Night's Bright Colors has been a vehicle for your songwriting since 2003. How does nowherehouse feel like a milestone in the project's evolution, especially coming after ‘Lanterna Magica’ and the self-titled album?
Honestly, this all started because a London label showed some interest in my home recordings, so I booked a little studio time with Kevin to redo a couple of tracks. I ended up being so floored by his production and musical input that I totally shifted gears. These were songs I’d been sitting with for two decades, and suddenly I wanted to re-record everything—old and new—with this amazing new sound. Nowherehouse is the continuation and evolution of that. While the first record was a sampler of this new sonic direction, and the second (Lanterna Magica) was a full-on concept album about the human journey, this latest release is a deep dive into childhood memories and how our identities are formed.
Tracks like “Early Grave,” “Halo,” “Little Lies,” and “Summer’s Place” paint a vivid emotional picture. What central themes or personal experiences tie the album together?
The album cover photo is looking out the window of my grandfather’s house in the 70s. I recently went back to that town after 25 years and though the location was still there, everything was different, of course. That place that is so vivid in my mind no longer exists. It’s a strange feeling to be confronted with a external reality that doesn’t match your internal one. This album tries to address that discrepancy while trying to preserve my experience. A lot of the songs are explicitly tied (“Summer’s Place” contains a sample of my grandfather singing in the 1940s for example) while others are suggested and fragmented.
You worked again with Kevin Boggs at Loc-Level Sound Studio. What was the collaborative dynamic like this time around, and how did it push the songs in new directions?
Kevin is absolutely amazing as a producer. His instincts for a song are impeccable. He also has an intuitive sense as an engineer about how things should sound. Add to that an impressive musical vocabulary and understanding and it is just rare that we don’t align on a given track.
Were there any happy accidents, abandoned ideas, or unexpected influences during the making of nowherehouse that ended up defining the record?
I knew I wanted to use more unconventional song structures (intros, outros, interludes, etc.) on this record to convey the fragmentary nature of memory but I wasn’t quite sure how that was going actually play out, if it would be too disruptive or jarring. It was after hearing how the little acoustic breakdowns in “Golden Hour Fade” turned out that really solidified the approach and even expanded the idea to some tracks that were initially more straightforward.
Your lyrics often feel poetic and emotionally precise. Is there a particular song on the album that was the most difficult or most rewarding to write, and why?
My approach to lyrics has always been phonetic, how the lyric sounds, the specific syllabic count etc. I also love word play, symbolism, and riddles so for that reason a lot of the wordier songs tend to be the harder ones to sustain my own interest. On the other hand, the few lyrically direct ones I attempt often turn out to be my favorites. I’ve been trying to get the general idea and sentiment of “Steps Of Your Street” across for 10+ years in different musical settings, lyrics, etc.
Now that ‘nowherehouse’ is out in the world, how has the early response been, and is there a particular fan reaction or interpretation that has surprised you?
For me, music is about connection and shared experience so by far the most meaningful response is when I hear from someone who I can tell really gets what I’m trying to do. We don’t really play shows or do social media which today is basically a musical death sentence but somehow, I’ll still get an email or something that really surprises me. You just never know how your actions will affect someone else and where it will reach them. That, to me, is symbolic of this great symphony we are all creating together.
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