by Taylor Ruckle (@TaylorRuckle)
One wavering synth note runs through Kamikaze Palm Tree’s “Predicament,” weaving in between drummer Dylan Hadley and guitarist Cole Berliner like a buzzy cartoon fly, leaving a dotted trail through the air behind it. The two credit producer Tim Presley with coming up with the part as a way to stitch together the song’s guitar squiggles and give the whole thing a sense of direction. “He had a weird way of describing it,” remembers Berliner. “He’s like, ‘We’ve got this song, but we need a path for everything to be following.’ He just put that over it, and it was one of those things where it's like, ‘whoa,’ you know? It doesn't make sense, but at the same time, it completely makes sense.”
Much of Mint Chip, their sophomore record and Drag City debut, follows a similar backwards logic where making everything more bonkers somehow just makes it more coherent and avant-poppy. The more minds Hadley and Berliner bring into the studio with them, the more it amplifies their singularly skronky idiosyncrasies. The closer they get to total abandon, as on the all-improv, violin and clarinet-layered “Club Banger,” the more they sound like wonky chamber pop composers.
On the resulting record, they catch more flies with vinegar than they could with honey–dissonance proves as sweet and addictive as harmony, and Mint Chip sounds as tasty as moose tracks. Theirs is a proprietary recipe, not easily explained, but ahead of the album release, the duo did indulge my questions about growing extra arms (the better to play the MIDI marimba with) and the one-of-a-kind dog who inspires them.
Photo credit: Mimi Pfahler
Taylor Ruckle: I know your last record Good Boy came out in 2019, so when did you get started working on Mint Chip?
Dylan Hadley: I guess the second we found out there was a pandemic happening. [laughs] We were like, "Oh, we should..."
Cole Berliner: "We should make another album." [laughs]
Hadley: “I mean, we're both working during it, but if we could find some time, we should take the opportunity to start writing and recording before it's too late,” you know?
So when the pandemic started, did you have some downtime to think about music?
Hadley: Yeah, I think the first couple months, we both couldn't work, so we were writing then, and–sorry, we have a dog. She's very excited about this.
Berliner: Bongo!
Hello! So this is Bongo?
Hadley: Here she is.
Berliner: She wants to go outside.
Hadley: Yeah, maybe we should put her outside. [laughs] Sorry! She's very energetic. But yeah, we started demoing the first couple months of the pandemic, and then sending some songs to Drag City, and yeah, we just got enough songs together. I think we finished recording about a year ago, and we recorded it over the course of a couple months, taking, like, three days in a row, and then taking a week off to think about what we did and what ended up going on in the studio, and then coming back after that.
Had you been talking to Drag City before you started making the record?
Berliner: Yeah, we met Dan [Koretzky] right before the pandemic too, and I think he just was in LA–I mean, maybe you had met him before.
Hadley: I met him before playing with another band, yeah.
Berliner: I think that was my first time meeting him, but through friends and people doing music, he heard we were playing in LA, and he was in town, and he came to one of our shows. We basically started talking after that.
Hadley: I think that was the beginning of 2020.
Berliner: Yeah, February or something.
Hadley: It was, like, our last show before the pandemic.
How well do you remember your last performances before things shut down?
Hadley: Pretty viscerally. You know, you're like, "Wow that was the last one," you know? Like, we opened up for Duster, and that was a show that Dan went to. Then we played in a strip mall in Santa Ana, and Dan came to that one too, with David Pajo? It was fun–it was like a tiny warehouse show.
Berliner: Yeah, [laughs] that was a funny show.
Kamikaze Palm Tree started as a duo, and the Bandcamp description now refers to you as an "eight-armed wonder." What has it been like growing the band?
Hadley: I didn't even know it said that! I think someone else did that. I mean, it's still a duo at heart, but we did have Josh Puklavetz play bass on Mint Chip, so it was cool having more collaborators in the studio, and then Tim Presley produced it. So we wrote the songs for the most part, then Josh added really cool bass parts, and Tim put his shimmer over everything. So yeah, it's still a duo at heart, but it's definitely been really beneficial to have people collaborate with us and help us out – fleshing everything out and making the idea really full, you know?
