#american love call

[sinceileftyoublog]

Aaron Frazer Interview: Implicit to Explicit

Photo by Rosie Cohe

BY JORDAN MAINZER

"The difference between Carole King and Westside Gunn...is a lot shorter than people realize," Aaron Frazer said to contextualize his second solo album Into The Blue (Dead Oceans). Reading that before I listened to the record for the first time had me primed for the unexpected. And while it's not an album that sounds like A$AP Rocky and Jessica Pratt--let alone a legendary folk singer and raw Griselda crew member--Into The Blue does demonstrate the genre-hopping prowess of a versatile singer-songwriter. Frazer, dealing with a breakup and a cross-country move from New York to Los Angeles, looked to his own record collection for comfort. He also returned to the exploratory mindset of his crate-digging past to make an album that captures heartbreak, transitions, ends, and new beginnings in all of their complexity.

Long before he was known as the falsetto singer and drummer of Durand Jones & The Indications, Frazer was a beatmaker, toying around with FL Studio (fka FruityLoops) as a teenager. He went on to study sound engineering at Indiana University, where The Indications were formed. While his records with The Indications as well as his solo debut Introducing..., the latter produced by Dan Auerbach, are clear contemporary takes on old-school soul, Into The Blue reveals Frazer's love for hip-hop. Co-producer Alex Goose (Freddie Gibbs, Madlib, Brockhampton) helped Frazer incorporate samples, from 60s teen pop music to 90's R&B, into his songs. Best, the samples are purposeful and tasteful. Opening track "Thinking Of You" takes the opening line from The Shades' "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", "Hey...it's him again...uh-oh!" to reintroduce Frazer and establish the modus operandi of Into The Blue. "Lonely nights like this, I still feel your kiss," Frazer sings over a swelling, lovelorn orchestra. "Fly Away" culls from the Hi-Five song of the same name in a coincidental bit of studio magic, where a song Frazer and Jungle's Lydia Kitto had been working on happened to follow the same chord progression as the 90's R&B classic that Goose had filed away for future sampling use.

Of course, for Frazer, sampling is just a more direct callback to the past than his normal, indirect cherry picking of blue-eyed soul. Into The Blue expands his horizons. The title track juxtaposes strings, breakbeats, and country western guitars. "I Don't Wanna Stay" employs a 5-piece string section to enhance the dramatic, cinematic flair of Frazer's storytelling. "Easy To Love", which does interpolate Kenix's disco classic "There's Never Been (No One Like You)", sports a four-on-the-floor drum beat and keyboard sprinkles for a slice of pure funk. And "Payback" takes a base of Northern soul-esque drum fills and handclaps and smothers them with whispered and lurking-to-shouting backing vocals and Nick Waterhouse's blistering guitar.

A few months ago, I spoke with Frazer over the phone. Calling from his apartment in Los Angeles, he discussed both the sonic inspirations and making of Into The Blue. He was also in the process of figuring out how to play the album live. Frazer had done a release show on June 28th, the day the album was released, something that he hadn't done since he was in college. "I forgot how much work goes into finishing an album rollout," Frazer said, "adding in the last little bits before release while also trying to perform not just passably, but well, for the first time in front of an audience who has only heard the record for a maximum of 18 hours." The answer on his current tour, including a stop Sunday at Thalia Hall? A 7-piece band, including Frazer behind the drum kits for a third of the show, switching places with his drummer/singer. It's still a challenge. "[Into The Blue is] a band album, but it's a production album, as well," Frazer said. "There are elements that need to be shifted in a live context...There are more voices on the record than I'm going to have on stage. I'm not going to have the string section. How are you getting to capture that psychedelic moment and dub basement soul in a live setting?"

Find out the answer on Sunday and read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: On Into The Blue, why did you decide to work with a different set of people than those whom you worked with on your first record?

