Thus Love arrived in the UK from Battleboro, Vermont for a number of live dates including festivals and headline shows. Interviewing the band before their sold-out gig at the Hug and Pint in Glasgow the discussion included not only their second album ‘All Pleasure’ (out today via Captured Tracks), but serendipitous encounters, becoming a four-piece, and the importance of joy in creativity.
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Congratulations on new album ‘All Pleasure’! Your 2022 debut ‘Memorial’ was such a success. New band members Ally Juleen (bass) and Shane Blank (guitar, keyboards) joined before you started recording. Is that right?
Echo: Just about. Ally had moved to the area two years prior to joining the band, and we had met via Shane and Ally’s old band Bat House at the Sultan Room in New York when we played a show together. We were a three piece then playing with Nathaniel (van Osdol, bass), and we hit it off. Then Lu walked into the Co-Op in Putney, Vermont, where we were both living at the time, and Ally was in there! Later, when Nathaniel left the band for personal reasons, we really needed a bass player. We got offered this run of shows in Brazil right around that time. So we said “Ally, will you please play bass?” And Ally said “Of course, what an amazing opportunity!” We had a great time, but there was a big preface of she knew that we were looking to be a four piece, and said “I will be in this band if I can ask my best friend Shane to join as well as another guitar player”, which was what we were looking for.
Lu (Racine, drummer): It was a package deal!
Shane (Blank, guitarist and keyboardist): At the time, I was living in Seattle with my fiancé. I was working a job and having a good time, living a very domestic life. Getting this opportunity to join this group was so cool. And on a personal level, you know each other (Echo and Lu), Ally and I know each other. So I think personally, bringing the two pods together, it made sense, we basically have the support system starting out, built in.
Echo: Dovetail off of that, we had put out ‘Memorial’, Bat House had put out ‘Twenty Mule Team’. I think things just kind of plateaued for all of us, in a way. We got to do some really cool international touring that we had never done before. We had done some touring the States, but Bat House had done extensive touring in the US, which we hadn’t done. So when we came together, we were all kind of on the same page of, how do we put our heads together and make the best possible band with the platform we already have via Thus Love, and aim for longevity, and for you know, atmosphere, comfort. We made ‘All Pleasure’ based on a few demos that I had done, and flushed them out all together over a myriad of different recording sessions between my rustic woodland apartment in Putney and also our engineer Matthew Hall’s studio where we recorded all the drums.
And am I right in thinking that the title track was written last and it’s the one that’s with the four of you?
Echo: Yeah, so I had the notion of calling the album ‘All Pleasure’. That was a title that I’ve been running through my mind since we were in the midst of the ‘Memorial’ touring cycle. We wanted to start actually writing songs together and start the process, how do we cultivate new music altogether as a band in a practice format? And that is how ‘All Pleasure’ the song was borne. Then we figured, hell, this is the first one we’re doing in this capacity. It feels the freshest, it feels the most organic and beautifully, in some ways the messiest. And so we felt it was really fitting to make it the title track.
I have to highlight the song ‘Face To Face’. Your vocal is breathtaking Echo and accompanied by only a piano. It stops you in your tracks. The lyrics are quite introspective, and it flows beautifully from that place of vulnerability into ‘Lost In Translation’, which has a more commanding and bold vocal delivery. Did you look to have a flow through the songs on the album?
Echo: Absolutely yeah, we had a couple ideas for the running order of the songs, but where it is now is definitely the best flow for the record. There are a couple songs that were somewhat written to go into each other. But obviously a lot of things changed. And we all gave our input, but we landed on, I would say, definitely the best running order in terms of emotional delivery and engagement.
Echo apparently you said when you were going in to start recording: “If it isn’t joyful, don’t do it.”
Echo: Sure, that’s definitely the basis of when I came up with the notion for ‘All Pleasure’ as an album title before the song was written, the mutual ethos of, if we’re gonna make another band together, if we’re gonna keep doing this, it has to be joy based, it has to be fun, it has to be fulfilling, and everyone’s needs have to be met as much as possible, despite touring obviously being pretty rough a lot of the time. At least for the song, ‘All Pleasure’ that has a lot to do with that concept for us as a band, but again, also introspectively for my personal life, which ends up happening a lot as the lyricist. I definitely write about me, but definitely for us.
I’ve got to ask about the video for ‘Birthday Song’. Did you flesh out a storyboard or did you hand the directors a brief!
Echo: We made it with our good friends Benny and Augie. We had done the ‘Centerfield’ video together, so when it came time to make videos, we figured it’s best to start where we’re most comfortable, where we already have relationships. We had some mutual ideas, but they were all very vague, and we knew that a lot of it was going to come together when we were making it. But when the proposal, went out, we said there’s gonna be two animals. We’re not gonna tell you which ones!
Lu: It’s going to be a whimsical fairy tale.
To finish off, you’re back in the UK playing not only Reading and Leeds festival but headline shows plus Brighton and Manchester Psych Fest and End of the Road. How does it feel to be back here?
Echo: Incredible. I mean, Lu and I have been here before, which is great, yeah, so this is our third time.
Shane: This is my first time out of the States so it’s been very exciting to be here. I think Americans have an assumption that we don’t have accents. My fiancé is on tour with us as well and we were walking around London in front of some girls. They were American, and we’re like “Oh my god, is that what we sound like!”
Echo: We went to a bar, and I tried to order a drink, and the guy laughed at me, just straight up laughed at me because he couldn’t understand what I was saying!
Shane: So it’s humbling, yeah, but it’s also very exciting. Being in Scotland right now, we’re far from where we’re from, and it’s beautiful. We performed in a record store earlier (Assai Records in Edinburgh) earlier near a castle built on some kind of volcanic rock. Not something you can say about any place in America!
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‘All Pleasure’ is out now.
Words: Julia Mason
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez
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