The Love Ways On the Making Of “I'll See You When”
What was the initial spark or idea that led to the creation of "I'll See You When?"
MARK SHREVE (Music + Instruments) - I came at ISYW from a bunch of different angles. I think it’s less of a specific spark/idea and more of a kind of list of things that I wanted to accomplish. One of the ways James & I always discuss what we want to do is “let’s make our version of ____” and here we wanted to do something darker, a bit more serious, less easy to grasp and a lot more ambitious. We wanted something that felt different to the rest of our catalog. To get there I looked to “Everlong” by Foo Fighters, “Tonight, Tonight” by The Smashing Pumpkins (that’s why you get strings at the end), and “Change in the House of Flies” by Deftones. Those songs were the kind of beating heart of it but then the confidence to do some weirder things came from my love of Biffy Clyro. I really tried to channel them in putting together the structure. When I think back on it - I think a lot of how this came together is predicated on it being recorded at the same time as our last single, “Desire Lines”. We knew DLs would be the one we released first, we knew we wanted it to be something that registers with our audience immediately, a structure that feels familiar rather than challenging, something that felt lived-in by the time you’re in the first chorus. With that done, ISYW was here to do the opposite - I wanted the structure to be weird and confusing: a maze you’re being chased through. Something that doesn’t feel lived-in until you’ve listened through a few times; something that gets more rewarding with time. So to sum up - spark #1 was to do something deeper, darker, heavier and kind of paying homage to the later-90s stuff we like than we’d ever done before. Spark #2 was to have a structure that’s labirynthine and builds to something spectacular as the walls shrink in around you. Spark #3 is to do something we’re proud of, always.
JAMES LANGLOIS (Lyrics + Vocals) - When I first heard Mark’s initial concept for the music I was sparked a bit by both by its general velocity and its push and pull between that propulsion and a certain stillness. That then made me sit with the idea of the various emotions memory can take shape as. Remembering specific times in your life can be tempestuous and comforting. It can also be conversational. You remember the words you said and the words you wish you had. The emotion of the song came easily through that lens as I thought of the various fires, seas and comforts I’ve lived through and the words came from there.
What impact do you hope "I'll See You When" will have on your audience or the music industry?
MARK SHREVE - Difficult to say what impact I expect this to have on the music industry (laughs). How about this: if Jared Leto hears it and thinks it’s so good that he quits music (and let’s throw in acting while we’re at it) forever that’d be a win. Outside of that, I’d be thrilled if I heard another artist say it gave them some confidence to go out and try to do something ambitious. I’d love to hear someone say it made them more interested in trying something heavier, or that they grew the scope of their ambition for what they could attempt/accomplish with a music video. Or even that it made them want to do a video at all. As far as our audience, as always I think we really just hope they like it as much as we do. I’d be really happy if it makes them excited for us to explore even more new ideas and sounds. I kind of think of it like if “Desire Lines” is TLWs at our most perfectly balanced, pH of 7, etc., our goal as a band for the next few songs is to knock that balance a bit in either direction. With some of the other new songs we’ve got locked and loaded - I can say for sure that they go in different directions but none of those directions is the same direction as “I’ll See You When”. To kind of sum it up, if someone listens to ISYW and leavse saying like “damn, ol’ boys were just getting started huh I cannot wait to hear what other new ideas they’ve got cooking” or like “this isn’t what I was expecting but it’s what I didn’t know I needed”, that’d be a bullseye for us.
JAMES LANGLOIS - I mean, as far as impact, I can only really speak to any sort of connection that someone can make with the song. Do they engage with the fun of the music itself? Do they sit with any different emotion or memory the words dredge up? Can they bounce between a variety of reactions that allow them sit with themselves while also rocking the fuck out? I hope all of those things ring true to somebody and that they come back for more.
What was your favorite moment in making the music video
MARK SHREVE - (laughing) Definitely when we got back from our first full day of filming and I sat down, dumped all the footage on my computer watched it and was like “this is all un-fucking-usable we have to do the whole thing again”. Mostly kidding BUT that first day of filming (which ended up being basically a pre-production day) was definitely the best part of it. James, me and one of my best friends (Ryan) went down to Fort Tilden which is this abandoned civil war fort on the outskirts of NYC and had some loose ideas of what we were doing and we started filming. It was fantastic - we were hopping fences, breaking into these abandoned, off-limits areas, keeping watch for cops, trying to get as much footage as we could. And at the time the idea was that James & I were like BLOODIED UP so we were absolutely caked in fake blood and we were carrying around an axe and a baseball bat with nails drilled into it and ‘TRY ME’ written on the side (laughs) - like tossing it into the bushes as a police cruiser circles by. It was a day with my best friends and it was like pure creativity and ambition and ingenuity and honestly you don’t get a ton of days like that that often.
