By Joseph Mastel
With their new album, Tomorrow Comes Crashing, Smut recorded as live as they could, channeling the intensity, excitement, and feeling of what a concert sounds like. The result is an electrifying and dynamic assortment of songs with cathartic emotions, commanding vocals, headbanging guitar riffs, catchy choruses, compelling storytelling, bombast, and a hypnotic mixture of rock, grunge, punk, dream pop, and shoegaze.
Recently, Tay Roebuck of Smut chatted with Post-Trash about chaos, Sydney Sweeney, their new album Tomorrow Comes Crashing.
Smut by Jon Salazar
This interview had been edited for length and clarity.
Joseph Mastel: What was the creative process like for Tomorrow Comes Crashing?
Tay Roebuck: This time around, we wanted to make something that was a bit more energetic than [How The Light Felt]. The last album was kind of sad, contextually, so we were like, ‘Let’s just have fun on stage again.’ We really wanted to channel how it feels to play live, which is very cathartic and exciting for us. So, we recorded as live as we could in the studio in New York, and when we were writing it, we just went song by song and weren’t really necessarily looking for like one kind of theme. It was just like whatever services each individual song we will do. This time around, it was just a lot of fun for us. We were just trying to reconnect with the excitement of making music itself, I think.
JM: You mentioned you recorded as live as you could. How exactly did you do that?
TR: We recorded in a studio in Red Hook, in New York, with Aron Kobayashi-Ritch from Momma, who was our producer. What we mean by that is we didn’t have each individual member go in and record their parts separately. Everyone in the band was in the same room, playing the songs from start to finish. So just trying to keep that same live energy for every track. It was amazing. We had a really good time with Aron. I think we all connected very well with each other. I think he very much understood what we were going for and had so many good suggestions and ideas. It seemed like he was really engaged with the music as well. We never had a producer really before. So, we were excited to have anyone produce, and it was just a cherry on top that it was a really cool guy who worked well with us.
JM: Were any of the demos quite different, or were they quite similar to what they ended up being?
TR: I think they were pretty similar. There were a few songs where we got into the studio, and Aron was like, ‘Let's remove that bridge. I think that would move better in the song.’ I think it was more like generally adding lots to the songs. We came into the studio with kind of bare-bones ideas, but when we got in the studio, that’s when we had fun with all these effects, pedals, adding extra stuff, harmonies, and things like that.
JM: Was it always your intention to start the album with “Godhead” and then end with “Sunset Hymnal”?
TR: When we wrote those songs, I think yes. When we wrote “Godhead,” I think that was the first song we wrote for the album, and it just felt like coming guns blazing for the first song (laughs). We were excited about that, and it was a good way for us to start writing ‘cause then we sort of travelled along that. When we wrote “Sunset Hymnal,” it just felt so anthemic that by the time we had finished the song, we were like, ‘This has to be the last one.’ Start with a bang, end with a bang.
JM: One of my favourite songs on the album is “Syd Sweeney.” What inspired you to write the song and name it after the actress Sydney Sweeney?
TR: Weirdly, when I wrote the lyrics, I always knew it was gonna be called “Syd Sweeney.” It was pretty directly inspired by her and the social culture around her. I've just noticed that every few years, we pick a girl that everyone adores and loves. You could say the same about Anne Hathaway or Jennifer Lawrence, where people like to build up these women who are very hard-working and talented at what they do, and it’s weird that as soon as the sort of cultural zeitgeist makes them into more a sexy persona, they get ripped apart and people like hate them suddenly. It’s this pendulum. It just keeps swinging. I just don’t think she deserves that hatred.
We have a very weird idea of women in entertainment where we put them on pedestals, then take them off and grind them into the dirt, and then sometimes they’ll have like a resurgence like 10 years later, and it’s just like, for what? They’re just doing their job. They just want to be a performer. Just let them perform. I felt that reflected in all forms of entertainment, like music and being a little paranoid about how I’m being perceived. I mean, we’re nowhere near the A-list status, but I think on every level, as women, you do get a little paranoid about how people are receiving you and how you look, which is not something I want to care so much about when I just want to write good music at the end of the day (laughs).
