Echosmith is a Band, and It's Everywhere (Profile/Interview)

It’s the unspoken hope of every upstart band gunning for a break, that one of its songs — borne of a lyric scribbled on the back of a crumpled receipt or a melody hummed into an iPhone’s voice recorder — will move the masses and kick start a career. For California’s own Echosmith that song is “Cool Kids,” a deceptively clever commentary on the universal need for social acceptance, its chic synth-pop gloss recalling eighties bands like Berlin and the Human League while at the same time boasting an undeniably of-the-moment vibe. 

The double-platinum lead single off the band’s 2013 debut LP, Talking Dreams (Warner Brothers Records), “Cool Kids” propelled Echosmith into the big time seemingly out of nowhere. Yet as frontwoman Sydney Sierota recently told Write on Music, the band has cultivated its collective talent and chops for the better part of a decade.

“We had a super-pop phase and then a super-rock phase and then a super-indie phase, then an experimental phase,” Ms. Sierota, 18, recalled, “but then as time went on it just became more natural to us.

“We were writing a song as a band rather than with the intention of having a good song or a successful song,” she added, “and that’s when all the really great songs came out. That’s when ‘Cool Kids’ happened. That’s when basically our entire record happened.”

And that’s when people started paying attention, flocking in ever-increasing numbers to see the band perform live on multi-artist bills like the Vans Warped tour and iHeart Music Festival or on its own headlining dates. 

“We got to really see every step, every time it grew a little bit,” said Ms. Sierota, who has video-chronicled the progress she’s strove to achieve along with her three brothers — Graham (drums), Noah (bass), and Jamie (guitar) — since the band’s inception. “We got to see the difference of one person singing along to “Cool Kids” at a show five to ten to the entire crowd of a hundred people. Then eventually it led to hundreds and then thousands.”

Now, Echosmith is everywhere. 

Just this month so far, the band has delivered a boisterous set at the Governor’s Ball Music Festival in New York City, appeared at the MTV Millennial Awards in Mexico City, and joined Taylor Swift at her 1989 World Tour stop in Philadelphia to sing “Cool Kids,” all the while maintaining a rigorous touring schedule.  

As Echosmith’s profile continues to rise, so too does that specifically of Ms. Sierota, who last month signed on with Wilhelmina Models. While her likeness is sure to complement an avalanche of magazine covers, posters, T-shirts, and other such promotional fare that already feature her (either depicted within the group, or alone), the matter of maintaining the integrity of a female-fronted band with an otherwise all-male lineup is hardly anything new. The most obvious example of this would be Blondie in the mid-to-late ‘70s, whose slogan “Blondie is a band” served as a requisite antidote to the media’s fixation on lead singer Deborah Harry at the expense of her male colleagues.

“It’d be different if two of us were siblings and then people would just naturally be looking at the two siblings,” reasoned Ms. Sierota. “Because we’re all siblings, it helps. 

“Yeah, of course, there are going to be instances when somebody will just naturally talk to me, want to interview me or things like that,” she added. “My brothers don’t mind. They’re okay with that. I think the only thing they wouldn’t be okay with was that if they were in the dark when we’re performing or something. Everyone's equal on the playing field and on the stage, literally.”

Check out Echosmith’s latest single, “Bright”:



— Photo © Nicole Nodland

For more information, please visit Echosmith online. 

Read on...

An Interview with Katie Herzig

“What if the closest I get to the moment is now,” sings Katie Herzig with tender, anxious optimism on “Closest I Get,” one of several highlights that grace her inspired new album, The Waking Sleep. The song earned the artist this year’s prestigious ASCAP Foundation Sammy Cahn Award, which recognizes the works of promising songwriters on the rise.

And she more than lives up to that promise throughout The Waking Sleep, melding digital elements like samples and drum loops with the more organic essentials of her folk/pop songcraft. “It was really kind of a natural progression,” Herzig says, noting that she's experimented a bit in this area on previous albums. It was during a period that saw her composing mostly for film and television, though, that she chanced upon a catalyst for what was yet to come.

“I was given an assignment a few years ago to write a song for Sex and the City and all I had was my laptop. So I just started building sessions in Garage Band and it turned out to be a really fun way of writing that was completely new for me,” she recalls, adding, “You’re just going to create different songs when you use different tools.”

In listening to the new album it seems like your songwriting encompasses more discovery and curiosity than any fixed forms or ideas; you can hear the discovery process in these songs. What was it like writing them?

The majority of [the album] was written and recorded over a year’s time. I didn’t want to put any pressure on me and my co-producer, Cason Cooley, to meet any deadline. I wanted there to be a spirit of experimentation. Making records is probably the most fun [part] of what I do. So I wanted to just soak it up and be in that process. And that allowed for the time to find new sounds and experiment with different loops and different ways of writing.

