We had the pleasure of interviewing The Grahams over Zoom video!
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“Perhaps we started writing this album with a sense of escapism,” posits Alyssa Graham of musical duo THE GRAHAMS. “We said, ‘Fuck the genre labels people want to put on us.’ We never felt they fit us anyway.” In one way or another, every release by the lifelong musical and romantic partners, Alyssa and Doug Graham, began with an escape or adventure that expanded their musical boundaries. This third record, Kids Like Us (September 20, 2019 via 3 Sirens Music Group/RED MUSIC/The Orchard), is no exception, exploring balmy and graceful dream pop, 50's mod influenced garage-rock energy, 60's and 70's style groovy guitars, and an explosive Morricone-esque cinematic intrigue. “We wanted to just let go and explore, and it made all the difference,” adds her husband, Doug Graham. “For the first time, there was no self-doubt, no self-loathing – just gratitude, bliss, and a complete sense of satisfaction in the process and the results.”
As with their 2013 debut, Riverman’s Daughter, and 2015’s Glory Bound, The Grahams lit out for parts unknown to gain inspiration for writing this ambitious new record – this time on a beguiling motorcycle ride along Route 66, at the height of the 2016 election season. “Everything about Route 66 – the neon signs, the motels, the cars, the souvenirs, even the menus – are stuck in a different time,” Alyssa says. “Of course the music that developed would have moments of fantasy, moments of horror, even some moments of the supernatural.”
Their work with Producer-legend Richard Swift (former member of The Shins who worked with Damien Jurado, Nathaniel Rateliff, Lucius, Lonnie Holley, The Mynabirds, Cayucas, Guster, and many more) and co-Producer Dan Molad (Lucius, Elizabeth & the Catapult, The Wild Reeds), who later took over the project – was what enabled The Grahams to channel all that chaotic stimulus into something big, lush, ambitious, and profoundly satisfying. Kids Like Us was Swift’s last project before his death in 2018, and the duo was honored to have the chance to work with him. “Richard was like magic,” raved Alyssa. “He was like nobody we’d ever met before. You instantly wanted to be near him and be part of his world and suck in the mysterious energy and love he put out.”
The albums 11 new songs grew out of motel-room whispers and roadside musings as much as from studio experimentation. “Don’t Give Your Heart Away” is twangy pop with a David Lynchian sheen; “Kids Like Us” takes a modernized Antonioni feel in new directions. “Searching The Milky Way” is a 50’s biker flick directed by Quentin Tarantino. “We started in Chicago with the blues and Motown,” Doug says, “and we ended in L.A. listening to the Beach Boys. And all of it found its way into the record.”
The other thing that found its way into the record, inevitably, was the surreal election of 2016 – and Kids Like Us evokes the modern American condition in remarkably empathetic ways. “We’ve definitely written a very political record,” Doug says. “These aren’t protest songs, but some of them are certainly a reaction to the big pile of shit America has stepped in, and our personal fear for the future.”
That future has a name: Georgette Ida Graham, the couple’s first child, who was born while they were still mixing Kids Like Us. “We set out to write songs and deliver messages that have meaning,” Doug says, “so that our daughter one day can listen to it and say, ‘Wow. They actually had something to say.’”
https://www.thegrahamsmusic.net/
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