The Love Language: Reverb, Rebirth and “Ruby Red” | Q&A

[Editor's note: This Q&A previews The Love Language's concert at O'Leaver's on Sunday at 8 p.m. Pony Wars and No, I'm the Pilot open the show. Find tickets for $7 here.]

story and photo by Michael Todd

Stuart McLamb doesn't sound like he's in a cave.

Sure, the cell phone reception is poor at first, but The Love Language frontman doesn't talk with the same resounding, hundreds-of-feet decay that often trails his singing voice on records. His dry speaking voice is only logical, but that's not to say I wasn't hoping for a built-in echo.

McLamb's band out of Raleigh, N.C., is chock full of washed-out guitars, layers upon layers of strings and horns, sparkling like a waterslide. The vocalist/guitarist says the dripping-wet reverb on the massive melodies he sings is there to blend all the wide-ranging elements together. The whistling, the windchimes and the bells need a well-mixed recipe of sounds beneath them so they can be the ideal spice.

And while writing, McLamb says he discovers the aural tapestry strand by strand.

"It’s sort of like a spiderweb, one little line will spark some ideas," he says, adding later that, "The more I get out of the way, the better the song usually."

Having released their latest record, Ruby Red, just more than a month ago on July 23, The Love Language is making their way across the country, stopping in Omaha at O'Leaver's this Sunday night. The Eyeball Promotions concert will start at 8 p.m. with openers Pony Wars and No, I'm the Pilot. Find tickets for $7 here.

To preview the show, McLamb gave an interview in which he describes the experience of an intense DMT trip that influenced the album, the Ruby Red warehouse space where much of it was tracked and the bandmate owners of O'Leaver's, who he hopes to see this weekend:

Hear Nebraska: In talking about what led in part to the making of Ruby Red, you’ve said that tripping on DMT was a life-altering moment. Tell me about how the experience shaped your views, and ultimately, the songs on this record.

Stuart McLamb: Yeah, it wasn’t necessarily a concept record about that or anything. But I guess that experience, it was just sort of a spiritual experience, where you realize that a lot of the things you hold onto in this life are fleeting.

Ultimately, it’s good to look outside of yourself and your ego to have a genuine experience here on planet Earth. It’s good to get outside of yourself, to know you’re part of a bigger thing. It’s hard to describe, it was a pretty intense trip. A lot of my songs prior had dealt with myself, relationship problems and things like that. Some of these songs were a little more universal.

HN: Could you talk about how a specific song is more universal than your previous, more personal material?

SM: Yeah, a lot of them are cryptic and not about one thing. Some of them are just plays on words and stuff. But “Private Light” was me just thinking about a death and rebirth. There was a sense that humanity is pushing fast toward something. I feel like it’s a new era.

I don’t know what that’s going to be, but I feel like there’s going to be a lot of major changes in the next 10 to 20 years, where a lot of the old traditional viewpoints and ways we’ve lived are going to change. It’s not up to me to predict how it will all pan out. But that song sort of dealt with a death and a rebirth.

It’s kind of hard for me to talk about it because I want the lyrics to be interpretable, so people can make up their own meanings. And I do, too. I don’t even know what the hell that’s about to be totally honest.

HN: Sure, so writing a song like “Private Light” helps you to make sense of bigger ideas, even if you don’t know what it means at first?

SM: Yeah, a lot of the stuff comes down gutturally, and things make sense a little later down the road. I don’t try to be a preachy sort of writer or write about specific themes. I’ll listen to the music and certain lines will come out. At first, I don’t know what they mean.

It’s sort of like a spiderweb, one little line will spark some ideas. But yeah, I built “Private Light” off the lyric “started as nothing and came out as your favorite line.” I had just a vague idea, and it blossomed into one of the songs I’m most proud of.

HN: You’re a melody-first writer?

SM: Yeah, I’ve had a few songs with lyrics first. I can’t remember which ones. But typically, I’ll come up with the melody first, and sometimes, I’ll write the whole composition melodically, and lyrics will come last. I’ll even work the melodies down to certain syllables and try to fit that in.

HN: Where do you think you find melodies?

SM: There’s a lot of different ways that I’ve written. It’s hard to remember the different ways. On a lot of this record, I was starting with drum machines, sampling some drum breaks and making loops for the demos. I was writing on top of that and trying to have a propulsive, faster-tempoed record, or on some songs. I’d have that beat going then start playing chords on top of it. That’s a big way I write.

It’s hard for me to spend lots of time on a song, craft it over the course of months. They’re going for what comes out gutturally. You just get in the pocket while doing demos, and the chords kind of just happen. If I forget what I’m doing, the song writes itself. The more I get out of the way, the better the song usually.

HN: Sure, that makes sense. Now, moving to the album title, could you tell me a little about Ruby Red, the cooperative warehouse space?

