Sad Park have just released their third album, NO MORE SOUND, and New Noise caught up with vocalist Graham Steele, guitarist Aidan Memory, bassist Sam Morton, and drummer Grant Bubar to discuss the new album and how it was recording the album with Sean Bonette from AJJ.
What inspired NO MORE SOUND?
Grant: That’s a good first question. So, Graham is the main songwriter. He brings us songs, and we work on them as a band. And, you know, Graham was already going for it, writing many songs and moving forward. And the biggest inspiration was that we were listening to ’90s alt-rock stuff, which was a huge inspiration to us. I’m sure we all have our inspiration that we brought to, like, the individual parts, but that was the big musical thing as a whole.
Graham: Yeah, I was inspired, and inspired is a really optimistic word. Coming out of a pandemic world where you can’t play music, really, and all you can do is write and everything. I came out looking at life and things a lot differently. And I just started appreciating moments a lot more. And there are a lot of times on the album where I touch on the point of just wanting to stay in a moment. In like a single moment for however long I possibly could, and yet I can’t, you know. So just appreciating those really special things while they’re here, enjoying them, and recognizing them while they’re there before they’re gone. And you’re not having that moment anymore, which I think. A lot of. Those special moments were sitting in the studio and recording the album, so it was perfect for me.
Sam: It was interesting because many songs for this album came naturally and quickly. There wasn’t much conversation about what we were going for on the songs.
Grant: Yeah, every time we get asked a question like this, it’s always funny because, like, what’s cool about our band is, like, we all like different types of music. And we’re all drawing on different things when we write certain parts. And, like, that’s how the songs end up, and I’m super proud of it. We don’t sound exactly like one band or the other, and so like Sam was saying, and Graham too, like, being in the studio. It was interesting. Like, I have kind of been stalking the YouTube comments. Many people have started being like, wow, this reminds me of the Strokes, which is really funny because that’s certainly not a band that I was listening to. When we were doing it, like in the studio. There were a lot of Strokes. Being played and Aidan, I know you got into the strokes.
Aiden: Dude, yeah, after we made the record. I was like, The Strokes are the best band in the fucking world.
You touch a bit of everything on this album, from gritty pop punk and the ska-inspired song “ART WILL BE GONE” with the horns in it, to Indie garage punk “ALWAYS AROUND,” and the somber vibe on “CAROSUEL.” Then there’s the throwbacks on the closing song “NO MORE SOUND.” But the lyrics on some of the songs do seem heavy at times..
Graham: Well, The funny thing was working on a lot of the lyrics was, I don’t really write many lyrics down ever. I’ve just gone in and recorded the other albums without writing anything. This time, we were working with Sean (Bonette) from AJJ and wrote a couple of lyrics here and there. But the stuff that got a little bit deeper was that we would finish recording the song with all the instrumentals and everything.
Sean and I would sit down to a song like “CAROSUEL;” we’d be sitting there, and we’d be like, “God, I mean, this song just kind of feels nostalgic.” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m feeling the same way.” And he’s like, “Yeah, but I like it. It feels like you’re just longing for this moment and the nostalgia you’re feeling. It feels like you’re grabbing for something and trying to stay there, like, desperately, as the song almost feels desperate.” And that was a really cool thing that we got to do: record the music and hear the music. What are we feeling from this music, sitting down, and then going off that feeling at that moment and recording it from there or writing the lyrics from there. So, it all stays in that theme a lot because we all did it in that one tiny frame of recording the album.
Sam: I mean, yeah, that was, like, three days, right?
Graham: Well yeah.The album took 10 days. Then we wrote all the lyrics for the whole album, minus one or two songs, in, like, three days.
Was that the fastest you’ve ever recorded an album?
Graham: Yeah, it was by a long shot. The other albums we’ve done were scrappy. OK, we’re all free this day; let’s record this day. Let’s do it here, spread out through the years because of the pandemic and stuff like that. And this one was like, you’re going in the studio; you have 10 days; you’re going to record everything. Then after those 10 days, you’re going to be done. I mean, granted, we’re really lucky. I live closest to the studio so, after everything, I went back two days later to record one line. Sean was like, “Record this one line. You need this one line.” But the whole album, yeah, 10 days. It was beautiful. We were stuck with each other for 10 days.
Grant: Like Graham was saying, the last album, we recorded drums, like ,the first half, and then six months later, we recorded the second half and the same thing for everything. And so it kind of lacked a cohesive sort of vibe. We tried our best, but it’s like there’s something about being there in 10 days and, obviously, you know, writing all the lyrics, but also just like, creatively, we were all in the same state for most of those 10 days.
It just feels that even though the songs sound different, it feels very cohesive. We talked about it—Graham, you called me one night, and it was like, “Oh, is this going to be like a concept album?” And I think you were talking with Sean about the idea that because we’re recording it and writing it in such a short time, it will naturally feel like a conclusive concept album without us really intending it to. And I think that’s something really cool and wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have to do the album in those ten days.
I was reading the press release right before you guys came on. And you mentioned the album’s focus, like love, death, life, and time. You hear it a lot, as you said, with “CAROSUEL.” It’s definitely about time. And then” DEATH” kind of gives death away. But tell me a bit more about the themes of the album. Did you guys go through a lot of hardships during the pandemic?
