The Husband and Wife duo that make up the Nashville based band City Silos, has a new album coming out August 30th. In fact, it’s the debut album from Kristen and Chris Butler. Don’ let the album’s title fool you. Happy Thoughts has an edge and almost lyrical darkness to it. That is if you can pull yourself away from Kristen’s intoxicating vocals long enough to focus on the words she is laying down. Once you get past those, you encounter some serious fuzz. The guitars drive these songs with almost a glossy metallic sound that is one part raw and another part polished. It seems like a weird mixture, I know. But it’s the best way I can describe it. Respect the fuzz.
I was able to catch up with City Silos to talk about the record and the future. Take a read and then take a listen to ‘Just Like Her’ below the interview and get a taste of those sweet guitars and her terrific voice.
You have a new album – Happy Thoughts – coming out soon. When is that set to drop and where can we find it?
CHRIS: Yeah we’re really excited about it! The album drops at the end of the month on August 30th, and will be on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, etc. Pretty much all the digital platforms where people get their music, and we have copies of Vinyl and CD available as well. Everything can be pre-ordered from our website at https://www.citysilos.com or directly at this link to go straight to the album Pre-Order: https://ffm.to/
Tell us about the personality of the album. What do you want people to take from it when they listen to it?
KRISTEN: I think this album has become a little more “anthem-y” than what we thought it was to ourselves, but people around around us have labeled a lot of it as “arena rock” or “dance anthems”, and we dig that! A lot of our songs are about internal conflict and I hope that people can listen to our music and understand those problems in day-to-day life, and have our music as some kind of release or therapy for themselves and can connect to it in their own way.
It almost has this combination of edgy and smooth all wrapped in one. Which seems like an oxymoron. But it’s smooth in the way everything comes together with a high quality mix. Then you have these guitars that sort of reach out and grab you, not letting you get comfortable. Tell us about the writing process on these songs.
KRISTEN: Thanks! Our writing process really varies between each song. Sometimes I’ll have an idea with lyrics and melody so we’ll start from there and Chris will build the music around that concept, or Chris will have the music and riffs ready to go so I’ll start writing something to that. We really work well together in that aspect.
Did you write these with a guitar riff and build from there? Was it always in the plan to have these sound so full with instrumentation?
CHRIS: Like Kristen mentioned, our writing process for this album really varied between songs. There are times I may have the whole music and riffs kind of planned out and then we’d start writing the lyrics and melody to it, and sometimes Kristen will have a melody or lyrics ready to go and we’d take that as a jumping off point to build the music from there. It was definitely always in the plan to have everything sound the way it does with the instrumentation and production. Sean Power, who we worked with on the album producing it at The Hilson Studio here in Nashville, really was on the same page with us musically when we went in to start recording and really understood our vision for this album.
When you’re writing lyrics, do you like to write to the music or do you have a notebook of words full of words?
KRISTEN: It really can go either way. Chris and I keep a shared folder where we each throw up ideas on songs, and sometimes lyrics are first, and sometimes music is first. I don’t have any notebooks, but I do have a ton of notes on my phone of things that inspire me.
It almost sounds like a Pixel or Silver Apple type of pedal on those guitars. Can you talk about some of the effects used during the recording process?
CHRIS: Yeah most of the lead and riff parts on the album are an old Shin-Ei FY6 Companion Fuzz that I have from ‘73 paired with a POG at times for more texture, and it’s gets some of those synthy tones out of the guitar with the octaves popping in and out. I’m a huge octave fuzz nerd, and fuzz in general, so I use a bunch of fuzz pedals and stack them like the Mythos Pedals Argo, Big Ear Pedals LOAF, Greer Amps Tarpit and Lightspeed, SolidGoldFX 76 and Sasori, to name a few. My delay tones all come from the Chase Bliss Audio Tonal Recall, which is a witchcraft pedal of delay; it does so much and sounds so good. I always have a slapback delay set and always on. I just like the way it sounds with a quick slapback at all times, and then some longer delays for lead lines or rhythmic pieces. The core tone of the album though came from a Greer Amps Mini Chief amp, which is a 3 watt monster of an amp and we just rocked that thing in the studio, and paired it with a Vox AC15. I’m a huge fan of those amps and have been an AC15 player for a long time. I used a variety of my Mario Guitars and pretty much always Fralin PAF’s. We used some single coils on a few tracks but I’m mostly using humbuckers.
The vocals are so clean. How long did you spend laying vocals for the record?
KRISTEN: Thanks! We spent about 3 days back to back working on vocals in the studio.
What’s the one song that you want people to hear most on it?
KRISTEN: I really love “Just Like Her”. It’s just a fun dance song with some attitude and it rocks.
CHRIS: I think I would have say to “Let You Go”. That one for me, as a guitarist, is just a lot of fun to play so hopefully other players will listen to it and get into it as well.
Sometimes the favorite song isn’t always the “single”. Any songs stand out or are a personal favorite on the album?
CHRIS: I think “Don’t Belong” might be my favorite from the album, even though we didn’t choose it as a single. It’s one of the first songs we wrote together and what kind of spiraled us into becoming CITY SILOS so it has a special place for me.
What does your live show consist of – band wise?
KRISTEN: We have a band with us for all the shows unless it’s specifically an acoustic performance. So that’s drums, bass and keys plus Chris on guitar. We always keep it high energy on stage and have a lot of fun with it!
What’s the plan for the rest of 2019 for you guys? Touring, more writing, videos?
CHRIS: We have tour dates coming up that we’re already in motion on for this album and things are going great so far! We have a music video coming later this month, and we’re always writing new music! Keep an eye out for some cool new merch up on our store coming soon! Tour dates, merch, all that stuff can be found on our site at www.citysilos.com
-Tommy Marz
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