JM: Are you quite a big fan of Sydney Sweeney’s films and TV shows?
TR: I’ve seen a few things she’s been in. I’m a big horror movie person, so I’ve seen multiple horror movies that she’s been in. One is The Voyeurs, which was good. It’s kind of like a thriller. There’s this really weird one [Nocturne] where she’s a violinist at a school. It’s like this psychological horror movie. She’s good. I think she’s really talented.
JM: I like rom-coms a lot, so I loved Anyone But You with her and Glen Powell.
TR: That one was good. That was really funny. I like seeing the rom-com come back.
JM: I also really like the outro in that song. It almost goes into a hardcore or screamo-type direction at the end. What led you as a band to go in that direction for that outro?
TR: it just felt like that’s what the song needed. I know especially Andie [Min] and Sam [Ruschman] are both really into metal and ‘80s metal. They’ve always been itching to add elements like that to songs. It felt like the subject matter and the frustration was so intense that it was like, ‘Of course. Let’s just start a breakdown. Like a hardcore breakdown at the end, why not?’ (laughs). Again, we wanted to try everything that we ever wanted to do on this album.
JM: On a couple of PR releases of “Touch & Go,” it talks about how the best part about music will always be the community you build with it. Then there’s a lyric that says, “This is what I wanted back at the beginning.” Is the song kind of like a letter to your younger selves about when you were first getting into the music scene?
TR: I was like really into MGMT in high school, and I always wanted to write something that was kind of inspired by their song “Time To Pretend,” which is just this sort of bittersweet fantasy of success. And at the end of that song, they’re like, ‘We choke on our vomit, and that will be the end.’ It’s so just anti-climatic. I wanted to write a song kind of like that. That speaks to, yeah, when I was a kid, I always wanted to be an entertainer and make art. When we started the band eleven, twelve years ago, where we had massive dreams, we want to chase them. We’re touring all the time and you dream as big as you can. With time and effort, we finally started making small steps towards that.
I just think it’s the sort of like ‘money can’t buy happiness’ cliché. I like to explore that and be like, ‘What if we became super big and famous?’ That would be so cool. But then how would you know who your actual friends are? Would you feel that cosmetic pressure to get all these things done to you? Just thinking about those ideas and settling on how much fun it’s always been to be on the road, and it still feels like that, like when we were 22 and sleeping on floors. We’re still sleeping on floors (laughs), but if the van breaks down, you have to change your tires, and you’ve got 12 hours to get somewhere. Those are the parts I end up remembering fondly. So, just a really roundabout way of appreciating finding a family in a band, connecting with audiences, and how, at the end of the day, it’s what we’ve always done, and it is the best part of it. The money would honestly just be a great bonus if we ever got it. But that’s not really the point.
JM: I really like the opening guitar line of “Crashing In The Coil.” It also plays throughout the song. It has a super cool effect that’s very earwormy and catchy. What effect did the band use for that?
Andie Min (via email after the interview): It’s a fuzz pedal that my friend Cameron Burt of Eternal Punishment Effects made me. It was based on a Shin-ei fuzz that Graham Coxon used on Blur’s 13. That effect was then run through a basic boss reverb, an MXR Phase 100, and a Strymon Deco. I think I was using an orange otr-120 amp
JM: Do you usually start with instrumentation and then lyrics? Or is it usually lyrics first and then instrumentation?
TR: It usually starts with instruments first. Sam or Andie brings a guitar riff to the table. That’s how all our songs are written. One of them has a little guitar line, and then every band member writes their own parts. It’s just fully collaborative. So, we all just pile on whatever we want to and then take off what doesn’t work and then pile on more later on. It’s really like a puzzle pieced together, but typically, vocals and lyrics come last after we’ve figured out the main sort of structure of the song.
JM: The song “Dead Air” kind of feels like a dream poppy grunge song. The first verse reminded me of The Cranberries for some reason. What were the main influences, either genre-wise or artist-wise, for “Dead Air.”
