Interlude // Interview with Mansions
songs for your mixtape featured “Strugglers” by Mansions a few weeks ago (read it here). Mansions started in 2007 as the solo studio project of Chris Browder. Since then he has been joined by Robin Dove on bass for the past ten years. The two-piece band currently resides in Seattle and this summer they released their new album, “Big Bad.”
I had the chance to do a Zoom interview with Chris. Over the course of our conversation we discussed the new album and how it was created, the creative process, struggles with perfectionism, and musical influences.
Mansions started as a solo project. Do you work closely with Robin throughout the making of the album?
She plays a really important part of all the writing and developing it. From that initial spark of an idea to trying to figure out how to make it work as a song.
She's really involved in that and she's a really good editor and kind of producer from that standpoint. Where for me, I'm often so close to it, that whatever I'm working on, I’m excited about it. Whether or not it's actually good. She can have a real good perspective of helping direct like, ‘Oh, this is worth pursuing or this one isn't really happening.’
And she's consistently right about it.
“Big Bad” is sonically different from previous albums. There’s this haunting-ness throughout the album that gives it an atmospheric sound of gloom. But it’s done with softer vocals and without heavy guitars or drums that might’ve been featured on previous albums. Can you discuss what led to this new sound?
I think with every album it's an exploratory process — just trying to figure out what makes sense for the songs. In certain songs they kind of demand to be loud rock songs. These songs, I was working on a lot of stuff that was more rock kind of things. And then there were a couple songs, I think it was “Do It Again” and “Get Loose” from the album, those were the first ones that it was, ‘Oh, this is like a thing.’ There's something here that we should chase. And it's always helpful when you have that happen. Cause it gives you a framework for what the vibe should be for other songs. You don't want every song to be the same vibe, but at least having a sort of center point to build around. So those songs kind of did it.
Whenever we're making something, like for me as a songwriter, the first audience is just myself. I want to make something that I'm interested in listening to. That I would enjoy. And I don't listen to a lot of big rock albums, you know? I don't listen to a lot of stuff with loud guitar. I grew up on a lot of that so it's still very much in my DNA. But it’s not really what I'm listening to so then why would I make that?
When it hits like a bridge where normally my kind of go-to would be bring in the loud drums and the loud guitars. And sometimes I would even start doing that and Robin would be like, ‘Well, does it have to have big drums on there? Couldn't it be big without that?’ And so then trying to figure out ways to make a bridge a big moment, but where it's layers of synthesizers coming in or something like that.
It was just really fun, but also rewarding. And it felt like it fit the lyrics and the overall feeling of not this youthful driving around summertime record or something like that, but something that's just a little more subdued, a little more subtle.
As you were working on the songs were there any new songwriting techniques, new instruments, or anything new that you learned that you were excited to put together for the first time towards this album?
With every album I think it's kind of useful to have some new piece of gear or a new toy to play with. For this one, I had actually bought a Rhodes Electric Piano. I was a little bit nervous about getting it cause it's expensive. I didn't know if I'd actually end up using it. And it's just like this big, expensive thing that might not ever make a song on the record. But it did feel like it unlocked a lot of things. Every song on the album has at least something that's this electric piano and that felt like it really shaped the overall sound and kind of the tone of this sort of dreamy, vintage-y sounding — sort of like, you've heard it before, but you don't quite remember where.
You mentioned “Do It Again” and “Get Loose” as sort of opening up the path towards “Big Bad”. Was there an epiphany type moment when those songs came together for the sound of the new album or was it more of a slow process?
It’s a slow process, for sure. People sometimes give us a hard time about not putting out albums very often. I'm working on them all the time. It takes a long time and I have a day job. So, it's not like I'm spending all day, every day, working on it, but all my free time, pretty much. It’s a long process.
There's always a good year or two of writing songs that aren't any good, but are kind of necessary to figure stuff out. And then also maybe another year of recording stuff and trying to play with different styles and different arrangements. Because it is more of a studio project and I'm doing a lot of it, it means there's sort of endless possibilities of what you can make it sound like. You have to set some arbitrary boundaries to play in because otherwise you're just paralyzed by how many options and different directions you can go.
But I will say once we had those two [“Do It Again” & “Get Loose”], it was like here's a vibe, here's a style of record that I've always wanted to make but it just never worked out based on the songs that I had at the time. And here's a chance to make this kind of record [now].
