Song Exploder - Sleigh Bells - I Can Only Stare

Episode Date: March 14, 2017

Sleigh Bells formed in 2008. They released their fourth album, Jessica Rabbit, in 2016. In this episode, Alexis Krauss and Derek Miller break down their song "I Can Only Stare." I interviewed the two of them in front of a live audience at the Kaufman Music Center in New York, as part of the Ecstatic Music Festival. songexploder.net/sleigh-bells

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-Hirway. Sleigh Bells formed in 2008, and in 2016, they released their fourth album, Jessica Rabbit. In this episode, Alexis Krause and Derek Miller break down their song, I Can Only Stare. I interviewed the two of them in front of a live audience at the Kauffman Music Center in New York as part of the Ecstatic Music Festival. I'm Derek Miller. I'm from Slay Bells, and I do all the music. lyrics. Hi, I'm Alexis Krauss, other half of Slay Bell's, singer, melodies, harmonies, songwriter with Derek.

The early demo of this song sounded a lot more like shoegazy. I was at home in my apartment in Brooklyn, just kind of layering guitar parts. Immediately reminded me of like a Johnny Marr type of chord progression. That longing, that ache, you know, that a lot of the Smith's records have a lot of the records from that period that I really like. So I was really just kind of trying to rip him off. We each write in very private spheres. Derek works at home, and then he'll send me material, and I'll work at home.

That's actually my favorite part of the process, is getting her the instrumental and seeing when I get back first. I love that challenge of trying to think of a melody. The second I heard you sing the chorus, that I can only stare. When you hit the A, when she hits that vowel, it's like at the top of her range. And with that lyric, and with the melody and the delivery, immediately it was like one of my favorite things that we had ever done.

We worked on this track for a long time. The first few demo versions didn't have verses. It really wasn't even until later on that somebody brought to our attention. Like, hey guys, this needs verses. The song doesn't have any verses. That's sort of a way that we cop out of writing a proper and complete and satisfying arrangement. This will just be like a minute and a half thing. This could be like an interlude.

Derek had some really quality lyrics that we just hadn't used. I mean, the song is about isolation and loneliness. It's kind of about the ache, but the good ache that you have from, you know, admiring somebody or something from afar, whether it's for five minutes on the subway, you know. I mean, how many of us have fallen in love on the subway? And you see somebody and you're like, I could make that person happy. They would make me happy.

Everything would be great. And you get to live in that little fantasy for, you know, for a couple of minutes. But I would never, ever sing this song. Like, even though I wrote the lyrics. But coming from somebody like Alexis, I don't know, for some reason it's interesting to me. Derek reveals a lot of himself to me through his lyrics. It's kind of like having a conversation with him that we never had, but I get to see it. Because I don't think much of myself as a lyricist,

and I certainly couldn't ever write lyrics for Slebele songs. Derek is able to, I think, give a lot more lyrically because he doesn't have to stand on stage and sing those lyrics and feel that vulnerable. and I think I'm able to perform them much differently because they're not coming from my own mind and I don't feel self-conscious. And some people think that's disingenuous of me, but for me as someone who's always worked as a session singer and has been comfortable singing other people's music,

it allows me to occupy a space that I don't think I could occupy if it was my own. That is one of my favorite parts of the process, kind of stepping back and reading them, and then trying to sort of mine my favorite parts. There was this couch in the old studio that we recorded in, and I'd always see her over there with her phone held to her mouth, like cupping it, looking really just like a total freak. And that was always a good sign because I knew that she had something.

So this was me sitting, whispering into my iPhone. You know, I'm to die. You're not, you and I. So the verses for me are like almost intentionally juvenile. Like they're sort of a romantic quality to the way that, you know, young kids' few crushes. It's that, you know, it's either the beginning of the rest of their lives or it's the end of the world for them. I wanted to create something that sounded like your heart was really sinking and that you were desperate and sad. The verse drums are pretty orthodox.

They serve their purpose. They're clean. simple. I think there's too much reverb on them, but it's done. And the, um... This is actually a song that Derek likes. You should hear what he says about songs that he doesn't like. The chorus kick drum takes up a lot of room in the speakers and in the frequency, you know, it just swallows up a lot of the frequencies. It's just kind of like caveman shit. Like the chorus needs to be louder, put a bigger, louder kick drum on it. It's like not, it's not clever at all. The verse since I wanted to get right, bright almost like Yamaha DX7 style,

which was a synth that was really popular in the mid to late 80s. You've definitely heard it. Almost like cloying synth patches that I really like. I was digging around and I found the patch and I was like, oh my God, it sounds like Amy Grant, Baby Baby. When I was 10 years old, this was like my favorite song. And I still referenced these synth patches in my head. This is not ironic.

It's not a pose. I'm dead serious. I really love that track. But I'm a big fan of distortion. I think anybody that listens to our band is aware of that. Both of our ears were sort of craving that sort of weight and gravity and menacing quality that those since have. Definitely sort of offset what I felt like was something that was sweeter.

There's sort of like a sweet, innocent quality to having your heart broken as a kid, but like very real isolation is it's dreadful. It's a pretty pretty. And that synth is, you know, it's extremely oppressive. So you hear that and you sort of brace yourself that you're about to hear something heavy. This was one of the first songs where we captured a much different vocal quality and delivery. You heard me sing in a different range and register and emoting more, pushing my voice more. The first record, we made a point of not emoting.

There was a lot of just make it dead. Can you do it more lifeless? When we would track those songs, I would stand as still as possible. You know, just like not move a muscle. Whereas I can only stare is the opposite of that. It's a full physical delivery and performance. It's hard to breathe after it. It's hard for me to sing as far as stamina goes, for sure.

I mean, it is a fatiguing vocal because it is existing in a certain part of my voice, which requires me to push a lot of air. air. It's a part of my range where I'm switching registers, so it definitely has that sort of natural cry to it. This is the first song in eight years of writing songs together where I changed the key of the song to accommodate her range, just because really it comes down to how that A sounds in stare. Writing a song like this is very hard for us. We could have left it a bit half-baked because we didn't feel confident enough to fully execute it. And for me, it was just really a lesson and paying attention to detail, really listening to every little moment, every little harmony,

every kick, every synth, every layer. At the time, I feel like this was us maxing out our potential creatively, not something that happens every day for us. As long as I feel like we're sort of inching our way up quality-wise, as long as I believe that, then I'm pretty happy. And now, here's I Can Only Stare by Slaybells in its entirety. It's at SongExploder.net for a link to buy this song, and to look. learn more about sleigh bells. I've also posted the video on the site. 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 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 Robe. 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 songexplor.net, slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. SongExploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons, and is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting-edge podcasts made possible by the Knight Foundation

and listeners like you. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. You can find Song Exploder on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder, and you can find all the past and future episodes the show at songexploader.net or wherever you download podcasts. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.