When they stopped of in New York, QRO interviewed Jack O’Brien of The Bright Light Social Hour. In the conversation, the singer/bassist discussed their new album Space Is Still a Place, getting studio songs ready for the live setting, their videos for “Infinite Cities” and “Wendy Davis”, Cosmos & Miles Davis, and more…
QRO: The band has existed for over a decade, and the music world is quite different from what it was back in 2004. What do you feel it is that’s helped the band go on?
Jack O’ Brien: Not going on would be weird. We’ve always just done whatever we like musically with no regard for what we did in the past. I think that’s really helped keep us excited, knowing we can continue growing any way that feels good.
QRO: One thing that seems to be unanimously agreed upon is that you guys are great live performers. When you record new songs do you find yourself thinking about how they’ll fit into the live show?
JO: Yea of course. Although lately that’s been less of a concern. There’s two songs at the end of the record, “The Moon” and “Escape Velocity”, that we wrote in the studio maybe a year and a half ago and never tried as a band until last week, and we’ve been really excited about how they work with the full band.
QRO: Jack, what was it like directing the video for “Infinite Cities”. Do you feel there was a bit of contrast of how the experience was like in relation to what you anticipated the experience to be like?
JO: It was very cool. Yea, pretty different. I’d always wanted to make a video around that area that was meant to take place on some other planet, all of that limestone was underwater before the big drought and looks so out of this world. But it was pretty laid back, all the actors are friends and we decided to have them dance to no music at all, and match all the dancing up later, which I think made for a lot of extra exciting movement.
The Bright Light Social Hour’s video for “Infinite Cities”:
QRO: What was the initial spark for Space Is Still a Place. Did you know right off the bat that your efforts were going towards a new album or did that happen by accident?
JO: No it was a gradual thing. We’d worked on a lot of music that we’d scrapped before hitting a stride of songs that started really exciting us. That’s when we started talking about the things these songs had in common and what direction we wanted to take the rest of what would make up the album. It was a ton of really long conversations and thought experiments and trying to whittle that all down to something cohesive and exciting.
QRO: Who produced the album and what made you want to go with them? I read that it was pretty much fully engineered by you guys?
JO: It was all produced and engineered by Curtis [Rough, vocals/guitar], Jo [Mirasole, drums] and I. We’d do tons of sonic experiments with effects and preamps, microphones, etc. and shoot them all out ‘til we agreed on what was working best. Jo and Curt took the lead on the engineering, and we’d all sort of coach and encourage each other through recording like a producer would.
QRO: What’s it been like for a psychedelic band from Austin to tour Europe and other parts of the world? Has it ever been a struggle to find an audience abroad or has it been quite the opposite?
JO: We’ve never played in Europe, but there’s been a lot of love in Canada and Mexico. We hope to make it further abroad in the near future.
QRO: When it came to writing the new songs for the album did you end up finding inspiration from one particular place/instance or was it an accumulative of things on your mind?
JO: I think we were really influenced by each other and the people around us, but also from music we’d share with each other, things we’d read. Watching Cosmos and listening to Miles Davis probably most.
QRO: When it comes to songwriting as a group, what would you say is The Bright Light Social Hour’s strength that you’ve grown to love?
JO: That we never settle on a particular way or method of writing. That we’re always pushing each other to write new things in new ways and scrap everything we know in order to discover something new.
QRO: When I was reading up on you guys I found the video for “Wendy Davis” and it instantly made me want to yell, “fuck yes!” That type of DIY attitude is a brilliant thing to see. What surprised you from people’s reactions to that track and video?
JO: What was surprising was actually the positive feedback we got from it. There were definitely people who voiced strong opinions against it, which we expected and are very understanding of, but the overwhelming positive support really was not quite what we anticipated.
The Bright Light Social Hour’s video for “Wendy Davis”:
