John Brodeur recently released his second Bird Streets album via Sparkle Plenty/Deko, Lagoon, and with it an intricate set of songs that each have their own special history and often their own set of collaborators. Part of that was diversity due to recent history impacting the album’s development, where groups of songs were recorded in different times and places, however the songs meander through their own set of interrelationships guided by themes of self-examination that chimes in a very relatable way with modern life.
Though the album is wide-ranging, there’s a sense of consistency in Production on the songs handled by Patrick Sansone (Wilco), Michael Lockwood (Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple), Zach Jones (Sting), and Oscar Albis Rodriguez (A Great Big World). Collaboration with Aimee Mann, Ed Harcourt, John Davis (Superdrag), Jody Stephens (Big Star), and more is part of what brings even greater sonic range to Brodeur’s initial ideas on Lagoon. However, the emotive core of vocals and lyrics continues to deliver an intimate feeling on the album, making for interesting, often energetic sonic combinations on individual tracks. I spoke with Josh Brodeur about the development of Lagoon and the relationships that he sees between these songs.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I love the “making of” videos that you’ve released for some of the songs on the album. I was aware, seeing the list of contributors that it might be hard to pick where to play for live events, so video content is great outreach.
John Brodeur: It’s a little different with this record, because the first Bird Streets record is one that I made in LA with Jason Faulkner. LA became a second home base. I probably played out there as much as I played in New York, at home. We do very well in LA. Michael Lockwood is in LA, but some of these songs we did in Nashville and Memphis. There are contributors on here from London, from Boston, and other places.
It’s almost like the home base is spreading out, but it’s still kind of New York and LA. The weird part is that there are so many personalities on this record and I’ll be handing this over to a group of musicians and saying, “Interpret what 15 different people did!” We’ve had a good time figuring out how to tackle these songs, though. You figure out what’s important to the songs that way, because it’s obviously very lush and there’s a lot going on. There’s strings and pedal steel on a few songs.
HMS: I understand that these songs were worked on during different segments and sessions. A lot of the songs have separate, little histories. I feel like you must have been staying in motion the whole time, keeping the album moving, especially since you actually recorded 20 songs.
JB: Honestly, 20 was just kind of a round number. There are probably closer to 30 that were in the works. A lot of that was a product of me needing to get through a backlog of material. I first got together with Pat Sansone in Spring of 2019. We did four or five tracks then, and then I did some stuff here in Brooklyn. By the time we did the second set of sessions with Pat down in Memphis, at Ardent, there were nine songs. We were close to having a record. I thought we’d finish it and get it out by the end of 2020.
Then everything changed, of course. One collaborator passed away. I had been planning to write and record a few songs with Adam Schlesinger before he passed away, and I’d been very excited about that. When I finally got over the early months of the pandemic in New York, and it was really weird here, I felt like songs were coming again. Then I started sending a lot of e-mails and sending out the songs that I’d been working on. We got a lot of projects started. That’s when a lot of the stuff came about, in that next year or so. There’s probably another record’s worth of stuff ready to go if I want to. There’s another solid album’s worth of material, or at least a couple of EPs’ worth. I’m an album guy. I think a collected body of work is something that people return to.
HMS: I’m an album person and I also have really come to appreciate EPs a lot, particularly during the pandemic period. I kind of thought that this album, Lagoon, showed that mindset. Even though the songs are so different in terms of collaboration and identity, I still feel like there’s a sense of intention to the album.
JB: I collected a lot of songs but not everything was in the running for Lagoon. From the start, because I had been going through a divorce, I knew that those songs were going to be a big part of it. The other songs would have had a different vibe. Even though these songs were done in a lot of studios and with different people, it holds together because there are some common emotional threads. I asked Pat Sansone if this worked as a record, and he said, “It’s your voice. You’re the one holding it together.” It does. It works even though one song sounds like Led Zeppelin busting through the walls of a studio on a Jim Croce session! Then there’s a legit Grunge song. But it does work.
HMS: A lot of the songs have heavier themes, as you mentioned. But it actually, in my mind, is cool to have the different sounds on the different songs because it changes up how the audience might think about those ideas.
JB: That’s where I’m coming from, too. The music and the melodies are home base for me. I’ve always been music first, lyrics second, though I’ve come to treat them equally over time.
HMS: At what point did you know that these songs would have a broader range of sounds? Did you know that writing at home, or was it something that developed in the studio? I know that at Ardent, you all developed things in the studio.
JB: Some of them, I definitely felt myself moving in a certain direction artistically. In a strange way, with songs that were a little more straightforward, like “Unkind” or “Let You Down”, as I was writing them, they already felt more mature than some that I’d written in the past. But the sonic stuff, the world of sound, was a product of the people who I worked with. A big part of working with those people was getting their unique take on things.