TR: We get Cranberries a lot. I think it’s just that sort of guitar rock sound. (laughs). With a lot of the songs, it’s not necessarily like, ‘Let’s write this type of song or that type of song.’ They are kind of Frankensteined together. For “Dead Air,” I feel like we wrote that one so quickly that it’s just one of those types of songs that comes out, and we’re like, ‘That’s exactly what we want.’ There was definitely unconscious inspiration, as there is for everything, but I don’t know if we were going for anything in particular. I think it was just like, ‘That’s a cool riff. Let’s do more with that,’ and it just spirals from there.
JM: Probably my favourite part of the whole record is the chorus in “Ghosts (Cataclysm, Cover Me).” It’s very moody, atmospheric, ethereal and dreamy. Could you share the creative process behind that chorus?
TR: “Ghosts” is a weird one. The story behind that song is I wanted to write a love song. I’m not great at like writing happy songs (laughs). I wanted to retell the story of Narcissus and Echo from the Greek myth, which is more so from Echo’s perspective. She was a nymph who was cursed not being able to speak. She can only speak in response to other people. She can only echo other people. So she falls in love with Narcissus, and he doesn’t love her back. He’s fallen in love with his own reflection in the pond. It’s pretty tragic. She ends up just heartbroken and escapes to this cave and slowly fades away to nothing until all that’s left is the echo of her voice, which is like the Greek etymology of the word echo. I just wanted it to sound cavernous, ghostly, and like an echo. When we were finishing it up and decided on the name “Ghosts,” we were like, ‘Let’s just add ghost sounds (laughs). Let’s just lean into it.' But I really like that song for that reason. I think vocally, it was a little Imogen Heap inspired with the sort of lilting ‘oohs’ and 'aahs’ sounds.
JM: I really like how most of the songs on the record have this heaviness, raw energy, gritty explosiveness, and hard-rocking guitar riffs, especially “Spit.” Could you share the process behind that song?
TR: “Spit,” I think, is definitely the most aggressive song on the album. I was really pissed off when we wrote that song (laughs). We were in a transitional period. We just got a new bass player [John Steiner]. For the whole album, if I ever felt some super strong feeling, I wanted to make that into a song, for better or for worse. That song was definitely pretty bitter. I was mad. I was angry at just how hard it is to be a band sometimes (laughs). I love it. We wouldn’t be doing anything else if given the chance. But I don’t know; I was worn pretty thin at that point.
The lyrics are, “I’m tired of acting lucky to be here,” and “Break my back, leaning into the spotlight.” I was so mad. I was so pissed off and kind of brought that to the table, and everyone in the band was locked in. Everyone felt it (laughs). Being like, ‘Yeah, we’re trying really hard, and we still all work full-time jobs and don’t make any money,’ and it’s a little embarrassing. You don’t want to admit that you’re irritated by it at times, but I think a sort of ethos on the album was just like, ‘Well that’s what we’re feeling.’
I think all feelings are pretty universal. If I want to write a bitter, angry song, there are plenty of bitter, angry people in the world, and maybe they can connect to that one. Then, the heartbroken people can listen to “Ghosts.” We really just wanted to tap into how emotional music is.
JM: You mentioned how you got a new bassist, John Steiner. Sometimes, when you get new band members, it takes a while for the chemistry to be there as a band. Was there a nervousness getting new band members, or did you find that they fit in with the band right away, and it didn’t take long at all for the chemistry to develop?
TR: It was so easy and nice. John joined about a year ago. We were nervous, hoping it would work out, but as soon as he got to the first practice, he knew all the songs. He had his own spin on the bass parts. Got along with everyone so well. He’s also a very grounded person, John. So we all really needed that (laughs). I think there’s a lot of fiery energy, and he was so relaxed, down to earth. We all clicked. It really feels like a new sort of family unit situation. Because of that instant connection, especially with the rhythm section, it felt like we were hitting the ground running. All anxieties were gone after one practice. We were like, ‘This is perfect.’ The songs just felt like they were pouring out at that point. It was very exciting, and we were really lucky how it worked out.
JM: What do you enjoy about making those aggressive songs like “Spit” or “Syd Sweeney” and then “Touch and Go” or “Ghosts,” where they still have those rock moments but are softer and more dream poppy-ish?
