[Transcript edited for clarity]

Swimming

Absent Sounds: Welcome Jacob from the band Swimming. I'm so glad I got to talk to you. This is a little fun fact. My sister and I actually got into music a while ago, but we always do this thing where we just think, "okay, maybe I'll reach out to this band one day." So I like categorize 'em somewhere and I never end up doing it.

So I'm glad that this kind of happened serendipitously and like naturally rather than me having to I guess force your hand to do this.

Jacob Cherwick: No, totally. We're glad to be here.

Absent Sounds: Alright, so for the first question I kind of wanna start off with before I even get into the album- when I think of emo bands I personally am a big fan and lover of the genre that we classify as emo, but there's a lot of things that people consider and will lump together [as emo] so what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear emo?

Jacob Cherwick: I mean, it's definitely a bit convoluted 'cause I feel like at one point in time if you said emo my mind would've gone to like... My chemical romance, 2000s, very mainstream, like eyeliner and fingerless gloves kind of emo.

Yeah. And then later down the line I learned more so about the different kind of waves that it's been through, and like where it started with hardcore and where it ended up with Midwest bands doing really twinkly clean stuff. And when my mind goes to emo it goes everywhere.

Absent Sounds: Likewise.

Jacob Cherwick: It's a loaded question for sure.

Absent Sounds: Equally loaded, which I guess is the reason that I'm curious about how you classify certain terms- The title for your sophomore album. Old. Congratulations on putting that out first. It was just out in February 21st, I think.

Jacob Cherwick: Yes.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. But it's such an interesting title. What does the word old mean for you guys?

Jacob Cherwick: Well, old was kind of an easy title for this album cause all of the songs on this album are older than anything on our last album. And most of them are kind of like, there's some of the first songs we wrote as a band and some of them are even songs we wrote before we were in this band.

And it was kind of started out as we were just kind of clearing out the closet of all these songs we had lying around. And as we were working on it, we were like, you know what, I think we kind of have an album here. And so we kept fleshing it out and we rearranged a bunch of stuff and rewrote a bunch of lyrics.

But we were kind of playing with that idea of taking old things and making it new and we thought it would be kind of a funny bit to be talking about our new album called Old. There you go. The name came from there.

Absent Sounds: Did it feel strange revisiting those old track?

Jacob Cherwick:

Uh, a little bit. Yeah. I mean, we were. Fairly young. Like we would've all been in our late teens I guess, when we started this band. And so it was kind of weird going back and listening to some stuff. Almost not even really understanding exactly where we were coming from when we wrote it 'cause it was so long ago.

But it was interesting, yeah. It was interesting coming back and there was things that we had kind of pushed to the back burner for a long time 'cause we thought that it was like, uh, it's an okay song but it's not our favorite or whatever. And we were kind of letting it simmer. And then we came back to a few songs and we were like, honestly, if we just change this and put this chord in here and change these lyrics, it's kind of one of our best songs.

So it was interesting to see where things that we thought might have not been our best ended up becoming some of our favorite songs on the album.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, that's so interesting because I feel like, well this has been a reoccurring question for me where I wonder where certain bands and people are able to.

Not throw out something. And decide this is what I wanna keep working on. How, for sure. How did you, I don't know. That sounds, that's like such an interesting process.

Jacob Cherwick: I mean, our singer and guitarist, Liam, who's one of my best friends, and we've been working on music together. We went to college together and we've been working on music together for almost 10 years now.

And and he's a really big proponent of not throwing anything out. And he always believes that if you have a song written, you should record it and put it out just so that it exists in the world, because you never know, even if it doesn't mean something to you, it might mean something to somebody else.

And so it's kind of, it's almost selfish to gate keep your own art from other people, I guess is kind of the mentality.

Absent Sounds: I love that.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah.

Absent Sounds:I'll take that with me after this. And I guess the themes as well that, that aspect of being generous and opening yourself up to people.

Which is a big thing within the emo genre, I guess. Being so emotive for sure that people just can't help but feel something. Did you feel strange with any of the themes revisiting them? Is there even any themes that you felt like, “wow, I guess this still resonates with me today?”

Jacob Cherwick: I mean, a lot of it does. I feel like even though maybe the specific settings of what we're talking about is changing, a lot of the general emotions that we were feeling back then are still emotions that we feel now. It might be in a different context, but a lot of it is still you. This resonates with different aspects of what's happening to us now than what we were dealing with when we were in college.

But yeah, a lot emotionally, a lot of it kind of still rings true, I think.

Absent Sounds: I'm gonna ask you a few more questions on the album, but I'm gonna, before I do that, I wanna come back to the broader scope of things. A little bit on I guess the sound that you guys decided to go after I often assume that it's not like a intentional thing like “oh, we wanna sound like Jimi Hendrix” or something. We're just gonna sound like us. How did that how did you find what you guys sounded like?

Jacob Cherwick: I think it started off as when we first started this band, there was a lot of or I shouldn't say there's a lot, but there was like a few pop punk bands and sort of like garage rock bands in town that we were going to see a lot.

And we were like, oh, we wanna start a band like that. And so when we started Swimming and it was kind of a scrappier kind of pop punk thing almost. And then eventually we realized that a lot of what we were writing had this emo influence. 'cause we had all been listening to a lot of emo at the time, and you should name them.

And then, well, we were listening to a lot of like Algernon Cadwallader and Liam was really into Oliver Houston at the time. We were all really into a band called I Kill Giants from back in the day. But yeah, we were listening to all this stuff and it was kind of creeping through and so then we sort of went down that route, but we realized that we weren't necessarily super tight in the really intricate kind of math rocky thing.

And so we were kind of taking snippets of that and then mixing it in with the sort of pop punky garage thing that we were doing before. And so it would kind of be like, you know, straightforward chords and then all of a sudden a weird, odd time signature thing comes outta nowhere and stuff. And so it's kind of these two things that are at play going back and forth.

