Moving forward is a chaotic journey. The alternative rock band Oldsoul take on every step of it in their latest album, Education on Earth. Sonically experimental and vulnerable, the 10-track album tells the story of moving on and knocking down the hurdles you face along the way. Through wailing synths, distorted guitar tones, and poetic lyricism, the album takes us through the disorder of figuring things out.
The band’s main songwriters, Jess Hall and Tom Stevens, sat down with us to talk about what it took to create Education on Earth and what it takes to move forward.
I have to say, I’m really excited for this album release. Tell me a bit about Education on Earth. What initially sparked the inspiration for the album?
Stevens: It just pieced together. It started as a lot of demos we had been working on, and I had been working on alone. It’s hard to remember what the inspiration was… A lot of the demos came early on in the pandemic.
Hall: What’s funny is that this was the most separate we had been from each other writing, like, physically. But this album is the most cohesive we’ve ever been. So I feel like, in my opinion, the inspiration kind of came from the chaos of everything unraveling for everybody, including us and our lives, and then just coming back together in a way.
There’s been a clear evolution in your music from your past releases to this album. Do you ever take inspiration from your old work? Do you ever bring elements from past songs into your newer ones? Is there stuff that you deliberately leave out?
Stevens: We kind of build off of things we’ve tried in previous albums, especially in the production of the album and recording the album. I can’t think of anything like thematic that is continuous on every album. Maybe someone else listening could do that better than me.
Hall: When we were writing songs, they didn’t seem to have like “catchy structure—and not saying that matters, a lot of the music I listen to doesn’t have your standard “catchy song structure”—but I feel like we kind of drifted away from having multiple parts that work together but a little more random, where now I feel like our songs like a little more calculated in a way.
So maybe more intentional?
Hall: Right … You can grasp onto it a little more, follow along a little easier while still being texturally complex.
Stevens: When I’m writing songs now, I follow a structure that’s more consistent. It’s gotten more formulaic.
Hall: When I write, I just write. But I guess lately, it just happens to be based on what we listen to. “We start writing based on when we were like, “Oh, I like that song structure. Oh, I like it when it has a part like this there.” Then you kind of think about it for your own music and then add it in accidentally-intentionally.
What kind of stuff have you been listening to lately?
Hall: I’ve been listening to a lot of techno house music when I drive. In the realm of new music right now that’s come out, I love Taking Meds, and they just put out some new stuff … There’s so many good things coming out right now.
Stevens: I’ve been watching The Bear. The soundtrack’s really good in that show. Each episode will use at least one song really prominently at some point in the show. It doesn’t have anything to do with the theme, necessarily, but it really sets the tone of that scene or whatever the episode is. In the one I just watched, “Love Story” by Taylor Swift was the really prominent song, which didn’t fit at all with what was actually going on in the show, but I love that it fits the tone somehow. I like how they use music deliberately; it’s not just background.
When I was listening to your album, I was picking up on the story about this very un-linear process of moving forward, the hurdles that you experience while doing that, and the things that hold you back. You’ve covered themes like these in past songs you’ve released, too. What’s usually the catalyst for “moving forward?”
Hall: Cliche, but other people … Also, telling myself that I’m irrational. Not to say I live for other people, but what really gets me to the next point or the next stage is to look around me and get perspective on my life. You know, you can have bad things in your life, and that doesn’t diminish them, but you just look around you, and you’ll end up seeing the better of your life instead of the worst.
The band have taken on a few forms since you stepped into the scene. It’s been a couple of years since you released your last album, You Were Overwhelmed. How have you seen yourselves grow—both as independent artists and together– between then and now?
Stevens: This is the first music we put out and completed since I’ve been teaching full-time, so that’s been a pretty big life change for me … Being a first- and second-year teacher is really tough because you’re kind of just thrown into the deep end. It’s a really tough adjustment period. So working on the album during that was hard because it was hard to give it full attention, so it took a long time, and it was really piecemeal. While we were recording, it felt like it wasn’t coming together at all. It didn’t feel like there were any good songs on the album.
Hall: Which isn’t true now!
Stevens: It was interesting to go from early in the process, having so little confidence and in the album, to, as it went on and kind of things sort of took shape, and the songs were working with how they were being recorded and produced … That’s different from the other albums, I’d say. For the other albums, I felt good about the songs going into the recording sessions. There was more—not more “vision”—but I guess just more of a confidence.
