Michael Bain is the lead guitarist in Austin “regret pop” band Sun June (whose album Years on Keeled Scales was one of our favourites of 2018). Back in late spring, Bain released his debut solo record, Tidal Ways. The album is difficult to label, fusing art rock and dreamy jangle pop jazz elements into something that sounds at once timeless and unique. Will Patterson and Rudy Villareal lend a hand, but Bain plays most of the instruments himself, an eclectic mix that includes guitar (acoustic and electric), banjo, bass, baby grand piano, Farfisa organ, Rhodes electric piano, Moog synthesizers, string emulators and drums. Add in the found sounds that pop up here and there and it becomes clear immediately that Tidal Ways will be anything but formulaic.
Excitingly, Bain has made a video for the song ‘Dad Rock’, shot with the help of Sun June band-mate Stephen Salisbury on Bain’s family’s ranch in Blanco, Texas. Check it out below:
Bain was also kind enough to speak to us about his music, so read on below to find out more about his creative process, the ‘Dad Rock’ video, and what it’s like to be a member of Sun June.
The album is very much a personal project, a change from your previous work with other bands. Was it liberating or terrifying to have full control over the creative process?
It was liberating/exciting and sort of daunting in equal parts, but once I had two or three of the tracks mostly recorded and got some momentum I developed some genuine confidence in the process. I was really excited to see what kind of fine details and textures I could create on my own. Even though I did technically have full control over the creative process I often found it useful to sort of artificially create scenarios that would loosen my sense of control over the material in order to generate fresher ideas and so that I wouldn’t be too married to the original conception of the song.
One way of doing this was to not listen to an unfinished track for quite a while and then go into a recording session without having anything written and then record takes of whatever I came up with in the moment. Quite a bit of the final overdub parts where generated this way. I did sometimes wish that I had someone there to put a fire under me because you can go a bit mad over-analyzing tracks on your own if you have all the time in the world. I think I would actually thrive on a deadline and enjoy working with a little external pressure, but I’m glad that I got to take my time for the first record.
How does your songwriting process work? Do you start with a melody or with the lyrics? And how does the recording work when you’re playing most parts yourself?
I write the basic chord progression on a guitar or piano and then slowly develop vocal melodies and lyrics over that part from notes and voice memos taken on my phone. I usually track the initial core parts very quickly and then take my time developing/adding overdubs and then stripping the song back and editing it to a point where something appealing emerges. I recorded about half of the songs core rhythm section and main melodic instrument with my lifelong friend Will Patterson (Sleep Good) at his then studio called Blackland Hall in Coupland, Texas. We live tracked either drums and guitar or drums and piano together straight to tape to give the recordings a live/organic heart and then I took those core tracking sessions and worked on overdubs in my home studio.
The other five songs I tracked entirely in my home studio recording every part myself and building the songs from the ground up. Recording songs in this piecemeal way can be dangerous in that it can often feel clinical or desiccated if you are recording to a click track and don’t have that element of live performance, but I looked to artists like Kevin Parker from Tame Impala or early Todd Rundgren as examples of people who are able to make really vibey and emotionally rich sounding recordings even though it’s just them in the studio. I think one way to eschew that rigidity/coldness of tracking by yourself is to allow some of the mistakes that you make to stay in the recording. That’s probably kind of a cliché by now but it’s true and those happy accidents are often my favorite parts of the songs. I also think the biggest challenge in recording solo is getting the rhythm section to feel right.
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What is the album about? Are there themes that link the songs?
I don’t want to say too much about what I think this record is about, because I might be wrong and the meaning is already changing for me when I listen back to it. I think a general thing that I feel comfortable saying about the record is that it does seem to be about looking back at a younger version of yourself and wishing to impart some solace to someone who is very anxious. Also, imagining a future version of yourself consoling your present self.
You cite bands like Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac as big influences, and while the song sort of makes a joke about your embrace of “dad rock,” it’s clearly something you genuinely love. What is it about the maligned genre that speaks to you so much?
I think the maligned genre speaks to me right now because I am interested in trying to reconcile seemingly opposites in music. I wanted to try to marry elements of experimental and lo-fi music with more accessible/palatable ‘dad rock’ or just pop.
I grew up sort of obsessed with the lo-fi home recording aesthetic of artists like early Ariel Pink and Smog and I have countless home recordings that fit that description. I wanted to see if I could go to the other extreme and get really clean and professional sounding recordings (even though I mostly recorded in my bedroom studio), and I wanted to have the weird/unexpected chord progressions, tight arrangements and clean hi-fi production of Steely Dan with the emotionally raw and direct lyrics/vocal performance of my favorite lo-fi artists.
