Songs With Words: Heather Woods Broderick & ‘Glider’
Heather Woods Broderick released her first solo record in 2009, the earthy From The Ground on Australian imprint Preservation, later to be issued on vinyl by Digitalis — one of Decoder’s spiritual motherships. Broderick fans likely knew she wouldn’t be writing the gorgeous, cabin-in-the-woods folk forever: “For Misty” (off the debut) leaned hard towards bliss-out ambient. The big, sweeping “Old Son” (also off From The Ground) provided a preview for fuller-bodied cathartic pop to come. And Heather’s cover of (her brother) Peter Broderick’s “Inside out There” (2013), with its drum machine and swirling vocal and piano layers, is at ease with shoegazey electronic contemporaries.
Glider, released in July via Western Vinyl, has left all of those sounds behind, and presents something clear, cutting, and different. The departure in production and arrangement is significant. At times sparkling with a neon flicker, it is an unabashedly hi-fi effort, but the changes don’t dull the deep melancholy or dream-like quality to her songs. Broderick draws from the triumphs and tragedies in the lives of her friends, and from the difficulties in maintaining relationships while living a transitory lifestyle. The album is a record in movement, written by a traveler in perpetual motion, someone whose “home” shifts. Throughout her career and especially since 2009, Broderick has contributed to the music of or toured with artists and bands like Laura Gibson, Horse Feathers, Efterklang, and more prominently and recently, Sharon Van Etten. Touring has stretched out the songwriting process, explaining in part the nearly six-year gap in between solo records.
Receiving space to write about the music of Heather Woods Broderick is exciting but poses its own insurmountable seeming challenge. I love her music so much because it leaves me overwhelmed and in wonder. It stirs my emotions. It is simultaneously world-weary and soothingly beautiful, awesome in that word’s original meaning. These fragments of ideas I’ve shared are directional, yet incomplete: tip-of-the-iceberg descriptions of music that I find, quite simply, indescribable.
Adam Pearson: It sounds like you’re spending some time at home in Portland this summer, taking a break from the road. Are you at all interested in making a full-band tour happen or working more in that dynamic?
Heather Woods Broderick: I’m pretty open as far as approach goes. I demo all the songs out when I’m writing, and overdub to record the parts how I want them on the record, but I’m not totally attached to having the songs played exactly the same when performed live. It’s really fun to hear people put themselves into the songs. Luckily I know a lot of great musicians who are like minded, and understand playing with each other — as opposed to on top of one another. Touring is really expensive, and I think any songwriter who is trying to, or has, put together a band would agree that one of the hardest parts about it is figuring out a way to afford a band and all the expenses that go along with it. Coming from a background of playing in the projects of other people, I understand how valuable everyone’s time is. I hope to do some smaller runs of shows with a band in the near future for starters.
I’m personally interested in newer fans discovering your older work… Do you revisit your older songs? Are there any songs you have a harder time identifying with years later?
I don’t revisit the From the Ground material very often. I still play the song “Wounded Bird” live sometimes, but that’s really the only one that’s survived. For the most part those songs just feel really old, and it’s more fun to play the newer ones these days. Sometimes I’ll go back and listen to stuff I’ve participated with in other bands. Those projects have really varied as far as my level of involvement in writing, but in all cases I spent a lot of time playing material live with those bands. Playing songs night after night for years definitely changes them for me, and although I love a lot of those songs and loved working on them, I don’t find myself putting the records on at home.
The first song you wrote for the record was “Glider,” which is both the title track and feels to me like a cornerstone for the record. You wrote this song in Berlin before you moved to Brooklyn in 2011. Can you talk a little about that song?
From the time I was a young teenager I always thought I would live in Europe. I grew up in a small town, was a quiet kid — always kind of a loner, and had dreams of seeing other places around the world. I lived in Berlin throughout the couple years I was touring with Efterklang. It was great for a time, but ultimately I realized that it wasn’t the place where I wanted to settle down. I tried to write pretty often while living there, but had a really hard time with it, like I was stuck in some creative block. The lyrics in the song are very simple and stemmed from some pretty literal observations I wrote down in my notebook while looking out the window of the tour van. I guess later as I was putting the song together back in Berlin, I found that the idea and image of a glider plane was one that pretty truthfully represented how I was feeling at the time.
