No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Eric Cardona

Episode Date: August 4, 2019

On this week's Sidetrack we listen to a handful of tracks from Mr. Twin Sister's Eric Cardona. Unlike the band's jazz and disco-tinged pop tunes​, Cardona's solo work is much more personal, often acoustic-heavy, and intimate. We fade out the episode with "3AMFM", Cardona's take on Mr. Twin Sister's "Alien FM". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And welcome to No Filler. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms to fill the space between the singles on our favorite record. My name is Travis. I got my brother Quentin here with me as always. And today we are talking about Eric Cardona. Last week we talked about Mr. Twin Sister, and Eric is one of the members of that band. He does guitar, vocals, saxophone. He's kind of a multi-instrumentalist. So he's released a couple of singles on his own. through the twin group label, which is their label,

and we're going to talk about them today. And what I'd like to do is contrast them to what we know of twin sister based on what we listened to last week. Because as you heard from that intro, very soft, acoustic. It's kind of his MO, which is interesting, because you really don't get that very often with Mr. Twin Sister. So do you get that in? any twin sister song?

I mean, yeah, here and there. Acoustic guitar? Yeah, sure. I mean, in their early stuff, they did. Back when they were more dream pop heavy, there was some acoustic stuff for sure. And, you know, there was a little bit of that at the, that song that we played at the end of our episode last week,

crime scene. You know, that was a softer, more acoustic. Yeah. Type of song. But anyway, it seems like when, when Eric sits down to write his own stuff, he tends to be a little bit more intimate and, like, you know, soft with his delivery. Which is interesting because, like, there's their early, early stuff on Mr. Twin Sister, the lead, the singer Andrea Estella, her vocals were very soft. Like, her delivery was very soft.

So I don't know if that's kind of a singing style that he likes, you know, or what? But it does he sing himself? Yeah, I mean, he's, he sings on, on a lot of the Mr. Twent. Well, not a lot, but he actually does sing. And his solo stuff? Yeah. Does he say? Yeah.

Okay, cool. So let's just get right into it, did. This is going to be a nice quick episode. So in February, he came out with a album called Cell Songs. And it's about eight tracks. And we're going to listen to track number three called Bedroom Demon. So that kind of reminded me of, I don't know, like Cigeros or something, like that super breathy voice. So like when I was listening to this, I was trying to think of like who it reminded me of as well.

And this is, this could be like a stretch. But I kind of thought of Billy Corgan of smashing pumpkins. You can tell me I'm crazy. but can you see that a little bit? I mean, I don't think that's what he was going for, but I was kind of reminded of some of the softer smashing pumpkin stuff, you know. And then I also thought of, and maybe the reason that I'm thinking of this guy is because of another track on this album,

and maybe we'll play a little bit of it as well. A strewd Gilberto, the guy that played, or that sung on the famous skits-in-gilberto, record, the jazz record, right? And like I said, definitely had a unique voice. Yeah, the Brazilian guy. Wait a minute, not Astrid. It's not Astrid, it's Jiao.

Gilber. Yeah, yeah. Estrid is his wife or his daughter or something like that. Yeah. But, yeah, Astrid Gilberto is, of course, the singer of Girlfamipanina, same album, right?

But anyway, Let's listen to the next song real quick on this album, just so I can get that point across, called Drive Solo. It's got this sort of like Basanova vibe to it, which I think is probably why I thought of Gilberto. But anyway, let's listen to that real quick. Yeah, I definitely hear that Gilberto vibe. Yeah, and, you know, we have to mention Kings of Convenience, too. you know, it's got that vibe. Yeah, with the guitar stylings for sure.

Yeah, and just the soft-spoken voices. I mean, that was kind of Kings of Conveniences, a whole thing, right? Quiet as the new loud, you know? So it's interesting to me the way he sings because I know that this is not his traditional singing voice. Like I said, he's sung on some twin sister stuff.

He sang on a track called Stop on in heaven. He's blended like his vocal vocals in the background on some tracks. And so we're going to listen to another single from his that came out the next month. So March

of this year. It's going to have a very, very different vocal style. But before we do that, I just want to say like it seems, it seems to me like like his voice is so quiet that it's that he's doing it as a like a style choice, you know,

but it almost sounds like he's, like it's the volume level that you would use if you're like trying to sing a, like a lullaby to your kid in bed or something like that, you know, like almost like a, I don't know, it's not like a whisper, but it's like a muted, I don't know,

dude, but do you know what I'm saying? Like he sounds like he's almost like straining to be quiet, you know? Oh, yeah. It's weird. Hmm. I don't know. I don't know.

But anyway. So, yeah, like you're saying, this isn't just his natural singing voice. No. He purrs. He's purposely singing this way. He made a choice to sing this way on this album in particular. And I think he was just going on. I mean, it's called Cell Song.

So that makes me think of like a prison cell or something like that. You know, like isolation, just really quiet acoustic stuff, you know. And I mean, there are some keys like synth and stuff on some of these tracks, but very, very soft. So what's interesting is we talked about the band members of twin sister last week, and specifically the keys and like the programming and stuff is Gupta. Dev Gupta is what he goes by. And he produced this record. Actually, he didn't produce this one. I'm sorry.

He produced this single that we're about to play called Two Moons. on sell songs he provided synthem piano on a couple of tracks so anyway I just I really like that that it's sort of this group effort right

that they are sort of like members that come in and out of each other's side projects and stuff you know it reminds me of the group the internet remember I told you about they're always they're always very supportive of each other's solo projects

and they always you know we'll hop in and play an instrument or sing backing vocals for each other Yeah, exactly. And the bass player from Twin Sister, Mr. Twin Sister, also did. He probably did bass on that song that we just played the drive solo because you heard a bass in the background. He's listed as providing upright bass. So anyway, let's listen to this next song, Two Moons.

