Q&A: Golden Apples Define Thoughtful Prowess In New LP ‘Shooting Star’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SYDNEY TATE ☆
PLAYING DEFENSE FOR ART AS A TENDER MUSCLE—Golden Apples’ Shooting Star opens as earnestly as any other all time favorite would, with an otherworldly cadence of synth harboring a sense of blushing singularity.
Shooting Star is hoisted in a blessed and glowy stupor from band-leader Russell Edling’s decision to prioritize collaboration for the development of this collection of songs, rewarded graciously in realization and purpose. The Philadelphia-based band sees creativity as innovation, where that belief rings true in envisioned crimson color.
Luna had the pleasure of pondering soup, emotions, and letting go to the flow of creation with Russell Edling of Golden Apples. Read on to find out more about Russell’s first book club pick, how the album concept came to fruition, and the most recent time he climbed a tree.
LUNA: What's something you've done that you wish you could experience again for the first time?
RUSSELL EDLING: Oh, geez. A couple of things are coming to mind. When I was a kid, my grandmother used to take me to this place to get ice cream, and it was built inside of a caboose, like an old isolated train car. I would get vanilla ice cream with sprinkles, and it was the best thing in the whole world. I would love to do that again for the first time, because my grandmother was great, and ice cream is amazing. And why not start at the beginning?
LUNA: Do you see creating as necessary?
EDLING: I'll answer it two ways, because I have slightly different answers, and both are maybe valid. For me personally, creating things is automatic. I don't necessarily seek to make things.
I will sit down with an instrument and be like, if a song happened now, but it's not necessarily super deliberate. There's usually a number of things that are going on that would make me want to do that in the first place and it just feels like playing.
In the grander scope of humanity, it is necessary to create. It is almost a survival skill to be resourceful and to find solutions to problems. Creativity manifests in many different ways, some of which are like, “Hmm, how will I get this object from here to way over there?” or it’s like, “What do I do with all these feelings in my head?”
Creativity is the bridge between a moment of need and relief from that need. What do you think?
LUNA: It's funny that I was so ready to ask the question and I did not think about my answer at all. It would depend in terms of…necessary for what, you know? But also yes, it's a great way to feel and be connected to yourself, so in terms of the type of life that I want to live I would see creating as necessary.
Like you were saying, though, there’s so many ways that can look like. It has been fun in the past year trying to do more general expression and that is creation too. Or using crayons or different physical expression like roller skating. I pretty much agree with you in a different font.
I was also talking with a friend recently about how once you start thinking about how your art will be perceived, then you’re completely off track from the whole point of making it. How do you feel about that?
EDLING: It's essentially true that you need to let go in the moment that you want to create something. It's important to try to let go of any thoughts like that. I also think it's an inevitability to wonder. It’s really easy to when you’re in the process of working on something.
Okay, imagine, let's just talk about songwriting. I am writing a song and then, oh, I don't, wait, no, this sounds too much like a specific band. And so to make that statement is already in some ways thinking about perception, and you’re recognizing that other people might think a song you’re making sounds too much like another band or even your own band.
Those observations are kind of unavoidable, but the challenge is to perservere and keep trying and stop listening to the voices inside your head, and get into a zone where you’re exploring without thinking.
LUNA: I agree that’s the purest and most sensical way to create as well. In the process of making this album and with [such a collaborative approach], were there any moments where working with others completely changed a track you were working on?
EDLING: To some extent, it happened on every single track. I work with these pretty articulate demos, so I will write the song and record a demo almost at the same time. Once I get the demo finished, it usually sounds fully realized. It has drums, it has instrumental tape, it’s not just me with an acoustic guitar.
It sometimes is, but anytime anyone is working on a song, we’re opening up the project and pulling things apart and putting other things in, so it does always change.
I'm most sensitive to changes in the drums and even just the approach. For the song “Fantasia” on the record, that one was all recorded live. For the most part, I did some overdubs, like vocal overdub and maybe a lead guitar track or something, but everything else was live, so that [ended up] very different than my drum machine demo.
The drum machine demo is very click, rigid, and has this robotic way about it. Doing that song live made it so much more dynamic and reactive and that was interesting. It was a lot of fun and it definitely changed a lot.
Another song that comes to mind is “Another grand offering for the swine,” I had done it differently. I had the drums in my demo fade in like an Elliot Smith song, I thought it was a cool move, it’s very in-studio. When we did it for the record, my friend Pat played this beat that almost approximated that.
I really liked how it came out and it does have a different feel than what I was imagining. Part of it is letting the songs take new forms lightly, and trusting the song and the people you’re with, and letting it grow up a little.
LUNA: I've heard writers say with novels that you have to let the story breathe.
EDLING: It's all true, yeah.
LUNA: What would be your first pick if you were starting a book club?
EDLING: This book that I read within the last year spoke to me more than a lot of books had in a really long time, and it's On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. I really, really loved that book and thought, damn this is saying so much really vibrant, potent, beautiful stuff. It has this emotional dip that I would want to be the foundation of my book club.
