Alyssa Coco and Matt Merritt of Roses & Revolutions released an EP in 2020 called Midnight Monsters that ran riot with the nighttime exile feeling of the early pandemic period, but also confessed those shadowy dreams and found some beauty in that sense of stillness. Now, almost accidentally, they’ve put together plans for a new EP from Nettwerk Records to be called Leave a Little Light On, arriving this Fall. Along the way, we’ve been receiving singles that speak to the overall direction of the collection, which is in keeping with the title, a movement toward the bright things in life, however small they might be at times, and a kind of conscious contemplation of their value.
With “Bright Side of Me”, a relationship reaches out to encourage that flowing towards the light, and with “Something Real”, a person makes their first steps out of a screen or a thought and into a reality that’s lovelier than they remembered. Previous single “Worry”, a duet with singer/songwriter Tom Speight, delivers a message about hanging on in hard times, knowing a human connection is going to come to the rescue. I spoke with Alyssa Coco and Matt Merritt about the organic development of these songs and the hopefulness of their common themes, as well as about their evolving awareness of pairing their songs with visual elements and finding new fans.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I’m aware that there’s a pretty big conceptual move from the ideas of your previous release, Midnight Monsters, and the singles that are leading up to the Leave a Little Light On EP. At what point did you start gathering ideas for the new EP?
Matt Meritt: This time around, I think it happened a little accidentally. Midnight Monsters isn’t that old, but we were writing songs for different reasons. Sometimes we were writing to get emotions out, sometimes we were writing for TV and film. Sometimes we were just inspired. The next thing we knew, we had a folder of all of these songs. Our label said, “Why don’t we just pick our top six and release them?” It was the first time we weren’t writing for an EP, but realized, “Wait, we have an EP here!”
HMS: That’s an even more organic development, I feel like.
Alyssa Coco: Oh, for sure.
HMS: Out of the group of songs that you picked from, were you looking for certain themes that went together or did they just all have a lot in common with each other?
Alyssa: Emotionally, a lot of them were quite similar. With Midnight Monsters, that stuff was a little darker or sadder, but with this EP, everything has more of a little glimmer of hope. We thought that was important to have in common among the songs. Then there was just one that was just a fun one that we wanted on the EP and was just very different for us. These were just a bit more hopeful than the past couple of EPs.
HMS: I’m a fan of introspection and reflection in music, and I really enjoyed how Midnight Monsters was honest and explored things that people might all be feeling but not talking about. But even with these songs, I can hear a lot of reflection and stillness, but I can also see a kind of intentional movement toward the light. That’s particularly true in “Brightside of Me”, but other songs too. Is this a process you feel you’ve been through as people?
Alyssa: I love that. That’s spot on. I guess this is a process we’ve been through. As humans, going through the past couple of years, you start to kind of come out of it, and realize that there is more out there. I think a lot of people have gone through that, and for Matt and I, music is the best the way to express our thoughts and our feelings. Matt and I write all the songs together and it was a thought and a feeling that we had.
HMS: Was writing them an expression or did writing them help you develop further in that direction?
Matt: I think a little bit of both, really. I think each song is different, but sometimes you listen to a song later and realize that at the time you didn’t know what you were writing about, but now looking back, you know what you were trying to say. You can look back on that time stamp.
HMS: I hear that these songs are a little more “filmic” and tie into you both thinking more visually at this time.
Alyssa: As Matt said, some of the songs in our folder were written with the intention of fitting well in a movie or TV show, though they are all based on relatable things. “Brightside of Me”, for example, was one that we had written for a potential film about two kids in a hospital who became close. It’s bizarre to try to embody that emotion, and I’m grateful that I’ve never had that experience, but we took a more dramatic approach. That was true Production-wise, adding lush strings, and having different build-ups than we’ve done before.
HMS: I know you’ve had TV placements in the past, and some since the last time we spoke, including Batwoman, and some for Showtime. It’s a real part of your music life now that your songs sometimes accompany visual elements. Not that you’re thinking towards placements, but has thinking visually influenced your writing?
Matt: Absolutely. As an indie artist, you put songs out and you never know who’s going to hear it, or if people are going to like it, but over the course of the past three EPs, something we’ve realized is that a lot of people have come to discover our work through TV. On our first EP, we had a song called “Moment”, and if you look at any of the comments on our videos from around that time on YouTube, they say things like, “Heartland brought me here.”
