by Selina Yang (@y_aniles)
Russian Baths has a sound that cocoons listeners in a gossamer shroud. The Brooklyn-based duo of Jess Rees (guitar, vocals) and Luke Koz (guitar, vocals) draw on the looming mystique of dark wave, hazy guitars of shoegaze, and agony of hardcore, resulting in their flair for the dramatic. “There are many moody pictures of [them] on the internet,” according to Koz. Both Rees and Koz have lush voices that calmly wash over instrumentals – whether glittering percussion, or guitars pushed to their limit. Putting out their first singles in 2016, early Russian Baths frantically spares no second to breathe, if they could be shredding instead. Seven years later, now 2023, their latest singles glimmer with bittersweet hope.
A track is distinctively Russian Baths if it manages to harmonize in composition, but not in emotional tone, as if the heart doesn’t know whether to reflect with bitterness or acceptance, deciding that leaving things open to interpretation is okay. Rees said that their newer songs are “harder to play than any songs we've ever had before.” This need for a musician to hone in, and put intention behind every note, results in songs that have that introspection built in. However, Rees and Koz avoid straightforward confessionals, because a Russian Baths song should be abstract enough for each person to interpret personally.
I was interviewing from a basement with no natural lighting, besides clinically eerie overhead lights. On this stormy day, Russian Baths sat down with me for a discussion on cinematic juxtaposition, introspective lyricism, and plans for an upcoming record.
photo credit: A.F. Cortés
Selina: Russian Baths has a lot of imagery that’s quite textural, like the vibe is something you can almost touch. Can you talk about your non-musical inspirations, whether it be literature, film, etc?
Luke: When it comes to film, definitely Tarkovsky movies. I really like things with sudden shifts in tone, or significant juxtaposition shifts. In movies, and in music.
Jess: Whenever we started this band, we talked a lot about that movie Stalker. I've watched parts of it over the years, I don't think I've ever watched the whole thing. But the visuals, textures and colors are what I see when I think of this music that we make. Really muted but saturated colors. It's very visually cohesive to the music.
Luke: We also talked a lot about art. When we were first starting out, Francis Bacon was sort of apt for the darker edges, but I don’t know if we ever roared as loudly as his work does.
Jess: We certainly tried.
Luke: But other artists as well, like Agnes Martin, we talked about her too when we were starting. Carl Dreyer and David Lynch are definitely also aesthetic inspirations.
Selina: In that case, you have the harsher, darker side established, but how do you find the balance between the macabre versus the light?
Jess: We strived for a particular end in the beginning, and now it’s more intuitive than an attempt to do it, it just kind of works this way. To have everything be a juxtaposition. For every raging, distorted, loud part of music, there's some kind of balance that comes where it’s sweeter, and the melody softer. I think that the interest in music lies in that dynamic. The high and low, hot and cold. Like harsh and soft. Even the band name.
Selina: Was Ambulance, in 2016, the very first thing you have put out musically, or did you have any projects before starting Russian Baths?
Jess: Yeah, we both had other bands before this one. I hadn't been in a band for a number of years before I met Luke, but I had a band before that was more indie. So I guess I brought the softer side to the music. That was in a band called Screens, definitely noisy and harsh sounding.
Luke: It was a post-punk band, I would just call it willfully difficult. I played guitar in that band, but tried to avoid it sounding like a guitar. Which, in Russian Baths, our guitars sound like guitars.
Jess: Not always, but most of the time.
Luke: I grew up playing in post-hardcore bands where I was screaming all the time. So I don't really scream very often. Anymore. In music.
Selina: If you went back in time to talk to Russian Baths, all those years ago in 2016, would you be surprised by what you sound like today? Or, could you understand the progression more naturally?
Luke: Oh, that's interesting. I think I'd be mostly happy, especially with the stuff we're working on now because it feels like it's moving in a freer direction. The earlier music, I still enjoy playing a lot of it – some of it. It's really hard to recapture the spontaneity of the energy from those songs. But the newer stuff has a little more depth and nuance, and also a lot more attention to the lyrics.
Selina: On that note, do you have any recent songs that you’re proud of, or really showcase a unique aspect of Russian Baths songwriting?
Jess: There are songs that we haven't put out yet that we've written. Some of them started a long time ago, but we've collected them into a body.
Luke: We did play “Chlorine” live at that show, though, that Cathedral Bells show.
Jess: The other one I'm thinking of is called “Vision”. At least from my end, I'm definitely more like – when I say proud, that's not the right word – but in tune with the way the lyrics came out. They're more intentional than just some words to go with the song. Most of the lyrics I've ever written, to this day, are more mood creating than storytelling. I'm not a storyteller type, as a person or as a musician. I’m someone who likes to create a mood that whoever's listening or participating in whatever way can start from, and then explore whatever meaning they can pull out of those lyrics. Rather than being like, “this is a story that happened to me”. Or, “I was walking down the street yesterday” and whatever, you know. I've never written lyrics like that. I don’t think Luke has even, maybe he does and I don’t know. [laughs]
Luke: Wait till you see what I got for practice. I think that the music and the lyrics were more interested in asking questions than providing answers. This is an embarrassing truism, but I'm gonna say it anyway: art asks questions and propaganda gives the answers. So yeah, try to ask questions. I also think that's a little bit different from what's popular in indie rock right now, which are largely confessional lyrics. We probably have some, but I think a listener would be hard pressed to know what they are.