And then I think on our first full length album that we made, we sort of settled into the sound of what Swimming sounds like, and now it's kind of more of an effortless thing where we just start playing and. And eventually anything we do ends up kind of sounding like Swimming.

Both: In some way or another

Jacob Cherwick:

Yeah, even revisiting these old songs, it was like we didn't really feel like we had to update anything. 'cause it still sounded like us and just the way we were playing them now made it feel new to us.

Absent Sounds: Which is really interesting how that works. A kind of consistency within, because people are themselves all throughout their lives.

Jacob Cherwick: Totally.

Absent Sounds: And I also, while before we started this interview, I was kind of going through your Spotify playlist. I think it was like Jacob'sAnd I thought it was so interesting, like the taste of music that you have now, or at least the stuff that you like. I mean it, I guess I shouldn't be like, ugh, why is it, why is this like random thing there?

I don't know. How do you describe your taste now?

Jacob Cherwick: I mean, it's so all over the place and especially coming from where we come from in St. John's, it's, it's a city that's big enough to have a diverse music scene, but not big enough for anybody to kind of stick to one thing. And so everybody here is kind of into a lot of different music and everyone that plays music here plays a lot of different kind of music.

And so it's almost inevitable that even if you're not actively searching out all this different stuff, you kind of stumble upon things just from whoever it is you're hanging out with or playing music with or whatever. So I just know so much music from all the different people that I've played music with over the last 15 years and then just being on the internet and finding stuff and whatever.

And I grew up playing music with my family and so there's things that, like I've been listening to since I was a tiny child that my dad was into. And yeah, it's just like everything all kind of boils down and I never really went through any phase of being like, oh, I'm not listening to this type of music ever, or this type of music ever, or anything.

It's I've always been pretty open to everything.

Absent Sounds: I love that. I think maybe we should hope that the wider Canadian music scene would be the same way.But it doesn't feel like that. It doesn't feel like that everywhere else. No,

Jacob Cherwick: No. Definitely not. And it's often weird when we go on tour and we're playing with bands either we're playing with other emo bands in different cities and they kind of only really listen to emo and they only really play with other emo bands.

Whereas here we're playing with, you know, hardcore bands and like power pop bands and like weird hip hop and whatever. Like it's all kind of happening in the same place at the same time. And then we go out elsewhere and we find that it's oh, we're playing this show and it's kind of just this one crowd of people showing up to it.

And it's funny 'cause we even have friends in other cities that are coming to these shows and they're like, oh, we haven't heard of any of these bands that you're playing with. It's always interesting

Absent Sounds:. It's amazing

Jacob Cherwick: oh yeah, I feel like here, I know every band that's playing all the time.

Absent Sounds: It is kind of like an interesting monopoly of different genres in other cities where maybe it's not the same rotation. That’s why I'm so fascinated with the scene in Canada. I don't know, Midwest emo I feel like we focus so much on the US as well, we overlook a lot of the great talent that we have here.

Jacob Cherwick: totally. I mean, we're also I mean, I'm personally a very big can con head and I'm always trying to like, find new parts of Canadian music that I haven't checked out before, but yeah, there's so much good stuff going on here, yeah, emo for sure is like a very American centric genre for the most part.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. Do you have anything you wanna shout out? Is there a specific maybe it's a recent find that you have, like a band that you think is really cool that we should hear about too?

Jacob Cherwick: It's a good question. Honestly, I feel like a lot of the, a lot of the recent bands that I've been getting into are American, actually. So that's a Bad Sage. Well, actually my favorite band that I've heard recently is this band from California called Rocket,

Absent Sounds: I heard them because of the Best Friends Forever Fest where I saw them.

Jacob Cherwick: It's kind of sounds like Smashing Pumpkins, but there's also something like unspeakably modern about it. I like it.

Absent Sounds: Whatever they're doing is great.

Jacob Cherwick: Totally, yeah.

Absent Sounds: But we're not talking about Rocket. We're gonna focus back on what you guys are doing. I just wanna start off by talking about,’you smell like PhysEd.’ What a title. I think there's so much to unpack there as it's funny. Yeah.

Jacob Cherwick: We regret that title a bit now 'cause it was that's an old, older song of ours and we put a demo of that out in 2019. Then, uh, and then kind of reworked it a bit and then rerecorded it for this album. It was the first single we put out, but it came out two years ago.

'cause we were going on tour. We wanted to have something new to promote while we were touring. And so we were like, oh, let's finish this one up and get it done. We'll have the rest of the record done soon. And then it took us another two years to finish the album. So we put that one up and then in the time, since we simplified all our song titles, so now it's like the album starts off with you smell like phys ed, which sounds ridiculous.

And then the rest are all single word song titles after that. It's a reference to a line from the Goonies, which is like a very classic emo thing referencing a TV show line or something..

Absent Sounds: Would you include any samples if you had the chance, like in the future?

Jacob Cherwick: We usually try to see steer clear of it just 'cause we don't wanna run into any weird copyright stuff. But yeah, it's always classic to have a couple, uh, bits of dialogue going on. Yes.

Absent Sounds: You know, it, you know it, there's a line that you guys have there too where you say “I'm drowning and wasted wasting time.” At the time, what were you trying to feeling that you were drowning and wasting your time in?

Jacob Cherwick: Well I didn't write that song, or I didn't write the lyrics to that song, but I do know kind of where Liam was coming from.

And I think it was, uh, it was like around the time when we were all starting to play in bands more seriously.

And uh, and we were kind of navigating the balance between. Wanting to be a professional musician and kind of make a career out of it, but then also still have fun and be part of a scene and contribute to the community and whatever.

And I think we were kind of grappling with a lot of our friends here that are play in punk band and stuff are not really interested in making any money playing music. They don't really, they hate the corporate side of it, which we relate to, but also if we didn't have to work jobs and we could play music all the time, that would also be great.

