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In an ever-quickening, consumptive lifestyle, such traits can also be a balm, curative and calming.
Pratts sound can feel a little like a rain-smeared window: blurry, vague, contemplative.
But her own songs were more hushed, kept closer to the heart.
For anyone who has become enchanted with Pratts songs, that fervent feeling becomes easier to understand.
Still built via voice and acoustic guitar, other instruments rise to surface after a few spins.
Themes of love and heartbreak drift across the album.
Aside from being a beautiful film, several themes resonated with me after all these years.
Theres this eerie awareness of mortality in Gena Rowlandss character.
It sounds melodramatic, but there was something about that which really struck me at the time.
He wrote that on the piano, but it didnt really work for a live setting.
But the moment I heard it, I became convinced it should be the opening track.
Theres this singular world about your music.
How do you pare things down to this rarified space?I dont know!
People have a natural filtering process and your brain grabs onto certain chords instinctually.
Its good to whittle things down.
Maybe if you had too many things going, it would come out as a big mess.
In a time of sensory overload, listening to your music draws it down in a way.
Social media can contaminate.
Its a really important form of unconscious meditation that I do.
I think thats why people create things.
I dont feel I have to seek refuge from the world to get to create.
It becomes a game of figuring out what those words are or should be.
It always feels like it happens without effort.
Its about making yourself available to catch whatever melody is floating around.
The more you make yourself available, the greater likelihood youll get something good.
The last record was a cathartic blast of material, so that I dont even remember making it.
It happened really fast, 80 percent of that album came out in two months.
Its usually months between songs Im a slow writer so thats a short time frame.
That was a major difference.
If I have one gift, its to leave my body when necessary.
That comes in handy for transitioning to the studio.
It was a fairly private affair, as the engineer is in another room behind a pane of glass.
It was pretty easy to pretend he wasnt there and feel comfortable.
I went into it a little nervous, but it was easier than I thought.
I practiced on focusing and spaced out accordingly.
Is it like that onstage in front of big crowds?
Which is necessary to focus and channel correctly.
It becomes a game weighing exposure and having an ideal setting.
Kurt Viles origins arent wildly different from my own.
Hes a strange-sounding person who manipulates subtle sounds.
What was the hardest song to realize on the album?Two come to mind.
So I came back a second time a few months later, which is odd.
Songs are these fleeting things, and I get anxious about letting too much time pass.
I asked many friends to try their hand at it.
It fought everything we tried to use.
The other song was Crossing, and its ethereal.
I worried it wouldnt survive the traveling across the country and being delivered in the studio.
But thats the difference between home and studio.
At home, you might just move on to the next thing.
You have gut instincts for a good song that can withstand anything.
Those are lucky moments when you feel that way.
I was just trying to find as many of those as I could.