Has having written for television and film–when the songs don’t necessarily have to be about you–affected the way you approached songwriting on this album?

Yeah. I think when given an assignment to do something for something else, you lose the kind of self-consciousness of an artist, like, “This is what I’d do as an artist;” or, “This is a song that means something to me personally.” You kind of lose a strong tie to those things. And it allowed me to really experiment and try, almost as if I were playing other roles or characters. It was so freeing and so much fun, not being so self-aware about the music I was creating. I think that did creep into how I was creating this album, except I was combining it with “me” again, things I have to say.

Some of your songs have also been featured in commercials, a medium which some songwriters resist. Granted we are in a different era than, say, the ‘80s when The Beatles railed against “Revolution” being used in a Nike ad. But did you have any misgivings over how your songs would be perceived in commercials, especially if that’s where a person was introduced to them?

There is still a little bit of that in the air, if it’s something that you’re just not quite sure about. But I think [of] how things are changing with the industry, of it becoming something that is almost like radio in a way. It’s just an opportunity for your songs to be heard and for people to hear about you. So I’ve embraced that in a sense. It’s enabled me to financially invest in making records and getting on the road... This has become the support for those things.

It helps to facilitate the other aspects of your career.

Yeah. And I’ve promised myself not to just rely on making all my money on film and TV stuff, because I don’t see that as building a career and a future as an artist. So I try to use that and invest that into creating my own records and then getting out there on the road, bringing a band, that kind of thing. It’s funny, there are certain placements that you get that you’re really proud of and others that you’re like, “Gosh, it’s okay if nobody saw that one.” [Laughs] It kind of comes with the territory.

What did it mean to you to win the Sammy Cahn Award for songwriting?

Oh, wow, that was really cool. I haven’t really won an award for music before so it was an interesting feeling. It was very flattering because there are some awesome songwriters that won that before me. Over time in writing songs, I’ve tended to simplify my approach lyrically sometimes. The song that won, “Closest I Get,” is just a simple three-verse song. So it was really fun that that was the song that won. It took time; I started writing that song at the beginning of the record. And a couple months later I wrote the second verse. Then a few months after that, when we were trying to finish recording, I wrote the third verse. It was just a long unfolding of a very special song. It was really an honor to win it.

Do you ever worry or consider, when you’re writing an album or even when you’re about to release one, that your songs won’t connect with listeners? Is that ever a songwriter’s fear?

It can be, but I do think that’s a pretty stifling way to be creating. When you have a little more of “I don’t care” in you, you’re going to create something that really isn’t just tainted with second thoughts. I don’t remember feeling that about this, because I kind of count on if I’m enjoying it, I count on other people enjoying it. And if I’m not enjoying it, there’s no motivation to work on it. Because when you make an album, you’re going to be singing these songs over and over and over again for years to come. I really count on what’s in my gut. If it’s inspiring, if it feels good to me, then I stick with it.

Read on...

Album Review: Duncan Sheik - Whisper House

Picture a dark night in the wilderness among friends, all huddled around a campsite fire, roasting marshmallows above the crackle of the flame. Someone suggests telling ghost tales, eliciting reactions of enchanted suspense. Such is the mood imparted on Whisper House, the latest album by singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik.  

Drawing on attributes of musical theatre and linear, narrative storytelling, Sheik is at turns evocative and engaging, precociously rendering ten songs like chapters in a fantasy book.  

Set amid World-War-II-era New England, the storyline centers on the doleful imaginings of a young boy, Christopher, whose father has perished in battle and whose mentally unfit mother has shipped him off to live with his aunt. Christopher soon suspects that his new home—as fate would have it, a lighthouse—is haunted by ghosts. The tracks that comprise Whisper House are the voices of these phantoms, which instill this already crestfallen boy with dread and self-doubt.  

Of course, none of this would make much difference if the songs weren’t any good. Fortunately, the compositions are equally progressive and beguiling—underscoring lyrical themes of mortality and irrational fears—making for a rich, thoroughly rewarding album.  

On the folksy opener, “It’s Better To Be Dead,” Sheik affects a vocal reminiscent of David Bowie circa Hunky Dory, assuming a stately air that sets a suitably ominous tone. He adds whimsical, melodic flourishes to tracks like “The Tale of Solomon Snell” and “Earthbound Starlight,” contrasting such austerity with more illusory, lighthearted orchestrations.  

Complementing Sheik’s foreboding, sullen vibe is vocalist Holly Brook, who renders an ethereal yet intimate presence throughout, gorgeously so on “How It Feels” and “Earthbound Starlight,” as well as on “And Now We Sing,” which finds her singing lead. Like any good story, Whisper House is imaginative and thematically sound. 

In translating those qualities to music, Duncan Sheik renders an inspiring work, one which yields enjoyment above and beyond its underlying premise.

Read on...