Bedroom Walls

A conversation with Adam Goldman

(July 2006)

Interview by Adam McKibbin

When they showed up on the scene with their debut record, I Saw You Coming Back To Me, Los Angeles “Romanticore” purveyors Bedroom Walls had no problem with preaching to the sad sack choir.  Moody, mellow and orchestral, it served as a light-sounding if darkly-themed contrast to the sounds most typically associated with their city.  Their new album, All Good Dreamers Pass This Way, branches in brighter directions while still maintaining its comfortable melancholy.  Hometown fans are getting multiple chances to see the vivid new material in person, as the band is holding down a residency through August.  Fans elsewhere will have to wait until the fall; until then, they can content themselves with an album that is ripe for repeat enjoyment.  Oh, and if you buy the album, you’re rewarded with a “semi-pornographic” video.

Going into this second record, were you looking to improve upon specific things from the first one?  Do you go back and listen to the older material?

I don’t listen to either of ‘em.  (laughs)  You probably need to put it away for a while.  But occasionally I’ll be in a situation where I’m listening to one of the songs from the first record, and I’m usually pretty happy with it still.  Something that I wanted to improve on—the first album was one of those records that was intentionally more of a vibe record, one mood throughout, more or less.  I’ve always liked those records, like Joni Mitchell’s Blue or any record by Low—I haven’t heard the last couple.

I felt that there were a lot of flavors to mix in, to use a really bad metaphor.  There were a lot of other interests that I had, and I hadn’t been able to indulge in them because I felt I wanted to be consistent with that first record.

Other than mixing it up style-wise, I wanted there to be more big moments.  The mood was so mellow on the first record, and that can be nice if you’re in that mood, but I wanted this record to be more mood-altering than just recording the mood you’re in.  That sounds ridiculous, but there are these moments throughout the record, hopefully, that are peak moments.

Yeah, I was curious about some of those songs that do have those big moments, those more grandiose elements.  Are those things there from the beginning, or are the songs starting as simple acoustic ditties?

Well, you know, I’ll demo the stuff at home on a little ProTools rig.  Some just start as guitar and vocals on a tape recorder.  But some of them start out epic—but in a chintzy way.  I’m doing it at home, so I don’t have an orchestra, but I’ll use fucked-up keyboard sounds.  I have a big closet that I use as an office, and I’ll lock myself in there with the ProTools.  Oddly, the demos are really epic.  I think sometimes people see orchestral pop and they see the orchestral part as icing on the cake.  I don’t know how it is for other people who make music like that, but for me, it’s not an afterthought.  It’s integral to the creation of the song.  It’s not like I write a song and then later think, “Oh, it would be cool to keep piling shit on the thing.”  It’s integral to the song that there will be a big arrangement, even if it’s not fully formed.

In the studio, we brought one musician in at a time, so we were often just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.  I don’t score things, so it was a matter of me singing a line to somebody or playing them the demo.  It all kind of came through in the mixing and editing.

So there’s a lot of change when the collective comes together.

Yeah, once I demo the stuff, I give it to the band, and there’s definitely a band transformation that goes on.

Were there any songs that almost didn’t get worked out?

The first song on the record, “In Anticipation of Your Suicide,” was too slow, we were thinking about scrapping it… the biggest problem for me was the middle section, where traditionally a guitar solo would go.  I didn’t want a guitar solo.  We probably spent too much time worrying about it, but that’s the nature of it.  You spend a lot of time worrying about something that no one notices.

Was that pegged as the opener right away?

No.  Joe Chiccarelli [who mixed the album] has the world’s most insane resume—he’s worked with Journey and U2, and the best for me was that he worked with The Bee Gees.  I’m a gigantic Bee Gees fan.  Actually, this record was probably really influenced by early Bee Gees, before they went disco—super psychedelic, orchestral, baroque pop.

Anyway, Joe asked me what I thought the lineup would be, and I told him that one would be first and he said, “No, you can’t lead off with a suicide song.”  (laughs)  But we did it.

For the songs that are more narrative based, is it more observation or imagination that’s fueling those?

