Envision a lake, early August. Maybe there’s the hum and whistle of birds, or shooting reeds concealing a family of mallards, and maybe even you, on the back of a boat slicing through water. Beginning inside of an environment and allowing yourself to expand with the scene slowly becomes an exercise in evocation, grabbing from infinite images, emotions, and sounds; for Slow Pulp, it is in these pictorial prompts where most of the music begins.
“When we’re writing some of the songs, we’ll use landscapes to describe the production style we want…[W]e’ll use rolling hills and cows, or wakeboarding on the lake,” lead singer Emily Massey tells me. Thus, the music that arises is not situated simply on a sonic or emotional plane, but somewhere spatial and visual, too.
Such an idea plays out on the snappy single “Slugs,” which transports listeners to a summer backroad; fittingly, the accompanying music video features the quartet circling mountainside drives in an orange Ford. With the wind whipping and the car radio static crackling through the speakers, the song’s distorted guitar lines and stretched vocal lines feed into such images. The ability to create these sonic landscapes is not pure luck, but rather what Massey and the band describe as a “shared language centered around where and how we grew up.”
The entire band, including guitarist/producer Henry Stoehr, bassist Alex Leeds, and drummer Teddy Mathews, grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, pivotal to the Midwestern evocations within their music. Massey emphasizes that there is “something about being in Wisconsin that is really inspiring and feels very homey…I feel very comfortable there.” On their forthcoming sophomore record Yard, out September 29th via ANTI-, the music resonates with this idea of a shared connection. “I think a common theme is that each song is about some relationship within my life. Our first record, [Moveys], was really reckoning with my relationship with myself and this album is completely outside of myself. I’m still reflecting, but it’s reflecting with my connection to others.”
This duality—moments of isolated sentimentality alongside the collective effort—frames the record, a sort of coming-of-age and growth within both the sound and the creative process. Moving into their sophomore record, a notoriously daunting terrain for any musician, Massey’s emphasis on the band’s commitment to learning and discovery reveals little fear.
“There’s still so much exploring and trying different things to see what’s the best way to make an album and work together as a group, but it felt a little bit less daunting making the second record. Sometimes it’s more scary because you’re like, ‘I have to make something better than the last one,’ but for me, I think I was able to take a little bit of the pressure off of myself knowing that I did it once before and something will happen again—what it’s going to be, I’m not sure. I’m even feeling that way going into the third album, being like, ‘I’ve learned a lot, I still have so much to learn.’ It’s always a mystery.” It’s a fitting claim to the one word with which Massey first tried to summarize the album: “process.”
For the band, believing in the process and channeling experience into the music has been pivotal. Their first record, released in October 2020, limited their ability to experience a true album rollout, from limited in-person interviews to live performances. At the time, Massey was vocal about both personal and familial setbacks that occurred during the production of Moveys, though emphasized music as a form of “healing”. Moving towards this new album, she expanded upon this meditative approach, writing a majority of the record at a friend’s cabin in northern Wisconsin. “I think being alone to write a lot of the melodies and lyrics for the song allowed me to have this space to be vulnerable and more outwardly emotional than I would with other people and I think that’s something that I really want to continue as a part of our process.”
When the band comes together to arrange and produce the songs, this collaborative effort becomes even more apparent. “[Stoehr]…will take the songs and all the fun, magical bits that make the world each song lives in,” Massey says. Like the distorted rewinding and fast-forwarded vocals at the end of “Cramps,” almost recalling a fuzzy VCR screen. “Trusting the song is key for that; we’ll hear how the energy is at its core and then take it into the world it wants to live in, rather than trying to direct it into a certain space.”
These created images are also tethered to the band’s influences, as if drawing on The Smashing Pumpkins’ scenes of “Junebug skipping like a stone” or Joni Mitchell’s recollections of “painted ponies going up and down.” These varied inspirations explain the album’s genre defiance. Massey says, “[A] song like ‘Cramps’ came out of a jam and us being loud when we wrote it, versus…‘Broadview,’ which started super sparse. I think that is part of the fun of the album, you don’t know what to expect.” From shoegaze to alt-rock to folk-Americana, Slow Pulp’s music holds a sort of playfulness and experimentation that all lead back to the theme of trial and error and the process of growth.
In their visuals, there is a similar root planted. Take the visualizer for the folk-driven single, “Broadview,” a meditative foray into opening oneself up to love. Informed by a melancholic melody and Neil Young-inspired harmonicas, visual artist Melanie Kleid concocts an array of pastel tableaus depicting the dual sensation of human connection and seclusion. “I think something about our music does relate well to animation…There’s an underlying aspect of animation that can be cartoonish or involve some sense of adolescence, and I think that relates to the music,” Massey describes. Within “Broadview” there is a sense of reflection, as if exploring something ubiquitous with youth, but now lensed through a matured perspective. Through its black, encompassing backgrounds and illustrative quality, it leaves us to see reflections of ourselves, while realizing what has been lost and what memories remain.
Along with the sonic and visual fields that Slow Pulp navigates, there is still the physical space—one they plan to utilize to the fullest extent on their upcoming tour. Commencing October 4 in Chicago and concluding December 16 in Munster, Germany, the band is more ready than ever to get out and play. Of course, this is far from their first encounter with touring; they have hit the road with some of the biggest indie-rock acts such as Death Cab For Cutie, Pixies, and Alvvays. This time, though, the band is “really excited to do another headlining tour and have so many songs to choose from.” With this go around, the prospect of a “proper” setlist with two albums and a few EPs worth of music, plus more than fifteen shows across Europe, surpasses many of the band’s dreams.
Still, with so much lined up for the band’s future, Massey remains grounded in development. She is candid about her own difficulties with making music and feeling confident in what she was creating, saying, “I’ve spent so much time in my discovery of music or exploration as a songwriter being so mean to me or being so self-critical.” It’s the type of confession playing out on a track like “Doubt,” seeing Massey navigating an unsureness and her previous pattern of fishing for criticism.
It is a feeling she’s growing out of, aided by the epiphany that “everyone who writes music, everyone who plays instruments or does anything in music is just trying and just shooting in the dark and seeing what happens.” She continues, “Failure is okay, making something you don’t like is part of the process…[Y]ou’ll be learning and trying for the rest of your life. I wish I had that happen earlier in my life, just trusting in myself earlier and giving myself the grace to explore.”
For the group, these ideas of development is a combination of both their art and the members’ interrelations. “We want to continue growing and working on our process, while feeling like our interpersonal relationships continue to be so solid and that we keep taking care of each other.” With Yard, a testament to navigating relationships and growing together, it is hard to imagine a better album soundtracking the coming adventures on Slow Pulp’s plate.
Yard is out now; listen here. Photography by Alexa Viscius.