And, you know, in a way, I can kind of see why he wanted to release this separately because it does have a very different feeling from the stuff on cell songs. sort of along the same vein as how they released Echo Arms and Power of Two as a single separate from salt. So they kind of do that. They like to keep things like, you know, separate as far as like, you know, they always said when I was reading interviews and stuff

that, you know, these two tracks had a very different energy level than the rest of the stuff on salt. So they wanted to kind of keep it, you know, let them have two different lives, you know. So anyway, it seems to me like that's what he's doing here. So anyway, this song is called Two Moons. That was lovely.

Yeah, a good song, right? So, obviously, much different vocal style in that song, right? He has a very feminine voice, right? We talked about that last time. Wait a second. That was him. That was him. That's what I'm saying.

dude. Oh my God. Who else would have a band? We're talking about Eric Cardonuts today. I know. It sounded like the lead singer of Mr. twin sister. Andrea Estella, right.

Holy shit. So that goes into what we were talking about last week, about how they, you know, part of the Mr. twin sister thing is that there is no, like, lead in the band,

right? And a lot of times when Eric sings, it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between him and Andrea. I mean, they definitely have their differences as far as like the cadence and stuff. Like Andrea always has really interesting ways that she like phrases things, you know, and like sing certain words that Eric doesn't really have. But his voice is like, like you can see this being a twin sister, you know, B-side or something like that. Right? Yeah. But I mean, it's missing some key elements that make a twin sister song, like a twin sister song.

But anyway, yeah, his voice is very like on the higher pitch. And he's able to do these sort of really lovely sounding songs because of that, you know? And, you know, like we were talking about last week, like this song had a very like dream-like vibe to it, you know? Yeah. Sort of that background, um, synth or, or, or piano or whatever that was that that kept.

That was my favorite part of the song. Yeah. Yeah, really cool, right? So this song was mixed by Dev Gupta and the photo on the album, uh, was by the bass player. So once again,

and somebody else. So once again, you know, collective effort. Yeah, that's cool. But anyway, um,

we, we also talked about how every member is, is almost equally, like, talented, and they all contribute to the song structures and stuff. This is just kind of more proof of that, you know, this is what this guy does on the side, in addition to writing and contributing to Mr. Twin Sister. So I would like to hear the other band members come up with some,

or come out with some singles and stuff, but I think he's the only one who's really ventured out and done his own thing, you know. Yeah. But anyway, that's that, man. Nice and quick, short little sidetrack for you. Where are we going next week, Q? I think it's time we listen to some washed out. Okay.

Wash down. The origins of the chill wave movement. I'm excited, man. This was, this was, we were in the thick of the music blogosphere at this time. Yeah. And, like, I feel like it's interesting because, like, we were, we had a music blog at, like, the perfect time of, like, buzz bands on from the internet, you know. And this was just one of those buzz artists, you know, watch that was. Oh, yeah.

Was it, you know, like you said, he was sort of like the one of the first really successful, like, chill wave sounds, you know. Yeah, we'll get into that next week. Yeah, we will get into this night. Let me just say this one thing. And I'm sure we'll talk about this next week. but when I think of another chill wave quote unquote artist that came out of that

same decade or whatever would be Toro Imoa which is what Chaz Bundick I think his name is I feel like they came out around the same time and Chaz seems to have had more success in the long term because his sound is a little bit more like he evolves

a little bit better than than the watchdog guy did but we'll get into that Yeah, I would have to agree. Because I'm also curious to know, like, which one really came first? And maybe there's somebody that came before those two that we don't even know about. So, yeah, maybe we'll get into the history of that sound and how it happened. But I think it's safe to say that it is classified as hypnagogic pop, right?

Yes, which we've talked about a few times. All right, cool. So we'll table this discussion for next week. Yeah. You want to outro out with some Getson Gilberto? Actually, no, because I wanted to outro out with, because I mentioned this last week, I was reading the Spotify track list and saw that Mr. Twin Sister was credited next to one of the songs on this record sell songs that Eric Cardona put out.

And the reason that that the credit, I thought maybe it was like, oh, they're all on the track, right? It turns out it's just a cover of Alien FM, sorry, it's a cover of Alien FM, which is Track 2 on Mr. Twin Sisters Salt. So Eric Cardona covers himself in a way, right? But it's really interesting because if you listen to Alien FM and it's Andrea's vocals, right? And it's more of like this, almost like this jazzy kind of darker song, the way that he plays it on this record is really interesting.

So anyway, we'll close out with that. I was really hoping you were going to say alien ant farm. Nope. Alien ant farm. Yeah, I want to hear them do a cover of one of their songs. Oh, geez. Yeah, you mean hear them do a cover of their cover of smooth criminal? Yeah.

An Inception cover. You know what, dude, I fucking hate it when people make jokes about Inception, and I just did it myself. So anything, there's some sort of like recursive thing going on. People's like, it's an inception of whatever. And I just did it myself. So anyway, this song is called 3am FM. And it's a cover of Mr. Twin Sisters alien FM from a member of Mr.

twin sister Eric Cardona. So anyway, we will close out with that. And next week we will talk about washed out and the history of chill wave. In the meantime, hop onto our website, no filler podcast.com. There we've got show notes and access to all our past episodes, all that fun stuff. Check us out on SoundCloud as well, soundcloud.com slash no filler podcast. All right, until next week. Thank you, as always, for listening.

My name is Quentin. My name is Travis. at the same time when you feel the comfort for time to come and then just go