And so I think, yeah, it was kind of grappling with the, if we're playing in these bands that don't really have any interest in making a go of it or anything, are we wasting our time? Or is it equally enriching to do something that's just like fulfilling as a fun project to do as it is something that might have the potential to make money or whatever.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. And where have you found yourself settling down on now? Which side of the road?

Jacob Cherwick: I think we're still kind of firmly in the middle, but we're more confidently in the middle now where it's like Swimming. Swimming is a band that we're, all three of us are pretty serious about it and we like put a lot of time and work into it and we're trying to do our best to promote it and bring it out of Newfoundland and do whatever we can with it.

But also, we all still play in a bunch of different bands here. A lot of bands that definitely will probably never leave St John's or anything, but it's just like we feel fulfilled doing it. We have a lot of friends here that we love making music with, so it's always nice to be able to go and do some other stuff for fun.

And we also I'm a like audio engineer and so is Liam. And we both record and mix records for a bunch of other bands here. And there's a bunch of like younger bands in the all ages scene that are coming up now. And so it's kind of like we're splitting our time between doing. Things here that are kind of more community oriented and then doing Swimming as more of a like full on touring band kind of thing.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. So a big push for that. Do you feel that there's a sort of fatigue that comes towards the music that you have? It sounds like you have so many different things cooking on the pot at the same time, which for sure I can only imagine would be exhausting at some point.

Jacob Cherwick: It is definitely exhausting and it's hard to kind of keep your brain wrapped around it all the time.

But I feel like we're always pretty good at compartmentalizing in our own brains, so we're always just you know, “okay, it's, this is coming up so it's time to lock into this mode.” And then it's so recently we've just put out this Swimming album, so we've been the last month emailing everybody, promoting this record.

We're like gonna set this up and then, we're organizing this release show and we gotta talk to these record stores and talk to this and blah, blah blah. And so we've been in that lane and everything else has kind of been cooking on the back burner. And now the record's out and it's, you know, it's getting picked up where it's getting picked up and whatever.

And so we're kind of taking the break on that and finishing up a few other things that we're working on. And then eventually we'll probably start touring in the spring or summer and we'll be back onto that track. But you kind of just have to break it up in your own brain.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. And I love, uh, this is, I loved using cheesy segue, so I'm gonna use this as a good segue to say, you know, chasing the rat race sometimes.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah.

Absent Sounds: Convenient. Because the next track is rat. Tell me about Rat.

Jacob Cherwick: Rat's, a song that we finished up for, we were playing a show, one of our early shows, and Liam kind of had all these different pieces of it lying around and uh, and we kind of had an idea of the vibe that we were going for, but we weren't necessarily sure like what the song was gonna be.

And so we were jamming for a show and we were like, you know what? Let's just finish that up and play it at the show. So we have a new song to play. Um. Rat was actually like a shortened version of the original title that was Rugrat, which was our working title. 'cause we were like, let's play something that sounds like it would be on the soundtrack to Rugrats.

Absent Sounds: I'm classic. I'm a big Rug Rats fanatic. Yeah.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah. And uh, yeah, so it was supposed to be this sort of like childlike sort of playful song and then it kind of morphed into a more there's a whole bunch of sections that all kind of feed into each other and, uh, and ended up being a little heavier than probably anything that would be on rug grass.

But, uh,

Absent Sounds: yeah.

Jacob Cherwick: But yeah, it from there,

Absent Sounds: from that's what, when you said that it honestly, in my head, I was thinking there are some lines in here that just feel so heavy.

Both: Yeah. There's a

Absent Sounds: lot going on. I kind of, I appreciate how honest it is where it's like I never trust someone like you. In that like theme of betrayal, how do you feel so comfortable opening up like that and it being honest on the stage?

Jacob Cherwick: I mean, it's one of those things where I feel like when you're writing lyrics, it feels like you're really pouring your whole heart and soul and being onto the page. And I know just from listening to a lot of music that a lot of time I have no idea what the songs are about. I knowI can feel that it was deeply personal for whoever wrote it, but oftentimes it's a lot vaguer than we let on.

And so I feel like as long as you're not really like dropping any very specific references most of the time, you can be as honest as you want and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're revealing your entire life to the world or anything.

Absent Sounds: That's true. To that point though, I noticed (this is back to your playlist again), MJ Letterman on there. And because of his recent…. Well I guess it's not a recent breakup, but the fact that it turns out like he broke up with, um, I can't remember her name,

Jacob Cherwick: Karly Hartman. Yeah.

Absent Sounds: The song I kept hearing was like, “she's leaving you too.” Eventually, you're like, I'm gonna putting these pieces together. What you're putting down.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah. I think it's very interesting. I love MJ Lenderman. I think he's one of the most interesting songwriters of my generation. I also feel a kinship to him. 'cause we were born on the same day.

Absent Sounds: February 4th?

Jacob Cherwick: February 4th, 1999.

Absent Sounds: Wow. That's incredible.,

Jacob Cherwick: yeah. I've been following him a lot and he is like a very private guy for the most part. But his songs resonate with so many people, which I find really interesting. It's like people don't really know much about him.

But everyone feels like they understand exactly what he's talking about all the time.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. That is a big thing I've heard a lot in different songwriting circles. I'm not a songwriter, but I just know that the more specific you get with your lyrics and the more you're willing to just be with the details.

And I don't know, getting into the grit sometimes the more people can resonate with it, even if they have no idea. They're like, I've never been through this exact situation, but

Jacob Cherwick: Absolutely yeah.

Absent Sounds: I will use that to kind of continue down into the next track, which is Reports.

Absent Sounds: And I feel that there is the same connection as to what you guys were talking about. I started feeling the same connection to myself now where I'm in this place where I'm done post-secondary school, but I don't know what the point of it might have been. When did you start writing this song?

