, “Wow, she just really has such a beautifully collaborative spirit and is open to any and all ideas, and they’re all welcome.” And I think we said recently in another interview, we have two rules: there are no bad ideas, and the best idea wins. That’s pretty much it in the studio. I like to say—and, Vanessa, correct me if you disagree—I guess the way I think about it is, Vannessa makes an amazing broth, and then says, “Here, taste this. What do you think?” And I go, “Oh! Wow! That’s incredible! What if we added some thyme, what if we added some wild mushrooms?” It’s kind of stuff like that, where Vanessa’s a really talented songwriter, and she’s great at coming up with melodies, with hooks, with the foundation of a song. And then I get to come in and have fun, like, “Cool, how about we add some more ingredients?” or “How about we decorate the cake?” kind of thing. That’s kind of how I tend to think about it. It’s a very fun process.
I love that; that’s awesome. How are you guys feeling with the release of LOVECOLOR? The album dropped, what, just five or six days ago now?
VS: It’s exciting!
RC: Yeah.
VS: We worked really hard on it. Andrew Dawson mixed a number of the songs on there, and then I mixed a number of them, and we worked really hard on getting it to a space where we were super excited, had many late nights down to the wire of setting it up. It’s cool, I think, to get the songs out into the world that we’ve been working on for such a long time. And some stuff is unexpected. “Love Held My Body” is a great example. When I was first working on the demo, I thought it was ridiculous. I was like, “This is so long. This is the longest song I’ve ever written. This is ridiculous. I don’t know.” Or a lot of the stuff, too, would just be like having fun, like “Crazy Love.” There’s some solos in there, and it was kind of just like, “What can we do to have fun with this? Make it ridiculous.” And we were adding horns and stuff in certain places. It was really fun to be creative in that way, and I’m really stoked for us. It’s been great to get it out into the world.
RC: Yeah, it’s been a really fulfilling, rewarding thing. It’s tough sometimes. Previously, we released a single when we were in the middle of a tour, and that was challenging. It was cool, right, because we get to talk about it and show up at the venue and say, “Hey, check out our new single that just came out.” It presents its own challenges, though. On one hand, the promotion of it, and on the other hand, the ability to really savor it and enjoy the process of it. This time, we released the record on the last day of tour, which was a great show in Salt Lake City, and got to say, “Hey, record’s out today,” which was awesome. And at the same time, we were tired. I flew home the next day on, like, three hours of sleep, and Vanessa’s flight got delayed, and so there’s all these life things just happening at the same time the record comes out, and it’s easy to kind of lose sight of, “Wow, this is so cool. This was over two years in the making, and we’re really proud of all of this, and we’re really happy with how it turned out. And also, there’s a lot of things going on.” It’s a good reminder. I appreciate you asking that question, because it’s a good reminder to go, “Oh yeah. We released a record, and that’s pretty cool.”
Yeah, I hope you guys have done something to celebrate, because that’s huge. Especially for a debut album. That’s amazing. And, I didn’t realize it was the last day of tour, so that’s just an extra layer of special, I think.
RC: Yeah.
What’s next for you guys?
VS: (laughs)
RC: Music! (joins in)
VS: Yeah, I mean, we have probably about ten other songs, demos, in the works, and just I think we’re both really excited about those, and starting to—well, continuing to—promote our current album, because it’s been nice to play all those songs, at least most of them, live, and present them in a way that’s still kind of [working] on getting them out to more people, and getting to know different fans and supporters and connecting that way, and then continuing working on more material. And, y’know, hopefully a lot more shows in the future, too.
Awesome, I love that. Are you guys planning a tour for this album, or was your last tour more for this album? Will there be a specific U.S. tour?
VS: Well, this tour that we just did was to kind of celebrate and support that, but I’m sure there will be many, many other things in the future.
Well, that’s super exciting. I don’t have any other questions for you guys, but I just want to say ‘congrats’ again on finishing up your tours and having that debut. That is so exciting. Really excited to hear more from you guys in the future, so thanks for joining me today.
VS: Thank you, yeah.
RC: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for your time, Olivia.
No worries. I’ll let you guys both go now. Thank you!