Aaron Frazer: In some ways, it's a whole new set, but in [other] ways, it's a return to my normal workflow. On the strings and horns, those are all my friends from Brooklyn who I've been working with on the Durand Jones & The Indications records since 2018, with American Love Call. It's less that this was a new thing: When you work with Dan Auerbach, and he's in the producer role, you have access to his collaborators. They're legends who have played on cornerstone records of American music. It's amazing. When I do it myself, I like to work with my friends. This was a mix of my friends from New York and new friends that I had made in Los Angeles, which included Lydia Kitto and Joshua Lloyd from Jungle, [as well as] Nick Waterhouse. Also, because I had the opportunity to do whatever I wanted, I was also able to hit up people I had wanted to work with for a long time, like Cold Diamond & Mink.

SILY: You were dealing with material that was a bit more vulnerable than on past records. Was it a blessing to work with your friends, people you could be vulnerable around?

AF: This record is the sound of me navigating and processing the things happening in my life very much in real-time. Definitely, working with friends allows me a certain level of vulnerability. When I wrote "Into the Blue", the day I showed up for that session, I was honestly too bummed out to write anything. Maybe in another session, that wouldn't be okay, or I'd feel some sort of pressure to power through, but because they were my friends, I voiced that. There was no pressure, and we just listened to some records, and the records we were listening to wound up inspiring the original demo of "Into the Blue". So it's definitely a blessing to work with friends.

SILY: What records were you listening to?

AF: We all geek out over records that feel ghostly, so The Ink Spots, for example. "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" is the classic Ink Spots tune people know. Some of the Charlie Parker with Strings album has this big, classic Disney chorus. I don't mean Frozen, more the old school Disney.

SILY: Fluttery instrumentation.

AF: Some Hawaiian stuff has a lot of ghostly qualities. Eventually, we came to Ennio Morricone's stuff, which is very much in the through-line to Into the Blue and a thread throughout this record.

SILY: I wrote down the word "ghostly" the first time I listened to "I Don't Wanna Stay", with the five-piece string section and the backing vocal harmonies. Combined with the themes of the record in general--a dying or dead relationship--it fits. Was that interplay between theme and instrumentation at top of mind when making the record?

AF: Definitely. It felt like I was navigating a haunted house. It kind of feels like for me, this album is the sound of driving across the country, but having flashbacks to the life that I left.

SILY: I'm definitely intrigued by the use of samples, and I imagine working with Alex Goose spurred that. It doesn't seem like that different of an overall approach from what you were doing previously, the same way you might call back to a classic genre or sound. Sampling is just a little more specific.

AF: I grew up making hip-hop instrumentals. I downloaded a free version of FruityLoops, which is now called FL Studio. It now sounds more professional. The first beat I ever made was a loop of the intro of the song "Lullaby of Birdland", this great piano intro. I made it in Windows Movie Maker, which was on the computer. I've always been drawn to samples. At first, it was jazz samples, then soul samples. I started going to Goodwill in the dollar bin to look for stuff to sample when I was in high school. That's when I started to learn all these other types of music, looking for samples. Hip hop and sampling have been there early on in my musical career. The current approach that people know me for with The Indications and my solo stuff is referential, and I think that referencing is its own form of sampling. You sort of approximate rather than go directly to the source. You put your own spin on it. Working with Goose was really cool because not only do we both share an enthusiasm for eclecticism, but hip hop is a genre that brings disparate elements together. That's always who I have been as a music fan and music writer. Allowing hip hop production to be in the driver's seat allows me to bring that eclecticism back to the forefront, to shift the dial one click towards hip hop being explicit instead of implicit in my writing. I don't think it was a big transition for me. I feel like I've been doing it in one form or another my whole life.

SILY: Certain songs, like "Fly Away", seem to be built around the sample, whereas others are more interpolative, or the sample is just thrown in at the beginning. How did your songwriting process come about? Did you start with the sample, or come up with the song and later think, "I could add something in here."?