Jess: Yeah, all the lyrics that we have are definitely more abstract. More vibe-y than confessional.
Selina: That’s super interesting, I’ll be sure to pay attention to that if you guys are working on the next album.
Luke: It’s done, probably won't come out till next year.
Selina: When you describe the song making process, like starting to put more nuance into the lyrics, does that make the process more constructive? Or, more destructive, where you start off with a huge vague sketch that you whittle away.
Luke: It can be both. If every song came out the way it started, then the outros would all be four and a half minutes long. So the biggest thing we’ve done is make the outros only one minute long.
Jess: [laughs] There’s definitely an editing process that has to happen.
Luke: We've been working on sort of streamlining our arrangements. On some of this newer stuff, we worked with a couple of different people. One of them was Walter Schreifels. There was one song in particular, where it was this long build up at the introduction that started with the drums, then the bass came in, and then some guitar lines. He's like, “hey, that's the good part, though”. Like, start with the good part.” And it's like, “Oh, yeah. Okay.” So, we've done some simplification for sure, where it's like, “get right into the lyrics” or “get right into the guitar melody,” just like, relent on some of the drama in the arrangement.
Selina: That's like a good problem to have, right? To have too many ideas, better than being stuck in one place, which it sounds like you’re definitely not. Is Russian Baths mostly the two of you, or is there anyone else you regularly collaborate with? How do you feel you fit into the indie rock scene of Brooklyn?
Luke: For the full band, our bassist is Kyle Garvey, then our drummer is Steve Levine. I’d say at this point, they’re in the band. [laughs] In the past, we played with some different rhythm sections, but we've now been playing with both of them for years. For the most part when it comes to newer material, they're writing their parts and contributing structure too.
As for how we fit in, there's been a wave of post-punk bands who have risen in popularity to varying degrees. Like we love Bambara, they're friends of ours. We think we fit along nicely with them.
There are lots of Brooklyn bands I admire and think are really, really good. I like the new Water From Your Eyes stuff, it deserves the attention it's getting. I also really like this post-punk band The Wants who are from Brooklyn, maybe you'd like them? Actually, I think they're from New York. I think technically, they might live in Manhattan.
Selina: There’s definitely a sense of Brooklyn pride. I’ll check those out! Genre is a touchy term, but since 2016, do you feel like [musical] trends have changed around you? Has Russian Baths been influenced by the times, or has the overall vibe stayed consistent?
Jess: I'm sure there's some influence and the culture around us. There's no way to avoid that. But our music has definitely evolved, some things becoming more complex, some less, like we were talking about before. I don't think it's any of it's been intentionally to suit like, some trend or some popular scene. We started out with an idea and it's evolving just because of our own tastes or abilities. Not for any other reason than what we are capable of or what we feel like playing.
Luke: Yeah, I'm not very competitive. When I go see a band that rocks, I'm not like, “I must be better.”
Selina: Are you two the main ones who write and create the songs? Or, is it now pretty collaborative between you four?
Jess: It's always been Luke and I for the most part coming up with the main themes in the song, or especially lyrics, just [because] we're the ones who are singing. The other people over the years, definitely, wrote their instrument parts, but it's always something that's come out of Luke or I’s head first. In the very beginning, we used to jam in the practice space, come up with ideas and go from there. I don't think that was very long lived.
Luke: Even that, we'd have structural ideas to begin with. I will say, though, on the album that is done being recorded, but not out yet, there are some songs that we wrote entirely as a band. There's a couple that we didn't at all.
Jess: There are some that Luke wrote entirely in the lockdown when no one could be near anyone.
Selina: It'll be really interesting to see if someone did a blind listening test, if they could pick out which songs those were. Is there anything else like on the new album that listeners can expect?
Luke: I think the lyrics definitely mean more. I would say, give it a couple of lessons first. Why? Because there are a lot of left turns on it. I think some of the music is more unusual than it immediately appears.
Jess: Some of the things are weirdly complex. Maybe they don't sound that way, but I know this because a lot of the songs are harder to play than any songs we've ever had before. I had to pay more attention to what parts were happening rather than just shredding.
Luke: Yup, there’s a wider emotional palette.
Selina: [To Jess] Will you ever go back and watch Stalker in its entirety? Or do you think it’s fun that it’s left fragmented in your memory, dream-like in a way.
Jess: It’s like little vignettes, and I took away the imagery over anything. I probably will watch it someday, all the way through, but I got out of it this dream-world-vibe. There’s some books I’ve read that way too, where I’ll read chapters here and there, then get vignettes. After a while, I’ll read them all the way through, then be wowed by how the pieces fit together.