Storm in a Soup Bowl; An Interview with Lonely Soup Day

A few weeks ago I decided to work from home for the day. If that first sentence made you imagine a day on the sofa in fat pants with a laptop roughly within reaching distance, you’re right. And if I'm being really honest, Facebook got rinsed that day. Some of my friends are in a different time zone, so we spent the afternoon chatting about a new music video that popped up online. To be fair, we were discussing it for all the wrong reasons.

October 10^th marked the release of the debut single from Lonely Soup Day; a Western Australian based pop-folk fusion duo. The song was accompanied by a music video shot in the USA and based on a pretty far out concept.  Sadly, it was brought to my attention for the online-trashing it received. Rarely have I seen such a strong adverse reaction to a new release from a newly emerging independent artist. With only one hundred and forty one likes on Facebook and no gigs under their belt, it seemed that Lonely Soup Day had grabbed the spotlight and channelled the wrath of the entire internet for the day.

I was horrified and a bit put out by the reaction. Being brutally truthful, the video was not to my personal tastes and I didn't understand it, but I thought the song had real potential. There were a few things I wasn't keen on in the mixing side of the track, but the essence of the song grabbed me and the melody was catchy! I ended up playing it on repeat a few times while I “worked”. 

Luckily for me, Lonely Soup Day agreed to an interview and were open to discussing the online blow up completely candidly. They've got some great words of advice so here’s what went down….

What’s Lonely Soup Day all about in a nutshell?

Chris: I’d love to get a song in the background of Grey’s Anatomy. Or any TV show. But seriously, we’re doing this for the love of it. We get pleasure out of creating the music, and then just send it out into the world and hope it’s found by people who like our sound. Nothing more than that.

Molly: Oh, we want to make it to the big time, definitely! Actually, just releasing a song that my Mum says she likes as much as anything by Melanie Safka would do. Or getting it on the background of Grey’s Anatomy, whichever comes first. 

How did you both get into music?

Chris: I’ve been improvising tunes since I was a kid, on the piano, but it was never really song-writing. I kept playing, but I needed a collaborator. Once I met Molly we became songwriters.

Molly: I have no musical talent myself so, happily, Chris was enthusiastic about me collaborating with him. I have been nagging people since I was about 5 or 6 years old to be in a band with me. I can’t play instruments, I can’t read music so I had no hope of doing it independently. I performed live with my dad’s guitar at a hippy commune when I was about 5 (to rave reviews), wrote my first full length song by the time I was 9 and wrote a duet with my best friend when we were about 10.

What inspired you to write your own original music and go through all the effort of making a music video?

Molly: Everybody loves music. I think, if given the opportunity, anybody would write their own music and put it out there. It’s a lot of work, even when everyone thinks you’re shit, but it’s rewarding…

Chris: I used to work in film, and music videos were my main job for a while, so it seemed obvious we should shoot our own. We’re both Twin Peaks fans, and we thought we could tell a story in the spirit of Twin Peaks that matched the song. I think we failed.

I've been directing professionally for nearly fifteen years, and this turned out to be my last project. I was so disappointed with the end result that I quit directing. I've gone back to being a writer.

You recently unveiled your new music video for your debut track “Line of Sight”. Can you tell us a little bit about how you made it?

Chris: We shot the outdoors scenes North Bend and Snoqualmie (USA) using the original locations from the Twin Peaks pilot and the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. We also shot indoor scenes in Vancouver, with an extra indoor shoot in Australia in September.

In Vancouver we shot some of the creamed corn footage, and in Australia we shot the indoor scene in the ‘room above a convenience store’. That’s the dark room with the weird goings-on. Some of the actors are professionals from Perth, who are extremely talented, and a few were family. We only had three hours to shoot, which was seven hours faster than it took David Lynch to shoot the same scene, so I'm told.

I found the use of soup in your music video a little confronting. At first glance, I thought it was vomit! Then I remembered the band name and realised it must be soup. Is it soup and does soup have some kind of special significance for you guys?

Chris: That was just for Twin Peaks fans. It’s creamed corn, which has magical properties in the world of the TV show. It was vile stuff, but it looks good on camera.

Molly: Soup… it’s significant in that we live like students and consume a lot of soup and two-minute noodles. I guess we could easily have been called Lonely Noodle Day or Lonely Cheese Toasty Day. The stuff in the video is Garmonbozia: it’s pain and suffering. It’s represented by creamed corn, which caused me pain and suffering. Well, mild discomfort in my mouth and hands. It is confronting, you’re quite right. I squirm every time I watch that moment in the video. But then I laugh, oh, how I laugh.

