Q&A: With Eyes For The Stars, Joyer Investigates Renewal In New LP, ‘On The Other End Of The Line…’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SYDNEY TATE ☆
Photo by Maria Gelsomin
WITH THEIR HEARTS AS A HOME — Joyer persists through the wonder of discovery in distance and every emotion underneath, through, and between that fleeting space—a sunscape on the horizon, a glance to the side while biting your cheek, and ultimately recentering after uncertainty.
The band consists of Nick and Shane Sullivan, brothers split between New York and Philly, though they welcome trusted collaborators in live and recorded exploration of their project’s sound. On The Other End Of The Line…, serves as a subtly-twanged silver platter of assurance post-rigamarole of tides changing. The band fears not their most earnest emotions—leaning heavily into what could seem terrifying at first thought and growing assuredly into the acceptance of vulnerability as necessary and worth celebrating.
If you enjoy the reliable heaviness of early shoegaze artists, the tender urgency of folk singer songwriters, or the mischievousness of experimental rock, you are guaranteed a favorite track in On The Other End Of The Line….
Luna had the pleasure of discussing themes of growth, stress dreams, and envisioning our ghost plans for the afterlife with Joyer. Keep reading to find out more.
Photo by Eve Alpert
LUNA: If you had to come up with a unique and hyper-specific genre for On The Other End Of The Line…, what would it be?
SHANE SULLIVAN: Genre names are so tricky.
NICK SULLIVAN: Brother-slacker-rock-and-roll-indie or something.
SHANE: And guitar.
LUNA: And it's all one word.
NICK AND SHANE IN UNISON: Yeah.
SHANE: Brother-slacker-rock-and-roll-indie-guitar…rock (laughs).
LUNA: Do you believe distance makes the heart grow fonder?
NICK: I guess in some ways, yes, in some ways, no. Shane and everyone that I play with in Joyer live, I’ve lived in the same place as them at certain times and in other times not. It’s weird to know the ins and outs of people’s life versus kind of growing apart and only seeing each other during music times. I’m thinking more of our live band than Shane, but I feel like there are yeses and nos to that question.
SHANE: Yeah, I think it does. Being away from someone makes me miss them more and makes the time together more special.
NICK: You're convincing me there.
SHANE: You had a good answer. It's a nuanced question.
LUNA: It could differ per situation. How do you hope you'll change as a person in the future?
NICK: I want to be more mindful. Going with the distance question, I try to be engaged and aware of what's going on in people's lives that I care about, and I'd like to get better at doing that. I want to get better at being engaged in catching up with people instead of letting communication fall through the cracks sometimes.
SHANE: I would piggyback off of that and say I’d like to be more understanding and caring of other people’s experiences. I want to continue doing that and get better at that, and better at seeing people where they're at. I think that helps with communication and understanding people as a whole.
LUNA: That’s nice. Even thinking about that and trying to prioritize it is a great start. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with a celebrity, who would it be?
SHANE: I would say Jonathan Richman. He's such a goofball and his music is so childlike and whimsical. It would boost my spirits up, and I'd be like, you know what? This is honestly fun being trapped on a desert island.
NICK: That's a really good one. I was gonna say the author, Thomas Pynchon, who has definitely written pretentious people books, but I feel like he somehow knows all these weird factoids of random parts of history. He’d endlessly be able to keep me engaged with all these crazy facts and that’s besides the fact that his imagination seems to be endless, too. I could get lectured by him forever.
SHANE: I like that we both chose entertainment-based answers, not anything to help us.
NICK: Like survival, yeah. I'm resigned to just living on the island, honestly.
LUNA: You'll never get bored. When was the last time you tried something new?
NICK: I play guitar in Joyer but I see myself more as a drummer, and in my day job I teach music lessons as a drum teacher. I started doing a couple guitar lessons for the first time, which I was really nervous about because I'm more self taught on guitar than I am on drums.
I really wasn't sure how it was gonna go, but I felt like I succeeded pretty well and taught some kids some new stuff. That was my big trying something new win that I had.
SHANE: I tried poke for the first time a couple weeks ago, I loved it. I was like, how have I never had this before? It’s one of those things you see everywhere and I always thought, why would I ever get that?
Photo by Maria Gelsomin
LUNA: I’m usually not in the mood for it.
NICK: Some of the restaurants seem kind of questionable.
SHANE: They all look pretty crazy. They're all beach themed and it’s too much themeing to where I think it can’t be good food. Especially because it’s raw, but…it’s good.
LUNA: I'll take your word for it. What song from On The Other End Of The Line… did you have to re-track parts for the most?
NICK: Probably “At the Movies,” partly because there’s so much happening and so many tracks recorded. Also, the riff is kind of, I wouldn’t say unwieldy, but it’s easy to forget to finish the riff before you restart it. It was a bit of a brainteaser for us at one point. We also couldn’t decide what tempo we wanted it to be at so we tried a few different options.
SHANE: That was also one where we finished tracking and we were mixing the record while we were on tour. We thought it needed more things tracked to it so we were on Ableton on tour trying to add to the instrumental section and working out how to send it over to Henry, who mixed it, and it was really stressful. We're surprisingly really happy with how it came came out, because it was such a headache and usually that doesn't end well.