Jacob Cherwick: That one is actually the oldest song on the album. It's the oldest song that we played as a band. 'cause we wrote that, Liam wrote that, uh, or like a early version of that when we were going to college together.

And we did a demo of that. And we had a indie rock band at the time. It was like this big kind of seven piece indie rock band with keyboards and three guitars and all this stuff. And it was like a little more it was very… it was very 2017 of the time. But that was a song that we wrote for that band.

And then years later we were like oh, that was a good song. Maybe we should try dusting that off for Swimming. And then we ended up recording this album. It was the first time we kind of seriously looked at it again and we rearranged it and kind of took out a bunch of sections that were in it before and simplified it a lot.

And now it's it's probably the least emo song on the album too. It's like a very straight ahead rock song. But I think we're all really happy with how it came out. It's one of our favorite songs to play now. But yeah, it would've been starting to get written while we were still in post-secondary and, uh, reworked years later after we were all done.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. Does it, is this, has this one taken a different take? Has you been, has it adopted a different meaning for you now or like a different place in your life?

Jacob Cherwick: Um, I think it has a little bit. We definitely, a lot of the lyrics did get rewritten when we were recording this one. So I think the kind of the main sentiment of the song is sort of the same and kind of struggling to figure out.

Why exactly we're doing what it's we're doing. But, uh, but uh, yeah, I think it kind of, it hits a few different notes now.

Um, but, uh, but yeah, I feel like it's kind of a it's like reflective in a way that we maybe wouldn't have been able to access when we first wrote it. I guess

Absent Sounds: the after the, I don't even know what the part of your brain is that, you know, when it develops till 25 minute clicks or something.

Maybe that's what been there.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah. I think that's it for sure.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah.

Absent Sounds: I'm gonna ask you about basement, 'cause I have a few questions I want to touch on Basement, which is another track that I loved. And it's kind of this, you know, the reflection on like past friendships and there's a lot of different metaphors that you in integrate into the song.

But I wanted to ask you if there's like a memory that you'd keep in your basement to. If you had to keep one, what would it be?

Jacob Cherwick: You mean one that would never leave the basement?

Absent Sounds: Yeah. Well, okay. The basement in this, I feel like it's a closet. No it's like a nice place. It's cozy.

It's a nice, okay. Wanna, yeah. Like you wanna hold onto it forever?

Jacob Cherwick: I mean, there's a lot, I feel like the basement is kind of where I like learned how to make music and where I learned how to play music with other people and all of that. And so, uh, most of my fondest memories in life all happened to be in the basement.

Yeah. Somewhere or another. But yeah, I don't know. I've I have always felt a kinship to hunkering down in the basement where you're locked away from the world and you can't really see the outside world much and you're just really. Left to your own devices down there, which can get dark.

But also I think that's some of the most creative times I've had in my life have come from hours in the basement, not looking at the, not looking at the sun.

Absent Sounds: Is that the kind of I guess musician that you are, like you have to be enclosed in an environment?

Jacob Cherwick: Um, not all the time, but I feel like, uh, I feel like if I'm working on music by myself, I am, I'm much better off enclosed with the least distraction.

Yeah. Possible. But I, yeah I'm like comfortable enough that I can make music anywhere, but that definitely does have a certain level of comfort that you can't get anywhere else.

Yeah. I guess

Absent Sounds: that almost does brings up the question to me about how do you decide what you want to use for Swimming stuff versus, I know your other projects that you guys each have going on.

How do you pick and choose which one's safe?

Jacob Cherwick: I it's kind of hard to say. It's, I feel like we're all kind of writing stuff, usually with the purpose of it being for one project or another. So a lot of our songs are songs that one of us would've started with the intention of oh, this will be a new song for Swimming.

But also there's been times where, you know, uh, one of us has been sitting on a song and not really sure what to do with it, and it's well, it doesn't necessarily feel like it works with anything else. And so then it kind of just finds its way into this band and we expand on it and maybe fine tune a few more things to make it fit the vibe of the other songs a bit more.

It’s kind of just like an intangible feeling that you get when you're playing it. It's like I can kind of tell in my brain already, which project it would work best under.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. That’s a skill that I assume takes a lot of fine tuning

Jacob Cherwick: A little bit, yeah.

Absent Sounds: This is bringing it to the tangible side of things, like the physicality of music. I feel like when you're in a place, sometimes there's a lot of memories associated with it. Do you have any place in Newfoundland, or maybe it could be from your tours or anything that you just hold fondly as well.

Jacob Cherwick: There's definitely a lot. I feel like all the venues here are very special places to us and there's so many that like as soon as I walk in the room, I just have a flood of memories from all these different times that I've played there. And the bar that we played our first show at ever is Swimming, actually is this bar called the Peter Easton Pub.

It's kind of like a small community bar. It's a little bit outside of downtown St. John's, so it's kind of like in the middle of a residential street. And, it was kind of like a pretty sketchy dive bar for a really long time. And 10 or 15 years ago, they like revamped it and started doing events there and having shows and they put in a new sound system and all this stuff.

And so it's become this really interesting community melting pot where they still have the old crowd of old people that have been coming there to drink for cheap every day for years. And then there's also all these new interesting things happening and it's kind of split down the middle. So there's a door that kind of shuts off, like the area where the stage is from the area where the bar is. It's almost there's two bars happening in the same building at the same time. And then there's this kind of weird zone in the middle where it mingles together and there's always interest in interactions going on and whatever, but it's like everyone feels so at home there and it feels like you're in somebody's living room or something. It's a definitely a special place and it's so small, but we try to play there as much as we can just 'cause it's like the best vibe out of anywhere we'll ever play. And I love spending time there.

Absent Sounds: That's great. I'm definitely trying to do a road trip across. If we make it out to Newfoundland, I'll definitely check out that spot too.

