Ryan Harris of Spiritual Mansions
The local band’s new Touched is full of surprisingly buoyant break-up songs.
Ryan Harris debuted his broken-heart-on-sleeve lyrical style back in 2007 with his group Spiritual Mansions’ debut EP, Give Us Your Hearts, a collection of macabre late-night balladry best enjoyed in low lighting by those sharpening their knife collection while wondering if their ex still lives in the same apartment building. Follow-up album Touched, out this month, lightens the mood with faster tempos and bright blasts of brass. But Spiritual Mansions know where their bread is buttered, so deliciously black-hearted R&B-flavored rock predominates, delivered with an impact seldom heard since Afghan Whigs called it a day. Ryan Harris talked with Decider about the protracted birthing process of the new album and his inability to write about anything other than women. Spiritual Mansions headline the CD-release show for Touched Feb. 21 at the Turf Club.
Decider: Give Us Your Hearts was recorded almost entirely live, whereas Touched has a much larger, overdub-friendly sound. How different were the recording conditions?
Ryan Harris: Very. We recorded Touched at two different studios and my house and another house. It was spread out over many places and took a ridiculous amount of time—over a year. That was a big change from our first record, which was knocked out in two different sessions about a week apart. Part of the delay was that we initially were recording some older songs we had played before even making our first record, but then ultimately scrapped them because we wanted to record newer songs, many of which weren’t actually completed yet. [Laughs.]
D: Is it fair to call Sam Harvey-Carlson the band’s secret weapon? In addition to his fluid keyboard work, he wrote horn arrangements for three songs.
RH: Sam’s role is huge. He goes to school right now for music education at Augsburg, and as part of his program he’s required to learn how to play lots of different instruments and write for them. He did an amazing job arranging the horn sections. Our bassist Anthony [Schaefer] learned how to play tuba just for the record. He actually played all of the brass parts on “Jenny” and didn’t even write them down. All of the guys in the band are a great resource for ideas, and we’re already working on new material Sam’s been writing string parts for.
D: Does the core of the song still always start with you?
RH: Our songs start with just me and an acoustic guitar, and gradually turn into a full-band thing. That initial kernel of the song determines the style of music we play. I’ll start writing it and it starts pushing in a certain direction and the band just adapts to it. When people ask me to describe our band, I have no idea what to tell them. We were a rock band in the beginning, I guess, but I don’t think we’re incredibly derivative of a certain style of music. That’s a good thing in some ways, but maybe we’re not the easiest sell because we don’t fit comfortably into any particular box. I don’t really listen to a lot of modern music. The little I do listen to is mostly rap. The genre of music I’m most interested in is psychedelic folk music, so that may be how it sounds when I start playing in my room, but it all turns into something else by the time it’s through. I feel like it’s possible I’m stealing melodies from other people’s songs all the time because I have such a bad memory. I’m worried some of the melodies running around my head I end up writing down are actually snippets I heard on the radio and then forgot where they came from. [Laughs.]
D: The first album stuck to one mood—dirty, desperate, and despondent. Touched lets the light in a bit on songs like “The Sweeter Side” and “State Song.” Were you actively trying to broaden the emotional scope of the lyrics?
RH: “The Sweeter Side” sounds pretty happy, but it’s not actually super-nice. It’s funny, but it’s not necessarily nice. I definitely wanted to show more of a range of feeling with this record. I have a really hard time writing about anything but women. [Laughs.] The song furthest away from everything else on Touched is “Smart Hurts.” I’m proud of that one and wish I could write more simple songs like it.
D: Touched continues your streak of writing songs with girls’ names in the title—any reason for the proper noun fixation?
RH: When I was younger I really didn’t like songs with names in them. But there are so many great songs with names out there I kind of started doing the same thing. I like using the same names other bands have used in famous songs. I’ve had it in mind to do the whole alphabet with girl’s names. “Jenny” is definitely about a specific person, but thinly fictionalized. The song “Sara,” on the first record, wasn’t written with anybody particular in mind, but then I met a girl named Sara who completely matched the character in the song. I sort of feel like I wrote my future with that song. [Laughs.] I think using names helps people identify with the songs easier.
Ryan Harris: Very. We recorded Touched at two different studios and my house and another house. It was spread out over many places and took a ridiculous amount of time—over a year. That was a big change from our first record, which was knocked out in two different sessions about a week apart. Part of the delay was that we initially were recording some older songs we had played before even making our first record, but then ultimately scrapped them because we wanted to record newer songs, many of which weren’t actually completed yet. [Laughs.]
D: Is it fair to call Sam Harvey-Carlson the band’s secret weapon? In addition to his fluid keyboard work, he wrote horn arrangements for three songs.
RH: Sam’s role is huge. He goes to school right now for music education at Augsburg, and as part of his program he’s required to learn how to play lots of different instruments and write for them. He did an amazing job arranging the horn sections. Our bassist Anthony [Schaefer] learned how to play tuba just for the record. He actually played all of the brass parts on “Jenny” and didn’t even write them down. All of the guys in the band are a great resource for ideas, and we’re already working on new material Sam’s been writing string parts for.
D: Does the core of the song still always start with you?
RH: Our songs start with just me and an acoustic guitar, and gradually turn into a full-band thing. That initial kernel of the song determines the style of music we play. I’ll start writing it and it starts pushing in a certain direction and the band just adapts to it. When people ask me to describe our band, I have no idea what to tell them. We were a rock band in the beginning, I guess, but I don’t think we’re incredibly derivative of a certain style of music. That’s a good thing in some ways, but maybe we’re not the easiest sell because we don’t fit comfortably into any particular box. I don’t really listen to a lot of modern music. The little I do listen to is mostly rap. The genre of music I’m most interested in is psychedelic folk music, so that may be how it sounds when I start playing in my room, but it all turns into something else by the time it’s through. I feel like it’s possible I’m stealing melodies from other people’s songs all the time because I have such a bad memory. I’m worried some of the melodies running around my head I end up writing down are actually snippets I heard on the radio and then forgot where they came from. [Laughs.]
D: The first album stuck to one mood—dirty, desperate, and despondent. Touched lets the light in a bit on songs like “The Sweeter Side” and “State Song.” Were you actively trying to broaden the emotional scope of the lyrics?
RH: “The Sweeter Side” sounds pretty happy, but it’s not actually super-nice. It’s funny, but it’s not necessarily nice. I definitely wanted to show more of a range of feeling with this record. I have a really hard time writing about anything but women. [Laughs.] The song furthest away from everything else on Touched is “Smart Hurts.” I’m proud of that one and wish I could write more simple songs like it.
D: Touched continues your streak of writing songs with girls’ names in the title—any reason for the proper noun fixation?
RH: When I was younger I really didn’t like songs with names in them. But there are so many great songs with names out there I kind of started doing the same thing. I like using the same names other bands have used in famous songs. I’ve had it in mind to do the whole alphabet with girl’s names. “Jenny” is definitely about a specific person, but thinly fictionalized. The song “Sara,” on the first record, wasn’t written with anybody particular in mind, but then I met a girl named Sara who completely matched the character in the song. I sort of feel like I wrote my future with that song. [Laughs.] I think using names helps people identify with the songs easier.