AF: The beginning of "Thinking of You", that vocal drop, we were just digging through some stuff, and we thought, "That would be so sick," so we just threw it in at the beginning. We didn't construct the song around it. "Fly Away" is an interesting one, because I have the demo, and it's me and Lydia--I have this piano progression that we played--and we wrote the song to the piano progression. When Lydia and I were at Goose's studio, he was flipping through some loops he had. Sometimes, he'll just chop up songs to file them away for future use. He had this Hi-Five loop, and I realized it was the same general chord movement as the song Lydia and I had put together. As he was playing this loop, I started singing this song down that Goose had never heard before, and Lydia was in on the background vocals with me. It was so funny to see Goose's reaction. His jaw dropped. He was like, "What is happening? How have you already written a song to this?" It was a bit of good luck and coincidence that the chord movements could wrap onto each other. It had already been a 90's R&B vibe, it was just divine timing to hit this 90's R&B loop and bring this implicit influence to an explicit place.

SILY: The first time I listened to it, that's exactly what stood out: the sample, yes, but the song sounds like you could hear it on a 90's R&B radio station.

AF: Mary J. Blige in the 90's made her career by taking soul samples and doing this neo soul approach to 70's soul samples. I feel like I inverted the ratio. I'm more inspired by 70's soul, but I applied it to 90's sampling.

SILY: What was your approach to sequencing the record?

AF: Sequencing is so important on a record like this. This is such an eclectic, sprawling record. I'm not doing death metal, or anything--it's all in its zone--but this album is the sound of my record collection. When it comes to food, sometimes the flavors that would work together, if eaten in the wrong order, don't taste good. Music is very much like that. You are a DJ. Two songs that are sick won't connect with people if you don't sequence it correctly. We tinkered around a lot with the--I almost said setlist, but that's kind of how it feels. We're DJs and trying to get that set together to feel good and not give you whiplash stylistically and show the authentic emotional journey I went on from New York to LA, from in a relationship to out of a relationship, from touring like crazy with a band to all of a sudden having a year off.

SILY: I noticed a lot of contrast in texture from one song to another, which is key in both albums and food! That ghostly quality is there throughout Into The Blue, but on a song like "Payback", Nick Waterhouse's guitars are so fuzzy and sharp.

AF: It's brash and bombastic. And then "Perfect Strangers" is the salmon sashimi of the record. It's subtle.

SILY: That one's just you on your guitar with background singers?

AF: There's a little bit of bass, but it's very minimal.

SILY: Are you the type of songwriter who is always writing even when you've just released a new album?

AF: There were maybe two weeks where I was feeling a bit of burnout. came out on June 28th, and on July 2nd, I flew to North Carolina to start working with The Indications on our 4th record, to start recording. That took a lot of caffeine to get me dialed back in. But I'm always hearing sounds where I'm like, "I want to do something like that!" Or little scraps come to me in the shower.

SILY: Are the sounds you're hearing, is that from you actively listening to music?

AF: I love clicking around YouTube until all the sidebar recommendations are 45 labels, and then I'm like, "Now I'm digging in." Instagram is an incredible discovery tool. It's crazy. Spotify's Discover Weekly is really cool. Thankfully, I also have friends who I tell, "Literally send me music any time of day or night." I might not respond if you text me at 2 A.M.--actually, I probably will be still awake--but I love getting recommendations from anywhere and everywhere.

SILY: Some people I talk to, when actively writing music, they really need to shut out all art. It sounds like you're the total opposite. You're a sponge.

AF: Yeah. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson coined "transparent eyeball." You have to see everything and let it pass through you. I will say that while I am a sponge, there's times for soaking in and times for wringing out. There's a bit of a reset period. Before I start wringing out again, I'm definitely in a soaking in period. But with The Indications, I'm having to soak in while finding a corner of my sponge self to wring out.

SILY: You're deft with metaphors! I can tell you're a songwriter.

AF: [laughs]

SILY: Is there anything else about the record I didn't ask about that you want to say?

AF: I feel very proud of the high-brow/low-brow [duality] of this record. "The Fool", the last track of the record, the drums, bass, and guitar are all one iPhone voice memo. It's fun to be at a point in my career where I've done this enough times to be grounded in my compass so I can be like, "Yeah, it's an iPhone voice memo, but it had magic to it, so I used it and tracked on top of it." I hope people listen to the full record. I think it's hard to pick any one song to represent what this album is. I tried to make it a full body of work.