When John Davis from Superdrag played electric guitar, pedal steel, and sitar, I got to use his entire bag of tricks on different songs. He played pedal steel on “Machine” and sitar on “Leave No Trace.” Those songs are worlds different from each other but I love hearing what other people hear on those songs. That’s the fun part of the journey.
HMS: Because some of the ideas on this album are based on personal experiences, did having more time to work on the album give you a useful distance? Or are you someone who likes to capture emotions closer to their source?
JB: I think there was a little bit of each. Actually, if you want to talk about distance and time, there’s the song called “Document.” It sounds the most specifically about my divorce, but it’s not even remotely about that. It’s a song that I wrote in the late 90s. I just didn’t have a place to put that song back then because I was in a Grunge band, or doing Alternative Rock. I wrote this quiet little song, so I just sat on it for years and years. When I sent it to Pat, he said, “We should record that.”
That was one of the easiest ones to record, maybe because of all the time that passed. But songs like “Go Free” and “Machine” were written specifically to go down to Memphis and were not even a month old when we recorded them. I needed certain kinds of songs to bring to those guys. That works just as well for me.
HMS: Do you ever feel you put pressure on yourself to do something with songs that you’ve written but never recorded?
JB: I’ve had a “maybe someday” outlook for a long time. I’m still working on material that I’ve had sitting around for the better part of 25 years. It finds its time. With that momentum that I started having about six to eight months into the pandemic, when I started making those phone calls and planting those seeds, a big part of that was saying, “I can’t sit on this stuff forever. It’s not going to do anyone any good. Let’s get it out to people.” I probably feel more like that now than I ever did before, that I should just make the thing and get it done. The recording is the most permanent version of the song, but it’s just a document of the song. The last couple years have been about capturing those ideas.
HMS: “Sleeper Agent” is a great envoy for the album, conveying a lot about the album. It starts with a certain tone and is very internal. I wanted to ask about the ending of the song, where it kind of flips. I found it surprising and interesting, when it says, “Now that I told you, I wish I’d never confessed.” The song already feels confessional, but you start to realize that maybe you don’t know this person who’s speaking as well as you might think.
JB: It’s a very internal record, and I give a lot about myself on this record. One of the big changes for me was working in the first person, saying “I.” I tended to use characters or use “you” in the past. That line, in particular, is a little bit of a twist ending. It’s hard to explain. The fear and the guilt that I’m talking about through that song comes back around in a full circle. It’s sort of embarrassing to open up about things like that, admitting, “Yeah, I’m really going through that stuff.”
A lot of the song is about imposter syndrome and the inability to get started. That’s part of why I wanted it to open the record, because it lays it all out there. That little bit at the end is that same embarrassment that keeps you from getting out there in the first place, because it’s circling back on itself, thinking, “I wish I hadn’t said that.”
HMS: That’s very consistent for this monologue! It’s self-censorship.
JB: Exactly, it’s entirely in character, even though it’s a little of a surprise. It ties things up in a nice little bow.
HMS: It also reminds me of the fact that sometimes sharing things with other people doesn’t actually make you feel better. By and large, sharing does have a therapeutic effect, but not always.
JB: Yes, exactly. It’s like, “Alright, I needed to say this, but now what? Nothing’s changed.” That’s the inertia of the thing. The whole song says, “Something’s going to happen.” And then it doesn’t. I like that line. It was one of the first things that I wrote for the song. I had the beginning and the ending.
HMS: Musically, the song really builds up, too. You think things are going to break free.
JB: Then it really closes in again at the end.
HMS: Sometimes doing the things that are supposed to make you feel better in life doesn’t actually yield the expected results.
JB: In the past couple of years, I started seeing a therapist, and I’m not sure about it. [Laughs] Now what?
HMS: Mileage may vary. I really like the song “Machine” for a number of reasons. I know some of the layers came about in the studio. I really like how the music fits with the theme of the circular motion with a repeating kind of feeling. Was that an early element?
JB: In a lot of ways, the version that you hear is the only real version. I give a lot of credit to everyone who worked on that song, because if I had just done it my own way, it would have just been a pretty straightforward Power Pop song. Having Jody [Stephens] play drums on it gave it a kind of swing that it might not have had. It gave it more space around the notes and more room in the rhythm for other elements. I think that’s what gives it more of a ghostly quality that really suits the lyric. It lets the pedal steel come in and out, and there’s some piano in there. Everything kind of gets its moment. That’s also a lot due to the mix, and to Pat’s Production. On that, the basic tracks were fantastic, and as we started adding stuff, it just got more fantastic. I was really happy with the way that one progressed.
HMS: It feels rare to come across that spaciousness these days which has a haunting quality here. It gets a little more of a performance feeling.
JB: Maximalist approaches have their place, but I like something that’s more dynamic, where you can hear the breath. That one really got it, even though it’s a dense Production. Michael Brauer’s mix on that song is fantastic. That’s a fun one to do live, too. We did get to play it at the one show we did in New York before the pandemic. We also did at Hotel Café in Los Angeles over the summer.
