Shouting into a valley. Big shout: big echo. Small shout: small echo - Zen proverb
the morning benders’ new album, Big Echo (Rough Trade Records), opens with the warm crackle and pop of a needle hitting vinyl, before the swooning orchestration sweeps in and carries you away to a time when life was more carefree and natural. A lush, big-hearted collection of songs rooted in the greatest traditions of American songwriting, Big Echo incorporates symphonic pop, a Wall of Sound production aesthetic, and sunny harmonies as told from the point of view of 4 kids in their early 20’s from Berkeley, California. “The title Big Echo sums up what we’re doing sonically and textually,” singer, lyricist, song-writer, Christopher Chu, reveals. “The idea was to take sounds from all different eras and all different kinds of music, throw them together, and see how they sound bouncing off each other. Throw it all into an echo chamber. Thematically, there’s a lot of pondering about time, the span of your life and how your perspective fits into everyone else’s. It’s explores the idea of your memories as echoes that are always inside you, creating these frequencies that become your soul.”
A project of this depth and ambition sounds like it was crafted by someone 20 years Chu’s senior, but the fresh-faced songwriter has been living his whole life just to make an album as impressive as Big Echo. Chu discovered music at an early age and was hooked from the get-go. “When my parents drove me and my brother to school when we were little, they would play Beatles greatest hits compilations and Pet Sounds,” he explains. “So, when I got into music as a teenager, it was a rediscovery of my parent’s old records. I went out and bought every Beatles and Beach Boys album. That’s where all of this started.”
the morning benders began to take shape in 2006, when Chu moved to Berkeley to attend school and started learning to play guitar. He started writing songs a year later, capturing his early efforts on a laptop in his bedroom. These initial recordings became the Loose Change EP. “I had no idea what I was doing,” Chu admits. “I didn’t know about compression or gain, so I would just stack tracks on top of each other to make them louder.” The self-distributed effort earned Chu a legion of local followers and a lot of online buzz, which gave him the encouragement he needed to put together a full band. He chose people he knew from around town and after a couple of personnel shifts, the band settled on it’s current line-up – drummer Julian Harmon, bassist Tim Or, and Chu’s younger brother, guitarist Jonathan Chu. “It’s great to have Jonathan in the band,” the older Chu professes. “We have a gut level of understanding, because we were raised in the same way and grew up on the same songs.”
Talking Through Tin Cans, the band’s first full-length album, was released in May 2008 on independent label +1 Records. Attracting rave reviews across the board, iTunes named it their “Top Independent Album of the Year” and it reached #8 on Billboard’s Heatseeker Chart. The band headed out for a year-long series of tours, criss-crossing the country with the likes of Death Cab for Cutie, Grizzly Bear, Girls, Ra Ra Riot, the Kooks, John Vanderslice, and the Submarines, as well as playing festivals such as Treasure Island, Outside Lands, Sasquatch, and Monolith. As a thank you to both these new fans, and those that had been around since the first EP, Chu returned to his home recording studio. The Bedroom Covers includes Chu’s personal take a wide range of artists, from Fleetwood Mac and Talking Heads to the Ronettes and Randy Newman. “It is a very diverse collection,” Chu admits. “But all the songwriters on there are touchstones for me.”
In a way, it was the perfect set-up for Big Echo, which Chu wrote as what he calls “a family of songs” in the fall and winter of 2008. He brought his compositions to the band and they worked on them together – but only to a point. “I don’t like rehearsing too much,” Chu declares. “I just want to get songs to the point where the rhythm section and the structure are laid out. Then the sounds and textures can happen organically in the studio.” With these sketches as their backbone, the foursome decamped to the Hanger in Sacramento to lay them down with Chu self-producing. These sessions were then handed over to Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear (Dirty Projectors, Department of Eagles), who Chu had befriended a few months earlier. Taylor mixed Big Echo at his Terrible Studio in Brooklyn, though to say Taylor merely mixed the album would be a misrepresentation. “He soundcrafted it,” Chu corrects. “It went to a whole new level with Chris.”
You can hear Taylor’s touch from the very first song. The album opens with the sumptuous single “Excuses,” a grandiose slice of Cali chamber pop that already feels like a classic. Chu drew on a kaleidoscopic spectrum of influences to craft it. “I really wanted to incorporate ‘50s girl group vibe with the harmonies, but affect those vocals with a lot of delay that’s very Kate Bush in the ‘80’s. On top of that, there are samples, which strike me as a very modern element.” The song’s lyrical inspiration spans an equally impressive continuum. “It’s a song about love, but what it means when you look at it on a larger timeline. What it means when you’re a kid, what it means when you’re in a relationship, what it means when you’ve been married for 50 years.” For the single’s memorable video, the band gathered a few dozen of their closest friends in a Bay Area studio to record a soaring, orchestral version of the song. “We wanted to do the song in a purer and more organic way,” Chu explains. “Plus, it gave us an excuse to hang out with all our friends.”
Big Echo is filled with beautiful moments that stay with you. “Promises” is a stately waltz that finds Chu lamenting, “Well, I can’t help thinking we grew up too fast,” while “Cold War (Nice Clean Fight)” is a sharp-dressed acoustic send-off to an ex. The album closes with the gently harmonized hymn, “Sleeping In,” which deftly manages to make the ending more sweet than bitter. No matter where you’re coming from or where you’re going, Big Echo has something for your journey. “I’m hoping that Big Echo is a record that people can continue to put on for years to come,” Chu declares. “It was important to me to make an album that spanned the whole spectrum – both emotionally and sonically. There are so many albums that I love but never listen to because I’m not in the right headspace. I hope Big Echo takes you into its world, so you can put it on anytime. It has enough happy, sad, dark, light, long, short, pop and expansive so you can take whatever you want from it, depending on what day it is and how you’re feeling.”
the morning benders
are
Christopher Chu – vocals/guitar
Jonathan Chu – guitar
Julian Harmon – drums
Tim Or – bass
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