The Morning Benders' are an indie-pop outfit from Berkeley, California, based around the skilled songwriting and sweet croon of Christopher Chu. The quartet (who include Chu's brother, Jonathan) made their debut in 2008, with Talking Through Tin Cans, but they came of age on 2010's Big Echo, a stunning, dynamic disc of classic pop-songs co-produced by Chu and Christopher Taylor of Grizzly Bear. Released by Rough Trade Records worldwide, it marked The Morning Benders as one of the breakout bands of 2010.
Interview: 16 March 2010
When did you start making any kind of music?
"I've loved music all my life, and starting dabbling in it when I was a young, shy kid taking piano lessons. But, I didn't really start taking it seriously until college, when I started writing songs on guitar, right when I was becoming less shy, less stand-off-ish. Just growing up. I remember finishing my first song and feeling for the first time that I could maybe be good at that. Because, up until that point I'd dabbled in music, but never to the point that I could actually finish anything. That was a big turning point. From there, I started writing songs all the time. The next step was playing them. That wasn't my main goal —I didn't write songs so I could be a rockstar, partying every night— but I did have a desire to play them for people. I found that exhilarating; this real way of connecting with people that I hadn't felt before."
Did performing and your loss of shyness go hand-in-hand?
"Yeah, I'd never expressed myself in any sort of extroverted way before that. Getting the chance to sing songs for people, getting to exchange yourself with them, it's an easy way to let people in."
How long did you perform just by yourself?
"It was about six months, a real time of just figuring things out. I'd never intended to play alone; I always knew I was going to get a band together. Even with the first songs I'd written, I already had ideas about full arrangements. That came from listening to The Beatles and The Beach Boys growing up. The stuff my parents played around the house was what I loved: The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Neil Young, Bob Dylan. I got really deep into that stuff, went out and bought every album by those artists. I have an obsessive personality like that."
Wait, you had every Dylan album?
"Well, with Neil Young and Dylan, people who are still around today, it gets a little spotty after the '70s. So, I have every album from the '60s and '70s, and a smattering of ones from the ’80s and '90s. So, I've got a lot, even some of the bad ones. It was just a necessary thing for me as a kid. My parents had all The Beatles' Greatest Hits, but they didn't have any of the albums. I remember ordering eight Beatles albums from Amazon: it was the first time I'd ever mail-ordered a package, and it was just like Christmas morning when it showed up."
Talking Through Tin Cans sounds more like the work of one person than a full, orchestral band record, though.
"With that album, I wanted to have a very strong emphasis on the songs at their most basic elements. Because a song is very precious to me. It was a matter of fleshing those songs out just enough, to make sure there was nothing cluttering the core of them. That was the concept with that first album. But, even then, I knew that there would be a lot of other sounds I'd want to explore."
Does Big Echo's title reflect its intent?
"It definitely was a reaction to the first album in that I wanted to try something new, to keep changing. The way that Big Echo turned out was multiple factors beyond that: the songs, the different kinds of music I was listening to, and my interest in production."
How did you cross paths with Christopher Taylor of Grizzly Bear?
"I first wrote him an email saying how much I liked Yellow House when that first came out [in 2006]. A couple of times when we were on tour in New York, he'd come see us play. That was the first time I'd ever met him in person. We always just had good interactions, a good energy between us. And, when he heard some of the early demos of these Big Echo songs, he was really supportive. We'd talked, vaguely, about working together at some point, and, eventually, we worked out he could mix this record. And it started from there, and I was lucky enough to be able to work on it with him."
Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors told me that, on the only record he wasn't wholly in charge of, he worked alongside Christopher Taylor, and felt like he became a way better producer, himself, because of it. Did you have a similar experience?
"Definitely. Before I started working with Chris I felt scared —I guess similar to what Dave said— about giving up creative control, about collaborating with someone on my music, and my songs. To have Chris be the person I took the plunge with was so great. I felt confident that he could understand what I wanted, what we were going for. He was someone that I trusted. With that out of the way, it ended up being a pretty smooth collaboration. I've produced other bands myself, so I've seen the spectrum of how it goes. Sometimes there's a lot of trouble; there’s just a clash of different viewpoints in regards to where the music's supposed to go. Chris, thankfully, was really able to focus in on that message, or that feeling, we were going for. Going from these tapes just full of stuff when we started working with him, to what we ended up, that's just a real tribute to his ability to focus on the core elements, and bring them out in a way that made the songs sound really strong and dynamic."
When you were making Big Echo, did you get the sense that it was going to take you to much bigger things than the first record had?
"I definitely felt like we'd lifted a lot of the restrictions that we'd placed on ourselves with the first record, and allowed ourselves to be a lot freer, both in this album and in the future. It felt a lot more unique and special. In terms of whether this album really is taking us to a bigger place, that's hard for me to tell. Of course I've noticed that we've gotten almost nothing but positive feedback, and that people seem to be genuinely moved by the songs. That’s all really encouraging, exciting stuff."
