Sylvan Esso, or Nick Sanborn and Amelia Meath, met each other through chance when they were both billed on the same gig. At the time Sanborn was a solo producer and Meath a part of the folk a capella group ‘Mountain Man’. Both have admitted their chance meeting was a strange coincidence, given their two genres of music were different to say the least. However, as fate and serendipity would have it, it was the beginning of a musical partnership that has resulted in arguably one of the most delightful and best quality electro-pop records of the year.
Before their debut Australian appearance as Sylvan Esso over New Years at the new Lost Paradise Festival, Nick and Amelia sat down with Pulse to chat recording their debut, karaoke hits and their favourite Australian artists.
I won’t labour too long on finding out how you guys met because I know you’ve had to repeat it many times before, I have to admit, it sounds like something out of the movie Serendipity. Nick: That’s nice of you to say, that it sounds like a movie! We always feel like we need more of a myth, like more mythology. Meeting at a show isn’t, like, cool enough. [laughs]
What I do want to start off with is the music outfits you both came from before you started working together. What did you take from each of those experiences and bring in to Sylvan Esso? N: Well I think that we have a benefit because, you know, we both came from these very like song based bands. I’ve done a bunch of different stuff and played in a bunch of different bands, and so has she [Amelia], so I think when we started wanting to make something more electronic and more pop, we’d already been in bands and already knew how playing and writing songs that way felt. We’d been on tour so long that we both instinctively knew what we felt worked and what didn’t work. Both live and on record. Everytime I talk to someone else who’s in production or is in an electronic band or something like that I’m shocked how few of them used to be in just band bands. I think that’s definitely affected the way we come at it, for sure.
I had no idea that 'Play It Right' was originally an acapella song done by Amelia with Mountain Man - which is phenomenal to listen to - and then it was given to Nick to remix. Is that correct? N: No it was just my remix! She [Amelia] had written that song for Mountain Man and then they’d gone and recorded in a studio with the intention of putting out this remix EP, but then it just never came together and it never happened. It was just kind of this weird random thing! So she was like ‘hey you should be on this!’, and then it was ‘oh this is never going to come out, but that was really good, we should do more of that!’ [laughs]
It’s a move from an acapella folk style to this incredible electronic pop - something I imagine can be tricky. And you’ve done it again recently with the song 'Slow Motion' by PHOX, which is a similar kind of genre jump. How do you approach those kinds of remixes, is there an element of the song you look to work with? N: It goes so many different ways, but I think my main thing is I always want to start by taking something that is essential to the original song and doing the total opposite of that. So change something about the foundation and then try and fit the parts back in over the top of it. It happens all sorts of different ways, with that one I was just looking through the song for maybe I could have be the main loop of it, something that could be a new foundation to start on. There’s that one little moment where he does that weird little guitar [sings guitar line], I don’t know, I was just moving a loop through his guitar part and found that one thing, and it kind of just all came together! Yeah, I never know. Usually I’ll find some little piece that when I put it in a different context doesn’t sound like it was in the original song but now I’ve made it like a central theme. Some way I can flip how you hear it. That’s my favourite thing to do. From there it’s just fun decision making stuff like ‘how loud is the bass going to be?’, that’s normally the longest running question [laughs].
With that one I tried to use almost only elements that were from the original song. I love doing that where you can take all the sounds from the original song but present them in a way that has nothing to do with the original song.
My favourite remixes are always those that don’t take anything away from the original song, they just present the original verve of the song in a new light. I feel like Jamie XX is so good at that. That Adele 'Rolling in the Deep' remix, those two songs work totally independently, the remix and the original. His remix just completely changed your idea of what the song was, it’s so great.
That’s the same thought that I had with the PHOX remix. I had never heard the original but I listened to it after I listened to your remix and it’s great because it sounds so different, but at the same time you can definitely hear that it’s that song, just like you say in a different order. N: Oh thank you! Yeah I tried to keep the song totally as is. That’s another thing, I like picking one or the other, like saying ‘alright, this song is going to be the lyrics as they’re presented and I’m going to change everything else about this song’ or ‘I’m going to completely change how the vocal works and keep everything else in tact’. I think those are my two fun tricks!
***Amelia arrives***
Your music and your videos all incorporate this idea and this theme of dancing. Your music has those great beats that make you want to move and your clip for Coffee was all about different kinds of dance. I know it was a little while ago but how long did it take to get all those elements together, all the choreography and people dancing together? Amelia: Well the first part, that’s contra dance which is traditional. We just went to a contra dance and they were kind enough to let us film it.
N: Yeah contra dancing is kind of like line dancing but there’s an east coast version of that called contra dancing which is kind of communal partner passing dance, which is kind of what the hook of that song refers to.
A: Yeah exactly! And then for the bad party, for the weird 1950s bit where we’re on the lawn that took a while. And it was freezing!
N: It was so cold!
A: And it was the last shot that we shot that night, so it was so cold.
N: Everyone was so happy when we were done. The bit at the end, that was like you [Amelia], Leah and Stella...
A: Yeah that part we had a couple of rehearsals for.
N: We were aiming for Beyonce, that was what we were going for [laughs[
Well you definitely nailed it! I’m a big proponent of dance and I think it was really great having that scene inside where everyone is let say ‘out of their minds’ swaying around like a lot of people do on club dancefloors, there was lots of different styles of dance in that clip, if you could bring back one style what would it be?
