Kyle Forester Interview: A Place of Sanctuary
“Marigold, it was a miracle,” sings Kyle Forester on his upcoming second album Hearts in Gardens. The sentiment of the line is emblematic of Forester’s attitude these days. In between his 2016 self-titled debut and now, the former Crystal Stilts and Ladybug Transistor and now Woods member, like everyone else, saw his fair share of highs (the birth of his child, playing on Purple Mountains’ self-titled record, forming a band to play his solo material) and lows (the death of David Berman, the political world at large). So in general but especially on Hearts in Gardens, Forester chooses to focus on the little things, from the flowers in a garden to the sun-kissed psychedelia of his peers.
Speaking to me over the phone last month while walking around and outside an arts supplies store in New York, Forester touched on the writing and recording process of Hearts in Gardens, as well as the books, movies, and albums that inspired or remind him of it. The album’s out February 21st, and he’s playing an opening gig Saturday at Alphaville in Brooklyn and a headlining show March 14th at The Sultan Room, The Turk’s Inn. Read our conversation, edited for length and clarity below.
Since I Left You: You had a lot of positive life changes leading up to this record. Is that what inspired you to make it?
Kyle Forester: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, actually. The first one was definitely one of these things where Crystal Stilts had kind of wrapped up, and I had nothing major going on, besides all my normal stuff, so I started making music not knowing where it would lead. Then, I did get kind of busy, and my kid was born, and I ended up going back on tour with Woods. One really motivating thing was I had gotten a good band together, and it was really fun to play music again. To have that experience of playing with people I really enjoyed playing with. I didn’t really tour in 2014 or 2015, which was the first time in a while I had not been on tour at all. Then, when I did, that was weirdly inspiring--being out at shows. I really just wanted to give myself another shot at doing my own thing that felt true to the kind of music I like to hear and make. The first record was a little pieced together recording-wise. I had a bunch of it recorded and overdubbed the drums on top of what was there. This time, I really wanted to do a record with a band in a room in a good studio and microphones.
In terms of the writing process, I’m never not writing a bit. I’m one of those people who has 50 scraps on voice memos. It’s more about deciding when it’s time to turn some of those into real songs. Once I decided I wanted to do that, I had lots of stuff to pick from and develop. There were one or two songs I just sat down and wrote. “Hearts and Gardens” was like that, “Know What You’re Doing” was like that. Old fashioned sitting down with your guitar and the song comes out for some reason. But a song like “Marigold”, the main guitar riff was something I started playing one day and recorded it, and I came back to it later and heard it and thought it was interesting, then I wrote another part of it. The thing that was different this time was I got together with my band, who took it to another place. That was cool.
SILY: So the couple tracks that were outliers are the lead single (“Know What You’re Doing”) and the (sort of) title track?
KF: That’s true. It’s funny. I read this lurid John Lennon biography a year ago called The Lives of John Lennon. It was controversial because it was one of the first big bios of Lennon after he died, and it was where the rumor that John Lennon had some kind of sexual relationship with Brian Epstein. Anyway, he had a lot of songs that he labored over, like “Strawberry Fields Forever”, where he had a bunch of versions, and then songs like “Across The Universe”, which is something where he sat down and the song unfurled. I don’t have that experience often. I’ve never considered myself in that sense a real songwriter songwriter. But I do occasionally! [laughs] And I think it’s natural that you feel a special fondness for those songs. They’re little gifts from the universe, whereas the others feel like something you labored over and you had to push out of yourself. “Hearts and Gardens”, we moved into this new apartment, and I set up my new studio and was looking out the window. It’s like that kind of song.
Me and my wife just watched the Lady Gaga A Star Is Born. [laughs] I love movie depictions of songwriting. They’re so funny. Did you see that movie?
KF: The idea that they’re hanging out in that parking lot and she sings a couple lines, and going off of that he does an arrangement and she comes on stage and sings it? It’s not a realistic depiction of how music making works, but it’s kind of cool!
SILY: The biopics are even worse, the ones purporting to tell a true story. Did you see Bohemian Rapsody? The scene in the studio where someone stomps and claps and all of a sudden, “We Will Rock You” is born?
KF: Exactly. [laughs] That’s why that movie Walk Hard is so good as a joke.
SILY: It holds up so well!
KF: The part where he’s saying, “It’s a difficult stroll,” and [the title] is coming to him in real time. You can depict it in that way, but it rarely happens that way.
SILY: What specific aesthetic difference was there by having the full band in the studio?
KF: I don’t know how different the music came out. I don’t really listen to my own music much after I’m done making it. I haven’t listened to the two records to hear the difference. I think there are nice little moments of musicianship on this one, on a song like “Another Day”, which has a little bit of jamming. There wasn’t really much of that on the first record. The first song on the first record, called “Won’t Go Crazy”, that was one where I recorded 20 guitars, and there were two different drum tracks. A very inorganic experience, which I also enjoy. But here, you can tell there’s a band playing. You know that album John, The Wolf King of L.A.?