Also, around the time I started writing Tidal Ways I was quite enamored of this idea of creating psychedelic sounding music without using any effects. I think that I got pretty heavy into Steely Dan largely because that’s something that I think they pull off brilliantly. I don’t think I’ve ever heard really heavy reverb, delays or phasers in a Steely Dan song and yet they achieve deeply rich and textured recordings that sort of defy your expectations and even disorientate you at times the way psyche music often does. I still definitely used some effects on the album, but compared to my previous recordings its relatively minimal. I tried to use the arrangement and chord progressions to create that sense of unfamiliarity or liminality rather than relying solely on effects.
Did you grow up listening to these bands? Or is it something you’ve discovered later in life?
No, I didn’t really start listening to those bands until a few years ago, but my parents did take me to see Christopher Cross (my dad went to high school with him) at SeaWorld when I was like five. So, maybe some of those diminished jazz fusion chords got lodged in my young mind and made it easier for me to latch onto the Dan later in life.
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What else influences your work, apart from other musicians? Do you seek out the same kind of unencumbered creation in other forms of art?
I used to write short stories my freshmen and sophomore year of college, but haven’t really delved into that too recently. I took this great creative writing class my freshmen year of college that really sparked my interest in short stories and I’m still a big fan of short story writers like George Saunders, Thomas McGuane, Denis Johnson, and Flannery O’Connor. The economy of language required in the short story is something that I find inspiring in relation to writing lyrics and evoking images or narratives in the fairly contained format of a pop song. I also love biographies and have recently read a Van Gogh biography, as well as a Captain Beefheart biography called Through the Eyes of Magic by Magic Band drummer John French aka Drumbo. This is going to sound cheesy, but I also get really inspired by going on really long walks or runs. Something happens towards the end of a really long walk where your thoughts become much more fluid and a lot of musical and lyrical ideas I have had fall into place when I’m on the latter half of a long hike. I often wish I had a pen with me when I go on these walks/runs but I always forget, and part of me thinks that if the idea doesn’t commit to memory then maybe it’s not worth keeping anyway.
Could you tell us a little about the video for Dad Rock? Where was it shot and where did the idea come from?
I shot the video for ‘Dad Rock’ at my family’s ranch in Blanco, TX, about an hour outside of Austin, with the help of my Sun June bandmate, Stephen Salisbury, who used to edit for Terrance Malick. He helped generate and refine some of the ideas that we ended up incorporating in the video like the groundhog dayesque waking up sequence, as well as the cow sequence. He acted as the cinematographer and editor and I occasionally provided some feedback/suggestions both during the shoot and in the editing phase.
The video generally has to do with feeling sort of stuck or leading an unsustainable life, and then having some unnamed element come into your life that coaxes you out of that lifestyle and that provides a window into another perspective. At first I imaged shooting more literal scenes of debauchery or chaotic environments in places like a bar or downtown somewhere to illustrate that unsavory lifestyle, but I instead chose to go for more abstract imagery namely the debris/rubble that I come across in the video. It also has to do with intuition and communing with nature and with cows. All of these ideas were mostly just extrapolated from the lyrics of the song.
We can’t really do an interview without mentioning Sun June. How has being part of that band been? And what was it like to record and tour an album like Years?
Being is Sun June has definitely been a learning experience for me. I have a tendency to over arrange parts for my songs and fill every square inch of the recording with instrumentation and Laura and Stephen have a starker approach to composition, which I find really inspiring. It’s that whole idea that Debussy talked about when he said that music is the space between the notes. They seem to intuitively understand that and sculpt the songs in such a way that allows you to breathe and fill in some of the gaps yourself. I like the idea that the best melodies are the ones you are hearing within the song that aren’t actually recorded. The ghost melodies that are obliquely suggested. Anyway, I’m still trying to learn and implement this in my playing. I love being part of the band though, and they allow everyone to write their own parts, which definitely helps generate uniqueness since we all have fairly distinct influences.
Recording Years was a dream. My bandmates are such an unassuming bunch and I didn’t really have any expectations about how the recording would go, but we slowly developed a quiet confidence in the material and by the time I listened back to some of the first tracks we recorded on the nice studio speakers at Estuary Studios, I had a real kind of pinch myself moment where I was like ‘Wait what? I’m in this band? Far out.’
I also really enjoyed generating ideas for guitar overdubs in the very last days of tracking. For instance, I came up with my main lead guitar line on ‘Young’ the day before we finished tracking that one and the band dug it and it stayed on the track, which felt amazing. Justin Harris, our bass player, also came up with a last minute saxophone part on ‘Homes’, which really elevates the song to another level in my opinion. So, it was really exciting to have that spontaneity and openness to new ideas even at that those very final stages of tracking a song. Touring has also been a lot of fun. I used to consider myself a bit of a home body, but I actually really enjoy life on the road much more than I anticipated.
Tidal Ways is out now and you can get it from the Michael Bain Bandcamp page, or listen via Spotify. Visit the Michael Bain website for more info.
