The Twin Atlas have been churning out atmospheric homegrown folk-pop now for 10 years. The band, comprised of Sean Byrne (Lenola, Mazarin) and Luke Zaleski, released their fifth record “Good Light” last year and are following that up soon with the companion album “Bait & Tackle”. Sean took time from work and family to answer some questions for Dagger.
Interview by Steve Payne
So how did the Twin Atlas come about?
We met each other in the early/mid 90's while in college, both of us were in the process of learning to play guitar at that time and we hung out alot and turned each other on to some different music.
I was already drumming alot in bands during that time but kept tinkering with guitar and other instruments on the side. Towards the late 90's I started learning how to home record and would tape Luke & I playing together whenever we'd get together. I then began to go back to those tapes later on and add vocals and additional instruments, etc. and build songs out of what had just been basic riffs or simple structures. That's pretty much been the same process of songwriting for us ever since.
Sean, you’re based out of Philly and Luke is up in New York. How does the long distance relationship play out in the recording process? Do you get together to record, or send songs back and forth to each other so you can overdub your parts?
Well for the last few years we've both been living in NJ actually, but Luke is still up north and I'm down south, so we're not much closer geographically. We've always recorded in person together. We'd usually try to get together 2 or 3 times a year for pretty intensive & productive weekend sessions where we'd just play alot and try to fill up alot of tapes with ideas. Then I'd have those tapes to sift through and work out ideas on for the rest of the year or until an album started to take shape.
Any Philly/New York rivalries in play? Eagles/Giants? Phillies/Yankees-Mets?
Yeah, lot's of that. I don't know much about sports, but I'll pretend I do just to annoy Luke when his teams are getting their asses kicked.
Did your parents get you into music at a young age? What do you remember listening to when you were a kid?
I was fortunate to have parents that listened to alot of music around the house when I was young. My Dad had a pretty eclectic mix of interests, he was into the current rock/pop stuff of the day like Steve Miller, CSN, Wings, etc, but he was also a huge fan of John Fahey and lots of the other solo acoustic fingerpicking guitar guys in the 70's, as well as some bluegrass and folk stuff too. I know that alot of what I absorbed during those years resurfaced as influence on Twin Atlas stuff.
My personal favorites in my childhood years (late 70's/early 80's) was pop & prog stuff; Cheap Trick, Rush, The Police, Yes, those were all my biggies until I had my punk/hardcore epiphany as a young adolescent.
Who would you say are your biggest influencers when it comes to Twin Atlas material?
The influencers on our writing/recording sessions aren't bands or people, but usually things like the weather or time of year we are recording, where we are recording, who's house or apartment, the time of day etc.. What kind of mood we're in, whether we're tired or over-caffeinated, cranky or happy, sober or not. Stuff like that, i can sometimes hear those things come through really easily in the basic tracks of some songs.
Your first couple of records (Philadelphia Parking Authority Must Die, Kitchen USA) were virtual epics, at over 20 songs each. But the last few records have much less material. The latest one, Good Light, has 12 songs. Are you writing/recording fewer songs now, or being more fickle about what you decide to put out?
We've never been much for editing, almost all of our ideas eventually find a home, not a tons of things in any vault or the cutting room floor. That being said, the quantity of material and writing sessions has tapered off over the last few years. Life stuff, jobs & kids, etc, all wonderful things but they don't allow us to create as prolifically as in those first few years.
Those first two album were really meant more as time-capsules for that era, capturing everything we were working on. I really didn't think of either of those as 'albums', more like big audio scrapbooks of ideas. It's hard for me to think of them any differently. By the time of 'Bring Along The Weather' I finally started to think in more traditional album-length format and have kept the song totals more reasonable since then.
How about sonic changes on the earlier records vs. the newer ones. I know you used to record on a Tascam tape machine. What’s different on the last few records?
The first 2 albums were all Tascam 8-track cassette and some pretty crappy microphones, I used a PZM 'plate' mic for just about everything on those early recordings, including vocals, which if you've ever seen a PZM, it's a flat square of metal about 6x6 inches, so i'd just hold that in front of me and sing into it. It sounds kinda harsh sometimes, but, it does have a very intimate sound sometimes as well.
