Miranova began in Columbus, Ohio, in 2014 as a solo project by longtime She Bears guitarist Alex Douglas. With help from a rotating cast of musicians, Miranova has produced three full-length records with an indie garage rock sound reminiscent of bands like Titus Andronicus, the Replacements, and LVL UP. While making its second record, Closing Door, Miranova added a dedicated drummer, Chris Price, to help shape a new expansive sound that includes everything from synthesizers to pedal steel guitars.
Miranova’s third full-length LP What Now? is the band’s first departure from the home studio and its most ambitious album to date. Pursuing richer and more complex concepts, Miranova enlisted the help of Jon Fintel of Relay Recording to engineer, produce, and mix the record. Douglas wrote “What Now?” while in quarantine and coming to terms with a breakup. The album explores grief, isolation, and hope through a bigger repertoire of sounds and instruments. The songs float from scuzzy garage rock tunes to country and western-style ballads to communicate different modes of survival within and against the American condition.
What Now? Explores the questions that inevitably arise after something ends, in this case, a relationship. Today Glide is excited to offer an exclusive premiere of the album in its entirety.
Listen to the album and read our chat with the band below…
“Love In Vain” surprised me with the country-feeling ballad. What made you decide to put a country song in the middle of a sludge pop EP? It’s bold – I love it!
I was listening to a lot of John Prine at the time. The news of his death from COVID gravitated me towards his music. Around that time the chorus kinda popped into my head and I picked up a guitar and tried to figure out music for it. The way I envisioned the song in my head had a country and western vibe. When I was writing these songs I was less concerned about writing “Miranova” songs and just wanted to write the best songs I could write no matter what they ended up sounding like. I didn’t hold back from pursuing any weird creative whim. When it came time to record the album it was too good of a song to not include despite it being the oddball of the album. I wanted to lean into the country western vibe so I recruited a pedal steel player to add textures to it. I like records that veer into different directions but have never done that myself until now.
I recently listened to Closing Door (your second full-length EP), and found the cover art (the cat with the winged helmet) to be very interesting. What does the artwork mean, are the wings a reference to Achilles, or something more whimsical?
Haha, I wish I had some well thought out symbolism for that. Our ex bass player Adam found that photo on the library of Congress website. He suggested it for the cover art because it looked like my cat Ruby. We recorded much of that album in my home and Ruby was presented for all of those sessions so she essentially was the mascot of the album. I couldn’t really decide on any symbolism that would be more poignant. A picture of a door closing is a little too on the nose so the picture Adam found stuck. It felt like the right image.
“Doing Fine” is so dark, yet poignant and relatable. What headspace did the lyrics come from?
I think when people know you are struggling with something they don’t really always know what to do. We aren’t always equipped to understand other people’s emotions let alone our own. Though it comes from a good place, I got a lot of “cheer up everything will be all right” sentiments before that concept could even resonate with me. When someone is grieving something it’s not always about making them feel better. It’s about understanding how they feel. I wanted to write a song that touched on how that feels from the perspective of the person on the receiving end of trying to be consoled. When people ask “how are you doing?” it’s usually easier for someone to just give an answer like “Doing Fine” rather than go into an explanation of how you are actually doing. I am also the type of person that avoids burdening people with my problems but even when you reveal how you truly feel, you don’t know what kind of response you will get back. Also, there was a pandemic going on at the time and everyone was miserable so I wanted to be sensitive to that. Ultimately, I think it’s an interesting social dynamic that a lot of us opt to hide how we are truly feeling and I wanted to explore that with this song
How did the four of you meet, and how do your individual musical tastes vary from one another?
Chris and I are the main longtime members. We are pretty sympatico when it comes to musical tastes. I met Chris when I recorded his band Versicolor almost a decade ago. I was super into Titus Andronicus at the time and when he shared that he really liked them I felt like I found a kindred spirit. Pete, our new bass player, and I met through playing shows together and I recorded his band Yellow Paper Planes. Pete likes everything from folk and bluegrass (he plays in a bluegrass band) to heavier stuff. We bonded recently over the band Pile and that’s basically what led me to asking him to be in the band. Scott, our new guitarist, and I also worked together on his record for his band Other People. Scott went to music school so his tastes are all over the place. He loves pop punk, jazz, Steely Dan, etc. At the end of the day all of us are music lovers and we have enough overlap in our tastes to where when it comes to playing together we can speak the same language.
