Moon & Sea

Control

2020 | Pop

— track 4: "The Good Days”

Andrew Dwyer: We gave our first album to our guests at our wedding.

Katie Dwyer: Yeah, that was our wedding gift, and I feel like people didn’t get it, like, they saw the CD and thought, “Oh this must be random songs that the DJ is going to play at the reception or something. Or, like, a mixtape of favorite songs.” I feel like they totally didn’t get it. I’m like, “No we literally made all of these.”

AD: And I think that was before — It was like three of those songs were Katie’s songs and three of them were my songs, and it wasn’t like a band at all.

KD: Yeah it was really kind of just like a hodgepodge of songs that we had, and we’re like, “Okay, well we could just record these.”

AD: I don’t even know that I would have said that Moon & Sea is a band for, like, its entire existence.

KD: It’s just us! Yeah. [laughs]

AD: It’s always been, historically, songs that I wrote, that are just pretty mediocre. Because, um, I’m not really a musician at all. I just like playing keyboards and stuff. And then I’d get Katie to sing on it and it would be good enough to show people at that point. But I’d say recently, pretty recently, that we decided we should actually, like, uh, put collections of recordings together and call it an album, and try to say it’s an actual band. We don’t play the songs anywhere, really, we just record them in here and that’s it. I forget most of them after that.

KD: Yeah, I really like the way that Andrew writes songs. And he goes through, like, bursts of creativity. So since we moved [to Pierre], which it’s been, like, in the summer it’ll be five years, since we moved here I feel like it’s been in the winter because it’s cold and you’re, like, stuck inside. I feel like most winters a couple of songs will come out of him, and I’m really happy about that. For me it’s more of a, like, all year thing that I just write, and then in February I participate in February Album Writing Month, so then I just take any little unfinished songs, or I’ll just whip out new songs — but yeah with this most recent EP, Control, it was probably the first time that — instead of just taking a bunch of songs that he wrote, and then just kind of putting my influence on them, and singing them, and things like that — I feel like we really worked together through the whole process. Instead of just coming to each other and saying, “Hey, I wrote this song. What do you think?” It’s already pretty much a song, you know? We kind of worked together on writing lyrics and together on writing chord progressions, so that was really fun and interesting for me, and even made me a little nervous, which makes no sense, because, like, we’ve been married for ten years.

AD: For me, it’s never a conscious decision, like, I want to go towards a certain sound, it’s like, “Oh, I got this cool new toy,” and it might be an accordion or glockenspiel, or whatever, so I’m going to have a song with that. And Control was the same thing where, like, I got this new synthesizer, and I’m like, “Doesn’t this sound like such an 80s lead, you know? This is rad.” I’ve got a handful of Moog synthesizers, and this new Arturia Drumbrute drum machine. I like to sync them all together, so I basically, at that point, just push a button and they all do their thing.

KD: It’s a very mathematical way of doing music, in my opinion.

AD: We’ve got a couple of semi-modulars, but then I’ve got a Moog Sub 37 which is a keyboard and all the knobs are on there too. It was kind of a different way of making music, but it was just so much fun.

KD: I really like that too, how he and I are both willing to experiment with new instruments that maybe we don’t even necessarily play, because I feel like you always are going to fall into your favorite or normal kinds of chords and things that you do on any given instrument, so sometimes it’s fun to just take something that you’re really not used to and just start fresh. Because you never know what you’re going to end up with. That’s been really fun. Kind of challenging, but in the best way.

//\\//\\//

KD: I think for both of us, a lot of the time writing is an emotional release. For me it’s almost like a diary entry, and so it’s going to be about your life, and a huge part of that is being, you know, a mother, and a daughter, and a sister, and you know all those things. Family. That’s definitely one of our themes that’s reocurring, and reocurring, and reocurring. But he’s the one that’s really — I have to say, I am much less good about keeping up with a theme for a whole album or EP. I feel like he’s really good at thinking big picture, and sometimes if my lyrics are my own random train of thought, he’ll say, “Okay, but wait, let’s remember that we want this to go this direction.” And there was a couple of times where I felt like that was happening while we were writing together, I’m like, “Okay, yeah, you see things big picture,” and I really liked that.

AD: If I remember correctly, we had like three songs and then we were thinking, “Alright, this is going to be an EP.” And then we were kind of aiming for the last one [“Control”], at least to say, “Alright let’s write something with this general direction in mind.” And I think it, yeah, it kind of worked out.

When you raise your voice / I pretend I'm not afraid. / Your volatility crushed my heart. / This time of closeness pushed us farther apart. / Each time you slam the door / I'm scared that's how it might stay. / But at least we're together.

— track 6: “Control”

AD: That one was kind of fabricated. The song was feeling stale, and we tried to manufacture some scenarios for emotional weight.

KD: Obviously we’re all living in coronavirus times, and I feel like we were influenced and curious about other families’ dynamics because we had both been hearing about how domestic violence had been skyrocketing, and so that was our kind of way of talking about the times, and how that was an issue for a lot of people. So, I don’t know, I do feel lucky that we’re not exactly living that. But that was our way of showcasing the current times we are in and just keeping that for history’s sake, I guess.

//\\//\\//

KD: I’m homeschooling. Really, what I’m trying to do is set myself up for success as much as I can throughout this year, so that next year when I do send my kids back to public school, I can treat this kind of like a job and, like, put in the hours and do the work. And, you know, cross my fingers that it pays me something, because I just, I don’t know, I told Andrew, “I feel like I’ll hate myself if I never try to pursue music as a career.” So that’s just what I’m going to do. And honestly, I’ve felt a lot better since just, sort of, admitting that and trying. And I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on a release before [referring to Katie’s solo 2021 EP Indiscreet]. Andrew did help a lot, he played producer, and I was more like co-producer standing behind him and bossing him around for that whole EP. So he was definitely involved, and I did let him make some creative decisions too, because I trust him in that way, and I think he kind of saw what I wanted, like, “Yeah, try it. Just do it.” So yeah, that was really fun, and we have some more releases planned out for the upcoming months, because I guess that’s how people do it now. It’s all about singles and EPs.

It depends on what you’re talking about, but in my life I feel like these are the good days.

AD: It’s hard to not always be, for me, wishing that we weren’t quarantined, and wishing that we could see friends that we haven’t seen in years, but yeah, big picture, I think yeah we’re doing alright.

KD: Obviously, you know, with parenting, there’s a lot of highs and lows, and wishing your kid was older, but then also living in these moments of like, “Oh my God, you’re so precious. I’m so glad that you’re this age right now.” For me, like, I just took my kids on a hike and we just got lost, and so it was, like, a really long hike, and it was while he was at work so it was just me and my three boys and my girl, and I really did feel like these are the good days. You know what I mean? I’m homeschooling this year, so we just decided in the middle of the day, like, “Okay, nobody’s brain is functioning anymore. Let’s just go on a fieldtrip on this beautiful day.” And so we did. I feel like I’ve been having a lot of those kind of moments where I do feel like, with all the crappiness in the world, these are still the good days.