Kissing Rosy in the Rain (reviewed here) is one of those recordings that just stays with you and makes you want to find out more about it and the people who made it, so we did just that.
Mason Lindahl‘s Kissing Rosy in the Rain album is one of those where it is very fortunate that somebody heard it (in this case Tompkins Square’s Josh Rosenthal) and decided it needed to find a wider audience. Similar to last year’s Hand like God record from J R Samuels, Kissing Rosy is highly creative music that can fall under the instrumental acoustic guitar umbrella, but certainly exists by itself and pays little attention to many of the tropes of the various guitar genres. “There wasn’t really any concept for this,” Mason begins. “I had been wanting to do a record for a really long time, but wanted it to sound a very specific way. I had an idea and didn’t want to just sit in my bedroom and record it and have it come out as this half-assed thing. I wanted it to be exactly what it was, so I sat on these songs for about four years, waiting to record them.” To do this Mason took some trustees with him to the studio to very subtly embellish his incubated tunes. “I really loved the studio and working with Jay Pellicci and Robby [Moncrieff],” he says. “The record really took shape in there; a lot of the atmospherics, like the creaky background noises, really created the environment. I didn’t want to do just a guitar record.”
Although Mason mentions that he spent plenty of time with the album’s songs before recording, there is still a sense of improvisation present at times, in that the music has a recurring nature and feels very immediate. “These songs are definitely written, just not written out,” he explains. “What I love about the studio is that if I’m at home I’ll record a song a thousand times over and have thirty different versions of one song. I have hundreds of versions of these songs with different titles at home, but in the studio, you have this chance to do it and then that’s it, it’s done.” The studio environment doesn’t suit everybody, but for a perfectionist like Mason, the restraints seem necessary, especially when it comes to keeping his colleagues sane. “The track ‘Kissing Rosy in the Rain’ is one where I knew exactly what I wanted it to be,” he continues. “It’s so cyclical and straight forward, but I probably played that song a hundred times, because I wanted it to be very gentle and soft and it took me eighty goes to be able to play it like that. I had to really warm up and the poor guys in the studio were like ‘dude, it’s done, it’s fine!’”
In Josh Rosenthal’s notes on Kissing Rosy, he mentions the appeal of an ‘artist staying in a zone, not caring about variation for variation’s sake, and it’s this cyclical aspect of Mason’s current sound that seems integral to the album. “I feel like that’s true, but I don’t know if it’s a fault or not,” Mason says. “Music used to be something really volatile and crazy to me, but now it has this very specific feeling and it’s kind of why I got into nylon string guitar. I don’t know if it’s a curse or not, but I only play or write something when I feel a certain way. It’s not sad, necessarily, but maybe introspective or something.” He pauses a moment and laughs. “I’ve tried to write stuff that’s more light-hearted, but it’s not nearly as good, or I don’t think it is.”
The nylon-string guitar Mason mentions is the bedrock to Kissing Rosy‘s sound. It feels like the music would have had a very different energy and emotion if it was played on a steel-string instrument. “I like Robbie Basho and guys like that,” Mason tells us. “I think he’s quoted somewhere saying something like the nylon string guitar is romantic and the steel string has the fire. I grew up playing steel string guitar; my dad has four brothers and sisters and they’re all rambunctious people who sat around fires drinking beer and singing. The nylon string guitar is very malleable; you can make it explode or you can make it incredibly delicate. I feel like it takes more intention to play the nylon string guitar properly. It feels more versatile.” He pauses a moment when his cat jumps on him, before continuing. “But I should say that the guitar I play has an under-saddle pickup in it, so it is electric. When we did a lot of the record, the guitar is going into different amps in different rooms and it’s miked like three times on the body.”
Kissing Rosy is indeed a deceptively intricate recording – hardly surprising after hearing how many times Mason plays each song – with experienced hands creating a very particular sound. “Jay Pellicci was the main engineer,” he tells us. “He’s a fucking genius and would be one of my favourite engineers of all time even if he wasn’t one of my best friends. Over the years I’ve come to know how I want my guitar to sound and in the studio, I know what I want my setup to be. ‘Kissing Rosy in the Rain’ is played the gentlest you can on a nylon string guitar, but there’s a mic on my hand and on the body and then we split the line out of the guitar into this old Gibson [amp] with crazy low end and into one with more high end. So that one take became six tracks and it’s blended super well. At that point it’s not just an acoustic guitar; it sounds like it is, but there’s a lot more there.”
A lot of technical detail lurks, but the album is still a lesson in minimalism and is unselfconscious in its stripping back of sound, starting with vocals. “I still write lyrics or poetry and I love a good song, like a perfect pop song,” Mason admits. “But I veered away from expressing myself in that way. It used to feel good to sing, but now it’s more like ‘what am I doing?’ I don’t need it anymore. I’ve also gotten more into classical music and I’ve stopped listening to much guitar music and have become more interested in piano. That was my first instrument and I kind of wish I had stuck with that, so in a way, I’m envious of these people because I’m a guitar player!” We suggest that a bit of envy is good for motivation. “Exactly,” he says. “I find myself over-doing it sometimes and it drives me crazy. In my head, I feel like it needs to be more than it is, but if I was listening to it I would turn it off because it’s too busy. That’s what’s happened with lyrics too; I don’t need to sing anymore and I’m getting to a place where I need to do less and less and less.”
Order Kissing Rosy in the Rain: https://tompkinssquare.bandcamp.com/album/kissing-rosy-in-the-rain
