Interview: Constellation Myths on ‘Everything and Time’
The Massachusetts post-rock Americana project discusses its third single in advance of October's debut album
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Photo credit: Ben Stas
Boston, Mass. [September 8, 2021] -- Reconciling the past with the present is an act of mythmaking, a process of organizing our memories through storytelling. In subject matter and its musical influences, “Everything and Time,” the third single from Massachusetts post-rock Americana project Constellation Myths, is informed by the necessity to make space for the past. The single and its companion b-side “Empty Bottles” are set to release on September 8 on all major streaming platforms.
For guitarist and songwriter Josh Goldman, the song had its origins in the quiet predawn of a bleary-eyed Thursday morning, coming together in a rush of structural experimentation. While for Justin Kehoe, who co-writes the music and lyrics, the words were inspired by a moment on the MBTA Orange Line, where he saw his former self 20 years prior in that very spot, at a very different point of his life, perhaps looking forward to some future self. Singer Molly Seamans was drawn to the song from the outset, immediately hearing in her head what would become the vocal melody.
Those moments all combined in “Everything and Time,” a composition with rising momentum that in turn serves as the title track to the outfit’s forthcoming debut album, due out this October.
publi*sist: What is “Everything and Time” all about?
Justin Kehoe: In the broadest sense this song is about the difficulties of reconciling the ephemerality and intangibility of the present with the persistent belief that we are stable, coherent, continuous beings. It was sparked by one of those rare, acute nostalgic reveries. I was at the train station, waiting for the Orange Line one morning. It was that early morning, piercing sunlight, but scattered and diffused by the time it reached the garden-level platform. And I just had this strong memory of one of the first times I’d been on the Jamaica Plain end of the Orange Line, more than 20 years earlier when I was in college, commuting from downtown Boston to my first band’s practice space in Hyde Park. I was 19 I think, and I was struck by how far removed I was from that person -- 19 year-old me. And yet that is undeniably and intensely my own memory. I wanted to try and capture that feeling when the past as memory completely overwhelms and confounds the present. It felt resonant with the hazy autumnal glow of this song and the title Josh had given it -- “Everything and Time.” Are we connected across time to our former and future selves? Or is each moment its own discrete world, and the notion of continuity a mere trick of the mind?
How did the song come together, and what was the creative process?
Josh Goldman: I was interested in composing with a strict minimalist structure in mind and had been experimenting with the idea of a one part song that didn't feel overly repetitive and actually went somewhere. If you listen closely, with the exception of the intro, the same chord changes continue throughout the entire song while the energy level is steadily increased through the addition of parts on top of it. The root of the song does not vary, however. Like a lot of my songs, this one came to me over my morning coffee early one Thursday in September of 2018. I worked on refining it for a few days until I demoed it on my phone all in one take. Interestingly that phone demo became the basis for the finished recording.
Justin Kehoe: I think this was about the third song we worked on together, and it was the first one that was pretty much arranged by the time Josh sent it to me. This one was much more of a straight-forward, singer-songwriter type of song, drawing on Time (The Revelator)-era Gillian Welch, even if it doesn’t have a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. I wanted to preserve some of the space and loneliness in the song, but as kind of a one- or two-part song, it felt naturally like it needed to build over the course of it. In that way it’s kind of Gillian Welch with a touch of Godspeed You Black Emperor, which is in keeping with our whole post-rock Americana approach. The necessary parts on my end were the organ and the drums. It was the first time I fooled around with the leslie rotor effect on the organ. I’d always really loved how that could be used to create subtle build and movement within a measure. The heavily affected piano and delayed rhodes push this song just slightly away from a more standard singer-songwriter tune, toward something a little more atmospheric. For both of those parts I was just fooling around with delays and reverbs, and in the case of the piano part, trying to get something that sounded a little like those atmospheric piano parts on the first Walkmen album.
Molly really gravitated to this song right out of the gate. She came up with a vocal line for the verses right away. The verse lyrics came together quickly after that, but the chorus was challenging. We went through many iterations, one where I tried to shoehorn in an elaborate reference to Borges -- my instinct is always toward abstraction and complexity, Molly’s is toward simplicity and detail. The first recorded version had a pretty, ‘60s folk vibe to it, and didn’t at all match the rising momentum of the song. We’d asked our friend Andy Arch to sing with Molly on this one. The three of us used to be Andy’s backing band in Tom Thumb, and Molly has sung on some of Andy’s projects in the years since. Andy actually suggested the edit to the chorus, paring it back to the “dreamer in the dream” line, letting the listener form their own connection between that line and the meat of the song in the verses.
How does it reflect the Constellation Myths as a whole?
Josh Goldman: “Everything and Time” started as a very stripped down acoustic guitar driven tune with a lot of space and openness. It had more in common with a quiet Gillian Welch song than what it turned out as. When I handed it over to Justin he initially added drums and an organ part. In the next round of recording I added bass, banjo and more guitar overdubs. If I recall we amassed a lot of tracks very quickly piling more and more material onto that original idea until it was moody, atmospheric, and lush, really a world away from the dusty melancholy of the demo. If I'm not mistaken this was one of the first songs that Justin and I worked on that really spoke to Molly.