When I was writing the lyrics, I thought that the art of the creepy seduction song was ready to be revived.  You know who’s really good at it?  Jarvis Cocker from Pulp.  So I thought Americans can do it, too.  But I’m not really a good storyteller.  The music is already written for the next record, but I’m still working on the lyrics.  I was thinking “Why don’t stories come easily to me?  Oh!  The only story I’m interested in is me.”  (laughs)  I’m a totally self-absorbed artist person.  But it’s fun to play characters, like with “Mandy,” which is first-person, but it’s basically trying to convince someone to sleep with you.  “Hello, Mrs. Jones” is another story song, and I’m really proud of that one because it’s so creepy—while I’m calling to talk to the daughter, I attempt to seduce the mom.  It’s supposed to be written from the perspective from a 17 or 18-year-old—someone that I definitely wasn’t when I was 17.  A really confident, seductive 17-year-old—I don’t know if they exist.  (laughs)  But I still find it interesting to play the part of someone who is bad, or to say things that you shouldn’t stay.

The suicide song was funny because some people have insisted that it’s about Elliott Smith.  But it’s not.  It’s for my friend, and it actually started as a joke.  I visited him in Massachusetts and I said “I’m going to write you a song when I got home.”  Because I’m immature, I guess, I decided to write him a mean song.  So the title came first:  “In Anticipation of Your Suicide.”  Whenever people write about suicide, it’s sort of maudlin, and I thought it might be cool to write an anti-suicide song that kind of makes fun of it.  You know, saying to somebody “You think it’s romantic, but the truth is, yeah, everyone will be sad, but in a year from now…”  The idea was to mock that romantic suicide.  Some local DJ-type people don’t like the title itself and won’t play it.

There’s a part in there about giving records away.  There were these health movies, like health education, and there was a classic After School Special starring Chad Lowe and Charlie Sheen.  Chad Lowe plays the kid in high school who’s not doing so great, and he does poorly on his SAT, and he kills himself.  Charlie Sheen is one of his old friends.  When they’re looking back, one of the signs that he was really depressed and maybe suicidal was that he gave his whole record collection to his younger brother.  If any of my friends offer me their record collection, I’ll know.

That’s interesting.  When I was a kid, my cousin offered me his book collection, but it turned out he just wanted to drop out of school.  A warning sign, nonetheless, I guess.

(laughs)  Yeah, there are different warning signs.

It seems like most of the artists you’ve talked about in interviews are artists who, even if they’re still active, had their creative peak in a bygone era.  Does that mean you have a hard time relating to your peers, or are people just not asking about the newer stuff?

Oh, they ask.  I’ll tell you a story.  (laughs)  About a man named Edward Van Halen, a young man.  I remember when I was a kid, and I was way into Van Halen—an influence that’s hard to pick up when you listen to our music, but keep listening, it’s there.  I remember someone asked, “Eddie, what are you listening to?”  He said, “I really don’t listen to anything.”  I thought he was full of shit.  C’mon, you know you’re listening to Ozzy!  You’re listening to Dio.  But now I’m in a band and we’ve made some records, and I honestly don’t listen to anything current.  I really don’t know why.  I was like every other indie rock kid when I was in college—I bought as many records as I could afford, and I taped the rest.

Actually, I’ll tell you why—and I think we’re part of this, I’m not putting myself above this.  I think we’re still at a point where people are not necessarily recycling but still sifting through their influences and not necessarily synthesizing anything really fresh.  I don’t think we made a revolutionary or groundbreaking record.  I feel like I might as well go to the source, you know?  Great records are obviously being made at this very moment by brand new bands.  But lately I’ve been listening to calypso records—you go through phases where you don’t want to hear white boys with guitars for a little while, even if you are one.

Do you feel like a black sheep in L.A., then?  I say this pretty often, but it’s true: it seems like bands out here are 50-50, either feeling like they’re trying to swim upstream or that they’ve found their perfect little niche, like the alt-country guy who hangs out with ten other alt-country guys and they all play the same bar every other week.