Graham: The pandemic was an interesting one because it felt like a time in which a lot of bands had already found success, and were already doing something, and were already touring, kind of. Not all of them, but some bands looked at the pandemic as, like, “Oh man, I’ve been touring nonstop for all these years. I get to chill out for a bit and enjoy it.” And obviously, that’s the mindset in the beginning until, like, you’re a year in, and you’re like, “I want to play music.” But a lot of bands just kind of stopped posting and stopped pushing their stuff and stopped doing stuff, and we hadn’t got to that point yet. We hadn’t gone on our first U.S. tour until after the pandemic, so we still wanted to be pushing and doing stuff. So while everything was going on during the pandemic, we at no point ever stopped. We were like, “We need to be pushing and still growing our band and still recording the album and still doing everything that we can to be a functioning band in a pandemic where you can’t even play live music.” And it worked.
We did pretty well. I’m pretty sure we came out of the pandemic with a lot more people knowing who we were and and and finding out about us during the pandemic, and so—then releasing an album like immediately after the pandemic going on tour immediately after the pandemic, we got our chance actually to do it, you know.
Grant: If we went through hardships during the pandemic, you know, I certainly don’t want to speak to Graham’s lyrics that he wrote with Sean, which is always funny. Like when we get asked these questions, and then it’s like, oh, you know, as a band, how do you relate to these lyrics? You know, make fun of me a little bit and be like, yeah, Grant, tell them what I meant with those words. But something nice, and you know this is tangentially related to your question, but we were asked to do this like the promo where I had to give, like, a minute story about the album, and I ended up telling the story about kind of, like, where you know when all those themes kind of hit home for me, as we said like we didn’t know what the lyrics were until Graham started recording them, you know, and when we were recording the song “DEATH,” I was sitting there in, like, the control booth, and we were recording the chorus. It was like, “If I could make time, I’d make so much time, I’d make the time to spend some time with you.”
Danny started getting teary-eyed. Danny, the owner of Balbao, is the engineer and co-producer for the album. And it kind of just hit me. Oh, there’s a dude who’s, like, a father of a young child and has spent almost every waking hour of the last seven or eight days at the studio with us. And, like, those lyrics hit him in this way where it was like, oh man, this guy is just missing his family and missing his son. And he is connecting so much to the lyrics on the album that he is co-producing and recording. That moment was really important for me and made me realize that’s what this album is about, you know? As Graham said earlier, it’s about those little moments and, you know, whatever hardships we might have faced as a band. And over the pandemic, like that little moment of this beauty of this man missing his family. It clicked for me, and I was like, oh shit. That’s what the album is about. This album is about appreciating these little moments and joy and not getting too bogged down in the other shit. At least for me; I don’t want to, you know, analyze.
You worked with Sean Bonette from AJJ; how was it working with him? Have you worked with him before?
Sam: We’ve never worked with him before. Before we entered the studio, he came out to Northridge, where we practiced. We Zoomed with him in the past, but it was the first time we met him. And we just played through all the songs for four days. Like, you know, him getting familiar with everything. We started going through some song structure stuff. We worked just like four, six, eight-hour days or something. And then we got to a place where we were like, “all right, these songs are feeling good.” We entered the studio, but it all happened quickly, like we wanted to work with the producer. And we were trying to think of people who would be good. I think, Graham, just one day we were kind of struggling as we had talked about a few other people but were just like, “Why don’t we hit up Sean? Like, would they be down?” and it seemed like the next day.
Graham: Same day we hit, I texted Chad, and I was like, “Hey, could we contact Sean Bonnette from AJJ? And I want to see if he’d be down to produce the record.” We sent three demos over to him. I think only one of the songs stayed on the album, “ART WILL BE GONE.” We sent him three demos, and 40 minutes later, our manager texted us and said, “Sean thinks this is dope. Sean wants to work with you guys. Let’s hop on a Zoom call.” We hopped on a. Zoom call the next day, and he was just like, “I love It. Let’s do it. I’m in. Let’s do it.” And we were like, “Alright!”
Aidan: It was really cool, man. ‘Cuz, like, Sean had also never produced an album. So, I think, like, hey, I feel like he was trying to figure it out too. I don’t know, and it was cool that he was just like, “Fuck it, I’m in. I like these songs; let’s do it.” With a band that he had never met or heard of, like, it was pretty fucking cool.
Graham: Yeah, he drove from Arizona to California to see us, hang out, and then work on the songs. And we, you know, we don’t have a professional practice space. We played in my hot, no-AC garage. So, we did that in the middle of summer, and Sean was down and hung out with us. We got all the local food around my neighborhood, and he was our best friend after that. I feel like it was like love at first sight with Sean.
Grant: Yeah, you know, I disagree. I didn’t like him at all. (laughs) Joking aside, I was the most against a producer. I was just like, “I don’t know about fucking someone coming in, some dude we don’t know. He’s gonna fuck up all the songs.” And I was like, “Whatever,” and then it was like, “Oh, it’s going to be Sean.” And it was like, here’s this guy we all respect, and after that, my worries were immediately assuaged. I was just like, we all respect any decision this man makes. He really just kind of—he was, like, umami, you know? He just kind of made us as a band better. Sean didn’t change the flavor. He just made it tastier.
NO MORE SOUND is out now via Pure Noise.
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Photo courtesy of Alice Baxley
