Initially, our goal with Other People was to make a concept album. However, an overarching narrative kept eluding us. The material we were writing was compelling, but it wasn’t going to tell a single, cohesive story. After eighteen months of songwriting, we sat down and had a reckoning with the dozens of ideas we’d come up with. We realized that the ones that made the best pop record weren’t going to be the ones that would make the best novel. Further, we realized that this was okay.
Thematically, there’s a split between the songwriters on this album. Collins’ songs tend more towards direct narratives (see Wasted Year and Watch as They Go), while David’s songs tend to meditate on emotional states (see Real Love and Where I’m Calling From). Will, the most recent addition to the band, brings in the song that unifies the two halves with Still Not Sick of You, an exploration of how people cope with both modern life (Collins) and how modern life makes them feel (David).
As far as the sonic textures on the record, we were extremely lucky to work with Chuck Brody. Above and beyond his impeccable skills as an engineer, he's got an innate talent for finding and exploiting the hooks of the song, which likely comes from his background in hip hop production. A lot of contemporary rock n’ roll records forget the hooks, tending instead toward a sonic wash that gets bland quickly. In our minds, rap and R&B producers seem to have an aesthetic more in line with ours: make sure the song never loses sight of its most expressive qualities.
But time marches on, and 2009 finds us with an eye to the future: a new year, new experiences, and new ways of thinking about music lead inevitably to new songs. We’ve been holed up in our hometown of Little Rock, taking the lessons we learned from Other People and figuring out how to push ourselves further. The comings months are blocked off for touring and, when not too busy with that, continuing to record what should be our best record yet.
