Song Exploder - Little Dragon - Sweet

Episode Date: May 2, 2017

Little Dragon is a Grammy-nominated band from Gothenburg, Sweden. They formed in 1996, and they released their fifth album Season High in April 2017. In this episode, Yukimi Nagano and Erik Bodin from the band break down the song “Sweet.” songexploder.net/little-dragon

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-Kesh Hirwe. Little Dragon is a Grammy-nominated band from Gothenburg, Sweden. They formed in 1996, and they released their fifth album, Season High, in April 2017. In this episode, singer Yukimi Nagano and drummer Eric Bodin break down the song, Sweet. My name is Yukimi. My name is Eric. And we are from Little Dragon.

This was a track that we wrote right after coming off tour. Being on the road for a long time, it creates a vacuum almost inside you. You really want to fill that vacuum with new beats. We started with the bass line. We listened to a lot of South African house music that has been a big inspiration. Eric's wife is South African. So we go there every other year. And my wife, she's the aunt to many kids.

and some of the kids are DJs. So I just give them a USB and please fill it with as much as possible, you know. There's one song by DJ Sindho. She's an awesome house producer. A lot of that style is... I wouldn't say that they're behind, but they're using older sounds that we are familiar with

and just doing it their way. And it's very refreshing. Some of those songs have this kind of simple, naive scent melody is kind of almost like Nintendo game-ish. It feels like it's, I know somebody who has a PC, I'm going to his place, I managed to kind of make a mix out of it, and then there you go, it's out. That's what it appeals to us, the rawness. We were in our studio in Gothenburg. I don't think we would have been so free if we would have been like in a... studio in Burbank, you know, like expensive rent and technicians and...

Big mixing tables. Yeah, and you're almost like you're in the spotlight. Our studio started 15 years ago with the PC and trying to learn. So it's just developed out of that. The guys each have their own studio set up. So a song will start in somebody's room. This song in particular started in Eric's room. So I program a drumbeat.

I'm very drawn into the sheep effects because they create sort of like a new era of the digital punk flavor. And then I like to record a tambourine with a vocal mic because it's important to have that kind of organic vibe to it. That's a real drum kit. A little kid's drum kit actually. It's very fun to play it because it feels like it's going to break apart any time

you know so it has a fragility built into the sound and then I got that hockey sounding organ I feel like it's both South African and maybe like the gospel house it's like churchy elements something a little bit old school I guess I loved it so I kind of just like oh I have an idea

That was pretty much the first vocal part. That's very gospel-ish, the call and response. Eric is actually a really good vocal coach, because he's so rhythmical. He'll be like, you know, try to sing it super softly, but, you know, still be bouncy, vocally bouncy. That's something that we really wanted to come through on this track. It really should be a dance track, you know, some feel-good dance track. I've always loved vocal effects.

It just takes you into another space again, you know, like you have a drier sound on the rest of the vocals and then suddenly, you know, it's like one part is dipped in effects. I was thinking about the Gregory I.6 song, Night Nurse, you know, how it's like a love song, but it's about cocaine at the same time. I sort of wanted to write like it was a love song, but it could be about any kind of addiction, you know. I definitely wanted to not make it solely about love.

but have that angle of being disgusting almost, but sweet. I think there is that element to any kind of addiction. You know, it's like so good, but then it's like you can go too far. Once we had all the elements there, we tried to get the structure of, and then it was like, what is the chorus? And, you know, obviously we're four people in this band, and everyone sort of had their own. I think this is chorus.

Oh, I think this is chorus. Oh, I think this is course. So we were trying to just get our heads around a kind of simple structure of the track. Sometimes there is almost like an anxious quest for a chorus. And you're like, actually, chorus is just a word. You don't have to have an ABBA chorus or like, you know, it's something to break free from sometimes. So we actually took help from Patrick Berger, producer who came in and was super helpful. I feel like we could have gone on and on for like four years

just like trying to figure out what the structure of the song was before we like killed each other or something. He added drums, much more of acoustic, like hip-hop sounding drums. It gave it a whole new energy and it was easy to listen to the song. So we worked on the structure with the track sounding different. But then we brought it back to the original. sound. There were so many chefs, like so many ingredients. I guess I stepped up because I was the originator

somehow. I was like, let's just bring it back. It's very hard to go back in the evolution of a song. But then if you really realize that the original was better, there's nothing wrong with going back because there is always a drive to evolve things always. Yeah, it can be kind of depressing when you felt like You spent two weeks working on a song, changing it, adding stuff, adding stuff. And you suddenly come to the conclusion that it was better two weeks ago. And it's like, oh, yeah, because that's actually why we choose that song, because of the original sound. You know, sometimes you get precious with something, but we kind of have this rule in the band. We try to stick to it.

But like, if you have an idea, try it out. You know, instead of being like, I don't like, I don't think that, you know, try it. If it feels good. but, you know, if it doesn't, then change it back. It's not a big deal. So we were all sitting with the track and sort of adding little elements. That's Hakan, the keyboard player.

He's very good with the synths. He's like... Wizard. This sound has created a big headache because that's one of the sounds that we seem to be impossible to find the original file of it. I scroll through all the synths I had.

But, yeah, can't find it. It's a feel-good melody. Yeah. Very Nintendo high-score sound. With Mario hit the stars or whatever. I don't know. It's very Nintendo-ish for me. It's called Portamento, the effect where the key you last played.

If you press a new key, it will go up there. It goes bananas all over the place. You can always feel when something feels. to square sonically. You want to put something that makes it a little bit often, you know, organic. So it's not all perfectly symmetrical somehow. It's just me breathing with a close mouth. I don't know why.

No, but it's good. I mean, I like that because it just gives it... Quite a hectic feeling. The best way to get a raw... Never heard of sound is to use your mouth. Even better than a real acoustic instrument sometimes. Nobody can really reproduce it, not even myself. So you realize it's not so much about the language.

It's so much about the music or the vibe. We love music from the whole world. We are able to sit and dig music for 10 hours in a language we don't understand any word. We still get super emotional. and enriched, you know, on all levels. And now here's Sweet by Little Dragon in its entirety. Visit songexplotor.net for a link to buy this song and to watch the music video.

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, Rishikesh, 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. 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 Weinrobe. 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 Manzukas, 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 songexploader.com slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting-edge podcasts made possible by the Knight Foundation and by listeners like you. Learn more about the network and all the shows on Radiotopia at Radiotopia.fm.

Next time on Song Exploder, Perfume Genius. You can find Song Exploder on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder. And you can find all the past and future episodes of the show at SongExploder.net or wherever you download podcasts. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.