Friends for many years ever since meeting at Boston’s famed Fort Apache recording studio, Tanya Donelly and Brian Sullivan—now known as the duo The Loyal Seas—have an easy, fun, laughter-filled rapport.
Sullivan arrived to our group phone chat a couple minutes late, apologizing profusely and explaining that he had been out walking his newly adopted dog, which immediately evolved into a discussion about the transformative nature of pets in our lives. “I told him to be prepared to love more than you ever have,” Donelly said. “I don’t know where I’d be without my dog.”
And the same goes for music. We talked about how they each got through the pandemic, and making their new record Strange Mornings in the Garden was a big factor, as well as listening to lots of their favorite music and leaning into family life.
Donelly is well known for her dynamic and long-spanning career in bands like Throwing Muses, The Breeders, and Belly, as well as a prolific catalog of solo albums. Sullivan has been creating heartfelt, hauntingly beautiful indie rock under the moniker Dylan in the Movies since the mid-2000s. Strange Mornings in the Garden, out May 20th courtesy of American Laundromat Records, is reflective of the signature sounds of both musicians, and longtime fans of Donelly will especially love the album if they slant towards Belly in their tastes. Strange Mornings in the Garden is lush, layered and shimmering, featuring rich, honeyed vocal harmonies and seamlessly melding rock, pop, folk, and orchestral elements.
The new album is beautiful. This isn’t your first collaboration—you’ve done some covers together for tribute compilations—but it’s your first full album together. How did you two decide to join forces in this way?
Tanya Donelly: The pandemic is probably why it came together. We had been trying to make it all happen for a while, and then we finally had the time to do it during the lockdown.
Brian Sullivan: We started the record a few years before, but I’ve been out in California for the past several years, and I’d go back to Boston and we would go into the studio and work on it whenever we found the time. When the pandemic came, we were stalled in lockdown and taking the lockdown really seriously, and I think it gave us a chance to really focus, as well as giving me a chance to focus on production.
TD: Brian really dug into the tech side of things. [Sullivan was the producer on the album]
BS: It was a really cool experience because usually when I record at home it’s usually demos, but this time I was doing it knowing that I’m doing the real thing already.
Do you have a home studio?
BS: No, I don’t have a formal studio. But [laughs] I made use of a lot of pillows and blankets and I got really creative and I found the right spot for my guitar and my mics and I made sure my back was to a hallway.
What was the setup for the two of you working long-distance?
TD: The phone, a lot. And lots of Zoom.
BS: We had standing meetings. We were really professional about it.
TD: Yeah, we really were! [laughs]
BS: And then we just would send things back and forth. I would send something to her and be like, ‘Do you like this?’ The thing with Tanya is, you know if you send something to her, she’s gonna send something back that will blow your mind.
Tell me about how the two of you first met.
TD: So, Brian came in as an intern to Fort Apache.
BS: It was the day you started recording Lovesongs For Underdogs. [Released in 1997]
TD: Fort Apache was a really porous business, people were just hanging out all the time. My husband and I would go in all the time. We met Brian, immediately clicked, and I just love him, he’s like my brother.
BS: And T is, like, a lot of us who worked there—T was really super supportive of our music. I remember playing something I had recorded at my desk and was like ‘shit, no one can hear this.’ And T walked by and I was like oh, shit. [They both laugh]
TD: Fort Apache tended to hire musicians, they wanted musicians working in the office. We all ended up vacationing together and spending lots of time together. The bonds that were formed there continue to this day.
So, as you were working on this album together, were you cognizant of having any specific influences you were tapping into?
BS: I was listening to a lot of Wings, and a lot of Phoebe Bridgers. And I think it was harkening back to get some acoustic sound—I listened to a lot of early Sundays. But a lot of Phoebe on this record as an influence.
TD: I love her. I mean, she’s just—talk about lyrics, man.
BS: She is amazing, and she’s a big fan of a lot of music that came out of Boston. Not that I’ve been reading every article that’s come out on her. [Both laugh]
Tanya, you’ve been in so many different bands and done so many different collaborations over the years—how has this one with Brian been unique in terms of process?