TR: We like the dynamics. We like to do everything as big as possible. I think that it leans into the catharsis and excitement we feel when playing. We like to make the songs feel like a journey and the album itself. You want it to have high points and low points and all the emotions represented, but I mean, I love screaming (laughs). I love being aggressive, yelling, and thrashing around. But I also like to feel introspective and like taking some little breathers. I feel like it’s just fun to play all different types of music. On our last album, it felt a bit more streamlined with the tone, which is fun, and I’m very proud of that record, but as far as playing the songs, it’s so much more fun. It feels like a theatre performance to get to do it all because why not? Why not make a really loud, a really soft, a really happy, and a really sad song? It’s just more fun that way.
JM: Do you have a favourite moment on the record, either lyrically, sonically, or vocally?
TR: Lyrically would be “Waste Me.” I think that song is so fun. When I write, I just write and write, and it's way too much lyrics. We always have to cut back. So “Waste Me” was just me ranting like I don’t have a breath. It’s kind of a hard song to sing. But I was like, ‘No. I wanted to be rambling on for like three minutes straight or four minutes straight.’ I like that song lyrically. It’s weird. I was really into mythology on this one. It’s kind of the Icarus myth. I was like, ‘What if Icarus lived and washed up, and some girl thought he was a deity and treated him like a God, but he’s just a dude who was stubborn and didn’t listen to his Dad.’ (laughs). It was just a funny idea to me.
Overall, I think “Sunset Hymnal” is my favourite song on the album. It really feels like it’s capturing this huge emotional moment, and I just think that song soars. I love the choruses. I love the dynamics of it. It always makes me feel like I’m levitating when we play that song.
JM: Recently, Smut toured with SPELLLING. How was that experience?
TR: It was awesome. They were super nice people. We love touring. If we could just be on the road all the time, we would. I think it was never more true than on that tour because everyone just got along so well. The routing was really nice. We had some cool days off in New Orleans and Philadelphia and places where you just have a lot of fun. We got to play all the new songs, and the reception of them was better than we anticipated. People were really into it, which very rewarding. We were like, ‘Oh, thank god people like it’ (laughs). It was amazing. Such great people and fun to tour with. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
JM: You mentioned all the songs really connected with the audience. What songs did you find were some favourites among the crowd?
TR: There were a few. A lot of people liked “Sunset Hymnal.” Tons of people loved “Syd Sweeney.” It was all over the place, which also felt good. People would come up and ask what that song was, and it would be “Waste Me,” and then the next night, someone would come up, and it would be “Godhead.” It felt like there was a little bit of something for everyone in the set. But I would say the two frontrunners were “Syd Sweeney” ‘cause that single had come out, and I think people were excited to hear that live.
JM: When you perform them live, do you try and capture the recorded version as much as possible, or do you add new elements to the songs?
TR: For us, very performance feels a little bit different. I do think it ends up sounding a lot like the record because it’s just how we play it, but I feel like everyone in our performances is having a lot of fun on stage. Sometimes Aidan will do just some crazy stuff on the drums out of nowhere that will fit (laughs). Or Sam will add some flourishes to a guitar solo if he’s feeling it. There are certain times when I’ll be like really losing it and screaming like crazy for a whole last verse or something. If the mood strikes and the energy is there, the songs can morph and change. I think we’re all good at picking up the vibe and rocking with what the audience is feeling.
JM: What does the album Tomorrow Comes Crashing mean to you personally?
TR: I like the phrase ‘tomorrow comes crashing.’ I think ‘tomorrow comes crashing’ means you can prepare as much as you want, but you have no idea what’s coming next. To me, it’s very emotional and heightened, like we’re going to barrel through the door. Hope for the best. Pedal to the metal. Keep it going. And it’s kind of a double meaning, because it could mean everything comes crashing down tomorrow. So, I guess it just depends on how you look at it. I like to think of it as a little more like hopeful chaos. But it’s definitely chaos either way you look at it.
Tomorrow Comes Crashing is out now via Bayonet Records