Emotionally engaging, carefully crafted dreampop
songs are the appealing sonic domain of Brooklyn’s Field Mouse.
The formidable songwriting and recording team of Andrew Futral and Rachel
Browne create aural landscapes that can melt the hardest of hearts.
Having expanded to a four piece with bassist Danielle DePalma and drummer
Geoff Lewit, the group has been playing numerous live shows around the city, as
it prepares to release its next record.
Interview:
Your band strategy at present appears to be
the measured release of one song at a time (rather than a full album up front) -
and playing lots of live shows. Is this an accurate portrayal of
what you are doing? Could you further expand on why you are going
about this approach?
Rachel: It's pretty accurate. We
have a lot of songs but didn't think releasing them all at once would be wise.
At some point in the fall we met the guys from Small Plates, who were into the
idea of putting out a 7". We thought this was a good way to start. We put out
another song (Glass) on our own as well.
Andrew: It feels like
there are a lot of bands doing this now. Releasing a song at a time just made
sense. There are only two songs on our 7" so it made sense to stagger the
release of the songs so that people were interested in it longer. As for playing
live often it's a combination of us not getting to see each other that often so
usually we have to play shows to hang out and also we are lucky enough to get
offered cool shows that are hard to turn down.
The song and video for "You Guys Are Gonna Wake Up My Mom" is lush and
gorgeous. How did this song come about? Who started it? Rachel just strumming
on guitar and singing? A simple song? How then did it develop in this larger
than life sound we now presently hear? How does one build a sound like
that?
Rachel: I
wrote the verses first and Andrew and I arranged the chorus melodies together.
We built it up to sound the way it does in practice sessions.
Andrew: The song
definitely started as chords as Rachel strumming and singing but she was playing
the lead part with the rhythm part at the same time by changing the voicings of
the chords. The main sense of longing that the song has comes from the song
being in the key of E major but us never getting around to playing an E chord.
So the whole song feels like it's trying to resolve itself and it never does.
The main balance of the song on the production side is trying to keep the energy
levels and intensity changing and never feeling too aggressive.
The video for that song is really cool too. Lots of overlying
images - the point of view you'd have rushing down a highway with lights on the
side. Who conceptualized this and put it together? Is there
anything interesting you can tell us about the making of this
video?
Rachel: Andrew had
very specific ideas for this video and he did everything for it. We filmed some
of it in our practice space and a lot of it up in Connecticut on a nice autumn
day.
Andrew: We shot that
ourselves in our practice space and then I went out and shot some time lapse
stuff and kind of created a collage of images. It was my first time directing
anything so I tried to keep it pretty simple I just wanted it to be a pretty
simple visual representation of the dreamy spacey thing that was sonically
happening in the song. A lot of the video is me discovering that "Luma Key"
exists in Final Cut. Chroma key is when you record stuff infront of a green
screen and then you "key out" the green and put in your own background but luma
key is when you key out specific amounts of darkness or brightness so that is
how everything got over layed. There are lots of layers and they all have a luma
key filter on them with separate thresholds.
Tell me about the song and video for the equally dreamy heart-tugging song
"Glass." The big hook in the song is the lyric "When you're out of love" - yet
the vocals are so stylized to the point it take many listens (and a look up) to
get that meaning. How important is the mood being set with sound -
and vocalizing - than actual literal interpretation of words? What
does "it would never be us" refer to? Is just another reference to
heartbreak?
Rachel: Thank you.
Lyrics are very important to me and sometimes I do think it's nice to hear what
you want to hear - literally - before you actually know what the person is
singing. I wanted the mood of the melody to fit the words, for sure. This song
was hard to write because its lyrics are actually pretty upfront about a real
situation. To me, anyway.
Andrew: Mood being set
with sound is important for every band I think. It might take a few listens to
get the correct lyrics of the song but you won’t be surprised when you read them
because they are working in tandem with the music and both part of establishing
the same mood.
The video that goes with it is this super slowed down image of Rachel.
What is involved in putting something like that together?
Does it take the latest in super sophisticated film equipment and a tech
person who knows the intricacies of using it? Something simpler
than that?
Rachel: That video was
directed by our friend Shervin Lainez and Andrew. It's actually about 15 seconds
slowed way, way down. Nothing too sophisticated. It was fun to make, I had to
keep a straight face through a bombardment of confetti, wind and
bubbles.
Andrew: It's actually
pretty simple. It's 15 seconds of Rachel slowed down to the 3:40 of the song.
Twixtor is a relatively cheap and nice plug in for creating slow motion that
looks cool at speeds as slow as 8% of the original speed (which is close to what
the video was). It was shot on a Canon 7d at 60fps at 720p and really it was
just our photographer friend Shervin Laniez and I shooting Rachel with bubble
guns, confetti, turning lights on and off and high powered fans and manically as
we could and when that gets stretched to 8% speed it just becomes super dreamy
and it feels like you are watching this intimate thing but really it's just
slowed down chaos.
The third song you've relased now - in this, your modern era - is
"Happy." To my ears another perfect piece of sugar coated dreampop
that still exhibits a sonic urgency. The emphasis once again is
centrally focused on Rachel's voice. Your credits indicate the songs are
produced by Andrew - and that the vocals are engineered by your band member
Danielle. Does she have a particular skill or expertise in
bringing out this amazing vocal quality? The guitars, on the other
hand (and possibly synths) create a musical base, making it all sound like an
orchestra. While the drums build and create tension.
You all play so well together. Is the lyric "that's what you get for
loving your regret?" It's good if so. I really like it (and of
course can relate to all this kind of wallow) - but - what's that got to do with
being "Happy?"
Rachel: We work with
Danielle at a studio she works at called Seaside Lounge. She and I have been
working together since college in various studios and she does know how to get a
solid vocal sound. Seaside Lounge also has some amazing gear, including a real
plate reverb. Yes, that is the lyric. "Happy" comes from the sarcastic, or maybe
not, part of the chorus: "You give me nothing/I'm happy." I think at the time I
meant it.
Andrew:
Title is 100% sarcastic. Danielle is great at what she does! She decides the
general chain of what preamp and how much reverb is used. We all went to the
college together at the music conservatory at Purchase College so we all kind of
know our way around the gear. I think the secret behind the vocal quality is 90%
Rachel's natural voice and 10% the Plate reverb used at Seaside Lounge where the
vocals are recorded. Usually Danielle will set up the mics and everything and
then we leave the room and Rachel runs protools until she likes the takes she
has done. As for the guitars, I don't think there is a single note being played
on guitar that isn't being played by a synth too. I just wanted the chordal
instruments of the song to have a kind of anonymous texture. The goal with that
is to have a sound that the listener doesn't 100% understand but because it's so
reverby and anonymous sounding. I wanted it to be intense but ignorable so that
Rachel's vocals were definitely the focus.
INFO BOX
1. Band
address: http://fieldmousemusic.com/
2. Origins: Brooklyn,
New York
3. What it is:
Alternately uplifting and/or heartbreaking dreampop
4. For those who like: Lush, My
Bloody Valentine, Asobi Seksu, Cocteau Twins
