Sylvan Esso announces new album ‘No Rules Sandy’
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Credit: Far Out / Brian Karlsson
Far Out Meets: Sylvan Esso and the humanity of a 10-year art project
Starting an interview over the internet is always a tricky process. Staring at a blank Zoom screen, hoping for at least one of the band members to turn up on time so that the dreaded 40-minute timer doesn’t cut you off mid-flow, is an unnerving moment. When you add to that the very real proposition of meeting an artist you have not only listened to on occasion but one that has, at various points in your life, been a soundtrack to your hopelessness, your happiness and everything in between, there is a palpable sense of nervousness that one imagines splatters across the screen like a teenage pimple. That is the gruesome prospect I faced when touching base with Sylvan Esso.
Like many other people, the music of Sylvan Esso hits me somewhere that I never really knew existed before sliding on my headphones and pressing play on their stunning self-titled debut LP almost ten years ago. The dynamic duo, comprised of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, create a soundscape that floats between the earthy humanity of folk and the bouncing escapism of pure electronica; it yields as much as it pushes forward and drives an incomparable sense of self to the fore. Across three albums, they’ve created their unique viewpoint and delivered records that lighten up the darkest days. My sense of dread that I would be left dismayed by meeting the group was quickly abolished as their bright, and smiling faces were warm and glowing when the comforting bong of a new guest arriving at the meeting hit my ears.
Why wouldn’t they be happy? The band have not only successfully managed to release three incredible records with their new LP No Rules Sandy — a sweet nod to the nickname of Sanborn — arriving tomorrow in a flurry of pop-tinged joy, but have managed to actually stay together as a happy and harmonious group for almost a decade. It’s a feat that isn’t lost on the group, as Meath confirms; while many of the band’s formative years were focused on actually gaining a career, looking back, there is more pride to be taken from simply staying together than they once thought: “It was as much of a goal to be able to last ten years or, or to be able to continue doing what we were doing, as it is to make records. So maybe being a band for ten years is an art project on its own.” And the trick to staying together? “The secret is just always telling people how you feel.”
That’s an essence of Sylvan Esso that is hard to ignore. The group have functioned as a duo since their inception, and while within a larger group setting, factions and cliques may arise, with a pair, there are only two heads being butted. It can make for a quick demise for some groups, but Sylvan Esso have figured out how to keep things aligned. Sanborn tells me: “I think you have to constantly be figuring out new ways to be yourself within the idea of the band.” It’s a simple concept that gets harder with time as artistically, each member grows and evolves into a new creative person.
When looking back at their first record, Sanborn sometimes struggles to connect with the music in the same way: “When we did that ‘With Love’ tour, which is the tour we did as a ten-piece band, I think I was in the space of not feeling like I related to the ten years younger version of myself and trying to understand how to relate to the music I made then, as somebody just performing it now. If you’re being honest, if your music is actually about your honest life, you have to keep doing that because you’re constantly a new different version of yourself. You have to figure out a new way to do it.”
It makes the fact that this album sees the group return to their natural ethos all the more enticing, as Meath explains: “I believe this one feels as close to the first album, as any of them have. I think we’re back just to exploration and expression in a different way than we have been in a long time.” Described as the group’s most personal record yet, the album also functions as one of their most simple, lyrically, which comes with its own complications: “It’s, it’s complicated and hard, but not in the doing things kind of way. It’s just that you have to let yourself be seen,” Meath explains.
“It feels weird sometimes and great other times,” the singer continues, “I think it’s fun, but this album also has the song, like the most embarrassing and strange anthem to asking for attention that I’ve ever written. The songs are so candid and vulnerable that I’m still not used to talking about them. Who writes a song called ‘Look At Me’? There are so many songs on this record that are basically just one line. And it’s just me saying, a very basic human emotion.”
With such a trainwreck of a world spinning away, there is a movement of musicians aiming for the socially conscious market. Whether it is to gain a few extra dollars in their pocket or indeed to try and effect some change through music, it’s a temptation that can sometimes weigh down the inner expression of a band, Sylvan Esso have a neat trick to avoid such a deliberate bet on modern dystopia: “I think this has always been the hallmark of our band. When I listen to this record, I really hear the pandemic. I mean, some of these songs are direct lessons that I think we’ve all been learning, or feeling, like, the fanaticism or the yearning to be back together. There are so many pieces here that are like the hallmarks to me of the last two years for everybody. But I think our band has never really been one that’s like, ‘Alright, here’s our women’s rights song’. I think Amelia writes, from a place of honesty, about her experience all of the time, and our music as a whole tries to reflect that. And because of that, it’s inherently about all of those things. Not in the overt ‘let’s make a protest’ song kind of way. But in the ‘what is our emotional reality of living in these times and dealing with all of this?’ Yeah, that’s so much more interesting to me.”