By the third album (Bring Along The Weather) I upgraded to a decent condenser microphone and also had the final recordings properly mastered and did some post-production recording at a better home studio on some songs to add drums, bass, etc. with the help of my Lenola bandmates at the time.
By 'Sun Township' I was doing about equal parts work on the 8-track and then in post-production with Dave Grubb on his digital set-up, adding proper drum tracks, bass, additional vocals, as well as getting his assistance mixing & mastering.
'Good Light' was the first all-digital recording for me, I finally broke down and learned how to record on my computer, but still did some additional tracking for drums, as well as mastering, with Dave on his setup.
Dave Grubb & Jay Laughlin (Like A Fox/Lenola) have been the group's unofficial 'third member' for most of our existence and have almost everything to do with our albums getting progressively better sonically.
Most of your records have a companion record to go along with them, and you have plans for a Good Light companion called Bait & Tackle. What can you tell us about Bait & Tackle?
Same concept as the other companion albums, just a looser collection of tracks from the same sessions, a bit more variety, maybe a little more experimental. I tend to not obsess over the companion albums and just have more fun with them, whereas the 'main/proper' albums I can stress on a bit more when i'm putting them together. The companion albums always have a sound and flavor that is similar to the corresponding 'main' album, they're usually just a bit more offbeat and maybe a little less cohesive.
You’re pretty prolific when it comes to recording. There are over 160 recorded Twin Atlas songs, between the proper releases and the companion albums. Do you still have a lot of Twin Atlas songs stashed away somewhere, or have you recorded and released pretty much everything you’ve written?
No, not really, not much or anything stashed away. Between the main albums, companion albums and songs we've done for compilations, any song or idea worth pursuing has usually found a home somewhere, for better or worse. I find it really hard to leave a recorded idea of ours unfinished. Even if i'm not that happy with it at the start I almost always see it through to completion, because sometimes the things that initially sound bad can all of a sudden come together and turn out decent. (and sometimes not, but, you never know)
Will Good Light and Bait & Tackle be the last we hear of the Twin Atlas?
Yeah, it feels like a really ideal time to retire this project and start something fresh. I'm really proud of what we've done to date, and I like the symmetry of a solid decade we've had doing our thing. I think we've nailed 'our sound' pretty well over the years and wouldn't want to start feeling like we're treading water stylistically.
Definitely new music will emerge from us in the future, but it'll be as a different entity, with probably a slightly different approach. We'll see, but that's the plan.
Time to hit reset.
You haven’t done a lot of live shows – are there any plans for a live show before you turn out the lights on the Twin Atlas?
No, the live shows we have done were always kind of random 'one off' type of things for the most part. They only happened when we'd been asked to play and couldn't say 'no' because we liked the person who was nice enough to ask us. Then we'd scramble to figure out how we would actually do the show and we'd have to learn how to play & sing our own songs (since we never practiced), etc. and it always seemed so ramshackle and frankly not that great of a live experience.
The Twin Atlas to me has always been solely about the recorded songs, and the recording process, and about our collaborative writing, and that is just a totally different thing from live performance. I love playing live music with other people, and backing up other songwriters, playing drums live, etc., but trying to recreate our Twin Atlas songs live never really seemed like a good fit to me.
What are your post-Twin Atlas plans?
Just to enjoy a clean slate musically for a while, try to do some exploring and learning in general, both in terms of playing & recording and see what happens.
I have a ton of ideas and directions in my head with what i'd like to do, but no idea if i'll be able to translate those and bring 'em to life somehow.
We shall see...
One last thing – leave us with a list of your Top 10 Desert Island Discs.
Not a list of my 'personal' favorites, but more a list of albums that had an impact on us as The Twin Atlas and what we do, one way or another...
(in no particular order:)
The Feelies - The Good Earth
Teenage Fanclub - Songs From Northern Britain
The Kingsbury Manx - Let You Down
The Byrds - Notorious Byrd Brothers
Yo La Tengo - Electro Pura
Pullman - Turnstyles & Junkpiles
The Jayhawks - Hollywood Townhall
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Damien Jurado - Rehearsals For Departure
New Order - Brotherhood
Guided By Voices - Alien Lanes
Check out The Twin Atlas @ thetwinatlas.com