"It was my face and voice that was representing the band and I could have taken it really personally but music and art are such subjective things. Ultimately, we still came out ahead." 

- Molly

 

The video seemed to cause a lot of controversy after you aired it, in particular it drew some nasty comments on YouTube. Do you have any comment on why this may have happened?

Chris: There were some vile comments on the Welcome To Twin Peaks Facebook page which have now been deleted. I love Twin Peaks, but a cult following can be protective of their cult. If they don’t think your creation fits in with their cult, they reject it. I spoke to a psychiatrist about the level of hatred we’d received, and he said that whenever there is a cult, it offers comfort to the followers, and the last thing they want is an unsettling change. So we upset people and they hated on us. It was a mistake to make that video. If you don’t know Twin Peaks, it’s a confusing mess, and if you do, you hate it for betraying your dream. I saw somebody on a forum the other day saying that the new series of Twin Peaks must not have any new characters in it, or it would destroy the spirit of the show. That’s the mentality we were up against.

In truth, I hope it’s forgotten about, and that we’ll not always be associated with Twin Peaks. We might even get somebody to make a really dull alternative video for Line of Sight, something with cats in it. People love that.

Molly: It got flack because it exists and we put it online and it’s easy to hate on something online. It would have been truly saddening if we’d been trying to sell it as a single twenty years ago and got no sales but we wouldn't have a dozen strangers casually tearing us apart publicly. I don’t really mind, though. It was my face and voice that was representing the band and I could have taken it really personally but music and art are such subjective things. Ultimately, we still came out ahead. Our voice was heard and seen by dozens of people and will exist indefinitely and was used for the edification of our souls and art. Their voice was small, spiteful and thoughtless and limited to our memories and a Facebook page and it’s certainly not as catchy as any music I've ever heard. I don’t want the video to be forgotten about, though. I hope it’s one of those things that gets more appreciation as time goes by, maybe after we’re both dead.

According to the director of Twin Peaks, David Lynch, a major theme of the work is incest and the feelings of the victim. Can you explain how the video is of significance to the song or how the two are related?

Chris: To me the series was about breaking down the barrier between two worlds – it’s an occult parable, if you will. Twin Peaks says that love makes you vulnerable, and that evil has easy access to you when you’re in that state. There’s also a lot about animal desires and wearing masks. We thought that fit in with our song, but we were probably wrong.

In the wake of the negativity, a number of comments showing the reaction to the bashing of your hard work started to pop up online. In particular, it said somewhere that you “thought you had overestimated your talent”. Now that things have settled down a bit, do you still feel this way?

Chris: That statement was made about my film-making. I've been a writer for 25 years and usually receive high praise. My film work has received almost no praise, so I don’t think I'm meant to be a director. I was ready to quit, and the response to this video sealed the deal.  I've no idea whether I'm any good at music, but we’ll see when the album’s finished.

Molly: If people can’t respond to a song they don’t like appropriately, I'm not surprised hate crimes are so ubiquitous. On the other hand, I don’t claim they’re wrong about our song or music video but if they knew I was standing behind them, listening to their conversation they wouldn't talk like that. I know this because I was on the set of a massively unpopular rock band’s music video as an extra and people whispered stuff among themselves but as soon as the band was seen they shut the hell up. Because it’s not polite to talk rubbish within hearing of the subject, right? So why write stuff that you know the subject is going to read. That’s nasty. That makes you a nasty pasty!

"I was on the set of a massively unpopular rock band’s music video as an extra and people whispered stuff among themselves but as soon as the band was seen they shut the hell up."

- Molly 

Can you explain how you feel about your first release after the release date?

Chris: I regret making a music video for the fans of Twin Peaks, because they hated it. I don’t regret releasing the song when we did. Some people like the song. Music will always find its audience, eventually, even if that audience is small. One of the bands I love the most, Lowlife, were never famous, but they have a small following. That would suit me, a following, however small. We may end up with 20 fans or a few more and it really doesn't matter.

Molly: I stand by the music video and the song. I wish more people enjoyed it because that is gratifying but I'm not dependent on other people’s approval for my self-worth. I had fun making it and I still consider our release affectionately.

When creating and releasing your music and videos in the future, will you do anything differently?

Chris: I’ll never direct again and I'm so bored of music videos (having made a bundle) that I don’t really care what they look like any more. In the future, I’ll never read a review of our music, either, or a single Facebook comment, because I don’t think you can learn from reviews. Criticism hurts and praise is misleading. Haters hate as a hobby, and fans often remain quiet. So I’ll never know whether anybody likes what we’re doing unless it sells well.

