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Harmony Woods - Sound In The Signals Interview

I recently had the chance to interview Harmony Woods. Check out the full interview below.


First off, thanks for the interview.
Thanks so much for having me!

For anyone who isn't familiar with your music. How did you get into music and what inspired you to make music?
I started taking guitar lessons when I was 10 and piano lessons quickly after that. The music taste I have now kinda developed from a combination of the "cool" indie rock bands my dad would listen to in the car when I was younger (Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem) and the weird, obscure Canadian indie rock bands whose songs would be on episodes of Degrassi. I started writing music a little over a year ago when I noticed a general lack of women and girls in bands in the scene, so I started the band as a way to combat that.

Your new album 'Nothing Special' comes out in May. It was produced by Jake Ewald from Modern Baseball. What was the writing process of the album like?
I wrote all the songs from "Nothing Special" by myself on acoustic guitar over the span of about 4 months and had help fleshing them out full band by my friends who played on the record. I wrote the record to flow like a story because I've always found cohesive, conceptual records more interesting than records that are just a collection of unrelated songs.

Why did you decide to have Jake produce the album and as a producer what do you think he brought to the recording process?
 Jake is a good friend of mine and I've always loved the sound of records he's worked on in the past (such as Kississippi's EP "We Have No Future, We're All Doomed" and Broken Beak's LPs), so I asked him if he was interested in recording the first Harmony Woods LP and he said yes! He definitely helped give the record the full, kinda intense sound I had been imagining since I had started writing the songs stripped-down acoustic. He basically took what I had been hearing in my head for months and made it real, which was really, really great.

The first song you released from the new album is "Jenkintown-Wyncote". I really enjoy the song. Can you tell me a little about writing the song both musically and lyrically? Why did you choose to release it first?
Thanks so much! When I first started writing what was going to become "Jenkintown-Wyncote" I was imagining a more lowkey, fingerpicked song, like the kind of thing the main character in a pretentious indie movie would be listening to while on a train. However, as the song progressed, I realized I wanted it to be more upbeat and driven, so I started strumming chords really fast instead of fingerpicking and I wound up achieving a sound that ended up fitting the subject matter way better in the longrun. The lyrics were originally going to romanticize train rides, but as I kept digging in my brain and going through the song I realized I'm actually not a huge fan of them! So what was originally going to be a chill, lowkey song about riding the train ended up being an upbeat, driven song about feeling anxious when using public transportation, with a small touch of romance at the end. I chose it as the first song to be released from the record because I thought it showed a nice balance of the moodiness and sappiness that's entwined within the record and was a decent representation of what the record is mostly like.

The album is being released on CD and cassette. How important was it for you to have the album released on a format that is "collectable" and limited like a cassette? Would you like to see it pressed on vinyl if you get the opportunity?
 I've always thought that the idea of cassettes was really cool. Mediums such as cassette and vinyl that require more effort to use than just pushing a button have always been super interesting to me, so I think it's really cool that I have the opportunity to put out a record on one of those mediums. That said, I would love to do a vinyl pressing of "Nothing Special" someday!

What are some of your plans leading up to and after the release of the album?
One more song is streaming before the record comes out, and then a few days after the record is released we're doing a record release show in Philly which I'm super excited about. After that we're playing a few more local shows and then we're going on our first tour in July! It's nothing too major, just a little week and a half east coast run, but I'm super stoked about it. I'm pretty much always writing so after all that is done we'll flesh out the full band parts for some new songs and hopefully record a new album sometime towards the end of this year/early next year!

I guess that wraps it up. Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions. Do you have anything else you would like to add?
That's about it! Thanks so much for the interview!

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