By Joseph Mastel
Fantasy of a broken heart is one of the best new experimental art-pop groups out there. Al Nardo and Bailey Wollowitz masterfully weave mesmerizingly catchy choruses, captivating hooks, and fun ‘pop vibes’ with quirky songwriting, odd time signatures, intriguingly surreal instrumentation, and fascinating production. Feats Of Engineering was a great debut, especially the track “Ur Heart Stops,” one of the best of 2024. Their new EP, Chaos Practitioner, is another terrific assortment that continues to show their immaculate balance of experimental music with pop sensibilities.
fantasy of a broken heart by Laura Brunisholz
This interview has been shortened and edited for length and clarity.
Joseph Mastel: What was the creative process like for Chaos Practitioner? Was it similar to Feats Of Engineering?
Bailey Wollowitz: It was very different, specifically in the sense that Feats Of Engineering was, from start to finish, always ‘This album and these songs.’ We took some songs away and added some new ideas, but I think it had a strong thesis to what the whole thing was supposed to look like, and nothing’s ever like what it's supposed to look like by the time it's done.
We changed a lot of things, but we went into [Feats of Engineering] with a structure very much in mind. I think [Chaos Practitioner] is a lot of songs just coming out of nowhere (laughs) and saying like, ‘Let's put these two things together.’ A couple of the tunes are as old as Feats, but only one or two.
JM: Does your time in other bands like Sloppy Jane, Water From Your Eyes, and This Is Lorelei come into play with fantasy of a broken heart?
BW: Playing in other bands definitely inspires in the way one would expect, but I think what really connects everything is we’re on tour all the time. We write and record everything while we’re on tour. This year in particular, we’ve been touring with Lorelei the most, and we were with Nate [Amos] when we were recording a lot of [Chaos Practitioner].
Al Nardo: I feel like we’re always working with the people around us and pulling people in, so the album has a lot of friends playing on it. The EP has a little bit of that as well. Nate mixed the album, and he’s in the room, and it’s like, ‘Hey, can you just sing this one little part?’ I feel like that’s always coming into play. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be the band that we’re in. I think it’s just more who’s in town.
JM: What were some of the biggest musical influences for this EP?
BW: True to the name and concept of the project, kind of all over the place (laughs). I was definitely listening to a lot of instrumental guitar jazz sort of stuff like Pat Metheny. Another thing about tour is we just sit in the car together all day and listen to music.
AN: I feel like we’re always returning to the same music when we’re on tour. We have our Steely Dan discography day and Dirt Buyer discography day.
BW: Do you know that band Dirt Buyer from Brooklyn?
JM: No. I know who Steely Dan is, but I don’t know who Dirt Buyer is.
BW: You should listen to them—opposite ends of the spectrum (laughs). Dirt Buyer is our friend in New York. You should definitely check them out. It’s really good. It’s like modern—not pop punk—but coming from very much that generation. It’s very beautiful guitar music.
AN: I would call it emo jazz.
BW: Emo jazz (laughs). But we’re always listening to The Flaming Lips. I know this time around, there was a lot of disco and true pop crossover stuff. Like, we’ll always have an ABBA night. ABBA night is normally when we’re driving deliriously to go get sandwiches at a random town at like 3 in the morning.
Al was listening to Gloria Gaynor a lot. I guess the obvious answer is that we did listen to the Lorelei set every night (laughs). We’d play the Lorelei or Water From Your Eyes set and then go home and work on this. So it leaks but less in a sonic way and more in just vibes.
JM: Something I really like about your music is that it has poppy elements like the hooks and choruses, but it is also very experimental too, especially “Victory Path.” What do you enjoy the most about taking pop music and making it more experimental?
BW: I personally have always resisted pop as an idea that I wanted to engage with, like in the music that we were writing, and then I was like ‘Actually that’s so stupid because my favourite band is The Beatles.’
There’s a good point of balance between the two of us quite often where my inclination is to obscure something—like I am worried about something being not abstract enough (laughs). Al has like a really good sense when we’re writing a ton of lyrics or going through a ton of ideas for riffs and zooming in on something and being like, ‘Lets actually think about this part a little more. That feels like something that people could latch onto.’ I am conscious that we’re writing pop music or writing a hook, but lyrically, for me, it’s harder to conceptualize. I think Al’s way smoother in realizing a moment in a song that people would be really into if we just opened up to them a little bit (laughs).