SILY: It's funny that you mention high-brow/low-brow with "The Fool", because you have the low-brow with the iPhone, but in regard to the high-brow, Bryan Ponce's backing vocals remind me of a Greek chorus.

AF: It's exactly supposed to be that!

[finsterwalds]

Thinking about better call saul if the action took place in france just because I wanted to see them in cunty robes lmao. More thoughts under the cut!

Obviously the action and the whole premise of bcs/brba wouldn't work in france (legal system aside, the whole cartel and walter white storyline would have to suffer major changes due to social security and the mexican cartel well. not existing here stricto sensu). But let's talk about the real Important Stuff : their names

I think Howard Hamlin would work well as Edouard Hamelin. He looses the cool HH initials yes, but it works really well as a genuine french name imo, and Howard/Edouard are pretty close phonetically

Chuck could still be called Charles without any realism issue, but he'd be nicknamed Charlie rather than Chuck because that's what a french person would go for... nicknames don't work the same, yeah

Kimberly Wexler and James McGill, I have no idea lmao. James when translated becomes Jacques, but it's such a boomerish uncool name that I cannot resolve myself to call my boy like that. It's also one generation too old. Jimmy being born in '60 could technically be called Jacques, but it'd be old-fashioned, as it's a name mostly given to the kids of the decade that came before him. McGill is an irish name, so something funny could be making Jimmy a breton with a funky last name like Gall/LeGall ? That's hilarious to me. But who knows.

Saul Goodman is a pun, so this is even harder for me to conceptualize. Saul's marketing would definitely not work in france at all, as no one would realistically hire a lawyer with a puny name and such chaotic displays (+ I think ads for legal démarchage are illegal mind you). However, let's have a crack at it. It would have to be a pun based off an expression similar to "it's all good man", or implying something positive and familiar... I need to think on that one.

[behindavelvetcurtain]

Durand Jones & The Indications - Circles

[synthe4u]

The stress was beginning to seep in. Your eyebags becoming more visible by the day. No one could tell you were more tired than the past week.

You were more quiet and less aggressive in your talking. You seem to have lost your spirit in a way, but of course, the man in the mask figured it out.

Ghost eyed you on the other side of the room. You were bobbing your head, nearly falling asleep before being shaken awake by the slight fall of your body.

You were being distracted by the lights and paid no mind to Ghost's wandering eyes.

It wasn't until around 2100 (9:00pm) when he knocked at your door. You weren't asleep yet. Your light was still on.

Opening the door you asked, "Is something wrong?"

You hadn't changed out of uniform and still seemed out of it.

"Why aren't you asleep?"

"Why are you awake?"

You snapped back at him. You weren't in the mood. You've been tolerable all day, no arguments or fights, but it's clear he came to ruin that.

He stared at you in silence. The mask made him more intimidating which caused you to fess up.

You ran your hands through you hair, frowning in disgust at the knots in your hair.

"Just some family problems is all."

"Losing sleep over your family?"

You sighed, "What do you need?"

"Need you to sleep so we could complete this mission."

"I'm not broken, I can still do the mission."

Silence permeated the hall, other than the occasional fizzle from that one light the base swears isn't broken or haunted.

"Can I come in?"

The door widened a foot further, allowing the masked man inside. You didn't understand why you would let him in. You don't let anyone in your room, at least, not for silly matters like this.

He followed you further into your room after shutting the door, and settled on the side of your bed. You didn't have time to question it before you fell.

Collapsing on the spot, Ghost caught you before the ground could do actual damage to your body.

I guess the sleep had caught up to you, just as Ghost had caught you.

Sleep truly is not for the weak. Stay healthy, guys.

.............................................................................................................

masterlist

[bacchuschucklefuck]

I know a normal amount abt waistcoats

[macksartblock]

could you do some gothcleats? pretty please

anyone else haunted by snowballs at school dances? no? just me okay

[alphacrone]

"he would not say that" except it's "they would NOT use/go by that nickname"

[sgt-tombstone]

Don’t know if anyone knows this but in the US Army*, Sergeant is sometimes shortened to something that sounds approximately like “Sar’ent” and I think the fic potential there is hilarious

Either the 141 visits a US Army base or a US Spec Ops team visits Credenhill; either way, they’re working in close proximity for several weeks. A couple of days in, Ghost noticed that Soap is on edge, not seriously or alarmingly so, just enough to poke at a bit, so he pokes.