NICK: We were just like, sorry about this Henry, I think this might work, but we weren't sure. He took a first pass at it and said he was trying something weird, to bear with him, and it was immediately so cool, so it all worked out in the end.
LUNA: What city do you think has the best DIY music scene?
NICK: Probably Philly. We're not as tapped in as we used to be, but when we first started out, every night there'd be a cool show in Philly and we grew up in New Jersey, so it wasn’t that far of a drive. Nashville has some cool bands, but Philly is hard to top.
SHANE: Philly, in terms of DIY, is especially good. House shows can be hit or miss and I don’t think we’ve ever played a house show there that hasn’t been really fun and worth playing.
People really care about music there and they really show up. The audiences are really passionate.
Photo by Eve Alpert
NICK: It’s also set up perfectly because it's still a city, but you're able to have a basement to throw shows in. New York could be really good, but everyone lives on the third floor or something of an apartment, so it’s harder. Philly’s set up to be big enough but not too big of a city.
LUNA: I don’t know why I went this route with the questions, but what do you want written on your headstone?
NICK: My first instinct is straight up my name and nothing else. I don't like the idea of attention, just mark where I am.
SHANE: I don’t have any profound quote that I'm attached to.
NICK: Our dad's headstone just has his name and I’m into that.
SHANE: His is cool, just a plaque in the ground. It gets a little overgrown too, which is nice. I like that it becomes part of the nature around it. I’ll go with that too.
LUNA: Then, if you were a ghost tied to one location in the afterlife, where would you haunt?
NICK: There’s this drive-in theater in Pennsylvania that shows all different types of old indie movies and that would be cool. The vibes there are so nice and pleasant, but I’m thinking of the entertainment thing again for some reason. I’ll watch movies and I won’t be bored, or I could haunt people because there’s a lot of traffic.
SHANE: I would maybe do an airport so I could see all sorts of different people [everyone laughs].
LUNA: [Laughing] Okay, going for the most uncomfortable environment of all time.
SHANE: I get to see lots of different people, haunt different people, it'll be interesting. You see a lot of interesting things at an airport. And this is kind of cruel, but people are already having a bad time, and then I haunt them on top of it?
LUNA: That's what I was about to say. When somebody's having a fight you can scare them. Can you name a few bands that defined your music taste at fifteen?
NICK: It was probably Alex G, Title Fight, and maybe Earl Sweatshirt.
SHANE: I would definitely say Alex G…I feel like it was only Alex G. I had phases with The Beatles where I was super into them and then it would cool down again, so I feel like that happened then. Then probably Caius, which was the band before Queens of the Stone Age. Nothing too embarrassing, I still like all of those bands a lot.
Photo by Eve Alpert
LUNA: Those are all great assortments. In line with Nick's answer about haunting the movie theater, if you had to watch only one movie for the rest of your life, what would it be?
SHANE: Gotta be something fun but not annoying.
NICK: I have two answers. There's E, because that movie's insanely long and really comforting and you don’t have to be in a certain mood to watch it. It’s slice of life, chill, and relaxing, or I’d choose Shortcuts, which is one of my favorite movies. It switches perspectives a lot and has all these different side stories. It’s the movie equivalent of watching TV episodes, because it switches around narratives a lot, so that would keep me going watching that over and over again. One of those two.
SHANE: Very good answers. I’m going with Spirited Away because it encompasses a lot of different genres. It's kind of light-hearted, also serious and heavy, and also cute and fun. There’s a lot there and I get a good sampling of different movie elements.
LUNA: Do either of you have any dreams that stand out to you?
NICK: Any dream that involves our bass player, Jake is always really funny because he's such a character in real life. I can’t think of a specific one but everyone in our live band has had a dream about Jake at some point.
Two days ago my girlfriend had a dream that Jake lived with us and it was really strange. It’s hard to describe without knowing him, but know he’s a very lovable and eccentric person.
SHANE: I’ve had a lot of dreams where my teeth fall out. I know that’s a common one.
LUNA: What is the meaning of that again?
SHANE: It’s some kind of stress dream. A lot of times they’ll fall out and I just have to keep spitting them out, and it is stressful but also really annoying.
That’s a recurring one that happens [for me] a lot, but I know it’s common. Maybe there’s more specific meaning behind it. It’s not a dream I like getting.
LUNA: I wouldn't like that either. The internet says it can be about insecurity or lack of control, or you could be grinding your teeth or something.
NICK: This is so weird because I don't care about baseball at all or even like it, but my stress dreams are always that I’m in my mom's backyard consistently hitting baseballs over and over again [Shane laughs], but I have this feeling of stress. That one stands out because it's very recurring and I always remember it.
SHANE: I’ve never heard that, that's so weird. You're never swinging baseballs.
NICK: Easily my least favorite sport. That's probably why it adds to the unpleasantness.
LUNA: If you look at your phone right now, what was the last song that you were listening to?
NICK: “Scarecrows” by 22º Halo.
SHANE: “Dig a Pony” by The Beatles.
On The Other End Of The Line… is out now.
