Little Soulstice
Happy 3rd Birthday, Sugar The Bruise!
Sugar the Bruise
Almost every day, I have a ritual that I took from a friend-search the current calendar day in my photos app, and reflect on what, where, who I was on this day X amount of years ago. The earliest the photos date back to 2012 on my current phone/mysterious cloud situation that I’ll never fully understand the inner workings of. Over the last month, a lot of the memories that are surfacing through are from both the recording of and release of my album Sugar the Bruise that came out June 16 2023. (Admittedly I started writing this last month…oops!)
This record was experimental in more ways than one. It kind of snuck up on me. Initially, the studio time booked at the picturesque Panoramic House in Stinson Beach was intended for a completely different project-an instrumental, open ended/improvisational session with two dear friends-Jeremy Harris, who was living at and running the studio, and our mutual friend Josiah Steinbrick. Plans shifted around, as they do, and Jeremy convinced me to come instead with our mutual friend/one of my musical heroes Luke Temple, to record Hand Habits songs instead. At this time, I didn’t feel I had a record of songs in me. I barely had songs, only a handful of sketches…there wasn’t enough distance from the recording of Fun House (2021), and more songs typically take more time to develop within my psyche after the release of an album. (I’m experiencing this right now..) It was the most unprepared I’d ever been before making a record, and that was the point-to just dive in and trust what happens. If it weren’t for Luke, Jeremy, and my manager at the time Brandon Stousy, I don’t think this record would’ve happened. But I’m grateful that it did, quirks and all.
I knew I always wanted to go back to this studio after having first gone there with my brother Kevin Morby to make City Music. It was one of my first experiences in a “real” studio-even though this particular studio doesn’t really feel like the typical dark, windowless cave where time ceases to exist. I had also spent a few days here recording with Luke and Jeremy for the 7 inch I did for Sub Pop, and felt very comfortable. It’s got a massive view of the Pacific Ocean from the live room, which doubles as the living room and dining room. Easy to lose track of time in a different way here-gazing at the horizon and watching the fog burn off. It’s so mesmerizing and meditative that I actually found it challenging to get to work sometimes, musically speaking. Eyes wanting to rest on the vastness, skin wanting ocean mist, legs wanting to follow the coyote trails. You would think that all of this beauty would inspire some kind of majestic, pastoral folk music-but what I ended up making here, what came through was more inspired by the tension beneath. This part of the world is extreme-big crashing waves, the coyotes screaming at night, full moons becoming a blinding spot light reflecting off of the dark glassy water. Mold. Lots of mold. It also sits on the San Andreas fault line. It was a strange time for me in my personal life to be making Hand Habits songs, and I tried to resist being myself as much as I could. As most of us know, that barely ever works. My overarching desire for this session was to have fun musically. To stay curious about what was naturally happening with the music with the people in the sessions. I trusted Luke and Jeremy a lot with these songs, and as a result I think I ended up making something very unique and at times wildly uncharacteristic for me. But this is personally an important part of being an artist-letting yourself be someone else. Disappearing into the wherever the music wants to lead you. Luke was very good at encouraging me to try things differently-during the vocal tracking of Gift of the Human Curse, he told me to try singing like a “sad cartoon”. We laughed a lot making this album, which at the time I really needed! I needed to let loose and not take myself so seriously in the studio after Fun House-was craving relief from the personal/emotional depths I descended into for that record. Not that STB doesn’t have depth, of course. Private Life is extremely personal. It just also has the much needed humor to balance it out.
Little Soulstice
I was lucky enough to have an amazing crew of humans and non humans involved with this record. On the human side-my long term collaborator and deep friend Sasami was able to swing through and did some of my favorite vocal arrangements-the harmonies on Something Wrong and the vocal pads on Andy in Stereo. My bud Andrew Maguire came in and added some cinematic touches with his log drum and some vibraphone. Tim Carr also came in and played some drums. We were lucky enough to have Euan Hinselwood (of Cate Le Bon’s band) on sax for a few days, adding many layers of dense harmony/arrangement to The Bust of Nefertiti. I’ll spare you the full credits since that is all available elsewhere. But I have to also mention Phillip Weinrobe, who took these songs over the finish line with extra production and mixing. After throwing so much paint at the wall, Phillip really helped this music come into a clearer view.
Alongside the musicians that came through, Jeremy had inherited his dear friend Pauline Anna Strom’s lizards-Little Soulstice and Miss Huff, after Pauline’s passing. They were a huge part of the sessions for STB- on a few tracks you can hear Little Soulstice’s claws on the hardwood as she found her way into a sunny spot. She was a beautiful, mystical presence that brought us all a lot of wonder in the studio. Aubrey Trinnaman, my sweet friend who has taken many many photos of me, including the covers for Placeholder and Blue Reminder, and who did the cover artwork for STB, was hanging with us during some of the sessions and snapped some great moments.
Now everyone say happy birthday to my little wild child, Sugar the Bruise. For the paying subscribers who I appreciate very much, a few voice memos are below the paywall of the early and raw, unfinished versions of some of these songs. I really like seeing how the early seedlings of songs inform the production of the final recordings.