“It’s these bloody fuckin’ Americans, LT,” Soap grunts. “They better start putting some fuckin’ respect on the G.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Johnny?”

“Och, you haven’t noticed?” Soap says, holding open the door for them both to step outside. “They don’t pronounce sergeant right.”

“Oh, is that all,” Ghost says breezily. “Well, that’s good then, they fit right in; you don’t pronounce anything right.”

“Haud yer weesht,” Soap says, begrudging fondness softening the edge of the phrase. “Here, watch.”

There’s an American captain approaching and, as inferior officers, both Soap and Ghost salute him as he gets closer. The captain salutes them both with a polite “morning, lieutenant, sar’ent,” and then continues on. As soon as he’s past, though, Johnny turns to Ghost with a comically exasperated expression, one eyelid nearly twitching, and Ghost can’t help the bark of laughter that escapes him.

If he manufactures as many situations for the Americans to address Soap and Gaz just to watch them both lose their minds over the butchered pronunciation, that’s between him and God (and maybe Price, who definitely catches on and, Ghost notices with no small amount of glee, also actively participates)

*I’m not sure if the British Army shortens it too but for the sake of crack, I’m going to pretend like they don’t lmao

[feroluce]

When talking about Boothill's drink order in 2.6, like. Hoyo could have just glossed it over and described it as "a few" or "several" drinks. They didn't bother to program in the actual glasses or anything- it's not like any of us were gonna count them and notice if they put in the wrong amount.

But they specifically chose the number seven, and if it IS just coincidence, it is a very very fun one.

Hsr is also known to make tarot card references- we had the online event shortly before Penacony's release, I'm pretty sure there's at least a couple simulated universe occurrences and a curio, and then Black Swan's Everything.

The Seven of Cups is a card about dreams and making choices when you have multiple options it front of you. It represents resisting self-deception and false dreams, and not letting yourself be charmed by hallucinations. It is a warning to carefully consider what is real vs what is not, which is very important in Penacony as a whole, being the land of sweet dreams, and it becomes relevant to Boothill later, when Primon starts to fuck with his head.

It can also represent someone who is "deep in their cups," which is a more polite way to refer to someone who uses alcohol as a coping mechanism to an unhealthy amount.

I hate that this could be a serious comment on Boothill being an alcoholic to cope with how much horrifying trauma he's experienced...and I have to discuss it looking at Primon's ridiculous fucking face fjkdslajldk

The overall message of the card is to stand fast, keep a clear head, and make your decision. Which suits Boothill beautifully even outside of this patch, since he is the very picture of ruthlessness and straightforwardness- he is able to see that bright clear line between action and result, and he follows it doggedly! Everything he does, he does wholeheartedly and decisively! And we see it especially well when he fights through the partial regression Primon leads him into!

Straight and clear and sure as a bullet, baby!!!

[historicity-was-already-taken]

pixeljade: #it IS very much a complex issue and I feel like saying that has been pissing off a lot of folks on both sides #one fact i would add to the table is that the current actions against palestine DO constitute a genocide by definition #its a word i hear pro-Israel people get very upset by because they think it is inherently comparing this to the holocaust #but its not. some people DO and thats its own discussion. but calling it a “genocide” is simply accurate and undeniable

Speaking as someone who was that pro-Israel person in her teens and very early 20s, the reactions you're describing are 800% cognitive dissonance freak outs. Most of these people, like me, received either directly or indirectly from their Elders in the Jewish community a very trauma-induced and deeply emotional information about the history of this situation, which boils down to: "They tried to kill us all once and they didn't now we finally have returned to the Promised Land, the only place we have to shield ourselves against It Happening Again. Israel's detractors hate that Jews can defend themselves now, and if any of them, including the Palestinians, were to have their way, they'd see us all dead. We must defend ourselves at all costs, and not let anyone ever put us in existential danger as a people ever again."

