That plan eventually fell into disrepair (“Who wants to hear a double album right now?” he recently told Corbin Reiff’s Sonic Breadcrumbs newsletter) but a sense of its scope remains in songs that conjure endless miles of open road, the sun racing towards the horizon, and Laurel Canyon jams on the radio. Way back at the start, while touring Yolk in the Fur in 2018, Ross was toying with the idea of making a double album based around the American west, with all of the open skies, empty plains and complex history that entails. That’s probably my go to when I’m just sitting down on the couch and zoning out.” As far as acoustic goes I have a nylon Alhambra, nothing nice but a cool, vibey classical guitar. It’s pretty much stock and a total workhorse. I put a Mastery bridge on it and that’s about it. “My guitar that I take on tour, my go to electric, is a J Mascis Jazzmaster. “I lean pretty heavily on a handful of synthesizers,” he says. Gear-wise, Ross also tends to view a small group of trusted advisors as the way forward rather than spending time getting lost in a crowd of instruments. Pedal steel is my favourite instrument, gun to my head, and he is amazing.” As far as Mike goes, I can’t imagine making a record without him at this point. I definitely wanted the vocals to not sound boring at any point on this record, which was why I was experimenting with a harmonizer and Julia and Dan, he sang quite a bit, just to freshen it up. “After the last record our live show featured more singing and guest vocals,” Ross says. “It’s like Christmas morning when someone plays something great on a song,” he admits. All of a sudden Ross, who writes and arranges every note of the band’s music, is dragged from a state of creative autocracy into having his ideas reinterpreted and built upon as he nominally watches from the sidelines. Brownell and drummer Dan Keegan – are a raft of session players and collaborators, and these outside voices offer a gentle shock to the system. Alongside Wild Pink’s usual rhythm section – bassist T.C. On A Billion Little Lights the cast list has opened up a little bit. But I like to subtly and sneakily make it kinda fucked up and harder for the guys to play, at least.” If you looked at a chord chart, it looks pretty simple. “I shy away from conventional song structures, even though I think these songs are deceptively simple – three or four chords, major keys. I really just like to jam ideas, as many ideas as possible, into a song. It’s way more fun for me to work when it’s like that, coming up with sounds that I haven’t heard before. A big part of that is just layering textures. “There are multiple ideas, but they flow as seamlessly as possible. “More and more that’s what I’m interested in doing, making a little world out of each song,” Ross says. It’s a sunlit wander along streets that might lead you where you need to go. It’s not content with verse-chorus-verse or beginning-middle-end. But repeated investigation revealed hooks that hung in the air and disappeared, getting one shot in the limelight, along with washes of harmonizer and a much, much bigger sense of ambition. On first listen it was an objectively beautiful, synth-heavy indie-pop tune. The LP’s lead single The Shining But Tropical told us an awful lot about where Ross’s head was at during the planning stages. It’s such a valuable working relationship.” “I’d have an idea and he’d know how to execute it. “He totally empowered me to do these things,” Ross says. It’s hugely ambitious but carried off with a sense of bone-deep confidence. A Billion Little Lights is packed with moments of warmth and granular instrumental innovation, alongside skyscraping melodies and rootsy guitar breaks. Helping Ross to bring the LP to life was producer David Greenbaum, whose experiences of recording with U2, Beck and Jenny Lewis equate to a pretty good Wild Pink Venn diagram. When that was done I was like, ‘Oh my God, I just want to keep going with that idea.’ With this record I had a year or two to really drill down into these songs and make them sound as lush as possible.” By the time I did Yolk in the Fur I was able to plan ahead, make things sound bigger, with more and more layers, which was really exciting. “It got me thinking about recording a lot differently. “That’s something that started on the first record, which was my first time making a record in the studio,” he says. It is a meticulously planned, beautifully executed decision to go big or go home. Ross’s new LP, A Billion Little Lights, is the result of two years of writing, demoing and recording. Then an intake of breath, but not a pause. Each of his records has been a refinement, beginning with the gutsy indie-rock of 2017’s self-titled being retrofitted to encompass sweeping heartland rock in time for the following year’s Yolk In The Fur. With Wild Pink, Ross has been zeroing in on this goal for the past five years or so.
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