“Billy Howerdel said, ‘This song is super slutty!’” Inside VOWWS’ new album

Marking the release of their ace, 4/5-rated third album I’ll Fill Your House With An Army, VOWWS duo Rizz and Matt James talk K! through each song on the record, one by one…

Matt: “Even though this is the first song on the record, it came right at the end of the writing process. We had been diving really deep into all our songs, pushing ourselves to do unusual things and trying to get out of our comfort zone. But with this, we just wanted to do something that felt good and hit hard – we were sick of thinking about everything so much. It came together really quickly, although I remember Rizz making one important guitar suggestion which made it way more drony and stonier.

“Even though it came together quickly, we still tried variations of certain sections with Billy [Howerdel, producer], which was pretty much the M.O. in the studio: don’t leave any stone unturned, try everything. But that went as far as it could before we realised what we had written in the first place was pretty much perfect. Having Josh Freese play on it was the secret sauce – that was all it really needed.”

Rizz: “This one was a doozy! If you heard the original version you wouldn’t even recognise it. It was a case of too many ideas shoved into one song and although we both knew it wasn’t working, we were in complete disagreement about how to fix it. Eventually, we figured it out and were confident heading into the studio.

“Once we were tracking the parts with Billy, he had some really crucial ideas which gave the song much-needed dynamics and of course, bringing Josh Freese and Munky – aka James Shaffer – into the mix on drums and guitars, it really took it to the next level.”

Matt: “I first wrote a version of the chorus for this song years ago, sad, in a room by myself. I didn’t do it with VOWWS in mind, I just felt like writing something for the sake of it. The original demo was actually called MDM because I had been listening to Mac DeMarco and I sort of had his breezy sentimentality in mind at the time – which I was envious of. It was just a dead little lo-fi beat, an acoustic guitar and lazy vocals.

“It was so delicate, and I loved it but didn’t see a place for it anywhere, so left it. Later, during the pandemic, we were searching for ideas, we rediscovered it and started to put everything else into place. Because of our state of mind at the time we put a lot more darkness and tension into it, and made it way more driving than when it was first written. It’s also something we’ve been playing live for a while now, so a lot of people have heard it and it seems to be a favourite. It definitely is for us as well, and we’re really happy to finally release it.”

Matt: “The first demo we had of this was called ’90s. I don’t know why exactly, but something in it reminded me of some ’90s alt.rock stuff that borrowed from the previous generation, from The Cure, Cocteau Twins, Killing Joke, etc. and wrapped all it up in a newer packaging. Although this is really nothing like that on the surface, it’s kind of sentimental sounding in parts and that identity is definitely in there somewhere. It changed a lot between demo and final recording – we sped it up, added live bass, and made it way more urgent-sounding. Billy deserves a lot of credit for that, and so does Josh.”

Matt: “There’s a big part of what we do that we call ‘happy-sad’. It’s nostalgic, maybe for something that actually existed or maybe not. It’s the feeling you get when you’re looking at an old photo of a happy time, thinking about something/someone you lost but still appreciate having had them in your life, whatever. I like feeling melancholy. To me it’s not straight sadness, it’s deeper but also lighter… like a drug that allows you to see past the usual everyday stuff, and feel what’s important and what moves you about life.

“Anytime we write a song that feels like it’s connected to that, it becomes really special to us. This is one of them – it touches on mistakes and regrets, but doesn’t get carried away with any of it, make judgements about it, or anything else. It’s still kind of light, it still feels like everything’s gonna be alright and I like that.”

Matt: “One of my favourite memories from being in Billy’s studio was when we were all standing around listening to this song and he just looked at us and said, ‘This song is super slutty.’ I didn’t know until then that that’s exactly what it is. Not in the lyrics or anything, just in how it feels.

“I think this is my favourite song to listen to on the record, which is surprising considering how much we struggled with it. We originally had a totally different section for the verse vocals, but it was too repetitive… just not right, too jerky or something. Rizz knew, and she convinced me which is often the case.

“Anyway we changed the music for those parts with Billy, and then had to re-write the melody and lyrics. That took almost the whole recording process, because we kept putting it off – we wanted to paint a picture and tell a little story, but didn’t want to beat anyone over the head with it so it was tricky. I think we got there in the end.”

Rizz: “If memory serves me correctly, this was actually two different songs that both had potential on their own, but were not quite there. So we ‘Frankensteined’ them together – which doesn’t usually work (laughs) – but we liked how it came together so we went with it. I could totally be imagining this, by the way…”

Matt: “I suppose this feels like one of our ‘songiest’ songs, if that makes any sense. It’s got a lot going on, it’s super dense, and I love it, but for whatever reason, it feels like the odd one out on the record, at least to me.

“I think as an artist, every album you make should have at least one or two songs that make you uncomfortable, because it means you’re pushing out of your comfort zone and trying new things, not just pleasing yourself over and over again. I mean, maybe I’m splitting hairs… it’s definitely a VOWWS song, but to me it sticks out as something different. I feel like this is when the second half of the record takes shape.”

Rizz: “This song almost didn’t make the album because we were having such a hard time with lyrics, but we loved everything else about it. There’s nothing worse than bad lyrics to break the spell and completely ruin a song. When you’re writing bare bones, emo-style ballads, the lyrics are way more important, because you can’t hide behind cool guy shit and studio tricks.

“Sonically it’s one of my favourites, I love the textures and the space… but, to be honest, I’m still not entirely sold on the lyrics (laughs). I think we just reached a point where we were like, ‘Okay, it’s not horrible.’ I don’t know, maybe we’re being too hard on ourselves…”

Rizz: “This is one of my favourites on this album. We wrote it in the pandemic and it didn’t really change that much from the original demo. Actually, when it was time to track the parts in the studio, we found ourselves not able to replicate some of the magic of the demo, so we kept some of the original scratch vocals that were recorded at home because they had a certain quality and earnestness about them that we just couldn’t replicate, no matter how much we tried.”

Rizz: “This song started out as part of a live score that we wrote for our friend Arashi Yanagawa’s fashion show for his label John Lawrence Sullivan. We liked it so much that with Arashi’s blessing we turned it into a proper song. It’s definitely got general anaesthetic vibes… dreamy and sleepy. We love that shit!”

I’ll Fill Your House With An Army is out now via Out Of Line

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