But for over a decade, the Chicago musicians have intermittently reconvened as The Sea And Cake to produce jazzy, electronic-laced pop-rock that consistently leaves fans wondering when they’ll do it again. Four years after its last album, the band has returned once more with Everybody, its seventh full-length. The Sea And Cake spoke with ALARM about staying upbeat, getting out of the city, and the possibility of more frequent output.
This album has a very cheerful feel to it. Was that intentional or just how it played out during recording?
Sam Prekop: While we were coming up with stuff we were consciously paying attention to not being too lugubrious or sleepy about it, which we’re often accused of. Wake up! Do something! [Laughs] So Brian Paulson, who recorded the tracks, we referred back to him about “does that tempo feel, you know, peppy enough?”
Archer Prewitt: We always bumped everything up. Every time.
SP: I guess it was a certain criterion. It seems a really dull thing to go for.
Who called you lugubrious?
SP: Eric says it all the time.
Eric Claridge: It’s on my business card, actually. [Laughs]
SP: I think of it as more just really gentle and laid back.
This was the first time in several albums that someone other than John produced your album. Why did you bring in Brian Paulson?
AP: We thought it would be interesting to change it up. Plus we wanted to go to Benton Harbor (Michigan, where the album was recorded).
That must have been a nice change of pace from Chicago.
AP: There was less traffic.
SP: I wouldn’t say it really affected the album though.
AP: It’s hardly bucolic. It was just more of a concentrated effort, a different pair of ears listening in and John being allowed to play the drums and concentrate on the songs instead of having to do double duty. To me, it felt like a return to a band thing – making music and someone else doing the work.
You have a lot of side projects among the four of you. When you come back to this group, do you find you have to get back into “The Sea And Cake Mode”?
SP: It’s not so much the group; once you decide to point your work towards a record, it changes with that in mind. Usually I wouldn’t start writing before I knew if it was gonna be The Sea And Cake or a solo album. Things change a little bit, but in general my approach is the same. It adds up differently, because other people are involved, but the way I start is the same. Now Prewitt, he works on that “rootsy”-type stuff. [Laughs]
AP: Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with Sea And Cake. But playing support guitar is a different thing. It’s very satisfying to come up with parts that interlock with Sam’s and Eric’s, yet it’s a very different activity. But it all comes down to creating something pleasant to your own ears in the end.
Compared to your earlier work, this is a really tight, concise album. Did you have to work at distilling the material, or did it just come out that way?
AP: I think we really worked at it. Sam, Eric, and I get together and develop the music and we play it to death until the best stuff sticks, so it is a matter of distillation.
EC: I think we’ve gotten better over the years at getting down to the root of things, as opposed to our first record where every song is seven minutes long.
AP: It’s painful to listen to that first record.
SP: Oh, is it? [Laughs]
EC: Oh, yeah, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life. [Laughs]
AP: Then it gets further refined when John comes in, because you don’t really know what it’s going to be until the drums happen. And then one song that you think is going to be this real gentle thing all of a sudden has this real drive to it. Things develop when the fourth member comes in and it becomes The Sea And Cake.
SP: We had fourteen songs, and I really thought this time we were gonna break the mold (of having exactly ten songs on every record). I had imagined a much longer record that went all over the place. And it would have, had we left in those tracks.
There was a rumor those songs that got cut might end up on an EP.
SP: We thought of that. But we’ve done other new songs since then, three last week actually, that’ll probably be some sort of EP.
It’s kind of remarkable for a band that’s been around for so long with so many side projects to be so stable – same lineup, same label, no big stylistic changes. Do you think the fact that you’re all able to switch gears between projects is a part of that, or is it just good chemistry?
SP: It just keeps happening that way, but we were saying the other day that if we wait another three or four years we should just give up. So if you don’t see a new record from us, like, next year, then consider it over. [Laughs]
AP: Doing these most recent three songs was sort of like when we made the Glass EP; it felt looser than going in and making a full-length album. It generates optimism and momentum that you want to continue with. Whether we’re able to relegate time to keep that momentum going – I think it could be the potential to sort of return to earlier form where there’s more ample output. I don’t see any reason why not. It seems like with the passage of time, things can gel pretty quickly. So I think there’s a more optimistic outlook on more frequent output.
SP: We say that every time.
AP: Yeah. But I think we’ll do it this time.
– Interview by Genevieve Koski, photo by Casey Sachen