SPILL FEATURE: ALL OF OUR RECORDS HAVE THEIR OWN THING GOING ON – A CONVERSATION WITH RYAN LINDSEY OF BRONCHO

ALL OF OUR RECORDS HAVE THEIR OWN THING GOING ON

A CONVERSATION WITH RYAN LINDSEY OF BRONCHO

Since their debut album, Can’t Get Past The Lips, Broncho has captivated listeners with their catchy choruses, Ryan Lindsey’s unique vocals, dazzling instrumentation, and ever-expanding sound. Their breakout hit “Class Historian” from their second album, Just Enough Hip To Be Woman, is one of the best indie rock tunes of the 2010s. With Natural Pleasure, their first album since Bad Behavior, Broncho continues evolving their sound while still staying true to their roots.

“There’s a lot of similarities just process-wise for writing each individual song, but there’s definitely a different feeling,” says frontman Ryan Lindsey. “All of our records have their own thing going on, but then there’s kind of some overlap between some songs that maybe were going to be on the previous record end up on the next record. I think there’s a natural bridge there that happens that was never intended, but it then works itself out. Maybe that bridge got stretched a little between the last record and this record. I can still hear the connection between records. From our first record to all the way now, that’s quite a bit different. But it’s like they’re all holding hands.”

Broncho continues to explore new territory stylistically. They never consciously decide to do something differently on each record. It just happens. “The only conversation I remember having about any of it was between the first and second record,” reflects Lindsey. “I remember in the peripheral someone asking, ‘Is this too different from the first record?’ I think I made the decision at that point not to even worry about questions like that.”

Natural Pleasure is slower and more texture-based than previous records. “Pretty much every record we’ve done, or if I’m starting a song myself and there’s an idea just living inside of me for a period of time where it’s just looped, it usually starts pretty slow,” comments Lindsey. “On previous records, it was like, ‘OK, let’s speed this up.’ This one, we didn’t really do much of that. We definitely sped up at times, but we were really just staying in where any one of the songs felt the best. With this record for the most part the slower tempo is where that particular song felt the best to us.”

“You Got Me” is a very meaningful song for Lindsey. The song is about becoming a parent. “It’s a song that came out of me before I even knew that we were gonna have a kid,” he smiles. “It also came really quick and was finished almost right off the bat just out of nowhere – it was magical in that way. But I didn’t have a kid, but we had cats, so I thought it must be about cats. Then my girlfriend informed me that we’re having a kid. So, I was like, ‘Well, that’s what that song is about.’ It’s just the fact that it came to me because it happened so quickly; nature already knew we were having a kid at that point. I just didn’t know it. In that way, it’s very magical and probably the most true to life that we get as far as any type of facts going in the songs.”

Some moments from the record happened unexpectedly, including the electrifyingly snazzy guitar riff of “Save Time”. “We had another version for a long time, and I loved the song, but I wasn’t fully there on that version of it,” recalls Lindsey. “It would get kicked up every once in a while, like, ‘Let’s work on this song again.’ That one got slowed down to a place where we were in the studio searching for something, and that’s when the guitar part happened.”

NATURAL PLEASURE ALBUM REVIEW

“Original Guilt” is one of the oldest songs from the record. It took Broncho a while to nail what they thought was the right version. “The other ones, they were all different versions, and I always loved that song, and I always knew that song was going to land somewhere in our world, and it just took coming back around to it,” comments Lindsey. The demo of it initially sounded different. “It was pretty much where it was now. It was just the dirtiest version of it and really noisy. Our recordings can be pretty dirty and noisy, but this one was like, ‘Maybe this is a little too much.’ So, how do we get it back to match up with everything else in a way that I felt good about? We just back-engineered it and found the right spot for it.”

“Funny” almost was about something completely different. “It was a song about money and taking it,” recalls Lindsey. Ultimately, Broncho decided against this idea. “I kept thinking about this melody. It was just really carving into my brain and was just on repeat. I had this moment where it hit me: ‘It’s funny.’ It was like an epiphany. It’s not money. It’s funny. When I figured that out, I had a new direction… There was a really fast demo of it, and it’s in a different key, but it helped me write the song because it was correct in the structure of the song from the beginning. That really was something nice for me just to be able to listen to and recalibrate where I was headed with it… I mumble a melody for a long time while I’m playing to a song. I was definitely mumbling a lot to ‘Funny’. Then I realized there’s a lot of things going on with this mumble. I thought, ‘We’re going to have to come up with a lot of words.’ That seemed impossible at some moments. You have these moments where a lot falls down, you discover and come across a bunch of things, and slowly, I started knocking out these little chunks that felt right to me when I was singing through it.”

“Get Gone” is a smash hit with hypnotically entrancing beats and danceable rhythms. It will undoubtedly become a dance anthem at live shows. “I’m always into people wanting to dance,” states Lindsey. “If you could plan it, you would probably want every song danceable, so it’s nice when something comes along that naturally moves and makes people move. It’s just fortunate to have at least one.”

In the future, Broncho might release a different version of “Cool”. “I had a drum loop from a song I think we already had on the record and was just playing some guitar and did some production on it, but it was very minimal,” says Lindsey. “I actually really love that version. I think we’ll put it out at some point because it has its own spirit that the one that wound up on the record doesn’t have. There’s something magical about it.”

Lindsey is particularly proud of the album’s cover, a photo he took on his back porch. “There was this weed of a plant that took over this whole area,” he comments “There were several times like, ‘Should this thing be cut?’ But I liked the privacy it gave us. It just gets really bushy really fast. We had this tree behind it. All the bees would come around it. They had these teacup flowers. These big bumblebees would go down in it. I’ve been watching that for years. We lost that tree. It was so sad. I was glad I kept this bush because it produces these yellow pollen things like from Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. I saw a bee there and started a little photo session without its permission; I do apologise. Hopefully it will raise some awareness for the pollinators. They are important. Hopefully, it’s not too late. Save the bees!”

Natural Pleasure dropped on April 25th. “It means everything to me,” remarks Lindsey. “I’ve had that feeling about whatever record we’re working on. I’m grateful for that experience of something coming out of nowhere and doing something about it, and that has been the process so far. You just hope that something comes again and inspires us to finish it or explore it. This record was the same. And we all love nature. We love natural things.”

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Photo Credit: Bryon Helm