AN: But the funny thing is Bailey’s really good at writing lyrics. I feel like the whole pop and experimental conversation for me is just about how much we can be laughing while we’re making the music. It is kind of funny to tee up this really sweet moment, and then everything kind of falls into something that’s a little bit weirder. It’s coming from a place of excitement, and it’s never like being forced. But it is a little bit funny, at least I think we’re laughing a little bit.
BW: It’s funny to consider pop as a vibe is one thing, but then when you really zoom out and think about it in terms of a mass appeal like, ‘What makes this song so good that a million people love it so much.’ Like “Dancing Queen,” “Dancing In The Dark,” “Just Dance,” or “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” the thing that ties these songs together other than they’re about dancing is that there’s a really simple sentiment in the middle of the song. Something relatable to a lot of people.
In some of these huge famous songs, the verse lyrics are sometimes a really weird thing that no one really knows what it's about like if you got to karaoke. I did "Life On Mars." at our friend's birthday party the other day. That's a song I love a lot. But I was like, 'I don't want to do this.' By the time it was my turn, a bunch of people showed up at the bar who weren't with us doing lots of '90s and early 2000s sex music sort of stuff (laughs). I was like, 'I'm gonna do this old fuddy-duddy.' I went up and did it. All these people, I was just like clocking visually based on how they're partying and stuff like, 'There's no way that all these people are singing every word of the song right now.' It's karaoke, so all the words are on the screen. The verses and even the chorus of that song 'cause David Bowie always got away with saying whatever he wanted it's like a proper noun after a weird adjective after him describing some really niche-specific British sentiment. There's all these wasted New Yorkers in the bar singing along as if anyone related to it. But the feeling is good, and that's pop.
JM: On the record, there are two features. There is Brutus VIII in “Have A Nice Time Life!” and Current Joys in “Road Song.” What led to them being on the EP?
BW: They’re both just really good friends of ours. Like Al said before, it’s just who’s around and who wants to work on stuff. Jackson [Katz] —who’s Brutus VIII —that song was one of the older ones. There was a period a couple of years ago where we were living in Los Angeles before we both moved to New York, and we were making a lot of music together. That one loosely came out of that stuff.
Regarding the Current Joys feature, I just think we had a song that felt like it wanted someone else to sing part of it. Al said, ‘What about Nick (Rattigan)?’ and we sent it to him, and he sent some lyrics back.
AN: We tried writing him a verse first. I guess we’re still at the beginning of a lot of things, but it’s nice when people bring their own ideas in. I think he was being a little shy (laughs), so we did end up writing a verse for him. He ended up writing something that was way better. There’s a lot of layers to writing a song. Bailey and I are really considerate of like which one is taking the lead at any given time in a song and what the implication of the character is within that in a storytelling way. To be writing a part for a third person is another layer. He ended up writing something that was really awesome.
BW: And it was way more him. We were trying to write what we thought he would want to sing, and then, of course, he is him, so what he came up with was even more so.
AN: It was funny because we were like listening to his music and we were like, ‘We need to like get inside his mind’ (laughs).
BW: Circling back for a second back to the pop thing—I think [“Victory Path”] is a pretty unique song for us in that we just had the bones of it. A lot of our songs develop over time, and it would be a lie to say we ever write a full song on the spot, with all the lyrics and stuff. That’s just not our flow. It's very back and forth, some music and then some lyrics and then some music and then some recording and lyrics.
Once we knew we were gonna have Nick work on it, it all sort of came together and this headspace, like ‘Who are we in the context of this song, and where he’s gonna be the other voice singing on it?’ versus something like our last record which had a lot of guest vocals but who were very complementary to us. They were people that were in the band already, guest narrators, and that song almost has a vibe of us backing him up a bit which is cool and a new flow.
AN: Having Jackson and Nick singing on the EP was a really nice full circle because we were briefly living in LA, and those were both people we were seeing like pretty often, so almost narratively, it felt very complete when it landed that way.
BW: The funny thing is the two of them have been making music together for like a decade at this point. Jackson plays drums in Current Joys. They’ve just been friends for way longer than we’ve known either of them and the way that things panned out, I think after we finished the EP, were like, ‘It’s kind of silly we didn’t get them to both be on the same song’ (laughs).
JM: I really like the riffs on “Victory Path” and “Star Inside The Earth.” Would you be able to share how you came up with those riffs?
AN: “Victory Path” is kind of an interpolation of “La Vie En Rose.” We both really like jazz music and classical music.