Molly: Chris warned me that it could get lambasted and I was like, I'm not reading any comments or any reviews and I don’t want you to tell me any that you read. In fact, you shouldn't read them because then you’ll tell me anyway. So he read them and told me them, anyway. Next time I'm going to turn off our internet service. I also wouldn't release it through a fan site for something else.

For more information on Lonely Soup Day, check them out using the links below. 

(And yes, the controversial music video can be found via YouTube! I’d like to hear your thoughts if anyone has any!)

https://www.facebook.com/lonelysoupday

http://www.lonelysoupday.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW9HcIEIM0k

  

A Rough Day at the Studio; Doubt was the friend who came round afterwards, brought the wine and ordered the pizza.

I recently had a really strange experience in the recording studio while putting the finishing touches to my band's EP.

I usually love studio work! It's the time when a song comes to life and you finally get to hear the track the way you imagined it in your head all those months ago. It can be really productive - if you get the right producer. If you're at the stage where you're considering investing your hard earned cash in laying down some tracks professionally, here's a warning for you. Find the right producer!

Sadly, a chance encounter was the only persuasion my band needed to be led into the studio of the producer we're currently using. Needless to say, this is a terrible selection process and he's not the right fit for us at all. Due to the dynamics of my current group, (one incredibly strong personality who gets to call the shots, but doesn't really know what's what) the decision was made to book in with the studio before discussing anything with the band. I really doubted that he was the right guy for us. Looking at the extensive list of past clients, it made for an impressive but mismatched read; none were in the same genre as us, or even anything close. This was mistake number one.

Mistake number two? Don't expect the producer to do anything more than the job of a producer, and certainly don't allow them to either; it's a can of worms you'll never be able to close.

The big problem here was that our producer was invited into the fold of the band, acted as a sixth band member for a while before graduating into the position of band manager. Crazy, eh? Looking back on it, I can see how this situation came about.

This band's career has been like an exploding confetti canon; we each had different skills and levels of experience making a pretty colourful mix, but when we got together it just exploded. Within the first year we wrote over thirty songs, appeared at some pretty big music festivals and experienced a winning streak when we were on commercial radio at least once a week. It was incredible, but commercial success is no substitute for experience.

Half the band have no experience working in studios and so, walked into it completely submissively. The process turned on it's head and instead of the band holding the reigns and walking away with a product true to it's original concept, we've ended up with the producer's interpretation of our work - it's a million miles away from what we wanted and coming from somebody who doesn't work with artists of our genre, what should we have expected?

It all started when he came to one of our gigs, listened to us play and then spent  the rest of the night being asked to comment on what he thought we should change. It all just snowballed from there; one minute he was making a suggestion on how to improve someone's drum pattern (totally acceptable and really helpful), the next he was sitting us all down to mentor us on interpersonal relationships (not really qualified, or even anywhere near appropriate!) and charged us for the time!

The most stark moment for me was when I turned up after a busy day at work to find my guitarist in the booth with the producer having a full on music lesson with him! By the time I arrived, they'd been in there for two hours while the guitarist played and the producer critiqued his right hand technique and the way his wrist moved while he played. Looking at the itemised bill, we could have paid for him to have almost eight hours of lessons with an actual guitar teacher for the same cost! He just didn't realise that this is NOT a routine part of studio work and that these issues really needed to be hammered out before we got to this stage.

I left the studio that day feeling exhausted. I called out for pizza and curled up on the sofa with my doubts spinning round my mind; I doubted he was the right producer for us, I doubted we were ready to even be in the studio just yet and I really doubted we'd come away with a product we were happy with. For fear of being labelled negative, stubborn, oppositionally defiant or a stick in the mud, I kept quiet, ate my pizza and watched reruns of Ink Master until it was time for bed.

Fortunately for me, I know when to pick my battles and keeping quiet was the perfect way to give the situation enough rope to hang itself.

The track was eventually finished and so was the itemised bill - it came in at a devastating three and a half times the original estimate. We had to delay any future recordings until we'd all recovered from the expense. Although it was a set back, it really gave us some time to contemplate the decisions we'd made and think about how to avoid this happening in future.

The good: next time we go into the studio we'll have straightened out the fine details and be really prepared, know what to expect and be able to keep the cost down closer to the original estimate. Every strange experience is a learning experience and I can certainly say that's true in this instance.

The bad: it's given half the band a twisted first experience of studio work. I still hear talk in the rehearsal studio of "running an idea past the producer" or asking the producer if it's ok for us to change this, that and the next thing. It'll take some effort to clear up the misconception that he's somehow in charge of us and get him back behind the sound desk, but I'm confident we'll get there.