Jacob Cherwick: It's definitely a long haul, but it's worth it when you get here.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I can imagine.

Absent Sounds: And that brings us to CDE. This one, I was like, I don't know how many questions to ask about this. 'cause it feels so personal once again. And there's, I guess this is like the running theme of any good band.

Both: yeah.

Absent Sounds: I'm scared to ask 'cause I don't wanna touch, but how do you navigate feelings of self-destruction now?

Jacob Cherwick: I mean, it's definitely, uh, this is another, it's one of our older songs. It was supposed to be on our first EP actually. And the title comes from when we were recording that we were trying to record this song a bunch of times. And there's one part where the chords changed from C to D to E.

Jacob Cherwick: Nick, our bass player, just couldn't we like kept getting to that part in the song and he would fumble it and then we would have to stop and start again and stop and start again. And at one point he just took his headphones off. He's I'm not gonna get it. And we just never put it on the album in the end.

And then it sat in the back of the closet for years and we came back to it now. So yeah. I feel like this one is one where, I don't know, I don't know if I can necessarily tap into where we were when we originally wrote it, but, I feel like it was maybe a little overdramatic for how we were maybe feeling at the time.

I don't feel like any of us were as self-destructive as it may lead on.

Absent Sounds: Well that's good to hear. Although I do resonate with the idea of just like putting things down. There have been times where, you know, when you're working on a doc or something and then it closes and it's like- I'm never gonna work on the thing ever again.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah absolutely

Absent Sounds: Right now in your catalog, do you feel like there's enough stuff that you would do the same thing again, where it's this is another hypothetical, like Old 2.0 where, you know, things are like sitting there.

Jacob Cherwick: There is definitely stuff sitting there, but there's nothing that's as fully fleshed out as any of these songs were.

A lot of these were songs that we had been playing live at shows for a long time and then they kind of just fell off the set list as we wrote new stuff. And I think when we made our last album, we wrote a lot of those songs for the album and then that kind of took precedence over these older ones that we weren't really as interested in anymore.

And I think the next thing we do, we have a bunch of new songs that we've been working on for the last couple years at the same time we've been making this album. So the next thing we do is definitely gonna be a batch of new songs again. But I feel like by the time we get to the end of that, we're gonna be in the same situation where we are now, where the songs that are new now are gonna have been sitting around forever and there's gonna be ones that didn't make it to the next album.

And I'm sure we'll always have something to come back to like that.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. Are there any songs on this record that you feel regret that you didn't put on an earlier thing?

Jacob Cherwick: I don't think so. I think we were discussing this as a band, as we were rehearsing for the release show that we did last week.

And we were I think it worked out for the best that none of these made it to where they made have originally sat in the discography. 'cause we were like, the way that they came out now after the hindsight and the reworking and the rewriting came in has kind of turned them all into the best versions of whatever they are.

So I don't think we necessarily regret not putting any of these out any earlier. I think the work we put into 'em now, definitely paid off.

Absent Sounds: Yeah- this is gonna sound really left field, but concerning the deterministic approach to life versus free will. I guess it happened for a reason, the way it should have.Where are you sitting in life in that philosophy?

Jacob Cherwick: It's definitely hard to say, I guess I feel like there's only so much you can leave up to chance and luck and whatever in this day and age. And I feel like a lot of the time you kind of do just have to like, pull your boots up and kind of make your own way through things. But also there is so much that, yeah, just like the passing of time kind of just dictates when things are gonna happen to you and when something might be the right time to happen.

Something might not be the right time to happen, you know?

Absent Sounds: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good way to describe it. I think time does play a big part of it. Which is cool. 'cause you guys touched on it quite a bit in this record.

We'll go to the max track, which is Nothing.

I actually have an obsession with tracks that are title nothing. There's so many good ones that I think those tracks will always bang and Nothing is included in that.

But tell me about it. I'll let you start off by just describing it for me.

Jacob Cherwick: Well, Nothing was also originally a longer title. It was called Nothing to No One, and then we shortened it down to Nothing 'cause we just thought it was a little more concise and maybe a little more interesting if you're going to click play on a song called Nothing, it kind of lets your mind play a few more tricks before you get into it.

But, um, but yeah, it's it was actually this song and the first song on the album, You Smell Like Physed which were the side B side of a demo that we put out in 2019. And this one was kind of, I would say maybe the first really emo song really in that Midwest style, sort of third wave emo that was like the first song we really wrote in that vein. And it's got a lot of newly guitars going on and stuff. And I feel like we were just trying to write something that was like catchy and also intricate at the same time.

And I don't know, I feel like at this point, we've found even better ways to do that than we did with this song. But I still like the song a lot. It's a fun song to play.

Absent Sounds: That's good. It's fun when we listen, but I'm glad that it's fun for you to play too

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah.

Absent Sounds: When you said the longer title, it kind of made me feel like a call back to Manchester Orchestra.Is that anything?

Jacob Cherwick: I wonder. I feel like none of us would've really been into Manchester Orchestra when we came up with that, but it's definitely possible that it creeped in subconsciously. I think we were definitely pro probably trying to hit a poetic, ote in the same way that does, I don't know if we necessarily knew what we were talking about, but yeah, we were definitely coming from that kind of angle.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I mean, it does sound like you're talking about some, once again, interesting stuff. Like for example, the idea that someone's cutting you off every time you're trying to speak.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah. And I mean, I think that came from just I think this song was less so about any kind of specific Incident or anything. And it was just, I think we were trying to work through sort of verbalizing an emotion and it was like, uh, yeah. Liam had mentioned that. He was like, oh, it's always I think we were talking to somebody and they had kept cutting him off in the middle of the conversation.

