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Finneas OConnell is having a life-changing week.
1 album by an artist born in the 21st century.
Xanny tiptoes quietly over pilled-out partygoers wondering what makes them tick.
Wish U Were Gay plays a story of a doomed crush like a radio jingle.
OConnell is an affable polymath with a keen sense of humor and an infectious love of his craft.
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Does that make sense?Yeah, that makes sense.
Shed have it in cause shed forget, cause shed get so used to wearing it.
But it makes your words sound a little bit messy when youre talking with it in.
It gives you kind of a lisp.
So whenever wed record shed have to take it out.
I was like, Bill, this is gonna be your signature sound.
It was kind of a grim reflection of the time that were growing up in.
It really resonates with me.
So that was kind of the goal with the intro.
We were very quickly discerning about what we wanted to hear and what we wanted to listen to.
And our dad, especially, was really supportive and helpful in sort of building our ears.
Xanny
I like how the sound tells a story as much as the lyrics do.
It feels like this song is happening in the middle of a party.
The way he sings …
So we tried to go with the emphasis of that.
And that sort of did help articulate it.
Absolutely.It feels like it has a brain.
We have to figure out how to justify it.
Its not one you hear a lot in Western theology.
I read somewhere that some fans think that All the Good Girls Go to Hell is about climate change.
I love that they think that.
I was like, Thats cause it is.
you’re able to think whatever you want about our music.
I love that its ambiguous.
But thats not a conspiracy theory.
Why did they do all of this?
That was an appealing concept.
Big hills burn in California.
In the last two years, there have been these horrendous wildfires.
You could just look out the window and see the skyline on fire.
Thats gotta have an effect.Exactly.
I had this feeling of, Oh, we kinda did this.
Especially because, I think, one or both of those fires were man-made, which is so scary.
Its looking out for the other person.
But what catches me is that it sounds like a church cantata.
It sounds like the liturgical music that you hear in a cathedral.
We didnt grow up in the church, but we grew up singing in a chorus.
Choral music has just always been a huge influence on both of our tastes in music.
It comes through on the record.Im glad to hear that.
Its one of those cases where I had left her house kind of for no reason.
I just sort of had said, Yeah, I gotta go home.
I remember driving home, and theres this freeway in L.A., the 2.
I was driving down the 2 back to my house, and its a very kind of quiet freeway.
It just turns around a mountain.
I remember just having that quiet when Im coming home, and Im on my own.
I could lie, say I like it like that, like it like that.
I feel like theres kind of a safety in not letting yourself become fully invested in something.
8
So 8 was originally called See Through?
All the Good Girls Go to Hell was a hook that we had sitting around for a long time.
And then, I was like, I love this hook.
We revamp things all the time.
The way that 8 happened was, we recorded it, and it was just her and the ukulele.
It was very bare-boned and stripped and really slow.
Like, so slow.
I remember saying to her, We gotta speed this up.
There are a lot of ways to speed up a recording in postproduction.
It never quite sounds as real as it would if you just rerecorded it at the right speed.
But there are a lot of ways to do it.
The pitch is higher and shit.
The whole songs sped up.
I shifted her voice to make it sound like it was playing at normal speed during the choruses.
My Strange Addiction
I liked how this one uses guitar strings as a percussion instrument.
Its not the only unusual choice on the record, as far as production goes.
Its kind of all done in bedrooms and hotel rooms.
The bass line and the drums of Strange Addiction are so rigid.
Theyre just really percussive, and they just go like … [Hums the synth melody.]
I just loved that.
I was like, I could probably do that with a synth.
So Fender had sent me a Jag, which is a pop in of guitar they make.
And I thought that sounded really cool.
It can take an artist and a songwriter and a producer years to get on the same page.
It must help to have grown up together.
Elaborate?I just drive really, really fast.
And Ive never been pulled over.
Thats pretty cool to me.
Youre just like, Yeah, I just drive.
Id love to justify wearing those douchey leather driving gloves.
And I think Billie would probably be an equestrian.
Shed probably work at a stable with horses all the time.
Thats her other favorite thing in the world.
I wouldnt have guessed.Yeah, she loves horses.
When we go on tour, shes like, How can I ride horses on this tour?
How can I figure that out?
The harmonies are tight and close.
The mix is kind of spacious.
It doesnt move like pop music.
Im curious about how you arrived at that sound.
Is it a function of where you recorded it and how you pieced it together?
The beat has got a lot of movement in it, but its very subdued in its sonics.
Its not very bright.
And then her vocal delivery is really secretive.
I think vocal delivery, more than anything else, articulates how a song sounds.
You have this incredibly dark song, I think, thats about disappearing.
And then youve got the love song.
Then youve got yourWizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moonconclusion, your dramatic Hollywood ending.
Are these three songs telling one story in installments?
She liked the readability of that.
I think in broad terms they are [related].
Theyre different sentiments about a farewell.
I love stand-up comedy so much.
I really love it.
Theres not really an end, most of the time.
Really amazing stand-ups will do that.
But, often, they just kind of are hilarious for an hour, and then its over.
And I love arc.
I love story arcs.
I love things that have a conclusion.
So I really love that this album finishes and it has this kind of farewell to it.
Even I Love You is kind of a farewell in a certain way.
That was really important to me.
