The Love Ways are here with us and we are thrilled to talk to them about their latest single “I’ll See You When” and about…everything basically!
Q1) How did you guys meet? and what made you think “Let’s play music together”?
MARK SHREVE (MUSIC + INSTRUMENTS) – Hello! Thanks for having us. So the intention that we’d be playing music together actually preceded our meeting. When our band first started – this would have been like, what? 2012? I met our original guitarist, John, and he invited me to play drums for a band he’d been putting together. James was the singer of that band. We met when I showed up at James’ apartment for him to drive us to our first-ever band practice. I think the more time we spent with each other the more we found that we loved to talk about. Then during the pandemic, as many bands did, we had some changes and trimmed down from five members to two members and found ourselves with just me & James. I was still demoing songs and having a ton of fun writing – we were kinda tossing ideas around, doing whatever we could to stay busy during lockdown. I think it was when I showed him the demo I’d done for our song “Wild Life” where the two of us were so excited to get it recorded that I just said “Let’s go and I’ll do all the instruments”. It was that or wait months and months. I’d say for that one song there was maybe still a sense of “mayyyyybe this’ll be something we eventually do as a five-piece?”. I loved playing all the instruments (laughs) it’s a pretty ideal scenario for me. But once we had that under our belts, we got more and more confident as a two-piece and fell into that cadence of me writing songs, working on them with James, then recording with me doing music + instruments and James doing lyrics + vocals. I’d say though a very kind of defining moment was when we released “Desire Lines” last year and really announced that TLWs are a two-person band now: Mark + James and that’s how we find ourselves still saying every day “Let’s play music together”.
JAMES LANGLOIS (LYRICS + VOCALS) – I recall that first band practice with Mark, seeing how excited he was to play this old cobbled-together crappy drumset of mine and how hard he went for it immediately. Immediately the energy felt right and we realized how much our aesthetics lined up and it’s been an excellent creative partnership ever since. Our shorthand was already well formed and has only gotten shorter as time has gone on which ain’t nothing to sneeze at.
Q2) Speaking of your latest release, what was the inspiration behind “I’ll See You When”?
MARK SHREVE (MUSIC + INSTRUMENTS) – This is something we’ve been getting asked a lot about ISYW. I think a lot of people conceive of inspiration as like a single spark – an idea appears in an artist or creator’s mind perfectly formed and all they do is become a vessel for its deliverance. “It’s magic” so to speak. That’s really not how any good art is ever created (laughs). I’d also add that inspiration is cheap – execution is really tough. For me & James, at this point, I’d say the real magic exists in keeping the inspiration and execution engine stoked and burning. For me personally, I’d always been inspired to write a song that does for our catalog what some of my favorite kind of darker/meatier/more ambitious songs did for artists that I look up to. In this case, that’d be “Tonight, Tonight” by The Smashing Pumpkins, “Everlong” by Foo Fighers and “Change In The House of Flies” by Deftones. (Laughing) Speaking of inspiration being cheap, man – not very difficult to be inspired by those songs. I think part of what brought ISYW to reality though was actually James & I becoming a two-piece band and there being maybe a bit more space for the sounds and ambitions that you get with ISYW. So yeah – not a like, single spark of inspiration but a steady grind of pretty intentional work toward something big, ambitious, dark, moody, different and sonically more expansive than you’ve heard us do before – that’s what I’d say was our inspiration for the song. Or actually, I’ll put it this way: since the first time I heard it I don’t think I’ve ever NOT been inspired to write something like Everlong (laughs). Took a lot of tweaking to get us there though.
JAMES LANGLOIS (LYRICS + VOCALS) – For me, diving into the vocal feeling and the lyrical mood was actually fairly easy with this song. The vibe of the music was very apparent from the time Mark first showed the demo to me. I started with the scraps of lyrics that came naturally when listening to the music and then followed them as they evolved from nonsense to something a bit more coherent (I hope). A description of the feeling of hallways not walked down and things left unsaid that sit with you. Once that feeling blossomed it was easy to see the forest for the trees.
Q3) I loved it…but why a 70s low-budget horror music video?
MARK SHREVE (MUSIC + INSTRUMENTS) – For the rest of my life if anyone says that making movies is easy I’m going to challenge them to go make a movie (laughs). The simple answer to your question is: “because that’s what was doable give our ambition, vision, timeline, budget, resources and talent”. That said, there were definitely some goals in mind. Firstly I wanted this to look substantially bigger and better than anyone expected it to. I also wanted it to be very differentiated from our last video for “Desire Lines”: DLs is black and white, it’s a 1:1 aspect ratio, there’s 1 camera angle, it’s all performance, single location indoors, etc. vs ISYW which is colorful, widescreen, multiple cameras moving all over the place, we act in it, multiple locations outdoors, etc. The song itself is supposed to be dark, and labyrinthine, it’s kind of closing in on you. We wanted all of that on camera. So that’s kind of the minimum requirements for whatever we’d end up doing. From there, I’d say James and I both loved the first season of True Detective so much that it was a simple thing to try and go out to find some locations and imagery that evoked that sense of oppression and dread. Like I don’t think we even had to talk about that being a goal (laughs). Another reference point for us was a movie we both loved called ‘Mandy’ that came out a few years ago. So all of the above – that’s one part of it. The other is that when you start making films of any kind – or at least this is definitely how I feel about it – it works when you make good decisions based on the limitations you have. For example – our budget didn’t allow for a massive cast or any like VFX (laughs) but fake blood was $8 on amazon and it looked great, so we did that. Also the camera work and editing of those 1970s horror movies was in our wheelhouse because you don’t need a ton of equipment to do it – a lot of it is hand-held, on-location stuff. So basically we bottled all of that up, shook it hard and we made the call that the look, feel and intention of the video for ISYW lined up best with a kind of 70s horror aesthetic. I’m so, so glad to hear that you loved it – we love it too. Thank you for saying so.