Some of your songs on What Now? Give me the sense that there is a lack of honesty between the two parties. Why do you think this happens between two people who have so much passion? Do you find expressing this (relatively universal) experience to be freeing?
Sometimes the truth can be difficult. I think the two parties I am singing about on this album both had difficulty with the truth. It’s pretty natural to put off difficult conversations but in this case, true feelings were held back for so long that it was very unexpected when it was shared with me. I think the truth is difficult when you know owning up to it will hurt someone you care about and in my case it hurt me. I am not sure if expressing this was necessarily freeing, but when you are in the midst of pandemic isolation, writing these songs was one the few ways to make sense of it. I do try to write songs in a way where people can identify with the themes. I have always liked songs that I can relate my experiences to in some way, and I am hoping people who have gone through something similar will connect with these songs.
What was your songwriting process look like for “Maybe in Another Life”? The instrument stack is so seamless and lush, and you have some interesting transitions in the tune.
I really wanted to take a different approach to constructing songs on this record. We couldn’t rehearse together so I basically sat in my home studio and put together elements of songs from scratch. A lot of the elements of this song were disparate ideas from the past and present that managed to fit together. I wanted to try writing songs starting with bass so I borrowed a bass guitar from a friend. I was really listening to a lot of Buzzcocks at the time and I just loved the bass line for Why Can’t I Touch It?. I basically tried to write a similar bass line because I wanted to do something similar rhythmically to that song. I’ve had the “Maybe in another life” lyrical idea in my head for a long time and finally found a way to make it fit into a song. I also had that run going into the chorus for a while and I finally found a place for it as well. I also had a longer outro to the song originally but when I sent the demo to Scott to listen to, he suggested cutting that part out. That’s kind of why the song ends somewhat abruptly, but I liked the idea of streamlining it. Finally, I sent the demo to Chris, he added that chugging drum part to it and that’s when it really started to take shape. I really love how it turned out.
Another bold move on your album is repeating the song “I Am Different Now” twice on the album. How did you come up with this idea, and what does the genre/feeling change represent as far as character development goes?
I basically stole the concept from the Black Keys album Attack and Release. I know there are other examples too but that one sparked the idea for me. I didn’t initially plan on making them two different songs. The first version of that song I wrote was the side A version, but I came up with the bass part from the side B version and I really wanted to use it. I thought about making the song transition to the faster part but it just didn’t seem to flow right. That is when I thought about doing two different versions of the song. It hadn’t really dawned on me that the context of the music almost made the lyrics take on a different meaning until I played the two versions for a friend when we were tracking the album. The side A version has a sad lamenting feeling to it and the side B version feels a little bit more confident and hopeful but they have the same exact lyrics. It is really fun when your songs evolve in a way that you don’t even anticipate and I really liked the depth it added to the narrative of the album.
Why do you think you all chose music as your art form, rather than a different way to express yourself?
For me personally, I don’t think I made a conscious decision to be an artist initially. I wanted to be a guitar player and melt some faces off. Somewhere along the way, I felt a strong urge to write songs and then it dawned on me that self expression was really important to me. I gravitated to music because I felt more capable of expressing myself effectively through that art form than any other. When I shared this question with Chris, Pete, and Scott they basically agreed that this was the only art form they considered.
Why did you choose to leave your album unresolved?
I think a common theme across all three Miranova albums is self discovery. I write songs to make sense of my own life but life doesn’t make any sense a lot of the time. I always attempt to find answers with every album but I don’t think I ever quite get there. I think the one thing that is different about What Now? Is that I recognize that I don’t think you ever really do. This album is more about the journey of even getting to that point. I have been guilty in the past of not focusing enough on what I want my future to be, and I think this album expresses how I got to the point where that became an important question to answer for myself. I had to figure out how to grow and move on. We will see if the next album is the one where I finally have some answers.
