interrobang is the follow up to 2018’s Native Tongue and last year’s Covers EP, and with a career spanning 20 years, bassist Tim Foreman says the band are closer than ever.
“We love what we do and most of the time we get on really well with each other” he told 96five’s Tim Bain.
“We’ve been through a lot together and every time you go through a valley, you add that to your memory bank of things you’ve been through together. I’d add 2020 to that list of valleys, and I can honestly say we’re closer as a band than we’ve ever been.”
Working with producer Tony Berg (Paul McCartney, Phoebe Bridgers, Andrew Bird) at both Sound City studio in Van Nuys, California and the band’s own studio in San Diego, the band recorded the album in a burst of pent-up mid-pandemic creativity throughout last year and into 2021.
“Normally we would be touring, that’s how we bring hope to the world, but we had to pivot and do live streams and do what we could to help people move beyond the year we were going through.
But what was it like writing and recording an album through something as challenging as a global pandemic?
“When the lockdown started in California everything was pretty hard, they even closed the oceans, for us (as surfers) that was the darkest moment – these things that you never thought would go away are suddenly gone.
“In terms of writing the record, we were connecting with each other via Zoom and trying to work on ideas which was really tough, especially when the kids were doing online school and all those challenges we all went through.
“When we were able to get back into our studio that was this incredible gift. We’d just show up every day feeling so lucky that we got to have this space to make music together.”
As restrictions eased Tim said that the band felt challenged to get out of their studio bubble as well as their comfort zones, making the trip to LA’s Sound City. With the band having been well known for their faith, the stepped further out of that comfort zone with producer Tony Berg.
“In our very first conversation he introduced himself as an aggressive atheist. We’d show up at Sound City everyday and we’d debate and fight about just everything on the planet, but we’d always agree on the music.
“The album is called interrobang which is a question mark on top of an exclamation mark; two things that seem in contention with each other finding harmony. The album became this big experiment – can you make beauty with people you disagree with? Can you stay in the fight respectfully and love each other, even if you both walk away disagreeing?
“I feel like as a society we’ve lost our ability to wrestle through things together, and I think growth happens through adversity and that’s what this record became for us.”
interrobang is available on all platforms Friday August 20 through Fantasy Records.
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