FINNEAS joins Hanuman Welch on ALT CTRL on Apple Music 1 to discuss his new single “A Concert Six Months From Now” from his forthcoming debut album ‘Optimist’.
He tells Hanuman about carving out the time to finish this album while finishing up Billie Eilish’s latest album ‘Happier Than Ever’, how what he’s learned from working with Billie has informed his solo career, why his fans deserve a full-length album, his recording studio flooding while he was making the album, and more.
FINNEAS Tells Apple Music When He Worked On His New Album...
I pretty much worked on Billie's album until February, slash March was when we were mixing and mastering it. And I was writing songs on days between us working, but in a very casual sense, like only for fun. It definitely wasn't in crunch time sort of homestretch mode on my record until hers was done. And then I thought like, okay, probably with stuff like Gov Ball coming up and I play in BottleRock in like four weeks. So it was just like, got to get it in, man, got to figure it out. So I didn't really start working on my album in earnest until April. Mid April I sort of was locked away, doing really long days on the record and I'd written all the songs prior, but that was when I was finishing them and mixing and mastering them and stuff like that.
FINNEAS Tells Apple Music How What He’s Learned From Working with Billie Has Informed His Solo Career...
The way I work on my solo stuff is like, I feel like being involved in Billie's career has been like college. It's been such a learning experience for me. And she has such an incredible team who have such good insight. And so I really piggybacked off of just watching them kind of learn stuff. And I think the way that I focus on my music and what I release is based on what I call audience appetite. And so to me, like in 2018, I was just doing singles because I just was like, I don't have a big audience, if I just ask for like three minutes every six weeks that seems fair, they'll tune into one song. And then the next year I was like, "I could probably get away with an EP. They'd probably be interested in listening to 20, 25 minutes of music." And then this year just sort of like watching numbers and engaging with kids online, I was like, "Okay, they deserve a record and I need to make it for them.”
FINNEAS Tells Apple Music About His Studio Flooding While He Was Recording His Album…
Most of this new album was written in 2020, a couple of songs written early 2021, a couple stragglers written 2019 sort of all over the place. And then production wise, I had sort of like blueprints going. I had a demo vocal, a piano, a guitar, stuff like that. And then it was sort of about fleshing them out, working on them that way. But the wrench in the works was right after we finished Billie's album, my studio, which I'm sitting in right now, flooded. I had a pipe burst in my house and my studio, not a lot of the gear unbelievably, but my room itself got completely destroyed.
FINNEAS Tells Apple Music About His New Single “A Concert Six Months From Now”…
I just felt like with this body of work, it had become this kind of pivotal thing. And there was a moment where it was going to be like the closer of the album. And then I was like, "You know what? I think this is the opener of the album. I think this is the very first thing that people get." And it was a really fun process. This was the only song that I had anybody else play on. I had Johan Lenox arrange some strings for me once I'd finished writing and recording everything else. I knew that I wanted some strings and he did a very beautiful job.The whole song is about this fantasy of being at the Hollywood Bowl, seeing the show. And it's funny, man, because you know, I wrote it in 2017, but obviously singing about a concert six months away is such a 2021 experience. And when I was recording this back in April, I've been to the Bowl since recording the song and seeing music and hopefully a lot of people have. But at the time the idea of going to the Bowl was this fantasy. And I was just sitting there thinking about, what a great sound. I grew up in LA, and like, that's such a great sound, being outside and it's starting to get dark in the summertime and the lights go down and that sort of like crowd echo up the hill.The other thing is that my girlfriend really likes that song and she has a really good track record with like... She's very supportive about all my s*** The ones on Billie's record she was always "Happier Than Ever" the song, it's like that's the one. So she has proclivities.
FINNEAS Tells Apple Music About How Los Angeles is a Character in his Music…
I like landmarks in music a lot. I like it in other people's music a ton, like in Billie's song, "I Love You", there's this whole thing about sitting in Central Park as the sun sets and stuff. I guess I love it because if you've been there, you have this sense of memory when you hear a song like that. You're like, you know what that feels like. And if you've never been there, you get to fantasise what that would be like. And I think that either way I'm a fan of that. And I don't have much interest in sort of parodying a city or a location or romanticising it as much as I do, just sort of like having it be the location where the film is taking place, that's the street you're walking down.