Berliner: One thing we did especially with this album is layered a bunch of keyboards and alternate melodies in there, so when we play live, too, we have a keyboard player, Sofia Arregiun, and she's usually doing multiple synth lines at once.
Hadley: Yeah, she's crazy. Couldn't do it without her.
This band has been around for about seven years now. How has the process of writing songs for you two developed over that time?
Hadley: Well, it's funny. We've been a band for a long time–we started in high school–but kinda haven't been able to do it fully until really recently? Cole went to college, and we would try and play shows or write stuff when we were both home, so we'd been writing snippets of stuff in that time, and then really started focusing on Good Boy–kind of a while ago at this point, which is crazy to think about.
We started writing that four or five years ago, and yeah, the writing process has definitely changed over time. For Good Boy, we were writing those songs at his parents' house, just drums and guitar, and taking that to the studio. This guy Spencer Hartling recorded that at Tiny Telephones, this fully analog studio. I think that record has a lot more juvenile energy, 'cause we're so young, and it does have a very stark sound. Mint Chip, we got to really–well, one, we grew up a lot. We're, like, 25 now. The difference between 19 and 20 to 25…
Immeasurable. Huge difference.
Hadley: And we got to take a lot more time with Mint Chip. Really sit on it, layer things, and learn way more about bands we liked. I'll let you talk on that.
Berliner: For the record too–for the record.
Hadley: [laughs]
Berliner: Spencer Hartling also engineered Mint Chip. This time, at his own studio called Wiggle World, which he and two other amazing producers and engineers, Danielle [Goldsmith] and Sami [Perez], also own. Anyways, it's kind of a similar crew, but we're all different people, and stuff's happened in our lives. Stuff's happened in the world. In addition to what we liked before, we like different stuff, or maybe actually we don't like some of the stuff we liked before, you know? So it's like, similar cast, slightly different arrangement. Some other people too.
Dylan, you also mentioned learning more about what bands you like. How did the shift happen? What was the difference this time?
Hadley: I feel like between writing Good Boy stuff and Mint Chip stuff, I became very excited with Slapp Happy, and Anthony Moore, and like, Mayo Thompson stuff. I guess more melodic stuff. I'm trying to even think about what I was listening to with Good Boy.
Berliner: Right, [laughs] I don't know either.
Hadley: I feel like I was way more into The Fall or something–being really young and being like, "I love The Fall!" You know? I mean, I still love The Fall, don't get me wrong, but Slapp Happy, Corky's Debt To His Father, all that stuff is just so melodic and has this really cool flow to it. I think that was the difference between Good Boy and Mint Chip, inspiration-wise.
Berliner: I would agree with that. Good Boy–sorry if this is obvious. We've always liked The Residents a lot, and I feel like there's a lot of that on Good Boy. Mint Chip has some of that as well, but feels like we’ve compounded it with, yeah, Mayo Thompson, Slapp Happy–not like those are in the same world. Two totally different worlds, but yeah–you know, Fred Frith too, the whole Canterbury scene, Henry Cow and stuff. I feel like we tapped into that a little bit more on this latest album.
You mentioned that there's so much more layered on top of it. What was it like building those arrangements?
Hadley: I personally felt way more excited, especially because we were apart so often during the writing process for Good Boy. It went over such a long course of time. Mint Chip, we lived together, so we could just be like, "Yo, you wanna make a song right now?" Or like, "You wanna work on these songs right now?" It was a completely different experience and it felt exciting to be able to sit and take more time with it. The difference between demoing straight to the computer where you can hear everything at once and hear how that's playing with each other, [versus] it only being guitar and drums, and then having to figure out the rest in the studio, which is what we did for Good Boy–it felt like we got to get way more ideas out.
Berliner: I wanna second what Dylan said before too, that Good Boy was very guitar and drums-based. It was coming out of an era where we really were just a duo. We actually added someone playing keyboards live because in the studio we had decided to add keyboard parts, but initially when we wrote the songs, there were no keyboards in mind, so yeah, it was like, guitar, drums, bass before, and this time around we were kinda like, "Well, let's just do whatever we want. Let's make a cool-sounding album. We can add bass and keys and piano, or background vocals, whatever we feel like."
When you bring in other people, like Josh playing bass, or Tim Presley on production, what is it like getting them on board with an idea? Do they understand what you're going for?