It’s a facet of the band’s work that has always intrigued its listeners, myself included. When the group’s debut album arrived, it hit me in a few different places spiritually. And yes, I said spiritually. Whether through Meath’s singular vocal tones or the glitching warmth that few can muster from a laptop that Sanborn always provided, the band connected with me mentally through this duality and hit me in the soul with an intolerable temptation to dance, marred only by the occasional use brain power it sometimes took to decipher the potent lyricism at the heart of the beat. Having spent most of my life in the ripped-up genre of punk rock, the idea of dancing beyond a pogo was a little confusing, but Sylvan Esso helped me escape my gruesome reality and left me dancing in the kitchen with a grin on my face. If that’s not what music is for, then I’m not sure what it is.
The duo opened up about their own escapes, Meath is a huge fan of Muna and made a special mention of the “tremendous experience of getting to see Porches play, and I so rarely get to be a fan of music anymore. When I’m at a show, I’m calculating how much it costs to freight the light across America. It was so fun to just get to, like, bop around, and I knew the words to every song — Erin’s been my favourite songwriter for a long time. To just like scream along to it and have a couple of drinks and it was so nice.” Sanborn instead prefers to find his “happy place” listening to Tim Bernardes, “it sent me on this journey of Brazilian crooners. That whole world is so deep and wide and beautiful.”
The odd thing is, you can hear both of these varying inspirations in the work the band produce. A wholly indefinable sound, the group have always operated on the outskirts of categorisation: “I think the reason why it’s indefinable is that it’s always been the thing that he and I made together,” confirms Meath. “And because of that, it lives in this weird space because it’s the summation of us. It’s the essence of collaboration. So, so it was never intentional, but I’m so grateful for it.”
“Mostly, because it feels like, for a while, we were trying to figure out what it was too,” Meath continues. “We kept on trying to shove it one way or the other. ‘How do we make it so that people understand what it is?’ So with this record, it just feels instead of being ‘it’s this or that’ or ‘look at how we’re doing it’, we’ve said ‘this is what it is’, and that’s why it feels so much like the first record to me.”
There’s a more practical reason for ditching any kind of deliberate sonic direction to, as Sandorn confirms: “One thing I think about all the time with us is that like there’s been so many times we’ve literally set out and been like ‘oh let’s make this kind of pop song. Obviously, everyone will understand that we’re making this really specific thing’ and then like nobody reads it that way.”
The band had once described their creative process as an ongoing argument and that their dual decision-making in the creative process allowed them to be balanced. But what happens if the group actually agree? “All of the songs are when we agree,” confirms Meath. “The only rule from the beginning has always been we both have to like it”, says Sanborn, “like every time one of us doesn’t like the song, we don’t even touch it.”
However, in truth, the only real barometer for the band these days is “does it fuck the pandemic?” As Sanborn explains: “This one time, I made a beat. I was all excited about it. And I played it for it. I was like, ‘Amelia, how about this fucking shit?’ And she was like, sitting there listening to like, ‘OK, all right.’ And then she was like, ‘Well, I mean, it’s good, but it doesn’t fuck the pandemic’. At that moment, I got the most accurate burn I’ve ever received.”
It’s hard not to be wrapped up in the warmth of Sylvan Esso. Despite the glitching tech supporting their tracks, Sanborn is keen not to envelop himself in today’s trends, instead “deliberately rejecting” those notions of jumping on the bandwagon. Their music may well be firmly in the future, but with Meath’s vocal, there is a classic folk earthiness that is hard to ignore; asking for some of the singers who inspire her sound, it becomes clear that Meath’s is a tone that is entirely singular. While paying tribute to Molly Sarlé and Daughter of Swords, whom she describes as “basically my two life partners,” she has recently found herself back on the Kate Bush trail, “like the rest of the world,” however, not only for her singing. “I was realising how much I think her dancing has influenced the way that I present myself because in the same way, she and I both have backgrounds in dance, but our dancing goals are not to be excellent dancers. And her voice is so like, she just, you know, you can hear who she is when she sings in a way that is just so generous.”
With a new tour arriving next week (August 17th) and the chance to play a new set of songs to a new crowd, the excitement is noticeable across both their faces as they revisit those crystalline moments of connecting with a crowd. “The thing I love the most about this job is that it’s always changing every time,” confirms Meath about the challenge of opening an arena tour. “You’re always trying to figure out how to get better at it. And we haven’t opened for anybody in like seven years. And it’s a totally different skill set. I completely forgot that you basically have to like, go out and like DOM the shit out of 12,000 people and be like ‘listen to my song right now!'”
A tour, a new album and a decade of experience in the bag, yet Sylvan Esso feel like they’re only just getting started, this time with the knowledge of how to create music that appeals personally and connects universally. But if they had the chance to speak to those young whippersnappers back in 2012 and offer up some advice for being the best Sylvan Esso they can be, what would it be? In a classic style, their message is simple, direct, and heartfelt: “Don’t worry. Be confident. Where whatever you want.”
It’s a simple message that likely strikes a chord with us all, and that’s what the band have always been about. Sylvan Esso may well be making the music of today, but their message, movement and momentum are as intrinsic, primitive and human as when the first rocks were hit against one another to catch a certain pitch and make the whole village dance. This has been a ten-year art project that has been firmly rooted in the primordial soul of us all, whether they meant to or not.
Sylvan Esso’s fourth album, No Rules Sandy, arrives on August 12th, 2022.