KF: The playing is so good on that, though I think John Philips might be controversial now. But you could just listen to that band play. Obviously, I don’t think we achieved anything like that. But for me, when I listen to it, I can enjoy those moments. It was fun for me to have Paul [Jenkins] play the bass. I played the bass on the first record. When it’s you, you know what you did, but when it’s someone else, you get to enjoy it more. You’re like, “Oh, that’s a nice thing he did I wouldn’t have done.” It’s a little looser. It’s more in common with some of those classic albums with a good band playing songs. But obviously we did a lot with them afterwards. It wasn’t super naturalistic.
SILY: The first couple tracks, the idea behind them is that you’re still finding beauty in an increasingly chaotic world. You’re finding ways to feel good. Is that increasingly almost a radical state of mind?
KF: I was talking to a friend the other night about how people talk about 80′s goth culture and certain parts of punk culture in the UK. The darkness was a reaction to the Reagan-Thatcher era of politics. A friend was saying that it seems like the Trump era almost seems to be creating this new age interest in spirituality and positivity. That’s a reaction. Trump specifically is so negative, that you can’t be any more negative than him. It is weird. Everything that’s happening with the planet, I feel like a little bit over the last couple years that anyone who cares to know, knows there was stuff that was going to happen. But now, there’s a real creeping sense that we might be living through something. That’s something I think about a lot. That we are or are going to be witness to a time of change in our world that we didn’t think we were going to be witness to. How do you respond to that as a person? You don’t have to do anything, but you certainly can start by getting yourself in order in the way you want to be, and then trying to go out and work from there. That’s not a very articulate way to put it. [laughs]
SILY: I get what you’re saying for sure. When he first got elected, people were saying, from a very privileged perspective, “Music’s gonna be so good!” as if that was their only concern. At the same time, I agree with you--maybe some people were envisioning some sort of 60′s idealism of standing up to injustice through angry music, but you’re also seeing people simply finding ways to cope. If that’s writing about the things in your life that make you feel happy or safe, that’s true and honest.
KF: What we’re going through as a country and society and species, it feels so much deeper and more spiritual than a political issue. It’s not the Vietnam War, where it’s, “We’ll all go out in the streets and stop the Vietnam War.” There’s a whole different way of living and living together that needs to happen if we’re gonna survive. That feels true in a way that maybe hasn’t ever before. It’s very psychedelic.
SILY: I want to ask you about a couple more specific tracks. What was the inspiration behind "[Interlude]”?
KF: I was excited to make my own record, partially because I played with a lot of bands but have never gotten to be in a position where I can do whatever I want. When I first started working on my music, I thought I might do a lot of little instrumental pieces. I sometimes think I’m better at that than writing songs. There are two quasi instrumentals on the first record. But in doing a record with a band, there were 3 or 4 things where I created a simple structure and played it with the drummer and the bass player. One of them is the last song on the record, “On the Way Down”. I literally said to the band, “This tempo, these three chords, go!” We hadn’t practiced it. We played for five minutes. Then, we went home and listened to it and sang over it and made it into a song. If you listen to that one, you can tell it’s the same three chords repeating. We edited the drums to make them have a little more shape. “[[Interlude]” was just one that didn’t get words on it. There were five minutes of us playing that riffing pattern. I kind of want to make an instrumental record. I love krautrock and weird synthesizer jamming kind of records. I like listening to albums, so I like thinking about an album in terms of the things you can do to break up the listening experience so you’re not just listening to a bunch of songs. An interlude makes you stop for a second and notice you’re listening to music.
SILY: When working on “On The Way Down”, did you know it was going to be the album closer?
KF: No, I didn’t. This album was particularly unsequenced. I didn’t really have a vision for it. I don’t know if I had anything else in mind for the closer, though. It’s not really a pun, but ending the album on a song called “On The Way Down” felt like a fade-out. I like the mood of that song. It’s maybe a little eerie, but it’s nice to listen to.
SILY: How did you end up deciding upon the sequencing of the record in general?
KF: I’ve been through that process a lot with bands. I remember the last Crystal Stilts record where we had a band meeting, and I brought construction paper where we wrote out all the different sequences and figured out which ones worked. Sequencing is super interesting. I tend to do it with vinyl listening in mind even if it’s not how most people are going to hear it. I think about what’s a good starter, side A end, side B starter, etc. I like “Turn of the Century” at the end of Side A. Side A of Abbey Road ends you with “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. “Another Day”, I wanted to start the second side with something exciting. And “On the Way Down” to end. I kind of do this thing where I listen to beginnings and endings a bunch of time to hear what sounds good. When I was 12 years old, I was really into reading Guitar World magazine. I was reading this interview with KISS, and Paul Stanley said something like, “The chorus should scratch an itch the verse creates.” I think about that all the time in songwriting and sequencing. You listen to a song, what kind of song does that put you in the mood to listen to? I don’t like KISS, by the way, for the record. [laughs]
SILY: What made you want to call the record Hearts in Gardens?