LUNA: I have not read that one, but I've heard about it a few times, so maybe this is the final push.
EDLING: If you like the feels, it's a very emotional book. It's so palpable and intense, but also so beautiful.
LUNA: Do you have a favorite soup?
EDLING: I was eating a lot of soup recently because I had to have a tooth extracted and it was horrible, I couldn’t chew anything.
LUNA: That's not a good context for soup.
EDLING: Yeah, I know, terrible. I really like a lentil soup. There’s this incredible soup-y sort of curry-ish dish that my partner introduced me to called khao soi. It’s a Northen Thai dish, and it’s so good. It’s the soup equivalent of the Ocean Vuong book. It’s so total in depth, like eveything all at once in a wonderful way.
LUNA: That sounds incredible. I was also thinking about cliches recently. Are there any that you really believe in?
EDLING: It's interesting, because I feel like there are cliches that argue the counterpoints of every cliche as well.
LUNA: (Laughing) You're right about that.
EDLING: That statement leads me to the cliche that I find myself relying on often. I don’t know if it’s a known cliche, so maybe it’s not even a cliche, but I find that my partner, Mimi, who also plays in the band, and I end up saying this so often—”it’s probably a little bit of both.”
We say it all the time. We even made an acronym out of it—LBOB. I think it’s a cliche because many things are more than one thing. In fact, if you’re weighing two things, often, it’s a little bit of both.
LUNA: It is a little bit of both.
EDLING: Yeah, think about it. It’s gonna pop up and you’ll think about LBOB.
LUNA: I'm probably going to immediately use that to my roommate later today.
EDLING: Go for it. We want it out there.
LUNA: What brought you to the name Shooting Star for the album specifically?
EDLING: It crept up on me. I had other ideas for album names and artwork, but I wasn’t really feeling any of them. They weren’t working or connecting quite right. Then, I was walking around or sitting around listening to the mixes and it occured to me that throughout the album there are a couple specific mentions of a shooting star.
There’s one in the song “Feliz” where the lyrics are describing someone as a shooting star. In “Fantasia” there’s a line “nobody’s shooting star,” and it’s connected to this idea of communicating with someone or trying to send them a message and you’re doing something so dramatic as conjuring a shooting star, but no one is going to see it.
There’s another line in the song “Divine Blight” where I talk about this idea of an interstellar steed—this magical horse that you can ride. There was this idea of some sort of entity speeding through vast space and it all clicked. I had this photograph of this mirror from a bar in New York called Birdy’s…
LUNA: Oh yeah, I lived around the corner from there for a couple of years.
EDLING: That's so funny because that's the cover art. I drew the photograph and the cover art is basically that mirror. Also, our dog is named Birdy, so when I put it all together I thought, that’s it. The album is called Shooting Star and the cover art is this super sick mirror. The planets were aligned and I was here for that. I received that transmission.
LUNA: I love that. That makes total sense now, and the amount of times that I've sat there staring at that mirror thinking this is way too beautiful to be in a bar right now. Do you have any specific memories associated with “Divine Blight?”
EDLING: Well, no, because it's mostly made up, but I do have images in my head when we play it. There’s a video reel playing in the back of my mind. I feel that with every song and it helps me to stay in the world a little bit.
I imagine you’re wandering around in this barren field and you’re weathering all kinds of discomforts like wind and rain and adverse conditions. In spite of it, you keep going, and when I get to the choruses, I imagine I’ve arrived at these buildings. Very classic country western kind of style, like a corral or something like that.
I imagine these cowboy vibes, but I don’t think the song conjures that overtly or sounds like a country song; it takes me there in my head. Even when I was writing it I was conjuring those images and it stuck around.
LUNA: When was the last time you climbed a tree?
EDLING: Oh, man, I climbed a tree two weeks ago and I hadn’t for a couple years before that. I was back home at my parents’ house, and I grew up in the middle of nowhere Northeastern Pennsylvania.
There’s corn fields all around my parents’ house. My cousin was having a wedding reception there, and I was climbing up a tree to string some solar powered lights so later that night we would have a nice, glowing apparatus to accompany the dance floor. It was fun because it was a tree that I had known my whole life.
I drew the tree on a wall, even, and my mom maybe painted over it now, I don’t know, but the tree has been in my life as long as I’ve been alive, and I finally got to climb up part of it. I had never done that before, so it was a new feat for me.
LUNA: That is quite lovely, I’m glad I asked.
EDLING: Climbing is fun because it reminds you how terrifying it is to fall. Living in the city in this built environment, everything is meant to accommodate the human form and mechanics, and a tree is not that way.
LUNA: (Laughing) It is until it isn’t.
EDLING: Exactly. I remember thinking it was a trip, it’s kind of dangerous. I was feeling like a cat up yearning like a firefighter up there to come and save me.