BW: The day “Victory Path” was first demoed, I went to our friend Nick Noneman’s house, who engineered and played on the record a little bit in Los Angeles. I went over to his house because I had the chords to the chorus, I think. I just had a little progression, and he had his Casio drum loop. He was messing around with something, and we very quickly created a sort of form to that song that I think sounded like something that it sounds like now but some old version. I think it happened very quickly, half an hour later, you came over, Al, and we we’re like, ‘Play some lead guitar on this (laughs).
AN: Yeah, I remember that. It was during COVID, so y’all were making music every day.
BW: Yeah, we had a ton of bad songs and some good ones.
AN: They would work, and I wouldn’t hang out the entire time (laughs) 'cause y’all would stay up so late. And I would put myself to bed until I would crawl over there, and they’d be like, ‘Play guitar, play guitar, play guitar.’
BW: You were like, ‘What is this song?’ (laughs) Because it didn’t even have chords yet. The chorus existed, but the whole other part of the song was just this bad preset drum loop that came in like an old keyboard. I think the first thing that came out of your hand was just sort of loosely “La Vie En Rose,” and we were like, ‘That’s perfect, that famous song that already exists. (laughs)’ It has a very sentimental ‘50s jazz line on top of it and we leaned into it. Not everyone identifies that melody with that song but definitely the spirit is in there. I think it was really nice to just let that feel free. To me I always thought it was that song that plays at the beginning of Up. Is that “La Vie En Rose” or a different song?
JM: I haven’t watched Up for a long time, but I think it's just the score by Michael Giacchino, but I might be wrong.
BW: I think it's an original song, but that’s what I thought it was for a second. We’re ripping off that song before the wife passes.
AN: Hey. No Spoilers! (laughs)
BW: Which is in itself a modern composer paying homage to that sort of real lo-fi big band. Is that a genre? You think back then, any of the big band composers were like, ‘My big band is doing like bedroom big band.'
AN: Dude, all of those recordings sound really bad. Like, ‘Ok move the drums farther away from the microphone.’
BW: (laughs) Yeah. Where are we gonna place this one microphone in this room of 50 people?
AN: Imagine being the drummer and having to scoot your whole drum kit back (laughs). Imagine the ego of leaning closer to the microphone with your trumpet (laughs).
BW: What was the other riff, Joe?
JM: “Star Inside The Earth.”
BW: “Star Inside The Earth” so far, is the only fantasy song that started out of this other project that I have called 108 Snails. It has no recorded material out, and it will stay that way probably. It was a band I started a couple of years ago. It was just me playing drums along to tracks and singing sometimes. I started it as a solo project to make a little extra money ‘cause we were at that time only playing in big bands that were four or five people, and at least on the New York scene, there was never really any money. It’s like, ‘We’re gonna take this DIY gig with a five band bill, and there are six of us in the band, so we’re all gonna make ten bucks.’
So, this is like some drum and bass kind of neurotic solo thing. I immediately stopped doing it after three gigs 'cause I realized it was really boring to go to shows by myself (laughs). I was like, ‘I don’t like being a solo artist.’
AN: 108 Snails is so good.
BW: Yeah, I should book something again. Anyway, that project was all samples. I would make a track that was more sample based more in the hip hop production universe. “Star Inside The Earth's” original version was called “Static Cymbal,” and the sample was “Layla” by Eric Clapton. I don’t know how much you know the “Star Inside The Earth” riff of the dome right now, which was just that part looped. It bears no similarity at all. I just chopped up the note down to the eighth note and was just popping them all together. But you wouldn’t be able to tell, it was just that riff over and over again. Al was like, ‘What if we play that one in fantasy?’ We always have a huge archive of ideas. We don’t do it that often, but every six months or so, we’ll be on a drive and listen to like every single perverted piece of audio I have on my Dropbox and will find something and revisit it. That one, true to what I was saying before, was in the me bag in mostly instrumental guitar music minded. Al was very gracious to let that one fly without adding any more words to it or whatever.
AN: For me, it’s not a form that we haven’t visited before. It’s kind of like an elevated “Tapdance 1” from our first record. It feels like it hits the nail on the head a little more.
JM: I really like “We Confront The Demon In Mysterious Ways,” especially its atmosphere, texture, and soundscape. Can you share what you were trying to go for with that song in terms of the vibe?
BW: Honestly that’s the scariest writing a song has ever felt (laughs). I think that song has six sections. There is a structure to it, but that song definitely changed the most from the original demo to when we finished it.