Yeah, we definitely feel slightly out of place.  It makes sense that it’s half and half.  We’re friends with a lot of other bands here, and it’s funny because it’s this large assortment of people who feel like black sheep.  We’ve had some problems in L.A. just because we’re not a rock band.  Even though we’re a cultural capital, it’s not really a big indie rock town.  There’s the Eastside, but I work with quote-unquote normal people who don’t go to Spaceland on Monday night.  Everyone in Silverlake thinks the rest of the L.A. is paying attention but, you know what, people don’t know where Spaceland is, or what it is.  People go out and they want to see a loud, fun rock band and, you know… (laughs), we don’t offer those goods.  But we’re kind of trying to create an ad hoc coalition of bands that don’t rock but still make interesting music.  Also, L.A. has obviously been good because we’ve probably gotten a lot of attention that we wouldn’t if we were in a city that wasn’t filled with media people.

There’s a romantic thing, like “Oh, Los Angeles, it’s alienating, but I love it and want to stay.”  I might be at a point—I’ve been here almost ten years, and in the next couple years, I’ll probably move on.

Back to Long Island?  (laughs)

No way.  (laughs)  You don’t go back to Long Island.  You leave, and that’s the point.  Did you go to Madison for school?

Yeah.

I remember a lot of kids from my high school went to UW-Madison for some reason.  You probably ran into a lot of Long Islanders.

That’s true.

Oh, boy.  Don’t hold the rest of us responsible.  I actually lived in Madison for a summer, too.

Did you like it?

I did, actually.  I thought it was pretty vibrant and cool.

I'm very fond.  Theatre was one of my majors, and that was similar to what you were saying about bands in L.A., where you have this collective of people who all feel individually alienated. 

Yeah, maybe at this point, with the music we’re making, L.A. isn’t ideal for us.  On the other hand, we’re kind of a national act.  I live here and we play shows here, but it doesn’t matter if we’re the hottest band in L.A. anymore.  The kids who like us in Wisconsin don’t care.

Right.  There are some bands out here, for instance, that wouldn’t have a career if The Smell closed down.

(laughs)  I know people involved in the noise scene, and I really admire how it’s coalesced.  They’re really protective of it, you know?  Since I’m not in a band that plays stuff like that, they hate my guts.  And that’s fine.  They have a community and they’re guarding it.  Every night that there are shows, everyone goes out and supports each other’s bands.  I think it’s amazing that’s happened in L.A., even if I’m unwelcome.  On the other hand, it’s really insular and there are rules, and if you don’t follow the rules, you’re bad.  It’s your typical punk rock rules thing—follow the rules or you’re not punk, blah blah blah blah.

I interviewed your former drummer Julian [Gross] a little while back, when the new Liars record came out.  I was wondering whether he’s always had his flashy fashion sense or is that something that was incubated by his current band?

Flashy?  Yeah, kind of.  We were roommates for five years.  I’m pretty messy, but he was probably the filthiest slob on the planet, God bless him.  We were doing a show and he wanted to wear an ascot.  He grabbed a really dirty sock off the floor and tied it around his neck.  Ascot.  So, yeah, I would say flashy.  He was always very fashion-forward.  He was the first guy I knew to wear a hoodie underneath a sport coat.  That’s everywhere now.  That was him.  I’m going to say that was him.

Something that your new record shares with that Liars record is the inclusion of lots of bonus videos.  I think that gives people an actual incentive to buy the albums, especially when the videos are actually interesting.  Was that a new process for you this time around?

Yeah, we didn’t have any videos before.  I went to school with Julian, and we know a bunch of the same people in the art community.  Occasionally someone would mention wanting to do a video, so the idea came along that we had enough people—at one point we thought we’d make a video for every song, and I think they were all made, but we couldn’t fit all of them on.  It was basically just taking advantage of our genius art friends who wanted to work for free.

It’s an eclectic batch.

Yeah, totally.  You’ve got Julian’s crazy animation.  There’s that semi-pornographic one.

That one took me by surprise.

Yeah, it’s funny, an actual pornographer, Eon McKai, made the video for “Mandy,” but it’s really sweet.  Somebody else ended up making the pornographic video.

That video kind of permanently attaches to the song, I think.  I was listening to the album in the car earlier and, yeah, it can kind of rile you up.

It’s true.  She did a good job—that’s Jessica Hundley’s.  It’s kind of sexy, it’s hot.