the deep listen - day 1

Welcome to Day 1 of The Deep Listen! A great deal of love, work, and time went into making Sprezzatura a reality. We’re excited as all get-out to be able to finally share the inner workings with you. (Revealing how much sweat went into this is probably counter to the spirit of the word “Sprezzatura”, but hey… we are vast, we contain multitudes and so on.)

On the board today are the album’s first two singles: “Loving U’s a Beautiful Thing”, and “Waiting (Scenes From a Lonely Planet)”. Scroll down or hit one of the buttons to get started!

“…there couldn’t be a better anthem to sing along with—to and for whatever we all love.” —Earmilk

the songs

behind the songs

loving u's a beautiful thing

Love, you really got me this time
Took me by surprise and I knew
It couldn’t happen otherwise
You impair my ability
With your heavy machinery
I gotta tell you now

Loving u’s a beautiful thing
A beautiful thing
A beautiful thing

Love, my senses you intensify
Send me up the river to float
You make me want to testify
You’ll be my disciple of love
Let me hear you talking in tongues
I wanna tell you now

You’re the butter to my toast
You’re the ocean to my coast
Ohhhhh
You’re the lie in my truth

waiting (scenes from a lonely planet)

Judy speaks
but no one listens
to her pleas
‘Cause they don’t speak
the language that she’s
learned to hear

Now you see
they’re all waiting
on her doubts
and her fears
Judy waits, contemplates
on the best road out of here

Do you recall
a love so unknown?
Please remember
’cause it’s calling you home

Everyone loses something
Judy knows it’s not
all worth mourning

Flowers fade in the distance
seeking water from frozen soil
Judy’s eyes court the last plane
out of town

If she runs
she can make it
to the airport terminal
Fare gets paid
Mind is made
Now the world’s open and light

EXTRAS

“Loving U’s a Beautiful Thing” (horns/bass/drums)

Understatement of the year: horns feature heavily on this record. Here’s a heavily stripped-down mix putting the horns on “Loving U’s a Beautiful Thing” front and center. The horn section on Sprezzatura consists of Andy Bergman (who arranged the horns for the record) on tenor and baritone sax, Eric Ortiz on trumpet, and Brian Paulding on trombone.

To make the most of our time at Mad Oak Studios with the album’s co-producer Benny Grotto, we created a road map for each of Sprezzatura‘s 11 songs detailing which instruments we intended to record and the general vibe of each song. Drums are typically the most involved instrument to record, so the songs were divided into three groups based on which particular drum sounds we were aiming for. Charles, as the band’s in-house recording engineer, got the ball rolling with ideas for these groupings; both “Loving U’s a Beautiful Thing” and (after a little debate) “Waiting (Scenes From a Lonely Planet)” ended up in Group 1.

Click to enlarge

Tanya Leal-Soto directed this 360º video for “Waiting (Scenes From a Lonely Planet)” — starring Michaella Vu and Bobby Coyne. Previously only available at festival showings, this video is being made public here for the first time! Just hit play to watch the video and drag through to see what’s happening all around! (*iOS users may require the YouTube app to view it properly.)

The official music video for “Loving U’s a Beautiful Thing” • Directed and animated by Matt Maguire

Tomorrow we dive into the next two songs: the apocalyptic “Hungry Land” and the string-laden rocker “Lovers of the Last Resort”. Till then, thank you for listening.

the deep listen - day 1

the songs

behind the songs

loving u's a beautiful thing

waiting (scenes from a lonely planet)

EXTRAS

“Loving U’s a Beautiful Thing” (horns/bass/drums)

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