TD: This is probably my first dedicated duet situation. Just, like, me and Brian. My past experiences have been me collaborating with several people at once and me in a band setting. This one feels like a duo, my first experience with that.
Brian, you’ve created under the moniker Dylan In the Movies, which sounds like the name of a band, but it’s a solo endeavor. Was it strange in any way to no longer be a solo act, to now be part of an official duo?
BS: No, it was awesome. On a good day, I can write a song with music and lyrics. But I sort of struggle with lyrics.
TD: I think he’s amazing with lyrics.
BS: I love the ability to be able to focus on the lyrics, but I love being able to know that when I send this off to T, the melodies she comes up with, the words she comes up with—it’s just awesome.
TD: I think that we live in the same musical landscape. As different as we may sound sometimes, we live in the same musical house.
BS: There are a lot of familiar themes that run between us.
How did you come up with the name The Loyal Seas?
BS: I was thinking that we were on two different sides of the country, two separate bodies of water. You know, with the loyalty part, we’ve been friends for a long time.
And how about Strange Mornings in the Garden? How did that become the title, or the album’s theme?
TD: I think I might have suggested that as the title, I think it’s immediately evocative. I know exactly what that looks like. It was the song title before the album title. It ended up informing the artwork.
BS: It’s very Grey Gardens [they both laugh]. I might have been thinking about that a little bit when I wrote it. We had a lot of variations of that song. We’d do it in a different key, and we’d slow it down, and after that we ended up going with the original.
TD: On the Grey Gardens point, I sort of tapped into the desperation of that [film].
BS: There are also so many cool things that happen in that song [“Strange Mornings in the Garden”] that I love—lots of little hooky things that are subtle.
This is kind of an odd segue—or maybe it’s not—but there’s lots of very lush, green nature imagery in the album’s lyrics, and I kept thinking about how that differs from The Breeders’ Pod. Pitchfork described that album as having a “fermented” quality – which, I think, stands in for “dark” as a descriptor. Tanya, how do you look back on that album now? I have to ask because it’s one of my favorites of all time.
TD: Fermented! [Both burst into laughter]
BS: It is a really great album—Pod is one of my absolute favorites, too!
TD: That [making Pod] was a wonderful experience. That was such a bubble—everything about it, the writing of it, the recording of it, the pre-production of it. It was like a hamster bubble. We made it in a studio that was a big house in Scotland, and we were in our pajamas for most of the production of that—it felt like a sleepover. It was a singular recording experience in my life. Kim [Deal] and I really supported each other in moving on from where we were [by making the album]. I think of it as really a watermark in my life for that reason. It was a gift that we gave to each other.
I never listen to anything I’ve made usually, I won’t usually go back. But I can listen to Pod and it just puts me in such a lovely mood. I like that, when you’re in a moment you can say this is what’s happening. I think what’s cool to me is that it doesn’t sound like a band album; I’m like, ‘Oh that’s Britt [Walford] on drums, or oh that’s Josephine [Wiggs] doing her thing right there.’
What was it like working with Steve Albini on that album? He’s a legendary producer/engineer.
TD: He was great. It was great to watch him work because when we came in with the songs, there were harmonies all over the place, and he basically said, ‘I don’t want to hear that.’ And his argument was that it folkified everything—I’m paraphrasing him. We pushed back for a couple of days, and as we included him, we realized that he was right. He’s such a team player, he’s a great producer because of that.
BS: I think you can get attached to songs as they are, but when someone else comes in, there will be pushback, but it will help give a new shape to it.
TD: And I want to talk about Jon Evans in this context. [Jon Evans mixed Strange Mornings in the Garden at his studio Brick Hills Studios in Orleans, MA. Evans has worked with Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Paula Cole, and many more seasoned musical acts.]
BS: We had such a great collaborative experience with him.
TD: He has such a gentle way of saying, ‘Let’s try this.’ I felt like the three of us really gelled. It was in that week that things really elevated, just the three of us together.
BS: Jon is just so focused and chill, and he just does his thing, and he has thing where he really has this respect for the people he’s working with. We worked with him down on the Cape and we were in this idyllic setting having dinner at night together—lots of cooking. It was a wonderful experience.