Hadley: Luckily, yeah. Tim has a band called White Fence, and all of us have played in White Fence, so we kind of know how all of us work together musically, which is part of why we wanted them to collaborate with us; we knew that we understood each other. Basically, the three of us with Josh recorded most of the parts, then we took, like, a week with Tim, and he put his magic on it and kind of put the pieces together. Where things may have been missing, he had a lot of cool synth sounds and cool ideas for parts that could interplay with everything else, so we got pretty lucky with them fully getting what we were going after.
Berliner: And also being able to add their own flavor.
Hadley: Yeah, trusting them with that.
Berliner: There's definitely moments where Josh or Tim would add a part that we would never have thought of, and it changes the vibe or the direction of the song. Just enough, you know–it's not like, "Oh, it's a completely different song," but all of a sudden, "Whoa, that's a new idea." That was the coolest thing to me about collaborating with those guys. All of a sudden we'd be like, "Whoa, it's the same concept, but there's another idea."
What stands out to you as an example of that kind of lightbulb moment?
Hadley: "Flamingo," when we demoed that song, I played bass. I don't know how to play bass, you know? It was like a joke. It was really simple, super slide-y. Josh put some psycho bass line that was super rhythmic, but also kept the slides that I did and that we both liked. He just took it to a completely different level that made it feel really exciting.
Berliner: We cranked it in the mix too. [laughs] We turned the bass way up at the end. He did that on another song that's coming out too, "Come In Alone." There's a nasty bass line on it now.
Hadley: I felt so excited. I was like, "We have to make it so loud! Turn it up, turn it up!" And then Tim–I mean, he was so instrumental in everything, it's hard to even pick out a specific thing. Definitely "Chariot on Top.” We were totally messing around, and it ended up being a really fun song together. It was us playing MIDI keyboard together, you know? It just felt like friends having fun.
I have to ask about the marimba sound on this album. Who was playing that?
Hadley: That's the MIDI keyboard. There's little pads on it, and we were just straight up hitting the pads for fun. It wasn't supposed to be a song, and then it was just so funny to us, that sound. We were like, "Let's make a song for fun," and it ended up working out.
Berliner: I think we were recording another song with a marimba track tucked in there. I forget which one.
I think there's one on "In The Sand." Is that the one?
Hadley: Yeah! We had a marimba sound on the demo, and we totally forgot, and you were like, "Oh, we gotta put the marimba sound on that." We did that, and then me and Tim were just messing around on that, and we were like, "Let's make this twisted." [laughs]
I need to ask about another turn of phrase that's on the website and also the Bandcamp, so you might not have heard this one either. There's a description of your music as "cognitive and dissonant," which rings very true. Is that something you came up with, or somebody else?
Hadley: I think it was a combination of us and Rian Murphy from Drag City. Or, he definitely made that up, but it rang true for us.
Berliner: We talked with him about how we want the description to read, and he got a vibe for what we were thinking, but I think those are his own words. But yeah, I don't know, I feel like that could mean a couple different things depending on how you look at it.
Hadley: It's hard to think about what that means in that context for us. It definitely rang true, and I don't know if I thought about the deep meaning behind that or whatever. It feels more instinctive. Like, things are thought out, but it's also more of a flow thing, and it ends up coming out the way that it is, if that makes sense.
In connection to that idea, I wanted to ask you about "Club Banger," which feels like the most dissonant song on this album, but in such a precise way. It's not just noisy. How do you assemble something like that?
Berliner: [laughs]
Hadley: It's so funny, 'cause it's like the least cognitive song on the album. Everything was one shot. You were playing guitar and I was playing piano at the same time, and then I layered a bass line, and that was it.
Berliner: Yeah, it was basically a free improvisation or something, and then layered bass, and then Dylan wrote a vocal part and melodies, following I guess, loosely, something in the song?
Hadley: It was your guitar part. Then we had Laena Myers play violin and Brad Caulkins play clarinet, and those are maybe the most thought-out things. They did a couple different cycles, just 'cause it was all improv, so it was taking bits from each take. But yeah, everything for the most part was one shot and ended up working out, so we just kept it.
There's this other line, "none of the songs are about anything," and I can't argue, but it sounds like a challenge to pull that off. How do you write a song that's not about anything?
