4 albums that inspired: The Thing With Feathers
4 Albums That Inspired: The Thing With Feathers
The Thing With Feathers release their debut EP on limited Edition Cassette Tape via Chalkpit Cassette Club - Head to our cassette shop to order a copy.
“An odd list to say the least, but after all is said and done between the members, this is what it boils down to. We knew we wanted to dig a little deeper with these recordings and we finally had a larger platform to officially say what we wanted to say. It’s something that doesn’t totally get to happen when just releasing singles. Rather than writing a chapter, we finally got to write a story.” The Thing With Feathers
Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism
Alex looked to one of his personal favorite albums, Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie, to inform how he wanted to go about the process, which was not only finding a good concept, but finding a concept we really understood. While Transatlanticism is about a long-distance relationship that eventually crumbles, Sunday’s in the South is about a weekend of debauchery that eventually ends in our main character analyzing what he truly wants.
Bon Iver- For Emma, Forever Ago
Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago’s influence is a little different. Dave was influenced by the harmonies of Justin Vernon’s vocal takes, pointing to that as the reason he stacks his own vocals. Production-wise, the titular song of the EP, “Sunday’s in the South”, also took a page from For Emma’s production, a humble recording that almost feels like it’s being played right in front of you, for you. Sunday’s and For Emma are both honest and humble recordings that still manage to reach extreme heights. Alex also tried his hand in emulating the guitar layering from The Wolves and Blindsided on the bridge of that song.
Deftones- White Pony
One thing we really wanted to make sure of with this project was that we wanted to get a little darker, and maybe even a little heavier. We were ready to take a leap forward and get out of writing our usual bright Pop/Rock anthems; we wanted to explore different territory sonically and thematically. We really started getting into the habit of having heavier bands on repeat, and one record that always sticks out during that period for us is Deftones’s - White Pony. In so many ways that record achieved the same sort of thing we were going for: just the right amount of experimentation that played off a familiar sound. It’s fierce, angry, has something to prove, but is also very sleek and kind of sexy. We almost wanted to get back to basics on this project and really embrace the four-person rock band that we truly were, before it was all about adding synths and making a large symphony of pop. We wanted to truly get rid of the excess and get dark, and thank god we had White Pony to listen to while we did it.
Bruce Springsteen- Born to Run
With this project being a concept, Dave really wanted to hone in on what he was going to say to reflect the music. The lyrics all draw on personal experiences, but the band had agreed that the story of the weekend wasn’t necessarily linear. It’s completely ambiguous and up to interpretation, so the same goes for the main character in each song. Although Dave was drawing from personal experiences, he wanted the character to be shaped by the environment around him, so every song almost yields a different perspective, or scope, of the main character. The album referenced by Dave in how he went about this was Bruce Springsteens’s - Born to Run, arguably one of the holy grails of “character-based writing”. In his own words, “Although I take more of an ambiguous approach and rarely put names in the songs, this record really opened my eyes to how I could tell a story and depict the environment that creates the characters. We wanted to put our perspective and experiences of our early 20’s into this record taught me how to set the scene and write the reason to the rhyme.”
The Thing With Feathers - Sundays In The South - Ep - Buy Now