What’s driven the change in your sound, which is much fuller on ‘Glider’ compared to the back room, cabin-in-the-woods, earthy feel of ‘From the Ground?’ Was it a question of resources?
The resources I had available to me played a big part in the creation of these songs. When I wrote the songs for From the Ground, I was just using what I had at my house — a nylon string guitar, a piano, and my cello and flute. I had never written songs with words before, so these were my first attempt. Naturally, and especially with so many years between records, there were a lot of things I wanted to do differently with the next batch of songs. I began using Logic so I could demo songs out in more detail and play with different arrangements and effects. I bought a couple really basic delay and reverb pedals, and was given an electric guitar when I moved to Brooklyn. I think these things really shaped the form of the songs and sort of set me on the sonic path of the record.
I also spent a lot of time in a rehearsal space in Brooklyn where I could get really loud, which I had never really done before and was really inspiring in the writing process. My brother Peter [Broderick] played a huge part in the final sound of the record, doing all the post production and mixing at his home studio. He was really familiar with my demos and understood the kind of sonic bed I wanted all the songs to lie in. He warmed up my cold Logic demo ideas and added a lot to them as well.
The “getting loud” part comes through on “Wyoming.” That climax is pretty spine-tingling. And there are other surprises, like the dubbed out bass on “Mama Shelter,” the muted trumpet on “All For A Love,” and the bold, sustained harmonies on “A Call For Distance” and “Wyoming.”
During the recording process I invited a few really talented musicians in to play. As I mentioned, I did spend a lot of time on arrangements prior to going into the studio, but there were some parts or additions I had in mind that I wanted to leave up to the player. Dave Depper played bass on the record. He’s an incredibly talented musician. I guided him a little bit, but he didn’t really need it. In a couple songs, Mama Shelter in particular, he came up with that dub bass part in the chorus, and that sort of inspired the rest of the production on that song. David Allred played string bass and trumpet on the record. He’s also an exceptional musician. I had heard him take trumpet solos before, so I just told him to go for it at the end of “All For A Love.” What he came up with was perfect.
Can you talk about your feelings on songwriting? How you flesh out a song?
I’d like to grow to be more flexible with writing, but I find it hard to change a song too much once I’ve finished it. Sometimes if I’m stuck on something, I just put it aside for a while because I don’t want to rush it and have to throw it out because I’m not happy with it. The songs are generally really close to the vision I had for them, or demos I made. Most of the time they start with a melody or riff that I play over and over, and eventually I build upon that — sometimes by coming up with some lyrics, and sometimes by fleshing it out with some more harmonic ideas.
How do you feel about production?
I definitely don’t think you need expensive production or studio equipment to make a good record. Some of my favorite recordings are really lo-fi, or home recordings. I think it’s more about the artist’s intention. From the Ground has a very different sound than Glider for sure, but it still feels that that record was as finished for me as Glider. For a handful of reasons, I think I’d be inclined to record with an engineer no matter what kind of sound I was going for. I can see myself doing many different projects with different sounds in the future, but I guess I won’t know how I want those recordings to sound until I write the material. I like whatever project I’m working on to be ‘done’ before I share it, but maybe just more like how a work of writing is printed and bound to share, or photographs or paintings are framed and hung to be presented.
It sounds like you’ve already got some new material in-the-works. Can you comment on the sonic direction…?
I plan on writing another record that’s songs with words. So far I have collected a handful of songs, but I’m not sure in which direction I’ll take them yet. I’ve been enjoying playing the piano a lot again lately, so maybe I’ll have more piano driven songs on the next record, we’ll see. I’d really like to also do an instrumental record at some point in the near future, and experiment more with that type of arranging.
[Header image is by Dusdin Condren.]