Hadley: I don't...I don't know. [all laugh] We were just talking to someone else, and I think a couple different things came to light that I hadn't thought about. I guess when we have written songs, it's maybe not a conscious thing, like, "Oh, I'm going to write about this." It's more like something you're feeling at the time, and maybe the sound of that goes into it. And then lyrically, the songs aren't about anything–it's kind of just whatever, you know?
For "Y So K," we had recorded the guitar and the piano stuff and the bass, and I was trying to come up with lyrics. I was driving around for work, delivering flowers, and I was pretending that I was Mayo Thompson [laughs] trying to write lyrics. I'm like, "What would he say?" Not as derivative as that, but just pretending like I was him and writing like that. Not about anything, but more an embodiment of inspiration or a feeling.
Berliner: The way we both write, too, is like, I'm always super into stuff on guitar with chords and melodies at the same time, so I feel like I think about melody a good amount, and Dylan thinks about melody a good amount–when Dylan was talking about a feeling or an embodiment, I feel like it's mostly, "Let's get words that feel right or sit right, or they have the right delivery to them.”
Hadley: Or it kind of suits what's happening, melodically.
It's another puzzle piece you have to fit to the overall picture.
Hadley: Totally.
Berliner: Sometimes we'll be writing stuff, and for example, I'll have come up with a riff or something, and then Dylan will be like, "Well, what if we change that one note or this one little part?" Or vice versa, just to make it feel slightly different. A slightly different note can shift a whole melody or idea into different turf.
Was there ever a point where you tried writing more conventionally? Or is this just what comes out when you write songs?
Berliner: I actually feel like if there was a time, it would be this album. Like, the first time we ever were like, "Let's add bass and keys and background vocals and build it in the studio," whereas before, we were always trying to make the most out of just guitar and drums and vocals, you know?
Hadley: Yeah, and I think we're trying to maybe lean into pop a little bit more. Not in the, whatever, like, Ariana Grande pop, but a little more melodic in that way, I guess.
And you get songs like "The Hit," which is called "The Hit," and has a guitar solo and everything, right? There's a way in which it's shaped like a pop song.
Berliner: Totally, yeah. We like to play with a couple different things. I feel like we've never felt like we have to do a traditional song form. A lot of our stuff–well, I shouldn't say that. I was gonna say a lot of our stuff, we have three different parts, and then we just repeat everything once, but–[all laugh]
Hadley: I don't know about that. Or it's like a couple different ideas, and trying to find a way to like...
Berliner: Bridge them all together.
Hadley: Yeah, mold them together in a way that feels like it flows well.
Complete non sequitur: I have to know about Bongo, who I briefly met, but who I have also already met through song titles. Tell me about Bongo.
Hadley: She is...
Berliner: She's crazy.
Hadley: …everything. [laughs] She's crazy and everything. I think we're both really big dog people, and maybe it's just because she's our dog, but I've never met a dog like her. She's such a trip and she's so weird, and so full of personality and energy. Even people that aren't dog people, she's won them over. It's probably just because she's our dog, but I'm like, "She's special," you know?
Berliner: She kinda looks and acts like a horse, which is cool. She's super athletic, likes to run around.
Hadley: Very inquisitive.
Berliner: Right. We'd love to figure out a way to bring Bongo on tour, but you know, she also would be insane.
Hadley: She would be crazy, yeah. But she ends up working in with the songs and visual stuff 'cause–maybe this is the cognitive and dissonant thing. She can go from looking super mesmerized, like, "What in the world is she thinking about?" totally tripper style to totally insane in a matter of seconds. So maybe she kind of works in like that, where she just has so many different versions of herself. She's a big inspiration.
One of my favorites from the last record was "Secure the Bongo," where you blow into the mic.
Hadley: [laughs] Oh yeah! Well, it's funny, 'cause we didn't have Bongo yet, and her name had nothing to do with any of those.
Seriously?
Hadley: Seriously had nothing to do with any of that, and then we were like, "Oh! The whole last record had so much bongo stuff." Maybe it was in there subconsciously.
Berliner: Yeah, I feel like for some reason, "Bongo" is an ongoing theme in our lives.
So was the dog named for the ongoing theme, or was the name...I can't even vocalize my question about this. How did the dog come to be named Bongo?