JAMES LANGLOIS - Just like Mark said, being able to pop around the abandoned buildings at Fort Tilden is always fun. The art that people have left behind over the years forms all these layers. The sediment just grows and grows. Finding that perfect Ouija board that someone had stenciled in one of the factory buildings was so awesome. Being able to poke at and find new layers in places that are close to us is so fucking fun.
How do you continuously grow and evolve as artists?
MARK SHREVE - It’s a good question and something I think about often. I believe that a lot of being a good artist comes from being a good fan. Part of that is like - take the bands and artists that you like and ask what about them makes you want to show up? Is it moments in songs, specific things they do live, what is it? And then how do you take what makes them great and special to you and translate that into what excites you about your own music. To do that you need to go to a lot of shows, you have to listen to new stuff as well as old stuff, it’s necessary that you continually show up for the artists. I also grew up listening to like hardcore so it’s pretty ingrained in me that you don’t just show up for bands you like but you show up and support the scene at large. So really that means you can’t consider yourself a good fan if you’re not challenging yourself to find new things and support new artists. Like if I say “I’m a fan of rock music” it really doesn’t mean much unless I’m looking for new artists, checking out their shows, helping push things forward rather than backward. Put another way: the number of people who “love rock music” and have access to all recorded music in human history and use that access to basically listen to like Stairway to Heaven 8 times a week is fucking soul-crushing. The other way I think about this is that I always think of songwriting as just a series of problem-solution exercises. I know more or less what I want to accomplish and there are always an infinite number of ways to get there. Evolution and growth, to me, is knowing how we’ve solved those problems and kind of paved those paths before and making sure we don’t do the same things again. I’m really proud of “I’ll See You When” because the entire song was an exercise in trying new things, introducing our listeners to some of the weirder ideas we’ve got and hoping it all works.
JAMES LANGLOIS - Always consuming new things helps me to move forward. Despite the comfort I take in listening to my favorite records, re-reading my favorite authors and re-watching my favorite films there is always some new to be dug up or thrown over or transformed by a friend or association. I find inspiration to be a mountain of references I stand on and process so I only ever want to make that pile taller.
Where do you find inspiration for your songs or musical ideas?
MARK SHREVE - For me it’s always kind of a draw between paying homage to the things that truly inspire me and being inordinately competitive with the things that don’t. Something I really love about working with James is that because our influences and ideas come from some pretty different places, whenever there’s something that inspires us both it’s a slam dunk, like full-steam-ahead with that idea. For example, our song “Wild Life” from a couple years ago was a pretty direct homage to “Dimed Out” by Titus Andronicus - we were inspired to write a song that sounds like a fucking heart attack. Even the video for Wildlife is a massive nod. For “Desire Lines”, we wanted something that felt like what we loved about early Killers stuff; we were inspired by how they showed up with “Mr. Brightside” and after one listen you couldn’t imagine your playlist without it. Again, for anyone paying attention, some similarities that flow between the videos as well (laughs). For “I’ll See You When”, as I said a little bit ago we looked pretty deliberately to early Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones, kinda that later-90s stuff that was brave and big and ambitious but also really vulnerable. There’s definitely also some Finch & Biffy Clyro bubbling in the stew so to speak. (Laughing) Listen this ain’t the first and won’t be the last time I serve you up something inspired by Everlong. So that’s kinda side one of my inspiration and then side two is that for me personally, I’m pretty competitive so I also get really inspired to write by things that I think are just garbage. For example I grew up in the UK and a few times a week I’ll throw on Kerrang and see what the like “New Rock Hits Right Now” playlist is and there’s so much there that’s just disappointing - I’m truly inspired by how abrasively uninspiring it is. It really makes me think like “alllllllright I guess I’ll just do it myself”. Or very, very much gives me a feeling of “shit, I can beat that” and then I spin up Pro Tools, send James a million texts with ideas and do everything I can to create something better.
JAMES LANGLOIS - Either listening and reading to new things or listening and reading to the old things. There’s so many times where I look both backward and foward and say “damn I need to know more” and find it easy as hell to dig in deeper and deeper. There is always some amazing music I’ve never listened to waiting for me to discover it or some novel or chapbook that’s waiting to be uncovered. It’s easy to jump down rabbit holes but it takes some discipline to document what I find and keep it all straight in my head. There’s so much of it that I want to keep with me and so I find that I’m always taking notes of my thoughts so they don’t evaporate. When I’m able to keep all that new, great shit top of mind or at least middle of mind and am able to combine it with what I am going through in my daily life, inspiration is the easiest of things to come by.