***Amelia performs an excellent demonstration of the Charlie Brown Christmas special dance***
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A: That’s my favourite one, I wish that was present on a lot more dancefloors.
A: That’s my favourite one, I wish that was present on a lot more dancefloors.
Nick you spoke just before about the skills you both brought from your previous bands to Sylvan Esso, but how did it go when you guys actually started working with each other not on the Internet? What was the process when you met up and started working together? N: A lot of hanging out. The first time we really recorded, I had just moved to Durham, and she flew out for two weeks while she was touring with Feist and we just kind of hung out in my house and tried to make something every day. So usually we’d have something we were working on and I’d start working on the mix or on the synths or something and she’d go out on the patio and sit and just try to write. It usually would be around stuff we’d been talking about or just stuff of the moment in our lives. Even though we took another year to do it.
Speaking of hanging out in your house and working together from there, some of the songs on the album - like 'Come Down' and 'Coffee' - have got little bits of extra audio; either someone talking or I think even a door closing. It makes the record truly unique and it adds a sense of intimacy for anyone listening. It’s not this thing that’s removed in a studio, it makes you feel like you’re a fly on the wall to these recordings and you’re in the room. It’s amazing! Were these deliberate? N: Oh yeah.
A: They were deliberate and also some of them were just cool sounds that we liked.
N: We talked a lot about a couple of things that were related to that which were that we really wanted to do something that was human and imperfect and didn’t have a lot of sheen on it. Pop that felt like humans made it, we’re really into that idea. I’m a huge fan of electronic music in general that you can feel, that you can feel a person made. Then also we’re also just huge fans of records that sound like the place that they were made, so using the house as an instrument was such a big thing to us. So many of the vocal tracks, I just recorded [Amelia] in our hallway in the house I used to live in. I would put a mic on her and a mic way at the end of the hall so that it would just be the sound of her singing. It was a way to get around using a digital reverb or something like that. That closet door thing at the end of 'Coffee' is because we recorded vocals in my closet because we didn’t have a vocal booth so she thought she’d nail a take and just open it up and say ‘yep that was good’.
A: I’d open it and be like ‘yeahhh’
N: And then I just left it on there.
It kept popping up that you guys are big Fleetwood Mac karaoke fans and that there’s a bar in Durham called ‘The Bar’ that does great karaoke. I have to know, what’s your go to Fleetwood Mac song for karaoke? A: I usually do 'Dreams', it's my favourite! 'Gyspy' is really good.
N: I’ve seen her do 'Gyspy', it’s a standout.
Do you do any Nick? N: I once did a very drunken spoken word version of Gold Dust Woman at The Bar, which was not welcome
A: He does a really mean Al Green though
N: I like Al Green, I’ll do They Might Be Giants if a place has them, I’ll always do 'They Might Be Giants'. Amelia does a really great 'The Way You Make Me Feel' by Michael Jackson. That’s probably my favourite one to see you do.
I think the next release, before album number two, needs to be a ‘Sylvan Esso Does Karaoke EP’ or something... A: Yeah! Sylvan Esso Karaoke Hits [laughs]
N: And we don’t brush up the tracks at all either, we literally just use the musak karaoke backing tracks [laughs]. That video kind of writes itself, just the words scrolling across the screen.
Jumping to lyrics, Amelia did you find writing for Sylvan Esso was different than for Mountain Man given that they lie in pretty different genres? Did you approach it different? A: Yeah. There are different allowances and different sets of rules for each genre writing. Or I hold myself to different sets of rules. But with pop music you can get away with writing a lot of silly stuff if you want to. So incorporating the silliness but still keeping it in the realm of reality was really really fun. And writing around hooks. With folk music there’s not hooky-ness isn’t necessarily the goal, sometimes it just happens.
You’re going to be in Australia at the end of the year for the Lost Paradise festival. Is this the first time you’ve been here? A: I’ve been twice before...
N: But it’s my first time.
Is there anything on the bucket list for you to do out here? A: I really want to take Nick to the Great Ocean Road so he can drive along and say hi to the beach and then drive up into that zone where you can say hi to all the koalas.
N: I have a lot of friends who are from Australia who live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that are from Australia and they just talk about it so much that I’m just excited to be in Melbourne where they’re all from. See that and go to the places they talk about. That’s the main thing for me, see that and then more fully understand where my friends are from. I think that’ll be really cool for me
Our electronic scene is really gaining momentum with some really talented artists taking their stuff overseas. Are there any Australian acts you guys are listening to or like? N: This is a tough one, especially with electronic music, I bet you there are, but I bet you I don’t know they’re from Australia...who are like popular acts that we might know over here?
The first name that springs to mind would be maybe Flume? A and N: Oh yeah! Flume!
Or maybe Chet Faker? N: Yeah I know of both those dudes!
A: I have heard nothing but really good things about that guy.
N: Yeah it sounds like he’s a total sweetheart. That’s right Flume I totally knew that one and I had just put it out of my mind. Did not remember that he was from there. Everybody sounds great!
[Sylvan Esso plays Lost Paradise festival in Glenworth Valley in NSW this NYE period. Buy tickets here]
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