Song Exploder - HEALTH - Stonefist

Episode Date: August 18, 2015

The band HEALTH formed in Los Angeles in 2005. Their newest record, Death Magic, came out in 2015. They spent four years trying to make it. They describe themselves as a noise band, but for this record, they reinvented their palette and their process. In this episode, John and Jake from HEALTH take apart the song Stonefist, which they made with their bandmates, Jupiter Keyes and BJ Miller. This episode is sponsored by Hover, Lagunitas Brewing Company, and Simple.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi K. Hirwe. The band Health formed in Los Angeles in 2005. Their newest record, Death Magic, came out in 2015. They spent four years trying to make it. They described themselves as a noise band, but for this record, they reinvented their palette and their process. In this episode, John and Jake from Health take apart the song Stonefist, which they made with their bandmates, Jupiter Keys, and BJMitt. And just a heads up, this episode has some explicit language. Now, here's Stonefist on Song Exploder.

I'm Jake from Health, and I sing and play guitar. This is John, and I play bass. Though I guess we're all doing a lot of stuff on computer. The whole song started completely computer-generated as the da-d-kind kind of riff. I had like a synth sound that I had made, and I put it in reverse and just chopped this really tiny segment, and then just, like, cranked all the distortion. And I was like, oh shit, this rocks. We're in business.

We've always been making aggressive music. Typically, historically, we've done something like that is like with the guitar and like shitload of guitar pedals. That sounded really intense, but you do lose clarity when you record that. And there was already a mission statement of the band that was like, we're supposed to try to have it sound new. We just knew we had to start using computers because we were a noise band. Like it was about like being able to create like aggressive elements.

And so it's like there was a. new range of things available to us. I kind of had this realization where it was just like, pop music on the radio is like heavier than like cool underground like gnarly bands. You're just like, this lady gaga song is kicking my dick off like telephone. I'm like this is fucking nuts. That's like a big part of why the record sounds like this.

It's like it was hearing those things and just being like, if you could apply that technology that made those sounds that aggressive and that apparent and like do it tastefully, like, it'd be fucking crazy. There's a lot of goofy shit in there. So there's a live snare. There's a white noise sound. And then there's like a cartoon punching sound effect. I want these really heavy drums, but like the way to get really heavy is you need it to sound kind of goofy.

So we have this like push and pull with a loving dumb shit, but thinking you're not a dumb person. I don't know. The first line is like, and though we know how far. we've come, we stay possessed by what we've lost. And though we know how far we've come, we stay possessed by what we lost. We're obsessive of the past. We're obsessive of memory. And it's just like, no matter how far you've gotten, if you're successful, unsuccessful,

married, unmarried, whatever thing, it's like you still have all this fucking baggage And a lot of times, regardless of the point that you're at, that kind of tends to weigh you down more than where you've gone. And we both know, love's not in our hearts. And we both know, love's not in our hearts. And we both know, love's not in our hearts. And we both know, love's not in our hearts. I'm trying to do an anti-love song anthem. This is the not exciting part of a relationship

that is not usually in a pop song where you're just kind of like, secretly if I was just going to be honest right now, like we both know that we don't even like each other anymore. So it's like saying the shit that you will deny to yourself, but you know that you actually think. Are we all the same different? Promise you to promise.

Because my voice is so airy and kind of feminine, we wanted things to be able to punctuate more, and like it's never really worked for me doing that. So Jupiter, whatever my main vocal is, he would just do an octave down. So he's in there too, and it really helped. I'm Lars Stoffers. I produced and mixed the health record. Every sound was like chopped up, pitched. It could never just be like, here's a keyboard.

sound or a bass. It's not like just plugging guitar in and like getting like a cool reverb tone. It was like, no, we have to create this soundscape. But they are perfectionist that way and it's crazy. It's like, how do you make sounds you never heard before? It takes forever. So in the chorus, we did some moments where like the whole song glitches basically. Well, it was a ProTools mistake and it was actually the whole track looping and then we just put it in. That just happened to happen. And we're like, whoa, what was that? Our producer was like, oh, sorry, it was a fuck up. That was like exciting to us. So then that became part of the song. This record has been scrapped and remade.

Scrapped remade like three times. All our early records, we wanted them to sound as huge and as pro as possible. We did our first record ourselves. We never even worked with an engineer before. We felt like we got kind of burned a little bit on the experience. So this one, we wanted the production to be very big and clear and modern. And it's like, this is part of why the record took so long for us to finish is one thing we all knew is we were just like,

we are not finishing this record until it sounds good. And now here's Stonefist by Health in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net for links to buy the new health record and to watch the video for this song. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career.

And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April. and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city.

Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin, Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks.

You can find all the past and future episodes of Song Exploder at SongExploder.net or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Next time on Song Exploder, Best Coast. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Sondon. Song Exploder. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, the curated network of extraordinary story-driven shows. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. My name is Rishi-Kesh Your Way. Thanks for listening.