JAMES LANGLOIS (LYRICS + VOCALS) – We knew we wanted to explore some spaces in motion and the horror movie aesthetic seemed to fit that really well. The places we knew we could break into easily already were a bit creepy in their own right so the narrative, such as it is, kind of evolved from that. Motion and dread, our raison d’tre raison d’etre.
Q4) Tell us more about how you evolve musically?
MARK SHREVE (MUSIC + INSTRUMENTS) – This is another question we’ve been getting a lot recently so also pretty top of mind for me. There are a few things that are always kind of intrinsic to how we work and what we want to accomplish. One is that we rarely try and re-tread ground that we think we’ve covered. In that sense, evolution for us is very much a response to our own catalog than any kind of external pressures. We lay out pretty specific goals for our songs and are intentional about achieving them. For example – we did a single a couple of years ago called “Wild Life” where the goal was to write a song that sounded like a heart attack; something that exploded with all the pent-up energy from the pandemic. The next song we did was our last single, “Desire Lines” – the goal there was to evolve and accomplish something more polished and easy to love. Now with “I’ll See You When” released, we actually recorded it over the same long weekend as Desire Lines but we already knew we’d want to evolve the sound to show more of what we could do. It’s something that became apparent as we were working on the video for I’ll See You When – we got this amazing response to “Desire Lines” but we were out there making this video for this very different song and I remember being like “welp if you liked DLs you are NOT getting DLs Part 2 here so buckle up” (laughs). We’ve got two more new songs in the can as well – just got the masters finished last week and I can promise you that they too will build on what we’ve accomplished already and show you even more about what we can do.
JAMES LANGLOIS (LYRICS + VOCALS) – I’m going to go ahead and echo what Mark said here.
*echo*
Q5) Did you get to play live? Any notable gigs?
MARK SHREVE (MUSIC + INSTRUMENTS) – (Laughing) no, like not in years. It’s such a fucking shame and I miss it so much. I mean we used to all the time back when we were a five-piece but post-pandemic we haven’t performed. I’m thinking about it more and more though – like a.) what that would even look like and b.) what sort of audience there would be for it. When we were first starting out there was a scene around live music in Brooklyn – there were venues like Shea Stadium, Bar Matchless, Death by Audio, Cameo Gallery…all these places that existed to help bands like ours thrive and are all closed now. We had some awesome shows – we headlined The Knitting Factory (also closed) and I’d recently seen Every Time I Die there, we played Shea Stadium like a few months after Julian Casablancas did a gig there. I recall kind of regularly playing stages where I’d seen bands I really admired played; as a musician, it’s this amazing feeling. I don’t know that that support system really is there anymore; that anything really rose up to take the place of those venues. We’d absolutely love to do these songs live though – so rather than just complaining, let us figure out how to make it happen (laughs). ETID broke up so I’ll check Julian’s tour log and see where he’s been recently and get back to you.
JAMES LANGLOIS (LYRICS + VOCALS) – Hopefully that’ll turn around soon. We’re still brainstorming what our live situation is going to look like, since it’ll probably involve a digital element so it’ll be a fun new challenge to figure out a new format from our more punk band format in our DIY days.
Q6) …a quick question that I like to ask the artist about…analog or digital?
MARK SHREVE (MUSIC + INSTRUMENTS) – On the creative side? Digital. The gear is so good now it’s indistinguishable. I’m a massive proponent of investing time in understanding digital tools to improve and broaden your skillset as an artist. Digital tools unlock and democratize the creative process. Anyone arguing exclusively for analog processes fetishizes that aspect of art-making too much. Or has a budget that’s a bit let’s say privileged. On the distribution and consumption side though I vote analog – I think there’s something special about buying a single record and that being your only record for a time; you learn it and you make a relationship with it and it imprints you in a way that I don’t think you get with digital distribution. So yeah – as a creator: digital, as a consumer: analog.
JAMES LANGLOIS (LYRICS + VOCALS) – While it was fun when I was younger to record stuff on a cassette 4 track with my buddies and really enjoy the quality you get from it, I certainly can’t complain with the ease and breadth the ole’ computer brings to things. That said the physical objet d’art is a great way to consume music. It lends a little more tangibility to the proceedings and really does deepen your relationship with the music.
Q7) Can you tell us more about your creative workflow? What happens when you work on a new song?