I hate when people do that. He's like, I just I'm trying to finish my point. And so then we were writing this song around that time, and then I think that kind of worked its way into the lyrics. He was like, oh, that's something that annoys me. I'm sure it annoys other people. And, that's kind of was the whole basis of the song of just you know, it makes you feel like whoever you're speaking to doesn't really care about what you have to say. And then it kind of also forces you to question like, do I even care about what I'm trying to say here? Or is this not so unimportant that somebody's gonna feel the need to just start speaking over me?

Absent Sounds: Yeah that’s a big one.I know for me I tend to be someone who mumbles a lot, which I'm trying to overcome, but it's 'cause I'll start saying something and then I'll realize nobody actually cares in the last bits just die in my mouth. So yeah, that's it. Definitely it, I feel that in my soul for sure.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah. And I think it's also, you know, grappling with the idea of maybe I should be cutting people off more too, is maybe it's not necessarily that what I have to say is not interesting, it's that I don't have the confidence to cut other people off when I have something more interesting to say, which I don't necessarily I'm kind of glad I don't do that, but, uh, but I think that's part of what we're kind of musing on here.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I actually do think we should start cutting people off more. I know I can ramble, but I do believe that sometimes people need to be cut off.

Both: Yeah.

Absent Sounds: And speaking of which, short, they need to keep things short. That's the next track.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah. Um,

Absent Sounds: I'll let, I like just letting hearing you tell me about it first and then I'll tell you.

Jacob Cherwick: Sure. I mean, this one again, kind of in the same vein as the title of the record, it was called Short in a very literal sense in that it was just a really short song and uh, and originally it didn't even have lyrics.

It was like an instrumental thing that we wrote. 'cause we wanted to have a song that we could play at the beginning of a show to kind of like sound check and Yeah. Start the set at the same time. And so originally it had this kind of long kind of intro where I was doing a sort of bossanova type groove on the drums.

And then Liam was just doing sort of like jazzy noodly stuff over it. And then it would cut into this really like loud, aggressive, like kind of a screamo song almost. And so it was kind of our way of easing into the set and like making sure everyone's amps were loud enough. And then also having a snap reaction from the audience as soon as we kick into the loud part.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

Jacob Cherwick: And then when it came to recording it, like we were, like, we didn't wanna start the album with it and it kind of felt weird to have this weird kind of jazzy thing happening like in the middle of the album somewhere. So we ended up just scrapping that whole beginning. And just using the second chunk, which made it even shorter than it was originally.

Jacob Cherwick: And then we kind of just threw some lyrics on it as we were finishing the recording up. But, uh, but yeah, it was like, uh, this was a song that we were I don't know if this one will even make it on the record. And then they're like, well, I guess it's kind of not in spirit of the record to keep something off of it. But I think of this as like the middle it's like the intermission of the album or something.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I think one thing when I was listening to it that I, what stood out most to me was, I guess it's like the, at one point on one hand there's like the pop punk idea of or no, not pop punk, but like the punk idea of as short as possible.

Quick quick.

But at the same time, I feel like there's. This weird, how do I start this's? A weird dichotomy where I always imagine that every band has to have like at least one 10 minute song. So do you feel like there's a possibility that you would even have a 10 minute song in addition to this really short one?

Jacob Cherwick: Definitely. I mean, even the last song on the record is I think like seven and a half minutes or something. Like it's creeping up there and I'm sure at some point we'll have something even more sprawling and uh, and epic than that. But, uh, but yeah, it's definitely, uh, it's funny. I feel like we have a lot of songs that when we first put them together, we play through it and we're like, okay, that seems like that was probably like.

A nice three and a half minutes or something. How long was that? And then we'll check the timer and it's oh, we were just playing for seven and a half minutes, and we're like we gotta cut that down. And then we end up okay, this verse can be half as long and we don't need three courses here and whatever.

And then it cuts down to a sort of regular length song. Yeah. But we definitely do have a tendency to make things long, so sometimes we do like to lean into that and just keep going for as long as possible.

Absent Sounds: Appreciation for that. Yeah. And as you described it, it was it feels like you're engineering of things in your head as you go along.

And I as somebody who's on the other side of the table too, like doing engineering, music engineering and working behind that side. How does that come together when you're also making the music too?

Jacob Cherwick: It definitely does play a role, I think, uh. Yeah we've recorded all of our records ourself. Like we've never gone into a studio with another engineer or anything. And so I feel like we're almost self-producing as we're still kind of finishing to write the songs as well. There's definitely, I think this record in a big way. We recorded all the like, bed tracks of this over a weekend in Liam's parents' basement. And we moved into their house for the weekend to try to get through as much as we could. It was like we had the list of songs. Some of them we had kind of rehearsed a bit ahead of time, but the idea was we're just gonna book these three days and go song by song and nail down the arrangement and figure out what we want to add, what we want to cut out, and figure out how they're going to exist on this record and then record the song and then move on to the next one and do the same thing.

Um. So, I kind of forget where I was going. Oh yeah. No, we were kind of like self-producing as we went. And I think there's a lot of parts on this album where we were kind of stuck on arrangement. Like we weren't sure exactly what we were doing arrangement wise, and then we would kind of think of oh, well it would be cool if we could overdub this and this, and sort of have this thing and if you could have this, a lot of reverb on the vocals on this, and it'll kind of make it feel this way.

So it was like thinking, wrote and arranged all of the stuff we were doing in the studio when we were making this one.

Absent Sounds: How does that compare to your other songs?

Jacob Cherwick: It was a similar thing where we recorded it ourselves and whatever, but I feel like that one was done over a really long period of time. Like we started recording that fairly early on, like during COVID. It was like the restrictions had eased up a bit here enough that we could get together the three of us at my house and start sort of putting the record together.

And we had been planning to do it before everything locked down. And so we kind of had an idea of these are the songs we wanna work on. And like we had rehearsed the arrangements for most of them. And so it was, I feel like that one was a little more put together when we went into it. And then there was also a few songs on there that we never even had played as a full band.