KF: That was actually suggested by the guy that made the album artwork. His name is Jay Pluck; he’s a cool dude. I was struggling with this. At one point, I was going to call it Marigold, but then I heard the band Pinehurst is putting out an album called Marigold. I think they just put it out.
KF: Pinegrove! I just called them Pinehurst. [laughs] But I was like, “Yeahhh...I’m not gonna share an album title with them.”
SILY: Probably a good move.
KF: Those kind of things are funny. Obviously, it wouldn’t have mattered. But I think Hearts in Gardens resonates with a lot of things. The idea that you’re finding good things in places. You have a garden, which is a closed space, and your heart is a place of sanctuary. It somehow resonated. It doesn’t really mean anything. But it means a lot of things, too.
Jay is an artist and a musician. I used to share a practice space with him. He makes really crazy show fliers. I’ve always been a fan of his work, and he works in a collage style. He’s an unbelievably creative guy. Pretty early when the record was done, I asked him about the artwork, and he listened to the record a bunch. He knew I was struggling with the album title. He did the cover of the first record, too, with a similar process: describe a few things to him, gave him a few images, and then he just made it. I really like what he did with this album. I’m tickled by it. It’s really hard. When you’re a musician and you collaborate with people, whether for the music video or art, it can be such a painful process. Art, like music, is fundamentally non-verbal. You can have a two-hour meeting to talk about what you have in mind, but until there’s something you’re both looking at, you don’t really know if you’re talking about the same thing. I’ve had that experience plenty of times, where you talk to someone about what you want, and then they make it, and it’s not what you were thinking. It hits home when it’s really great. Jay had this idea with the cliff and the water. I will cop to being a big fan of the band Genesis; the album Foxtrot has a really insane album cover that also involves a shore. I like anything in common with the artwork of that-era Genesis.
SILY: Are you playing these tracks live?
KF: We’ve played a few live. I’ve been taking a break from playing shows, but now we’re getting a new set ready. Do you know the band Modern Nature?
SILY: I just saw them the other night!
KF: Did you enjoy the show?
SILY: Yeah, it was awesome. I really like them. Olden Yolk played, too.
KF: Oh yeah, I like them.
SILY: And Tōth and Hannah Cohen. I love Sunwatchers, too.
KF: Totally. So I went to see Modern Nature in New York, and they started playing, and I realized they were just playing the album. I was like, “That’s cool, maybe I should do that.” We’re gonna play a couple shows in February and March, and maybe we’ll just play the album in homage to Modern Nature and lots of other bands who have done that [laughs] But there are some songs from the first record we never learned as a band because we never played them because that record wasn’t made that way. In this case, we can pretty much play all of them. A few of them have guitar tuning issues. I’m happy with how they all turned out, but a song like “Lily” could drift into a type of music I don’t like as much.
KF: A really weird experience when I’m playing music live, maybe you played it slower or faster, or maybe there are important elements from the record you don’t have live, but it feels different. It feels like a different type of song than how it feels to you when recorded. In the case of “Lily”, it could turn into a cliche classic rock song. And I wrote it in the Keith Richards guitar tuning. My mind goes towards “not good bar band.” It’s a weird thing to worry about.
SILY: Are you coming to Chicago?
KF: I would like to! Last time around, I didn’t get to touring much. I did some East Coast touring. But this time, I had someone write me asking whether I’d like to come to Columbus. And I’d like to come to Chicago just to go to Chicago because I have some friends there. So then I got thinking about going in that direction. I think that could be cool. I gotta try harder this time. Booking tours is hard. It’s hard until it’s easy, but one of the things I get hung up on is whether I should try to get a legit show, an opening slot, or do really small DIY-ish kind of shows. I never know which direction to turn. So the answer is maybe.
SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?
KF: I’m always listening to lots of things. I like that new Modern Nature record. In my house, we’re really into Alex Cameron. His new album Miami Memory is my feel-good record. I’ve been a lot to this label Unseen Worlds. He does a lot of reissues, weird, meandering piano stuff. I’ve been listening a lot to this Michael Vincent Waller record. I really like instrumental music you can just put on. The last couple days I’ve been listening a lot to this Irish record I came aware of through Cian Nugent. I think he produced it or co-produced it. It’s Aoife Nessa Frances’ [Land of No Junction]. The last four days I’ve been playing that every day and have been really enjoying.
I don’t really watch things. Over the holidays, me and my wife got into watching blockbusters. We just watched Crazy Rich Asians and A Star Is Born. I just read a book I really liked, A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. I hacked my way through a Maria Montessori book...Do you know who Gary Valentine is? He was in the first lineup of Blondie. He now goes by his real name and writes books about very esoteric subjects. He wrote a book about Aleister Crowley. He wrote a book about the role dark arts played in the rise of Trump. He also wrote a biography of Rudolf Steiner I read, which I really like. [Steiner] founded Waldorf schools and invented biodynamic farming, so he’s having a movement with all these people drinking organic wine. He was a really far-out dude.
