Last week I was fortunate enough to sit down with Minneapolis darlings’ Grant Cutler and Maggie Morrison of Lookbook before their gig at Sauce in Minneapolis. We talked process, live show, and Blackberries. Photos & Interview by Chase Turner.
How did Lookbook begin?
M: we started a couple of years ago, fall of 2007.
M: Grant asked me to do some vocal tracks over R&B songs he’d written and I said yes of course, we didn’t release any of those songs. I don’t want to hear ‘em.
G: They’re probably on my hard drive somewhere.
Once you’re huge you can release them.
M: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs just released that sort of album, their last album that they released was the first stuff they did, they just didn’t release it.
How did you start writing together?
G: We’ve always written the same way. It starts, I write a bunch of music, I give it to Maggie, she takes it, and writes words over it.
Do you ever write lyrics or is it just Maggie?
G: I wrote…umm…I wrote all of the songs, every one. I sing them all too.
[laughs]
G: I wrote the verses of Passenger. Maggie writes primarily.
Grant, how do you start your process? Do you use Ableton?
G: I use Abelton Live and I’ve got some synthesizers, a guitar, and a bass. I usually just start with whatever I feel like starting with at that moment. It’s maybe starting with a bass line or a drumbeat. A lot of times I do start with a drum beat, and then I change everything MUCH, over a long period of time.
One track, what’s your turnaround time?
G: It depends. Some songs I write in an hour, sometimes I tweak one song over a long period of time. I throw away a lot of songs. So it differs every time. Scratch that, let’s just say eight hours per song.
[laughs]
So True to Form, how long did that take?
G: That’s a good example. True to Form was three songs before it became one. The Only Ones was always that way, I wrote it in one shot and it was done. The stuff I’m more proud of are the layered songs, I get more out of them. The heavier shit with all the layers is more satisfying, for me anyway.
When you released your EP, I Fear You, My Darkness, that’s got a different vibe to it, it’s more mellow, it’s darker than the new record. Your sound seems to be evolving.
M: We made a conscious decision to have the EP sound like that. The songs fit together much better. True to Form and Over and Over were recorded when we put that EP together. We were going to do a full length with everything but we decided it would be better to isolate that sound on the EP.
G: James Buckley and Adam Hurlburt helped us to decide to make two separate records instead of one.
It works. For the next album is there a new idea, a new type of sound you want to explore?
M: We can’t talk about it.
G: Top secret.
[laughs]
Give me a hint.
M: Grant just gave me the initial new tracks yesterday.
So you’re going to try and move in a new direction?
G: I’m so tired of people talking about us sounding like the 80s.
I won’t ask you about that.
G: Well, it does sound like the 80s, but I don’t want that to be our thing. Our new stuff will sound new.
Where did you first start playing around town?
M: The Uptown Bar. [ed. Note: RIP]
You have this great onstage dynamic, did you cultivate that or was it just a natural, organic thing that showed up when you were playing shows at the Uptown Bar?
M: It was very natural for both of us.
[both pull out Blackberries]
So I see you both have Blackberries.
G: Yeah, we’re working on a sponsorship deal.
M: How many bands do you know where every member has a Blackberry? I actually listen to the tracks Grant sends me when I’m in the car, come up with lyrics and sing them into my Blackberry.
Going back to your recording process versus your live act, you’re queuing up preprogrammed beats and then playing guitar, have you thought about doing some of the electronic stuff live?
G: We want to experiment, maybe try and do more than we have before, but this seems like the best way for us to perform this kind of music live. Many parts of our songs I can’t reproduce live with an instrument necessarily. I would like to incorporate more stuff for Maggie to do in terms of instrumentation, without making it this huge complicated setup.
M: Right now we have a really convenient setup and it’s easy to tour, we can do it in a car.
G: We’re all about efficiency.
There you have it folks. Check out Lookbook at Sauce on NYE.
Lookbook on Myspace.
