The Everyday Visuals are preparing for the release of their third self-titled album on April 14th. If you like bands such as Radiohead, Wilco, R.E.M., and Fleet Foxes, you will love this band. They play around in Portland once in a while, and they’re aiming to come back sometime in the summer. I recently had a chance to sit down with the lead singer, Christopher Pappas. Here’s how it went down:
Free Press: So your upcoming album is self-titled. Is there any reason behind this decision?
Christopher Pappas: Yeah, I think Eli was the big proponent of self-titling it. Things Will Look Up and Media Crush were all sort-of transition albums. We’re either transition members, we’re transitioning location.
This record felt like more of a combined effort from all of the band members, and we have a clear vision. For the first time, it was really like art. Eli especially felt that sentiment, even more so than Things Will Look Up. We decided to go with it because we think he’s right.
FP: A long time ago you had a song called “What We Deserve” on your band’s Myspace page. Did anything happen to that song? Is that on the album?
CP: No, it’s not on the record, but we are actually getting ready, after the release, to put a bunch of b-sides out because there are five or six songs that aren’t going to be on the record that are new that we could release as b-sides.
That song was written…it was a very politically-charged song, and I wrote it while the primaries were going on. When it came time to choose a song for the record, I felt like that song almost encapsulated a different period, and we had moved past it. So when we put it on the Myspace, it was definitely for political reasons and it was more in the spirit of the time. It was like writing a Christmas tune and then having a record that comes out in March.
FP: That’s what I was thinking, because I knew that it was politically charged.
CP: I’m happy with that song, and I think it will get a release someday.
FP: Was there any musical discoveries in the past few years that’s had a major influence on your songwriting now?
CP: I think it was more like personal discoveries…I feel like the hardest part for me is always keeping a steady vision of what I want and sort of trusting myself. And this has been a new struggle with me.
When I wrote Media Crush, and Joey Hallowell and I recorded it, I was like, “This is what we’re gonna fucking do. I don’t give a shit what’s happening right now.” So when we released that and started to plan the follow-up, we got very in tune with the trends that were going on, and not that we wanted to mimic what they were doing, but I felt like it almost made us self-conscious. It’s like, “We don’t sound like that, are we doing something wrong?” I don’t know if we can be disingenuous about our music; if reggae suddenly took off and went top 40, I don’t know if I could write a reggae tune, but it was more of a feeling of, is this going to fall on deaf ears? Are we doing something wrong?
I think for this record, I got back in tune with my roots, music I grew up with and went back to when I was more comfortable writing, and not only more comfortable writing, but starting to believe in it again. I feel like in Things Will Look Up, we got really beat up. We beat up ourselves. Or at least I did. Joe was like, “No, man. I was fine the whole time.” And I believe him. He was very confident about the whole thing, but I’m starting to feel comfortable again in my own skin.
That was kind of a round-about way to answer the question. I got back to the classics. I got back to the bands that I love the most. There wasn’t any new musical discovery that I was like, “Oh, you know what? This is…” For example, I love Fleet Foxes and for a while, I almost fell under that trap of “oh, we should add more reverb and stuff like that,” and for me, I caught myself doing it. I was like, don’t try and follow because you’re always going to be a step behind. You can never catch up. It’s a fruitless effort.
So I just went back…I grew up on Crosby, Stills and Nash, America…those records are great, and I felt like I had already been writing acoustic songs, kind of like folky, harmony-driven songs anyways, so I didn’t need to compare myself to other writers like that. Media Crush already had basically what the Fleet Foxes were doing. You know, there’s no reason to chase. Just do your own thing, and it will work itself out.
FP: The tracklisting has been revealed on your band’s website. “I’ll Take It All In Stride” and “Driving” are returning on this album. Are they new versions?
CP: No, they are remastered, but it would be disingenuous to say we re-recorded them or anything. The reason why we put them on is because…when we finished the album cycle of Things Will Look Up and we looked at what we had accumulated band-wise and progression-wise, we felt that to move onto another record, it would be like, “Well, those songs are done.” It didn’t feel right to us. And especially since we’re doing such a big national publicity push for this record, we really wanted to invest a lot of time, money, especially money, and effort into this new record. It felt wrong to leave those songs behind because I felt-I’m so proud of “I’ll Take It All In Stride,” songwriting-wise, the sounds that we got on it.
FP: It wasn’t until last year that I started to really listen to “Driving.” It was one of the last songs I got into. It’s a really good song.
CP: I feel like that song can flip by you if you’re not in the right mood for it, but if you’re driving at 1AM and it comes on-you hear the rain in the background, because we recorded the acoustic guitar while it was raining in this giant hallway.
I just feel like there are so many elements to that song that feels so good to remember. I remember recording it, and I remember feeling good. It clicked when we recorded it. That’s what music is all about: collecting memories. If the song still gives you good memories, then you’ll get something from playing it-it’s hard to let it go.
FP: You posted a new song on Myspace called “Florence Foster Jenkins.” Is that about anyone in particular?
CP: Yeah. That woman, Florence Foster Jenkins, was a real person. When I was studying music in college, I took this vocal class and every Tuesday, students and the teacher would bring in CDs of different vocal styles and vocal performances, and we would talk about them in class. One woman that our teacher brought in was Florence Foster, and she was brought in as a joke, like how not to sing classical.
Florence Foster was this woman who was born in the late 19th century and she grew up in Pennsylvania, and she always dreamed about being a singer. Her parents tried to swear her away from singing, but when they died, she inherited a lot of money, she moved away to New York and started putting on these concerts. She was starting to become really renowned in the classical music scene. This woman was completely off-key, has no sense of pitch, no sense of rhythm and wears these elaborate costumes and seems to have no idea how horrible she is. She would hold these small concerts at the Ritz Carleton Ballroom once a year just for her lady’s club, and she would distribute the tickets herself. And she started to gain popularity. So much that by the end of her career, there was enough demand for her that she booked a show at Carnegie Hall, and it sold out weeks in advance. So at 60 years old, this woman who had made music her whole life, regardless of what people thought, stood on Carnegie Hall, sang her heart out and then died three months later. And it’s just like, that story was so touching to me.
I long to have that courage of not caring what people thought. She had this great quote about her critic, “My critics may tell me that I can’t sing, but they can never say I didn’t.” And that’s so true. Just do what you love. You know, to hell with everybody else. And that was such an inspiring story, so that’s what that song is about. It’s about trying to pin myself to Florence Foster, let her sing through me.
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You can pre-order their upcoming album on their website:
http://www.theeverydayvisuals.com