'cause it was kind of stuff that like as we were each quarantining on our own, we had put our own songs together. And so then when we came to record it, it was like, like there's a song that I have on that record where I play almost all the instruments on it and then. We never even played it live.

'cause it was like, we realized we had never even played this song as a band. It was just like, I was just kinda like a solo thing that I did here, even though everybody did play on it in one way or another, and everyone sings on it and whatever. But it was weird because, yeah, I think we had all worked on our own stuff and then sort of come together afterwards for that versus this one we all just hunkered down in the room together and powered through it.

Absent Sounds: So when you describe that, it kind of made me feel or remind me of a lot of the times when I'm working on different art pieces and stuff where I feel like it'll keep me company for so long that it becomes like this little companion thing that I'm always kind of just working on.

Definitely. And I imagine that's kind of how a lot of these tracks for old were keeping you guys company for so many years. For

Jacob Cherwick: sure.

Absent Sounds: Letting, how does it feel to, like I said, I guess let go be honest. Let go of it. It's,

Jacob Cherwick: it's honestly very refreshing 'cause I feel like it did feel like that for a while, that they were keeping us company and then I think eventually it kind of evolved to, it felt more like they were looming over us.

Yeah. And it was this thing that we were like, we just want to get rid of this and start moving on to the next thing already. And then. The songs were already old when we started recording this, which was the fall of 2022. And now it's the early winter of Yeah. 2025. And we're still talking about the same songs.

So I think we were all kinda like, all right, it's time for these ones to go out and play on their own. Yeah. And we gotta start getting into the next thing now.

Absent Sounds: Kicking them out of the nest now.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah.

Absent Sounds: I think that is a great place to go into the next 'cause we have two more tracks. Sure. Which, so we have Glimpse and Charlie.

I think that there's two sides. They feel like almost two sides of the coin for me. Um, maybe like one, because one side is it's a glimpse of stuff, but Charlie also kinda talks about this regret that it's like weighing it down. Um, tell me about these two tracks for me.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah. I mean, glimpse.

Glimpse is a song that Liam kind of wrote and played on his own. And it actually, it's the only song on this album that is newer. I think he wrote this one closer to when we would've been recording this than the rest of these ones that had been sitting around for years. So I can't speak a whole lot to how to, what he's talking about in it.

'cause I didn't I wasn't around for the writing of it, but, um, but yeah, we were kind of looking for something else to sort of pat out the la later half of the album and sort of give a break energy wise. 'cause it felt like, oh, we were, when we were writing them, we were just playing a lot of like really small kind of sweaty, energetic shows.

And so all of these songs are pretty like relentless all the way through. And we were like, I feel like we need somewhere for somebody to breathe when they're listening to this record. And Liam was like, oh, I have this song that I had. He had just done a demo of it and he was like, I wasn't really sure.

If it was something we were gonna work out into a full song with the band or whatever, and we listened to his demo of it and we were like, honestly, this kind of sounds perfect as it is. Just him playing his guitar through a little practice amp and singing. And so we rerecorded it for the album, but we basically, it was the same thing.

It was just like him playing the guitar and singing and this little like seventies practice amp that he has cranked to full volume and uh, but yeah, and he was kind of just like reflecting on I think at the beginning of the song, he's kind of reflecting on like memories he has from his childhood. And he's talking about watching the cars out of the, his bedroom window at his parents' house.

And then it cuts to a more recent memory of kind of similar things happening. And then I think he's kind of playing with the the similarities and differences between. You know, being your younger self and being your older self, which also plays into the old title and the whole theme of the record and everything.

So I think I it's a really nice song. It really fits nicely in that part of the record. I think.

Absent Sounds: It really does. Yeah. Um, I feel like the same reflection is happening a lot for me too, where I'm back in my, I guess, childhood bedroom. And sometimes I start to question like, maybe it's because I don't physically feel my body aging, or I don't really feel like time is a strange thing, but, you know. Yeah. I don't really, I don't notice it, so it's so strange to, to feel like, wow, I guess I am the same person, but I am in, I guess 15 years later I'm in the same place. And I, you know,

Jacob Cherwick: Definitely.

Absent Sounds: I relate.

Absent Sounds: And to swing over to Charlie, to the other side.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah. And then Charlie is kind of like our most, experimental kind of sprawling track on here. And it's another one that we it kind of in various stages of being done for a long time. But it's almost I kept jokingly referring to it as a rock opera 'cause I knew it would piss Liam off

Absent Sounds: He doesn't like rock operas.

Jacob Cherwick: I think he was just against using that term to describe it. I feel like it conjures certain ideas when you say that, but, it is that kind of that sort of set up where it’s probably like 14 different sections in this song, and none of them necessarily are like a repeating chorus or anything.

It's kind of like- this section into this section. And it's like there's a whole arc to it. But there's four or five different parts of this song that all feel like, oh, this is the chorus, and then you get to the next one and you're like, oh no, I think that's the chorus.

And you get to the next one. It's maybe this is the chorus. And there is no chorus really. It just keeps going. In a weird way, it kind of plays into what I was talking about earlier too, just the progression of like, when we started out writing kind of these garagey pop punk songs into trying to do more intricate emo stuff into also like incorporating more just like straight ahead rock and pop sort of sensibilities into stuff.

And it kind of starts with it starts almost sounding like a Blink 182 song or something. It's a very 2000s sounding kind of power chord pop punk thing with this lead line going over it. And then it goes into a sort of uptempo thing. Then it takes a detour into this weird sort of like off kilter thing with like where accenting weird notes and it throws you off.

And then it goes into an even more kind of concise, like straight ahead garage rock sounding section. And then that sort of builds up and then releases into this long sort of like extended bridge that's just this repeating chord motif on guitar. Li is tapping over the chords on the guitar.