Our song “Looking Glass”, which was on Batwoman, didn’t have a lot of streaming at first when it came out, but once it was on the show, we saw the same thing on social media, with fans commenting, “Batwoman brought me here.” Another song was in Charmed, and people found the music that way. We have gravitated towards that, realizing that this is a cool way to get our music out there. If people are invested in these shows, and a song plays at a key moment during these shows, people form an emotional attachment to it. We’ve discovered some of our favorite artists that way, too.
HMS: I’m a big fan of TV and film, and I am so affected by music that comes up connected with visual elements. I have discovered artists that way, too. As a music person, what I tend to think is, “Wow, that music elevated that scene so much.” It creates more of an emotional punch.
Alyssa: Oh, yes. It’s so powerful. The two things really do go hand in hand. If you eliminate music from a scene on a TV show, it would not even be close to being as emotional or epic.
Matt: Like with the Kate Bush song, “Running Up That Hill”, we were already fans of Kate Bush and loved the song, but I think that scenes that it’s been used in [on Stranger Things] has led a whole other generation of people to create an emotional connection to it.
HMS: The reaction has been incredible. I hope more of her music will be popping up in things now. She was too challenging for her time, but her day has come. Did you allow yourself to go further with Production on these new songs than in the past, creating these dramatic layers? Some artists have allowed themselves to do that more lately because live shows were on hold.
Matt: I don’t think we’ve ever held back on Production, for instance, out of fear of how to perform it live. Every song is written on the guitar or the piano and has that there even if everything else gets taken away. We love doing acoustic show where we strip down even some of our most Produced tracks. We just sing it and do chords. We never limit ourselves based on what we’re going to be able to have on stage.
HMS: I do notice the piano and acoustic guitars are still there under the layers on these new songs.
Alyssa: Those are always the nucleus of our songs and we can perform them that way when it comes down to it. It’s usually one or the other, or both.
HMS: I heard that your recording process was at home. Did that work on a song-by-song basis, creating demos, then pick which ones to record?
Matt: One of the great advantages of recording pretty much everything from home is that we don’t really have to do demos anymore. Previously, demos would be like a blueprint, but at home, when you’re recording, you might do more than one take to get a better vocal take or guitar take, but there’s not a separate demo and final version, there’s a work in progress. A lot of times the first take makes its way into the final recording, you just keep adding and subtracting. We don’t mix ourselves, though. We send everything to mixing and then go back and forth with revisions.
Alyssa: It is funny to see how things progress and how things have changed. On our recording program, there are recording back up files, and if we look back at files from a month prior, it’s so crazy to hear the difference. It’s just growth, but it’s funny. Other times, though, we’re surprised by similarities to what we ended up with.
HMS: The song “Something Real” kind of confirms some things about the direction of the EP, wherein relationships are key, there’s a speaker’s voice reflecting and being confessional. That song starts off with the piano guiding us in, and feels more meditative, though it does build up towards the end.
Alyssa: It’s much more mellow to start with. That one does have a much bigger build-up towards the end, and we surprised ourselves with that. That song was about having more experiences in life and finding something tangible and real, though it does talk about relationships. It’s that moment where you actually look up from your phone or maybe from the thoughts that have been consuming you, and you focus on real things you are seeing. You are seeing the beauty in the world, the little details, and the tangible things.
HMS: That’s a very significant thought for modern life.
Alyssa: It’s such a big thing, and that’s surprising, but the second you leave your phone at home, either on purpose or on accident, you feel like you’re in another world. It’s so different.
HMS: It’s a startling feeling, and it can be disconcerting. My first feeling when I don’t have my phone, is panic, and I know that’s not good. For your duet on “Worry”, I know that you’ve collaborated with other artists before, but how did you come to work with Tom Speight?
Alyssa: Weirdly, that was from a writing session which became so much more. That was from a Nettwerk writing camp last summer. It was all virtual because Nettwerk artists are from all over. We did one with a group in Australia, and we did one with Tom in the UK. The three of us were very comfortable with each other and it all just flowed out. He contributed things just like us, and we came out of the session thinking, “This is really beautiful and we can’t wait to share it with our team.”
HMS: I love that story. I think it’s amazing when people can share different perspectives across the world, bringing their experiences. It’s a cool zone to be in.
Alyssa: Writing sessions, in general, might not sound that artistic, but when you get to talk with people all over the world, you never know what you’re going to be able to come up with. It’s such a cool experience to have conversations that bring in world events and different perspectives. It really took us out of our own bubble for a while.