If I had to describe our process of working in one word I would say that it is fundamentally evolutionary in that songs change, grow and develop in strange and unexpected ways based on new musical elements entering into the equation. In that way Everything & Time is entirely and perfectly emblematic of our way of songwriting as a whole.
Justin Kehoe: Thematically, most of this batch of songs on this album are about the relationship between memory and identity. While we finished “Case History” before we finished this one, we had been working on this one for a long time. The lyrics for this song go way back to the beginning of this project, and in that sense can be seen as the starting place for the theme that would emerge over time. For the next album, Molly and I will write a paranoid concept album about the surveillance state and platform capitalism... or a Bob Pollard-esque suite of songs detailing household chores.
From a process standpoint, while those first couple of songs we worked on (where we were chopping things up and looping them) were a ton of fun to create, this song is more like how the majority of our songs operate. The initial demo that Josh works up is pretty close to the ultimate structure of the song, my time is spent filling it out sonically and then at the end Molly and I work on lyrics and vox.
How does “Everything and Time” fit in the context of the album?
Justin Kehoe: Well, it’s the title track. It sets a mood that I think kind of grounds the album (as much as one three and a half minute song can do so). And sonically, while mostly I’d say it draws on the folk/singer-songwriter end of our influences, the post-rock influence is definitely there in the rising noise squall leading into the chorus. Some of our songs are more pure folk/americana (“Candle” and “Case History” are both great examples of that), and others are more firmly post-rock songs (forthcoming single “Usonia”, album tracks “Aniline” and “The Form of Space”). This song, as with “Suffer” and “It Would’ve Been Enough”, balances both impulses.
What is the relationship, if any, between “Everything and Time” and its b-side, “Empty Bottles”?
Justin Kehoe: These are both very early songs, things we worked on in those first few months of this project. They both lean toward the folk-Americana end of things, while having a touch of gentle post-rock experimentalism in the middle portions. They sound good together. Both are songs that Molly was initially drawn to (she wrote most of the lyrics for “Empty Bottles”). Both feature our friend Andy Arch on vocals. The lyrical connection between them is less strong than it is between “Everything and Time” and some of the other songs on the album. “Empty Bottles” is about the end of the night or the end of the hang/party, and about growing older. The idea comes from something Andy once said to us one night, probably 15 years ago, after a Tom Thumb show. Mols and I were looking to turn in early (as usual), and Andy wanting to stay up and not give up on the hang just yet, said “every sleep’s a little death” (I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s a sentiment expressed in literature going back a long ways, most famously by Schopenhauer, Homer, Buddha).
We wanted this song to have kind of a rousing bar sing along kind of feel (thus the kinda honky tonk, saloon style piano at the end). Other sources of inspiration for “Empty Bottles”: Dylan’s “Restless Farewell,” Our friend Will’s old place on Chestnut Hill Avenue, and a patch Molly got that read “all the good times have been had.”
A final note on “Empty Bottles”, my own vocal turn is something of an accident. Molly had come up with the lyrics and vocal line, and we were trying to record it, and she felt like she couldn’t achieve the right amount of grit with her own voice. She asked “how would the guy from The Walkmen sing it” and I just tried to sing her melody line in my best Hamilton Leithauser impersonation (which isn’t really very good), and she was like “we’re using that.”
Direct all press inquiries to Constellation Myths at theconstellationmyths@gmail.com or Michael Marotta at michael@publisist.co.
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‘Everything and Time’ single artwork:
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Constellation Myths are:
Josh Goldman (acoustic and electric guitars, banjo, bass)
Justin Kehoe (drums, percussion, keys, and vocals on “Empty Bottles”)
with Molly Seamans (lead vocals)
and Andy Arch (guest vocals on “Everything And Time” and “Empty Bottles”)
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‘Everything and Time’ production credits:
Acoustic and electric guitars, banjo, basstracked by Josh at home in Dorchester, MA. Keys and vox tracked by Justin at home in Jamaica Plain, MA. Drums recorded by Justin at Studio 52 in Allston, MA.
Recorded and mixed by Constellation Myths in Boston, MA.
Mastered by Andy Arch in Cape Cod, MA.
Cover design by Molly Seamans.
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The music of Constellation Myths has been heard on:
Breakfast of Champions on WMBR; Virtual Detention and Fuzzed Out Boston on WZBC; Your First Listen on KNNZ (Fargo-Moorhead); The Pop Hour on Banks Radio Australia; Tinnitist; KONR (Anchorage, AK); Parcheesi Redux with Jay Breitling; Boston Emissions; Bay State Rock; Mark Skin Radio’s Christian's Cosmic Corner, Original Music Showcase, and Marc's Alt-Rock Playground; Lonely Oak Radio; Eagles Nest Radio; Valley FM 89.5 FM in Canberra, Australia.
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Media Contact: Constellation Myths at theconstellationmyths@gmail.com or Michael Marotta at michael@publisist.co.
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