And that just goes on and on. And we keep bringing in different elements of stuff and like building things up in the band. And we also had, uh, my dad and my sister both played on this song as well. This is crazy. My dad, crazy

Absent Sounds: There are so many layers of this.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah. My dad comes in on the accordion and then my sister comes in on the violin and that starts adding things and then the band starts getting louder and then it kind of erupts into this like almost noise section. It's like we're still kind of playing the song underneath it, but then we layered, I think six different guitar solo, like independent guitar solos on top of each other. So it's just this kind of wall of sound sort of swirling around and then there's a drum solo and it kind of fizzles out at the end into a single acoustic guitar at the end. So it's like this big arc. But yeah, I think it was the only one that we really kind of went all out on production wise.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, no kidding. And yeah just hearing you want ask, where does it come from?

Where is this coming from?

Jacob Cherwick: I think we've all kind of had different sort of arcs of what music we've been really into. But there's definitely like common threads between all three of us. And I feel like pop punk is a big common thread. So it's obviously there's parts of that creep in everything we do.

But then also I think we all kind of went through phases in our like mid-teens where we were like, oh, well it's not cool to be into any kind of like pop music. And we all started listening to you know, Godspeed and all these like post-rock, post hardcore, whatever. And so I think it's kind of like the whole the whole like expanse of our arc taste wise kind of plays out in one song here

Absent Sounds: and it all comes together so nicely.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah.

Absent Sounds: Wow. And that is where the album ends off, which is like kind of a, I feel like it's a whole little experience going on over there. When it comes down to, I guess, I often kind of imagine that a lot of like albums are asking questions and they are not, maybe they're not asking the listener to answer them, but, you know, do you have any questions that you feel the album was kind of like asking along the way or maybe it was like trying to say something?

Jacob Cherwick: It is one of those things where I don't think we were consciously putting anything like that together when we were making the album. And then just as we've been kind of writing and speaking about it afterwards, we're kind of realizing more sort of common threads throughout it all, and throughout even just the making of it and talking about kind of our feelings towards it when we're sort of realizing that it is kind of an album about growing up and it is about sort of navigating your own way through the world when you don't really know exactly what it is you wanna be doing with your life. Which I think is something a lot of people are relating to for sure. But yeah, it's definitely when we decided to call it Old, it was just 'cause, oh, these are all old songs. It's called Old- that sounds cool. And then we realized eventually that we were like, oh, well, it's like the songs are old, but we're also old compared to how we were when we wrote the songs and whatever. So it is kind of about, you know, aging and also I think nostalgia has become such a thing in the last few years too, where every so much stuff is trying to trigger this nostalgia for times that weren't really that long ago.

And it's more interesting because it seems old or is it just kind of like a marketing tactic to trigger those feelings in people and whatever? So I think just that whole idea of the passing of time and is it really as long as it feels sometimes it's way longer than it feels, but it's all kind of, it's all kind of come together I think a bit in recent times as we were putting the record out. I think we realized that,

Absent Sounds: Yeah, I'm looking at you Shrek. I actually do think that there's like a conglomeration of time, I think specifically within the past, not including like the, you know, the era of technology and everything from like the 21st century, but specifically within like from COVID, even before COVID till now, where eerything is kind of mush. I don't know.

Jacob Cherwick: Oh, so much. It's a weird thing. Yeah. So much. And like it's weird to us 'cause I feel like we all kind of coming of age and like really starting to do our own thing right before COVID hit.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

Absent Sounds: Early twenties

Jacob Cherwick: exactly and then I was 21 when COVID hit and uh, and so I feel like we had kind of found our footing but not fully. And so then we've kind of navigated our way into like where it is we sit in the community and in everything it is that we do. And now I feel like there's this discrepancy where it's like we're meeting all these people that we assume are kind of like the same age as us, but they're actually way younger than us and they're all that's looking at us as oh, you guys have been around forever.

You guys were around before COVID. And we're like, well, yeah, COVID was the last year. And they're like, no, that was five years ago. And so I think we're always constantly surprised that like, how much it feels like that kind of period of time slipped us by. But also, if we actually look at the like hard and fast proof of everything we did during that time, it was like, of course that was five years.

Like we did so much stuff and we're so much more experienced than we were at the beginning of that. But, it definitely does make that whole chunk of our twenties feel really strange to think about.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. As we're coming to like bringing the interview to a close, looking forward, how do you see yourself looking back at this record and how do you want the band or your music career or just whatever path you're taking, where do you want that to kind of navigate and go down?

Jacob Cherwick: I know we all love playing music and we all love being in this band.And I think we're hoping that we can kind of make a go of it and we're hoping that we can kind of start to make our way out of Eastern Canada a little bit more and sort of expand our footing. And I think we're also all just like really interested in meeting new people. We've been on a few small tours just around Eastern Canada and we've already made so many friends outside of Newfoundland that we all keep in touch with regularly.

And it's just it's kinda like we were talking about earlier, it's like nice to feel like we're more a part of the Canadian scene as a greater thing than just our own kind of local thing that we have going on, even though we're all in love with St. John's and we love to do everything we do here.

But, yeah, I think it's just like we're hoping to kind of just keep expanding it and meeting new people and. Seeing how far we can keep riding it until we end up, wherever we end up

Absent Sounds: In the grave.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah.

Absent Sounds: Knock on wood. Yeah. I honestly am so excited to see the growth of everybody. I feel like every time, when you check back in the band, you're like, wow, this is so cool. This is what they're doing now. And it's really cool to see, just knowing the stories behind this album, which I think is really pertinent as always.

Jacob Cherwick: Yeah. We never, get rid of our age.

Absent Sounds:

We can't ever, no, but one thing you got is music.

Jacob Cherwick: Definitely. Yeah.

Absent Sounds: So yeah, I think that's all my questions really. Okay. To ask that. I wanted to ask you, um, is there anything else you wanted to say to

Jacob Cherwick: not really. I think, uh, I think we hit a lot of different stuff.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. Thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.