A new thing would reveal itself while we were working on it in a really cool way that isn’t always true to how we work. Never before had I felt such a sincere sense of this song continuing to write itself every time we sat down, like some new thing is coming up that feels really important to how the song goes. I think a lot of that came from an emotional angle, some sense of vulnerability of just letting emotions flow into the song in a very organic way. It’s a weird one for me.
I still struggle to play that one live a little bit. I mean, it's technically hard to play. I think Feats Of Engineering was very much a retrospective album. It’s an album of stories sort of told in a narrative way like it’s reflecting on a bunch of little moments in time. I think “We Confront The Demon” and this project as a whole, but particularly that song, had real life flowing into it every day we were working on it on an emotional level, and I’m grateful for that. I think I’m excited to engage with that allowance of self to let there just be some more room to write lyrics or riffs, too. Lyrics are more obvious to trace what it’s about, but just to put a feeling before a song before you actually have closure on the feeling. What say you, Al?
AN: That song was really exciting to make. I can’t speak on the texture or anything of it too much because I feel like we were so focused on the songwriting part of it. I feel like we literally just kept tearing that song apart, which was really exciting. I need to relisten to the original demo because I know that it’s so different.
BW: We recorded a form of that song where every part of the song is what ended up being the bridge, like it was four minutes of that part and just ended up being 20 seconds of the actual song. It had a way happier vibe to it originally and a different name. It just continued to be injected with other stuff to the point that it doesn’t bear much of a resemblance, but that was sort of the thesis. That song was called “Chaos Practitioner” up until the day we handed in the master, I think (laughs). We texted our label, I think, literally an hour before the masters were due, asking if we could change the name to “We Confront The Demon In Mysterious Ways” (laughs), and they were down with it, which was cool. But true to the name of the EP as a whole and the nature of which the project was made, there was a lot of room made to allow for chaotic decisions (laughs).
JM: Do you both have a favourite moment on the EP, either lyrically, vocally, or sonically?
AN: Sonically, I really like the guitar solo that Bailey takes in “Star Inside The Earth.” That’s a really good one.
BW: Thanks Al. I’m glad you picked that because it would have been embarrassing if I did (laughs). I have a lot of love for that song definitely. We were just talking about it in our car with our band on the way to a gig the other day where everyone was like, ‘That song is such a nice little silly song. And I was like, ‘To me, it’s very serious (laughs).
AN: No, you said it’s really sad.
BW: It is really sad to me. My favourite moment would be “Demon,” probably. A specific moment doesn’t even come to mind, maybe sort of the hook of that song.
AN: And what’s the hook (laughs)?
BW: 1:31 probably. I don’t know, random guess. That song as a whole just because it has self-contained so many moments that surprise me in a good way every time we play it, and I think that’s why I’m still not super used to that song. Compared to everything else on the EP, like our ratio of how much we played it to how long it took to write it, it is sort of skewed. We made it very quickly before we ever played it live. I think on an execution level, it surprises me all the time of just like, ‘Woah, this part is in this song too.’ Trying to be as much of an objective listener to that song as possible, I really always appreciate when that chorus comes up. I feel like we hit something really cool there.
JM: What does Chaos Practitioner mean to you personally?
BW: That phrase has been around for as long as the older songs on the EP have been around. At the time, it was very much describing someone who continues to fuck up their own life sort of recklessly in a day-to-day way. Like the decisions we make in chasing some sort of like, ‘Why the hell not’ philosophy about things and the potential damage that can be inflicted on yourself and others around you. But also sort of confronting the fact that particularly at the time, about the end of COVID, which for me was the period I stopped drinking and was like really reflecting on the influence of party culture on friendships and things like this. In its origin, I think it had a darker sentiment to it. It was a self-reflection on losing control of one’s reality and allowing things to become messy.
As we’ve grown older, the sentiment is probably more generally referring to how insanely chaotic our lives are as touring musicians and people who spend half the year living in a car. Our label, Dots Per Inch, has really been a blessing to work with. One of them being Tom (Moore), the head of the label, who understands that our music flow is one where it doesn’t really have a Google Calendar deadline on it (laughs).
Full circle as it came to be, the making of the EP itself was the practicing of chaos. We are very grateful we had the opportunity to do what we did, which is to say we should just make something and put it out, and it’s probably gonna be a massive amount of stress for everyone involved, especially ourselves, to say that we need to declare that this project is done in six to eight weeks and chaos was practiced and everyone did it with a lot of love and determination.