Member Since: 7/30/2010
Posts: 20,632
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Interview with NPR
Quote:
The album ranges widely, soundwise, from the country harmonies of "The Eye" to power pop to that Roy Orbison-style heartthrob thing you do, which I love so much. Did you enter the process of writing these songs with the goal of showing your whole range? Other albums have focused on one or the other of your approaches
B: Thank you for noticing that stuff! I got some baby clothes from the Orbison Estate that said "pretty woman" with tiny Ray-Bans. ... I died from excitement because you know how much I love him.
Our whole range is so eccentric because of the close "cultishness" of the twins and me, and the fact that the three of us are so different. Having three equal writers for a band is tricky, and not just for sequencing. I'm always trying to pull all the songs together with something, whether it's a drum or a theme or some ambient sound they all have in them, subliminally. I didn't even try to rein it in this time. We totally let go and embraced how different our songwriting is. My wife was nine months pregnant, so there was very little I could control except my dog! All that vulnerability is all over this record.
You've said that "The Eye" is the song that's most representative of your band, because you all share the lead vocal. That's a powerful statement from someone who records under her own name as a "solo artist." Can you talk about the twins as collaborators, and specifically their role in making this song?
B: When I met the twins I instantly loved them. I had to have them in my life; it was borderline obsessive! They had day jobs and were in a couple of other bands — it was all I could do to get them to want to play with me, let alone be in a band with me. I had six residencies a week, so almost every night I was in a different bar or restaurant, and during the day while they were working I was pinning fliers or busking at [Seattle's] Pike Place Market. The twins would play with me at lots of these gigs, and the idea of three-part harmony at that time wasn't really very cool, but it was somehow solidifying what we would eventually commit to and pursue. But all the gigs were already billed as "Brandi Carlile," and believe me, they didn't want those gigs stuck to them. We just kind of went with that name and never changed it, but at the time, if I thought I could get them to stay with me by calling our band "The Hanseroth Brothers and that bar singer" — that would be our name.
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Nice to see the twins stepping even more into the spotlight. Their harmonies are insane.
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Such an amazing song. Can't wait for the new album 
Can't wait to give this a listen.