For those who are fans of Smut, their new full-length album Tomorrow Comes Crashing takes you down a new and exciting avenue from their previous works; and for those who haven’t heard Smut before, the record is a captivating introduction to this genre bending ensemble. Smut is based out of Chicago and made up of vocalist Tay Roebuck, guitarists Andie Min and Sam Ruschman, Aidan O’Connor on drums, and bassist John Steiner. They bridge their sound between pop rock, shoegaze, alt-rock, and hints of post-hardcore sprinkled throughout tracks. This project was produced via Bayonet Records and released on June 27th. This project is a well-rounded look at what this group is capable of as they put their progression on full display. Produced via Bayonet Records, the album was released on June 27th.
Tomorrow Comes Crashing is a conquest album, with a drawn out writing process, lineup changes along the way, and a labored recording process, albeit one full of love and accomplishment. The band dragged their equipment from Chicago to New York and spent countless hours over a 10-day period in the studio to bang out their final product. The album is a reflection of their dedication, blood, sweat, and possibly a few tears along the way. Just a day before the official release, I sat down for a chat with Roebuck, O’Connor, and Steiner to discuss their newly developed dynamic, a new wave of musical experimentation, and the raw emotion that each member poured into each track.
Let’s talk about the production process for the album….it seems like it was an intensive and exhausting experience getting it recorded, can you expand upon that?
Tay Roebuck: We stayed on a couple of friends’ floors in New York and recorded it all within 10 days. Every morning we would just wake up, drive out to Red Hook and then spend all day in the studio. We would run over to the grocery store and grab sandwiches or whatever and just wouldn’t leave from morning to night when we finally left. And when we were recording, it was really we just got in and we started playing. All band members were playing together for every song but it was awesome. It was really intense. While it’ll make us tired, we wouldn’t have it any other way. A labor of love.
While definitely strenuous, I don’t think anything will compare to the pure ecstasy of recording together, being together for those 10 days all the time and just the pure joy of finally seeing these vocal pieces come together. I think I’m always trying to remind myself, we’re so lucky to just get to shred our faces off all the time.
Tell us how you [Roebuck] eventually blew your voice out by the time it was all said and done?
Roebuck: I was singing for 10 days so by the eighth day when we were actually doing vocals, like vocal takes, we were down to the last song, which was “Touch and Go” and my voice was just shot. It was completely gone so I had like six bears of honey in a row and cloves of raw ginger. I was melting cough drops in throat coat tea and chewing ginger. I would do that before every single take to try and get it. Then Aaron really worked his magic on that because we recorded like 80 takes and he made it sound like one take.
This album took a while to write, was there anything in particular that eventually drew out that writing process?
Roebuck: So we started writing it pretty much immediately after How the Light Felt three years ago and then we spent a while sort of just chipping away. Then we had a lineup change where we didn’t have a bass player and were looking for one for a couple of months and finally locked down John. Honestly, I feel like when John joined the band, we felt this sort of renewed energy with having this completely locked in rhythm section. After that, we just hammered out like half the album in like a few months, which was wild considering how long it took us to write the first half of the album.
Once you got into a rhythm and you figured out what you wanted to say and what you wanted to present in this album, what themes were important for you to cover?
Roebuck: For me, I really wanted to make an album, a really emotional album. I had this idea of wanting to express really big feelings because I wanted people to be able to have something to listen to when they’re feeling those feelings, and that included like ugly feelings. Like if I was feeling jealousy or frustration or devastation or super excited or really hopeful; I kept in mind that I wanted to make a sort of soundtrack for moments in other people’s lives, so that’s kind of what I was going for.
Aidan O’Connor: Yeah, I feel like my mission statement when I joined the band is to want to pump everything with energy. I wanted it to freaking come off the page or the plastic or whatever you want to call it. I wanted it to feel like a freight train and the train could come off the road at any minute. I just wanted to bring this unpredictable kind of exciting energy to it. For the drums, I feel like that’s all you can do, its all intuition.
John Steiner: Coming in kind of like halfway through the writing and development, I just wanted to support as best as possible and make inputs that would make the impacts of those emotions felt as effectively as possible. With the bass, just spending time literally thinking about every note and making sure it’s right.
It seems that you leaned into the heavier side of things with this album in particular and ‘m curious if that’s something that you are going to continue exploring or pursuing as you all continue to progress?
Roebuck: I love intense and heavy music. I feel like with the last albums, I was very emotional and guarded because the emotions I was dealing with were grief and really sort of tender. So, it was a really fun exercise in a way to be able to shoulder off any embarrassment and just let yourself rip. The word I keep using is cathartic, to write and then play these songs. So if we got even more intense, I’d be happy. I feel like it’s a very freeing feeling to let yourself lose it on the track. It was an amazing writing experience to be able to let yourself be emotional in a group of people that are your friends.
I am a huge fan of the video you put out for Syd Sweeney, as its very horror movie coded, I would love to hear more of the backstory for the creative direction that went into the video. It’s goofily cinematic and looks like it was a lot of fun to make.
It’s called Syd Sweeney because she was like a direct sort of inspiration for it. I feel like this thing happens pretty frequently with women in Hollywood where people can’t separate the character from the person. I think a woman in any field of work where you try really, really hard and then have to sell themselves aesthetically. For me, I just want to give you the song and have you be able to digest it. I don’t want to have to worry about how I look when I’m telling a story that I care about.
For the video, I’ve always wanted to do a horror music video and our friends Spencer and Joe from the band The Ophelias have wanted to make a video with us for a long time and they had just made a horror movie, a short film. It was like a perfect marriage and the timing was amazing. We were like, let’s do a slasher film in the woods and it was so much fun. We made a body double, like a dummy of Aiden, which was really weird to carry around. We were all covered in chocolate and strawberry syrup and It was freezing cold outside so once you had it on you, it froze almost instantly. We initially tried a recipe to make fake blood because of the sheer amount we wanted. We made it, but it was like water with chocolate powder and corn syrup, it just looked really strange. By that point, we were literally filming it already so we sent our manager to a grocery store and she just came back with her bottles of syrup. So, we were like, I guess we’re going to make it work.
Are there any songs that are particularly personal to you or speak the most to your own experience?
Roebuck: For me, it would be “Sunset Hymnal,” that’s my favorite one and our final track on the album. It’s really just big and it feels like an anthem in a way. But that is the most personal lyrically because I was writing about a funeral. I was writing about my little sister’s funeral, which is what the last album is sort of about, through an exploration of grief. This one felt really good to write as almost just a tribute to a moment and where I’m at now in that sort of grieving process as opposed to when we’re in the thick of it. It’s weird to have a song about that, one that you enjoy playing so much, but I really feel like I’m flying.
Order your very own copy of Smut’s Tomorrow Comes Crashing at Bayonet Records official website and stay up-to-date on upcoming tour announcements.
Tracklist
- Godhead
- Syd Sweeney
- Dead Air
- Waste Me
- Ghosts (Cataclysm, Cover Me)
- Burn Like Violet
- Touch & Go
- Crashing in the Coil
- Spit
- Sunset Hymnal
Photo courtesy of Jon Salazar
