Stalwart US folk outfit Saintseneca have been prolific in the full-length stakes since dropping their debut LP Last back in 2011, following it up with last year's Dark Arc and now only a few days out from unleashing their third album Such Things Down Under.
Ahead of the work's local release through Anti- this Friday, The Music was fortunate enough to get inside the head of songwriter Zac Little and have him break down Such Things track-by-track, from go to whoa.
Of the wider album, Little says: "I was pushing myself ... to try to explore the pop motif further, to try to use and bend that formula of having a groove, a beat, locking in and using that as scaffolding to build a song.
"And even though it oftentimes might seem like this singular vision, at the core my creative strategy for the band is one that inherently involves other people. I think the best work I’ll make involves working that way."
Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter
Have a listen to the album, and read Little's track-by-track breakdown, below.
Such Things
I wrote many of these songs while babysitting my niece. She was only three months old when I started watching her, and she couldn't do much besides just lay there.
I would just play guitar all day and sing and read physics books and mystical stuff. Fortunately she seemed happy with the arrangement, because she would stop crying when I played guitar.
I have this old piano that belonged to my great-grandmother.
I can't bring myself to tune it because I love the sad warble. We used the home recordings I made with that piano on this track and a few others.
Sleeper Hold
This song took me days to write and years to finish - primarily because I wanted to make it weirder and just couldn't figure out how to do so.
Eventually I just decided to stop fighting it and let it be the pop song it wanted to be. I was feeling kind of frustrated with the song, but Maryn really liked it so I asked her to sing it, and that brought it back to life for me.
Estuary
The place where a river empties itself into the ocean.
Rare Form
I really fussed over this song. I liked the riff and the melodies so much.
There was a point, after I demoed the song, when other people weren't really feeling it. I felt like I was defending my beloved yet homely child.
The whole time recording, I felt there was a bit of tension between me and everyone else - including the producer Mike, who was like "mayyyybe cut this one?"
We worked and worked, and it became this wall of sound kind of thing. Finally I think other people came around to it, or gave up trying to get me to cut it.
Bad Ideas
In many ways this is the antithesis of Rare Form, which is why I thought it worked well immediately after. Rare Form is a wall of sound - all constraints cast aside.
I wanted Bad Ideas to be a sparse as possible, close and tight and weird.
I was trying to see how few parts I could use while still giving the song what it needed. Thus the drum machine.
The Awefull Yawn
To quote Fred Neil:
"Everybody's talkin' at me
I don't hear a word they're sayin'
Only the echoes of my mind"
How Many Blankets Are In The World?
This song emerged all of the sudden. It was the last song I finished for the album.
How many blankets are in the world?
Maybe you can never know, but if you keep counting you can be a little closer.
River
The ah-ha moment with this song was the riff.
I kept trying a synth or string part over the instrumental sections, but nothing was working. I was listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival and just amazed by how powerful and iconic they made just a few guitar notes sound. I decided to try something like that, so I borrowed Steve's telecaster, cranked up the overdrive and there it was.
Soft Edges
Inspired by Quantum Foam, a description of the fabric of the universe.
When you zoom way way way down to the bottom or zoom way way way out, at their most fundamental, things become probabilities - fuzzy, indeterminate, soft.
The All Full On
I was experimenting with what I call palindrome songs.
I sing a phrase that works both melodically and lyrically forwards, and reversed.
If you sing "the awful yawn" and then play it backwards, it sounds like "now you'll find/fight".
Necker Cube
I named this song after the optical illusion. A necker cube is that famous line drawing that looks like a 3-D box. I liked the idea that we project our perceptual biases to resolve ambiguity. Even though all we're actually seeing is a series of lines, we make it into a box shape in our heads.
Lazarus
Lazarus is based on the story of a man being brought back to life from the dead.
I was wondering what it might feel like to wake up from death. What if you left your body, but when you came back it didn't seem to fit quite like it used to?
House Divided
I saw a band singing the word "hallelujah" in one of their songs.
It seemed like a powerful sound so I built this song around it.
Maya 31
I got to see the New Zealand band, The Clean, play a small festival in Columbus.
Rather than playing the hits they just played all of these drone-y psych rock jams.
I felt inspired, so I went home and wrote this song. I wanted to create an album closer that conjured up the vibe of Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles.
Such Things is released this Friday 9 October via Anti-.
