“Caregiver”
from the single Caregiver/Heirloom
2010
iTunes
On debut EP The Years, the young Guelph, Ontario duo Memoryhouse layer reverb over wistful, bittersweet hooks and minimal drum machine tics like a more fresh-faced Beach House. Evan Abeele, a student of classical music, originally intended Memoryhouse to be a multimedia art project, pairing his compositions with singer Denise Nouvion’s photographs. Over time, the duo evolved. Pitchfork spoke with Abeele about Windows 95, Grizzly Bear, and pneumonia.
How long have the two of you been recording as Memoryhouse?
Evan Abeele: About a year. Actually, it started in a different way. We were attempting to kind of do something more with ambient structure and textures, not really with pop music. The idea was to create this audio-visual project with ambient music and Denise’s photography. And so it evolved out of that into this project, in which we were beginning to record pop songs. It’s been a year since we started doing that and kind of just refining our aesthetic, learning to write pop music as we went along.
Where does the name come from?
The name is a reference to Max Richter. He’s a classical composer. He released this album in 2001 called Memoryhouse. I studied classical music in school, and for me, in my musical development, there was a before Memoryhouse and an after Memoryhouse. Before I listened to that, before I entered that world of minimalism and ambient music, I was doing really baroque compositions. Hearing that, it fundamentally changed the way I approached composition. I just wanted to pay tribute to that. I wanted to have that to ground us, wherever we took our own music.
Have you ever been interested in non-classical music?
I’ve always been really into pop music. I was from that generation that got turned onto alternative music through Windows 95. Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” video was preloaded onto that computer, and I think that was my first really significant exposure to that kind of music. It became a gateway into other kinds of music, like Pavement and stuff like that. So I have always had interest in it; it’s just something I never really thought I could do myself.
Are there any people that you look at as precedents for balancing the worlds of pop and more classical, ambient music?
Absolutely. When I look to a band like My Bloody Valentine, hearing the textures they create and how it doesn’t go against the sound of the pop music buried underneath all that ambiance — they coalesce in a really unique way. Same with Cocteau Twins. They use reverb and ambient structures in a way that really compliments the pop music hidden underneath that. I think that’s why they’ve had the impact that they obviously have. They’re able to use these two really disparate sounds and make something really beautiful with it.
You covered Grizzly Bear. Do you regard that band in the same way?
Definitely. I mean, when we covered “Foreground,” it was actually before Veckatimest was even released. I think Yellow House is an absolute masterpiece. In anticipation of Veckatimest, we were fervently listening to whatever live music we could get. They did a show in New York, and they debuted the song “Foreground.” It was just so beautiful, and so we got this idea to record our own interpretation of it, not really knowing how it would turn out in the studio.
Have you heard back from Grizzly Bear?
Yeah. I don’t know why we did it, but we just ended up getting in touch with Ed Droste through MySpace. We sent him a link to the song, and he was just amazing; he responded within a day. He loved it, and I think he was just proud that people were doing that, that people could relate to his music like that. He was just really supportive, and it was at a time in which we were still struggling to define our own process with pop music. It also just struck me the line between a rock star, I guess, and fan is nonexistent anymore. I mean I know Ed Droste isn’t this enormous rock personality, but someone on his level communicating with us as two people literally recording in my bedroom, meters from where I sleep, is just unreal.
You also sampled some of Jon Brion’s music from the Eternal Sunshine soundtrack. Why did you use that?
It was kind of a weird, serendipitous experience. I was actually in the hospital at the time. I had a really bad case of pneumonia, and when I was there, I had these lyrics in my head. When I was in the room, one of the DVDs that they left there was Eternal Sunshine. As I was watching it, I heard the music of “Phone Call.” I had been a big Jon Brion, but I heard that, and it really struck a chord with me. I thought it’d be interesting to take that idea that the song really represents — just this idea of the unconscious memory — and bring that to the forefront and reinterpret it by making a new arrangement around it. It was a really happy accident, and I guess it worked out.
With a lot of music that’s coming out lately, especially with the dreamier music like what you guys are making, there’s a compulsion to muffle the vocals and to bury them in reverb. But you really hear everything Denise is singing. It’s really flat and plainspoken. That’s pretty refreshing.
What we wanted to convey with “Lately” was that it was very conversational. That is something we try to bring into our music — a more comforting, conversational dialogue going on in our songs, rather than framed narrative. The way we’re trying to write songs is having Denise in the forefront, with the plaintive delivery, but then having the music behind it really determine the mood. If you just listen to the vocals, it’s sung very sedately and stoically, but the music underneath gives it that melancholy that the actual delivery doesn’t contain. The music and her voice create this interplay that is just really unique, I think.