Sounds like it. Your first single “(So Far from) Silverlake” is particularly wonderful at showcasing how beautifully your voices complement one another. You’re both New Englanders, but Brian you’re living in California—how did that song come about?
BS: There’s a story that goes with that song, and I don’t usually love when people give away the stories. But here you go, I wrote…
TD: Gather ‘round. [laughs]
BS: I wrote the first line when I was living in Silverlake years ago with a roommate who sort of became a love interest, and then I had to leave and get back to Boston really quickly. The line “I crossed the country in less than a day” isn’t much of an exaggeration. I wrote it and passed it off to T and sort of let her shape it from there.
The song really has that sunny California feel, but also sort of shimmery and hazy at the edges.
BS: I love the way that the light hits everything in Silverlake. I wanted to go for that feeling in the song, and I think we achieved that.
What was the pandemic like for both of you personally?
TD: I had to simplify, but I guess the two biggest things were I spent a lot of time keeping my kids okay, and so my main focus was on my children. Musically, I’d say I worked more than I’ve worked in years. And then, another plus side was learning how to use my laptop musically.
BS: Yeah, it was an interesting time. I’m definitely someone that can be alone, but not that alone. My sister lives down the street from me, so it was my place, my neighbor’s, and then over to my sister’s place to hang out with her and her kids outside. It was a devastating time emotionally for so many people, and some of us did find some silver linings in it, and for me it was to focus on this record. I’m thankful for that.
Tanya, I read that Belly, at the height of the Spotify controversy, had posted a “Delete Spotify” message at the top of its band page. It’s a complicated process for many artists to leave the platform—can you talk a little bit about that, and artists’ rights in general when it comes to streaming services? Brian, I’d love for you to weigh in as well.
TD: Belly’s been pretty vocal, and I have to preface everything with: I feel like streaming could be this beautiful perfect model of getting music out to people if they paid artists more. The music education my kids have gotten from these platforms is encyclopedic. It could potentially be beneficial, and it’s an elegant system that’s been made inelegant by unfairness.
BS: Where else do you deliver a product and make nothing from it? There’s little to no exchange of money for something people literally put their blood, sweat and tears into. Literally —those fingers bleed when you make music sometimes, and you put so much emotion into it.
TD: It takes advantage of the fact that most artists would be doing it anyway. It is really hard to extricate yourself from it because we’re not in control. At the moment, Belly is trying to reclaim our catalog, and that’s what we’re doing right now. Bands on our level, that’s harder to do.
What are your future plans, beyond this album? Have you been continuing to write new material together?
BS: I think at some point down the line. I think we’re both catching up on lockdown things that didn’t happen that were supposed to happen.
TD: Yeah! We’re going to do two shows in Boston in June, that’s going to be a lot of fun. I feel like there will be more shows coming up.
It seems like there’s finally going to be a return to live music.
TD: I get more nervous now more than ever. My nerves have come back, after all these years.
BS: Yeah, you’re spending all this time recording by yourself at home, and now I’ve got to kind of go back and figure out what I played so I can do it live. [They both laugh] Hey, it happens.
TD: How did I play that and sing at the same time? [laughs] Now that I’m older, it’s sometimes harder to play it—that arthritic claw. [laughs]
BS: We’re just gonna do a show with holograms. Make holograms of ourselves, and they can play the songs. [Both laugh]
You’ve both been so generous with your time, and it’s been so much fun talking with you about the new album, and everything else in between. We conclude every interview by asking what your Top 5 albums are. Would you mind listing each of yours for me?
TD: This is so hard. But I’m gonna say Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Miss America, Wings’ Wings Over America, Leonard Cohen’s Various Positions, The Go-Go’s’ Beauty and the Beat, and Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life—that’s my defibrillator, that album.
BS: Another vote for Beauty and the Beat, also Wings Over America, Green by R.E.M., The Smiths’ Strangeways, Here We Come, And I’m gonna say Pod [The Breeders].
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited from the original transcript for length and clarity.
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