MARK SHREVE (MUSIC + INSTRUMENTS) – Yeah absolutely. Generally I’m always kind of working on a few songs at a time – all ideas that I like and want to develop but not always things that I really truly believe will become Love Ways songs. James and I are always chatting about what makes us tick and what we think is special and kind of worth shooting for – so as far as the songs that you end up hearing, that’s normally where it’ll start. Our individual tastes don’t always line up, so when we both agree on a direction it pretty much always clicks and we know that’s the way to go. Those conversations normally revolve around like, “what’s our version of ____” or “wouldn’t it be interesting if we tried to shoot for something like ____” where ____ is a song, an artist, an idea or I’d say increasingly just a feeling or a moment we want to create. From there, I dig into writing music. Tactically – that means opening up Pro Tools, laying down guitar, keyboard, drum parts, scratch vocals, etc. and getting a demo done. I’ll send iterations and ideas and drafts to James and we’ll discuss what we like and what gaps it has. The ones you’ve heard general go through that process for about 2-3 months before we head into the studio with it, but by the time we’re ready to record it it’ll be about 90% of the way there. That said we always leave that 10% for innovation, ideas, trying things out, experimenting and having a ton of fun at the studio. For the two new songs we haven’t released yet that’s definitely the case – we experimented more and did some things that were really special and exciting – way above and beyond what we’ve done before in-studio. I’d add that as far as being in-studio: one of my favorite things about being in this band is I don’t really know what James’ lyrics are until he’s in the vocal booth. So we get there, I spend a day doing drums, bass, rhythm guitars and for that day James just kind of paces around with a novel under his arm and a pencil in his ear humming to himself, sipping coffee, looking out at the deer in the field (laughs). And then he steps into the vocal booth and just rips it to shreds – like just annihilates me with what he’s come up with. Once we’ve got that much of a base, we’ll tweak here and there and do everything we can to make sure not a single thing is sub-par by the time you hear it. Then we get started discussing how we want to visually introduce the song to you and we’ll be storyboarding a new video.
JAMES LANGLOIS (LYRICS + VOCALS) – Doing this does make it so much easier to dive into the song because so much of the emotion is embedded in that pretty far along demo. The words come faster and easier and it allows for even more tweaking as I get closer to the vocal booth because I’m not worrying as much about things drastically changing at the last minute. It allows for more focus on emotion, narrative and wordplay. So thank god for that.
Q8) What are your plans for the future…is it more gigs or more time in the studio?
MARK SHREVE (MUSIC + INSTRUMENTS) – It’s awesome to be able to say we’ve definitely got exciting things lined up. We were back in the studio in June and recorded two new songs – both of which are pretty unlike anything you’ve heard us do so far. We just got the final mixes finished last week and I’m fucking ecstatic with how they turned out. We can’t wait for you to hear them. And given the response we’ve had to the last two videos we released (for “Desire Lines” last year and then for “I’ll See You When” most recently) it’s very safe to say we’ll be doing some (hopefully) exciting videos for these ones as well. We were talking with another interviewer recently about these new songs actually – you know, it’s really rewarding to hear that people like what we’ve done with ISYW because it was definitely us going in a few new directions; flexing out a bit with what you can expect to hear from a TLWs song. These two new ones both really do that as well but I think we’re very proud of them doing that in very different directions than ISYW. They all add to a kind of evolving and expanding kaleidoscope for us. Don’t want to share too much at this point but one is by far the hardest we’ve ever gone – prepare to have James shred you to pieces vocally. (Laughing) it’s like “what does that band who always sings about weird books and shit sound like when they REALLY try and throw down?” You’re boutta find out. Early Arctic Monkeys / QOTSA / Idles influences. I tried to write a Hives song. It’s just fantastic – it’s so much fun. The other one is dark, dancey, moody as hell and really interesting. We went into some early Yeah Yeah Yeahs for that sound of a NYC band reaching for the stars at the same time as they scrape under the grease of the street. I love it and I believe you will too.
JAMES LANGLOIS (LYRICS + VOCALS) – Pushing forward on new songs and new videos is the way for us at the moment. It feels good to keep creating and we’re going to keep on keeping on with that.
Q9) Can you give us an elevator pitch on why people should listen to your songs?
MARK SHREVE (MUSIC + INSTRUMENTS) – (Laughing) you know it’s kind of tough to do an elevator pitch for your own band. You’re the journalist, man – I’d rather hear your elevator pitch for The Love Ways. Our songs themselves and the videos we’ve made for them are the pitch so here you go: “Desire Lines” + “I’ll See You When” – that’s the pitch. I’ll say this though: I think our songs are very, very fucking good. I don’t know of anyone doing what we do better than we do it. I think we’re way fucking better than most other bands right now.
JAMES LANGLOIS (LYRICS + VOCALS) – The hope is that you come for the rock and leave with something that sticks to your ribs a little bit. We want to make things that make you dance while also touching in a slightly more complex way. Come for that shit.
Guys, it’s been an absolute pleasure chatting with you, we are fans and we can’t recommend your music enough…I wish to see you on the global stage and experience your music live for sure.
We’ll be waiting in the meantime for your upcoming releases. Best of luck.
Cheers!