Hall: I think our band has grown since 2015, not just with member changes and people coming and going, but Tom and I have decided now that Oldsoul is a collaborative; it’s a collective. Everybody’s in Oldsoul. We have a great lineup; we have a great band—I’m so excited. But Tom and I, we’ve solidified our bond with this record. This is our band, and we really have worked so hard to get to the point where we’re at now, and I think that the confidence really shines through with the songwriting, with the production.
Tom’s right. The process of recording the album was kind of chaotic with all the changes and how long it took, but it kind of makes sense with the record. I feel like life is so up and down all the time, and once you take a step back after all that stuff happened, something crazy cool comes out of it. Something good comes out of the bad or the uncomfortable. So I feel like our recording process, although was kind of rocky for a little while, I feel like it just kind of makes sense with the record. It just works.
That’s a really great perspective to have on it. Was there anything you learned from that process that you don’t feel like you would have gotten if you went into it with the songs fully formed and everything was solidified before walking into the studio?
Hall: I guess the only thing for me, at least personally, the only thing we’d do differently next time is to just be a little more prepared. But we’re musicians, so who knows? On a more serious note, I feel like there’s less life changes going on this time around. So it’s probably going to be a little more easy to like a little easier to organize our time now that we know what to expect with our adult schedules.
Stevens: I know how I would streamline the process in the future. I think in the future, anything we write will be not written by a band, it’ll be it’ll live on my computer as a demo first and then recorded later.
Hall: Tom and I are the songwriters of the band, so we’d just trust ourselves a little more next time. But I’m happy with everything, I wouldn’t change any of the process now with this result.
How has your process changed over the years?
Hall: At first, when we were a four-piece band at the beginning, we worked on a lot of the songs together when we were in loll. Then there was a little bit less of that on the second album, but it was still collaborative mostly. Now with this album, it was even more a project that we worked on and not so much a band-contributed effort. I feel like working on the record, it was us two, and Zach (Weeks), who was a huge part of making the album work. He was really working with me to produce it, and he’s a really good engineer with a really good ear and really good taste.
Hall: He wouldn’t agree with this, but he’s part of the band.
Stevens: To me, that was the biggest part in getting the album that we got out of it.
Hall: It’s exciting when you work with somebody for a while and then bring them something again, and they’re (ike), “Oh my god, I love this. I can’t wait to work on it.” I mean, that’s not exactly the words, but it’s nice when somebody has faith in you enough to contribute their thoughts and ideas because they care to add to it.
Stevens: He had a vision with his production going into it, because we recorded together before, that I didn’t really recognize until we were at the mixing stage. So it was cool to record with someone at that level.
You explore a whole spectrum of different styles across the whole album, as you’ve done in previous releases, too. How do you manage the balance between musical exploration and cohesion in your songs? Is that something you even consider when you’re writing, or do you just roll with it and put trust in what you create?
Stevens: That’s kind of where the production came in. We kind of just pulled demos from our pile of demos, chose the best songs we had, and recorded them. I think the cohesiveness comes from the production more than a plan going into it to make it flow. Even if there are different styles, the guitars were just recorded loud as fuck on every song, so that’ll give it some cohesiveness. That’s a big part of it, I think.
That has to make for a great show. I can imagine that it’s fun to perform that range live.
Hall: Oh yeah, we’ve got three guitar players, which is honestly kind of extra and kind of unnecessary, but it works so well.
I really appreciate the blend of styles throughout the album, actually. I feel like it creates a lot of depth in the storytelling. I think it really illustrates the complexity of the emotions and stories that you’re telling in your songs. You said a lot of that comes out in production, and you were really piecing together demos. But was that something you initially had in mind to do?
Hall: You know, it’s funny. This whole album was like an accident. Honestly, it’s weird how such an accident turned into one of the most cohesive things we’ve ever done … We didn’t plan any of this, and it all just fell into place, and it became the most cohesive thing we’ve ever done, in a weird way. The songs … were pulled, and none of them really had anything to do with each other, and we didn’t have this whole concept album figured out. But then all the songs’ themes, and then we added the production like Tom said, and it all just ended up being cohesive, and the themes worked. The order of the album worked with the message behind it was weird how it all kind of fell like that.