Hadley: Well, my mom's friend had a dog named Bongo, and I was like, "Aw, that's such a sick dog name." And then we named her Bongo.
Berliner: Yeah, it just felt right.
Hadley: Then we were like, "Oh, Bongo's been here forever." [laughs] Like, she was supposed to come into our lives, you know?
You also mentioned the visual side of things, and there's such a colorful, kind of abstract look to everything you’ve been putting out. What are your biggest visual influences?
Hadley: Honestly, I mean–so, I did the insert. I don't know if you got a physical record.
No, I haven't seen the physical record yet.
Hadley: I did all the single art and I do our tour posters and stuff–
Berliner: And you edited the "Hit" video with all the images.
I have seen that.
Hadley: [laughs] I don't know, I don't have an inspiration 'cause it's honestly the opposite of, like, visually what I would pick out for my house, or whatever. My house is not chaotic in that way, but maybe mentally–[laughs] mentally, it makes sense. It's hard to describe 'cause it's fully not like anything I would wear. I guess it's more funny to me. There's a part in "The Hit" where there's a fish, and then someone hitting a bat, and I think the absurdity of it makes me laugh, and it's just trying to make things like whatever.
Berliner: Sometimes that's how we make songs too, is just try to have it not be too serious, you know? Something we would think was funny, or fun to listen to.
Hadley: I feel like every time I make a poster, or like, all the single art, I was cracking up the whole time. I was like, "This is so funny to me." Like the toothpaste on "The Hit," I was laughing so hard when I found that picture. I guess it's just having fun.
It comes through. Yeah, I'm looking at "The Hit" cover now, that's great. And also, mint! Which reminds me, I love Mint Chip as a name for this record. If your music was an ice cream flavor, it would be mint chip.
Berliner: Yeah!
Hadley: On the song "Mint Chip," I don't remember how we came up with–well, Cole just went, "When you look at me, it's like mint chip," but I don't remember if we were talking about mint chip, or how that even came up. But then we were like, "We should name the record Mint Chip," 'cause it did seem to fit. [laughs] I don't know why you said "When you look at me, it's like mint chip." We all started laughing so much. I forget the context, but we were dying laughing.
You have a tour coming up where you're playing some dates with Wilco. What is it like preparing for something of that scale?
[both laugh] Hadley: It's definitely the biggest thing we've ever done, so we're nervous and excited, and there's a lot going into it logistically and sound-wise. It's definitely been the thing that we both have been thinking about, at least I think, every second of every day, just trying to get ready. And we're doing our first headline show in Boston, and in Chicago–it's our first time playing in Chicago. There's a lot of cool first exciting things happening.
Berliner: The Wilco thing, we're super excited about, and to be perfectly honest, Nels Cline is one of my favorite guitarists of all time, so I'm just looking forward to shaking his hand. Maybe give him a hug if he's open to that. [all laugh] Also the rest of Wilco. I always thought Wilco was super interesting, and we're excited to play some of these locations we've never played before too.
It seems like a really neat bill, to see you and then to see Wilco.
Hadley: Yeah, it'll be interesting, and I know we both appreciate the fact they would take such a small band on tour. It's cool. You can tell a theme of theirs is really supporting smaller bands and artists. I was talking to Dan K from Drag City, and he was saying that Jeff orders every single record that comes out of Drag City, which is so cool. It's sweet to care and be interested in what's happening in smaller bands and everything, you know? So we both feel grateful.
Berliner: They do seem very genuine, and like nice, cool people.
With this record about to come out, what are you most proud of from this project?
Hadley: I think again, like how Good Boy felt so…not juvenile in a bad way, but just different, it feels nice to have this more fully-fleshed-out thing that shows a progression of growth. And like, just a lot of good memories, and getting to share fun times that you had. Even if people won't know about them, knowing that so much came out of fun with your friends, and that you get to share that with people, without the context or whatever, but maybe it can seep through musically and visually. I'm interested to see what the response will be, knowing that context of us having fun with everybody, and seeing how that translates to other people.
Berliner: I would agree with all that, and I guess I would say I'm proud of us doing something slightly different than our last thing, and stoked at all the people we worked with making this happen. 'Cause truly, not to be corny, it has been a team effort, and to me, that makes for the most interesting projects, is when there's multiple minds in on something.