How do you get past “perfection”? When you can finally say “this song is done”? How do you reach that point?
That's a huge challenge. I think it's one I'm still kind of trying to figure out. Cause the flip side of not doing music full time is that it means there's no deadlines.
So really, I kept kind of having internal deadlines but I would breeze through them. Then, Zack who runs Bad Timing Records — they put out our album and we've worked with them on a bunch of other stuff — he was always asking me what was going on. I was at a point where it felt close enough. Some songs were coming together so I gave him a firm date of when I thought it could be done. And then a few weeks later I was like, ‘Oh shit, I don't know if I can actually do this.’
I was tweaking the mixes up until the morning of that day. If there wasn't that deadline, I would still be tweaking them now. You gotta have those deadlines cause at a certain point you're not making things better.
How has the creative process for you and Robin changed during the development of this album compared to previous ones?
I don't know that it's changed that much. It's still me sitting in a room alone, usually with a guitar, trying to come up with an idea and then chasing that down. For me, even from the beginning, recording was really linked with the writing process, where there's not much division between writing and recording.
On this one [“Big Bad”] I was more open to the whole process is making the album and there's no difference between demoing and recording for real.
But it's still a really similar process: writing, demoing, playing it for Robin, changing it, going back and forth a million times. It's still the same, same deal.
What was the hardest song to finish on the album?
“PPV,” or Pay-Per-View, was definitely the hardest. It was one that I had back while we were working on “Deserter” [EP, 2017] and just could not figure out how to do it. It was one where I really liked the verses, liked the melody, liked the chord progression, [but] couldn't write a chorus for it. Tried it a million different ways, a million different versions.
And then even through the process of making “Big Bad”. Kept trying it over and over, just could not figure it out. And then eventually it was like, all right, I've been working on a song for five years. I have one final idea of how this could work and if it doesn't work with this, it's just over — we call it quits. And that ended up being the version that's on the album.
So it was a last ditch, see if we can make it work and now I love it. I’m really glad it made it.
On the other end, what was the easiest song to finish?
Probably “Do It Again.” That one basically is the demo. I only rerecorded a couple things. It came out pretty fully formed with the synthesizer. I think the vocals are from the demo. Every once in a while, you get a song that just like here's the lyrics, here's the song.
And it doesn't have that pain — going through and editing and rewriting things over and over. That was really just encouraging when that happened. Like this can still happen. Not everything has to take five years.
What are some of the artists that have influenced you and Robin throughout your careers? Were there any new sources of inspiration for this album?
I think for this one, most of the interesting guitar-based music that's being made these days, it's all female singer-songwriters. Whether it's Julia Jacklin, or Jay Som, or Phoebe Bridgers. That stuff was definitely inspirational to me.
Cause for a while it sort of seemed like hip hop and pop were being a lot more interesting than rock music. But I feel like this new breed of singer-songwriters were making that interesting again. So I found that inspirational for sure. There's other stuff like Japanese Breakfast. David Bazan is a long-term one that has influenced me. Spoon is kind of consistently in my life.
That's a lot of the big stuff. There wasn't a lot of things that were directly, like this is a sentence band and I want to make a song that sounds like that. I think a lot of stuff [inspiration], was I really like these like singer-songwriters. What if they use more synthesizers? What would that sound like?
I do like a good amount of electronic music. LCD Soundsystem is another band that's been an influence on me for a long time. Also, a lot of old country we were listening to a ton. Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton. I think that played a part.
Will there be any future tour plans after the pandemic, once it’s safe again?
We’re kind of out of the touring game. But next year is the 10-year anniversary of our album, “Dig Up the Dead” [2011]. It’s become the album for us, so if it’s feasible to play shows [again], it’d be fun to play a couple of shows for that. I don’t see us doing a big, six-week drive around the U.S. kind of tour. But playing a few shows in places that we’ve done well would be fun. Right now, having put out “Big Bad” and not played any shows for it, it does feel incomplete in a way that I didn’t really expect.
In the spirit of this newsletter, what song would you recommend for a mixtape?
There is a song on that last Angel Olsen record, not the one that just came out but that “All Mirrors” [2019] record, called “Spring.”
That's one of those songs that I keep coming back to like every week or so, there's just something about the vibe of it. The words are really interesting. Sounds are great. But that's one of those songs that'll probably stick with me for a while.
Thank you, Chris, for your time and for the fun interview.
Listen to “Big Bad.”
// press play