Stevens: I kind of feel like you can just take some totally different songs and put them together and give them a somewhat evocative title and maybe paired with imagery or visuals, and it’s going to stick together somehow … The title’s Education on Earth. We never planned that to be the title, that was just the name of one of the songs, until after we finished the whole thing. It just kind of felt like it fit. So it just works in like a founds poetic way, I think. I bet going back through the lyrics now, I could perceive some kind of cohesion because of that.
Hall: The cohesion is, to me, the album starts as somebody who thinks they’ve got it figured out, and then the rockiness between your ego and your confidence and whatever, you alienate yourself, or did they alienate you? Are you creating it? Then, at the end, you find I just gotta go back to Earth; I gotta come down back to Earth. So it’s funny how it worked out that way.
Jess, you have such a vast vocal range, and I feel like you use that as a storytelling tool throughout the album. You go from really soft and beautiful melodies to almost full-on yelling. When you’re writing melodies and recording your vocal tracks, is that something you’re very conscious of?
Hall: It really depends if Tom or I wrote it. It’s funny, when Tom writes a song and presents it to me, you know, he’s considering all the things that he knows I can do. He’ll come to me, and he’ll give me his demo, which is different than what I would do because we have different voices. Then he gives me his general idea of how he wants the vibe of the song to sound, and then I’ll contribute my ideas and my thoughts based on how I sing…I find that when I sing, I’m not really thinking too much about the fact that I’m singing. It’s more like I’m trying to tell the story of the song that I’m singing.
Was there ever a song that you envisioned taking on one form but went in an entirely different direction?
Stevens: The song “Crystal” I re-wrote and re-recorded many times to figure out how to fit the parts together. That went back to 2019 or something, and between 2019 to when we recorded and then when we started recording and 2022, it went through a lot of different rearrangements.
How do you let go of your original idea, or is that something you’re just not precious about at all?
Stevens: I try not to get attached and not be sentimental.
Hall: What’s that like, buddy? Please teach me!
Stevens: Everyone is going to hear it and see it a little bit differently. Sometimes my preferences are not objectively better, and I just try to recognize when a preference is just that—a preference and it’s not something important to the song. I think when you’re working with anyone else, you have to be flexible for it to work out. That’s how I feel about it, but I’m not sure if it’s true. I think sometimes people just have the vision, and that’s what it needs to be.
Hall: I usually get really upset it about it at first … I’ll obsess over it for a while and just keep trying to force myself to write something. Then it just doesn’t work when you force yourself to do anything, at least in my experience with myself. If I just put an idea on the back burner and forget about it for a while, eventually, I’ll go back to it and then be like, “Ah ha!”
Is there a song that speaks the most to you on the album?
Hall: It really depends on how I’m feeling when you ask me that question … My favorite song off the record right now—which will probably change next week—is “Lavender Cane” because it’s just, like, a bunch of nonsense. But I relate the most to that song because I have found in my life, not the specific crazy situations we talk about in that song, that are kind of just like exaggerations of things you do for people, but I’ve overextended myself for people in very, like, outlandish ways that are my fault for doing that stuff for other people at the end of the day.
Stevens: I always felt the best about “Crystal” and “High On Yourself” spoke to me back when we were first recording it. Early on, one of my favorites was one that we cut from the album … That was one that spoke to me the most when I was working on it somehow, so we’ll probably release that later on as a single.
Hall: I love the title track, which happens to be the last song on the record, “Education On Earth.” That song is just such an epic ending. I feel like it’s like, “alright, I fucking figured it out!” and then it kind of goes out with a bang. It ends with, like, “Maybe it’s time to start over,” which is funny because the album’s over.
Stevens: I forgot about that song! That one was a little bit special because I wrote it trying to mimic a poem that’s called “My Education on Earth,” so we took the title from that. I was just trying to mimic what I took out of that poem, what I thought was the message in that poem. So because that poem meant something to me, this song means kind of the same.
Now that you’re starting to do a bunch and have this album out in the world, what’s next?
Hall: We’re probably going to start writing more music.
Stevens: We’ll play some more shows in the Northeast throughout the year.
Hall: Hopefully, our record will bring something interesting for us, or we will create something interesting for ourselves.
You can stream Education on Earth here and follow the band on Instagram for show updates.