SM: Yeah, it’s an artistic cooperative workshop that’s in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. My Tim Lemuel, he was a buddy of mine in Raleigh. I think we borrowed some monitors from him for a house show. That’s how we met, then we stayed in touch. He let us know that he was working on this old warehouse in downtown Raleigh. He was renting it and fixing it up to turn it into an artistic, cheap rent space for visual artists, sculptors, filmmakers, musicians.

It’s a double-decker huge warehouse. You see that in bigger cities. There’s a lot of that in D.C., New York and Minneapolis. But I thought it was really cool because that wasn’t going on In the triangle area of North Carolina, these three cities all about a half-hour from each other: Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill.

There was always a lack of rehearsal spaces. Just having a general area where you could get a lot of artists in one building feeding off each other was a really cool thing to be a part of. So me and BJ (Burton), who was a coproducer and engineer on the record, we took a portion of the record advance and we bought some gear and built a makeshift studio in the bottom of the warehouse.

There was this really big room with, like, 30-foot ceilings in the bottom. We got some of the big drum sounds down there, built a control room. We built this studio down there. That’s where we tracked the bulk of the record. We did some overdubs on a couple songs in another studio. But it was just cool that we had a lot of our buddies lend a bass line and strings or horns or drums. It was a big collaborative thing.

I was more like the director, where I had written a lot of the material and was giving instructions about what to do, but at the same time, people were bringing in their own personalities and ideas for the songs. So I liked seeing them evolve further than I could have taken them on my own.

HN: For sure. I’m curious, since your music often involves a good amount of reverb, having made this large space that offers natural reverb, is it more of an analog record?

SM: We did use a lot of natural reverb. It wasn’t all done in one place. Some of the mixing was done in certain places. There’s some songs where BJ would do weird shit, running my vocals through guitar pedals and stuff. But there was a good deal of natural reverb.

Yeah, and with Libraries, there was a little, but this is a lot more of an analog record. We did a lot of it to tape, with the drums and bass tracks, and overdubs on top.

HN: Do you hear that different between natural reverb and the more synthesized reverb?

SM: Yeah, I do. It can go both ways. If you put them back to back, it’s like doing a blind taste test. People’s ears probably can’t tell the difference on the surface — some people can — but it’s just more authentic.

You can hear that when you use a reverb effects pedal: It sounds like machinery working. Digital just has that digital thing about it. The decay is a little more unnatural in digital reverb than in spring.

HN: What draws you to that cavernous sonic space on many of the songs?

SM: It’s funny. Part of me is worried that I’m a reverb junkie and need to chill out a little bit (laughs). I think it’s an environment that the vocals fit in. If there are washed-out guitars and stuff, the vocals need to blend with that.

Reverb is more of a blending tool when you have a lot of things going on than a noticeable effect. There’s definitely times where a dry sound is a lot better, too, like a good ‘70s, Fleetwood Mac snare drum; you want that to pop real quick.

With these songs, I just wanted them to be a little more dreamy. I didn’t want it to sound like people in a room playing, but to be more surreal.

HN: Do you aim to recreate that sound onstage?

SM: Yeah, definitely, and I think we make up for it. For instance, a song like “Lalita” off our first record, even though it’s a little more lo-fi, there’s a reverb and dirtier tone that has a lot of energy on the recording. But what’s actually going on is that it’s just floor toms. There’s no cymbals in that song.

I remember we really tried to work that out live. There’s a lot more cymbal and crash, and a lot of loud, rock ‘n’ roll elements to our live shows. Where we don’t have strings and multilayers, we just play really loud.

Yeah, I think we’re a lot different live than on record. But I don’t think if we tried to approach live like the record, it wouldn’t sound as good. Or if we approached the record to make it sound live, it wouldn’t sound as good.

HN: I understand. Now, on the record, I like the use of lesser-appreciated instruments like the wind chimes on “Golden Age.” And is that just whistling on “For Izzy” or is it a theremin?

SM: That's a good buddy of mine, Tony Woodard. He was this national whistling champion back in the late ’90s or early 2000s. He was on Dave Letterman, I think. I tried to YouTube it and couldn’t find it. I don’t know if it was Letterman or Leno, but he was on some major late-night show.

But he came on, and it was cool because people thought it was a theremin, but he’s just this amazing whistler.

HN: Do you hear the sort of auxiliary instruments in your head before you lay them down, or do you test them out while recording?

SM: Yeah, kind of goes both ways. Some songs have that in mind, and then there’s some experimenting. We did some overdubs at my buddy Mark Simonsen’s studio. He has a bunch of different organs, harpsichord, some old ‘80s synthesizers. So I definitely was going through soundbanks and trying stuff out. But it does go both ways.

HN: Well, I think that’s all I have for questions. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

SM: Yeah, we did a tour with Cursive a couple years ago and met all those guys. We’ve always had a good time going through Omaha before, and we’re looking forward to seeing some of those Saddle Creek guys. Yeah, we’re just stoked to be coming back through.

Michael Todd is Hear Nebraska’s managing editor. Love Language’s previous album, Libraries, loves road trips in Michael’s car, J. Alfred. Reach him at michaeltodd@hearnebraska.org.