And then to have some rando 19 year old who knows jack shit about your or your community or your community's trauma to get up in your face and start screaming at you about genocide? It's only going to trigger that intergenerational trauma, and cause the party being screamed at to dig deeper into their defensive, cognitive-dissonance fueled response. Which, if we were to boil that response down to a thought process, looks like "This person hates me and all Jews. They think we're a hive mind who don't deserve to live. Thank G-d for Israel."

What's complex, is that not everything in that trauma response is wrong, and not everything the dumbass 19 yo who has no interest in unpacking their own learned anti-Semitism was wrong.

Israel's actions towards Palestinian Arabs since 1948 does fit several definitions of genocide and/or ethnic cleansing. And many of the Westerners who scream about it the loudest are fairly openly anti-Semitic.

Now, as someone with big Holocaust intergenerational trauma in her family, I am sympathetic to the Jewish kid in this scenario. But cognitive dissonance is just that: the domain of a child. Adults understand that cognitive dissonance is a little voice in our head telling us "Hey comrade our discomfort with this is a little much. Maybe this is a learning opportunity?"

I mean, that's what I did. But it's difficult. Its uncomfortable, and that scares people. It's much easier to believe that "They call it the Naqba because they hate us and think our survival and access to national self-determination is a disaster,"* than it is to understand that "They call it the Naqba because it was the near total dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arab populations from their generational homes and properties."

And again, everything I'm saying here is a result of my journey from a hardcore Zionist-in-the-contemporary-sense child (though always left in terms of domestic US Politics), to a grown Holocaust historian who understands that Israel is no better and no worse than all the other nation states (for new readers, I understand the nation-state as a political entity, the logical end point of which is genocide and/or ethnic cleansing), and openly criticizes it on those grounds.

*A rabbi in a youth group I belonged to told me this almost verbatim when I was 15. And when you're 15 and somebody tells you they love you you're gonna believe them.

[ricky-mortis]

Howdy hello- guess who made a wings au :)

More to come with this eventually- I’m working on my designs for other characters at the moment, but for now we’ve got Red-Tailed Hawk for Curt and Eagle Owl for Owen.

For DMA I had Barn Owl wings because a) Barn Owls are beautiful and I wanted to draw the wings for them, and more importantly, b) Owen would probably want to disguise his wings, and it would make sense if it was as a different type of owl. I just assume he’d dye his feathers in some way or another. Look- just don’t think about it too much.

[goodboypolly]

If you’re a fan of ‘the most normal man in the world experiences the horrors (featuring music)’ the musical:

you may enjoy ‘the most normal man in the world experiences the horrors (featuring music)’ the game:

[sky-is-the-limit]

My red flag is that I'd still fuck Graves after his betrayal, even after shooting Soap and trying to get him and Ghost killed, after the tank chase and I'd blame it on my chronic dilfcrazed disease.

Catch me switching sides with a text like "bye 141, I'm a Shadow now 😘"

Even if his middle name was Judas, I'd be all like "Yes, Commander. Whatever you want, Commander, you want me to shoot the Scott? Only if you promise to fuck my brains out later, Commander"

Anyway, I think everyone was overreacting a bit cause me, personally? I'd give him both my base and body to use 🙏

[nerdygirl84]

Never in my life did I think I would be deliriously happy after watching an episode of Family Feud but here I am.

[booknerdmusician]

there are many things that left me utterly happy about gotg vol. 3, but one I haven't seen many people mention is that Peter refers to Mantis as his sister at least twice in the movie. Like obviously they are all a big found family and they call each other as such. But there's something about the aknowledgement of Mantis put in the same regard as Peter's grandpa on earth. Something about the fact that he considers her as well as a blood relative because they are both the children of Ego, and Ego raised Mantis to be a tool in the same manner he would've done so with Peter if he had the chance, and they were both taken advantage of by him. And despite all that they both went through because of Ego, they at least managed to find each other.

[butchnavi]

nina salazar-roberts is such a beautiful case study in comphet and I genuinely think her arc deserves so more appreciation