Thus Love: 'All Pleasure' No Regrets

In “On The Floor,” a buoyant bass line drives head-first into distorted guitars before lead vocalist and guitarist Echo Mar comes in with ‘70s rockstar affectation, singing, “There’s a move on the horizon/ That’s not as cruel or a setting sun/ Even now hope I’ll never know/ How it feels to be truly alone.” It’s poetic and sharp, biting and elegant. And much of All Pleasure plays out that way. “Birthday Song” is a vintage love ballad, as the band pontificates, “Do you think fall would criticize the spring?” before falling into the witty reflection, “It must be my charm/ 'Cause I'm not that smart and/ We're still holding hands.” On “All Pleasure,” the band takes on a languid pace, with a sound that merges somewhere between a ‘90s grunge track and a psychedelic pop track, as Mars sings, “I just want you to feel good/ I just want you to hold me down.”

A few days before All Pleasure was set to release, PAPER spoke to Racine and Mars about the path to All Pleasure, how Juleen and Blank helped them transform their sound and what it takes to transmute the energy of their live performances into a record.

How are you both feeling about having your second album out in the world?

Echo Mars: I feel good. I’m feeling pretty numb to the whole thing. Things are good, we’re prepping for the touring cycle but specifically the release shows. It feels like a year climaxing. Lots of running around but feeling good though.

What release shows do you have planned?

Lu Racine: So on Friday, release day, we’re playing a show at The Stone Church, which is where I work. It’s awesome. Feels like home. Lot of our friends going to be there, all three shows are with our friend’s band, a four piece Robber Robber from Burlington. Then our friend Zack is going to be doing a vinyl, DJ after party. Then a week after that we’re going to New York, we’re playing Elsewhere. Then a couple days after we’re going to Burlington to play at The Radio Bean.

Let’s go back to the beginning of this album cycle after Memorial. What was the your intention when you got into the studio for All Pleasure?

Echo: We wanted to make something more simple and intentionally more dynamic. We also wanted to make a record that would be fun playing live. That’s the whole ethos we’ve been pandering with All Pleasure and keeping things joy-based in the experience. So, songs we would want to play live and also embracing the way an album sounds cohesive in the way we sound live as well, trying to capture that and make it accurate to our live sound. At the same time, with the knowledge that live it will never sound the same. So, embracing moments that come about when we’re recording and being open to those nuances shaping the live sound later on is cool. That’s the gist. We worked with a bunch of demos that had been made in the two years prior and we needed to make a foundation for this new lineup.

Lu: I will say too, I feel like it was a big experiment in the most beautiful way. I feel like this is a brand new band and we’re stepping in to create this thing together for the very first time. And that’s a little scary but it’s an opportunity for an insane amount of growth and we had a lot of fun which was the most important thing.

You've talked about the live sound and I remember seeing one of the iterations of the band at Rippers and being blown away. I'm curious, though; what I saw doesn't seem like an easy thing to transmute into a recording. How did you do it? What was that process like?

Echo: It really comes down to getting over a fear of failure. You can spend hours of a recording session just doing nothing because you're afraid to do the thing. So get in there, just do it. If you fuck up, do it again. And the less you're worried about fucking up, the less you fuck up. And that's a beautiful thing you have to learn with time. And patience becomes a lesson you learn. It's still this delicate thing you're trying to capture and not let it get to skewed from the vision. It's a different medium output recording as a whole. Making it cute ... this isn't cute, but I tried not to be on my phone in the studio. Also keeping the mood light. It's a workplace and I don't like to call it that but really you're there to have fun and remind yourself of that and keep the energy... cute. Adorable yet fertile.

I read in your bio that you wanted the themes to touch on dizzying growth and transformation. Now that the album is tangible, what were some of the things you were surprised came out? What thread do you feel pulled the album together?

Echo: Honestly, different forms of heartbreak and different forms of heartfelt. Maybe hearfelt includes sad, happy multiple emotions. We're called Thus Love, the album is All Pleasure, we clearly have a theme going of vulnerability.

I wanted to ask about the singles, like "Birthday Song" — did you know you wanted that to be a song people heard first before the rest of the album?

Echo: Funny enough I wrote that on acoustic guitar and in my head Anaïs Mitchell was singing it, for some reason. It was that timbre of voice singing with a massive grunge band behind it. I personally didn't think it would be a Thus Love song. I wrote it for my good friends. Then I showed Shane 15 seconds of an unfinished demo in the third recording session for All Pleasure and he really liked it. Then it seemed like a song that everyone liked. The fact that it was the first single came as a surprise to me.

Was there a moment in the studio, a lyric, or even just an agreement that made you feel confident in what All Pleasure was going to be?

Echo: I'm sure Lu has a good one too but a big one that comes to mind is Ally's harmonies, Ally's backing vocals. That wasn't really a plan but it made sense. We want to be a band where everyone sings when they want to and we're slowing adding pieces of information into our live medium. There was a part on "All Pleasure," cause I'd written the lyrics prior to us all writing together and then I figure those lyrics would be good on the song. At least for the sultry pre-chorus where Ally comes in with the modulated vocals. What I realized becasue it was most in my head and in demo form, I realized that if I was playing the slide I wouldn't have time to take a breath for a whole half verse and that whole section. So I was like "What am I gonna do, should we cut some of these words out?" Then I was like "Ally, just sing this and this."

Lu: We had another demo of another song that didn't end up being on the record. There was also a vocal trade off there that was really cool. I'm happy that there are multiple singers, that's really awesome. My "aha" moment was when Echo started doing stuff on the piano. That was really cool. I'm really excited to keep doing stuff on the piano. Singing and playing the piano and that's it, I love that.

Echo: I didn't want to do it on the piano. Lu you probably remember this but I wanted it to be a synth song and all this extra shit. Inevitably, you just run out of time on an album. I think that was also a Shane suggestion just play it on the piano you've been writing it on. Even the stool of the piano is very creaky and an old piece of shit. I thought I needed to find another chair cause it was making so much noise and Shane was like, keep it. Those sounds make it unique.

Lu: Every time I hear that song, I feel like I'm in the room with Echo. That song just transports you there.

Fans are about to hear some of these songs live for the first time. What do you hope they're thinking and saying when they walk away from the venue?

Echo: I hope it's a solid mix of nostalgic euphoria and here-and-now euphoria. That sense when you get a smell from your childhood and you're like, "What's that strange feeling." Sometimes music makes you feel that way. I hope people feel that way.

Lu: I hope gets people talking. I hope people come to the show, meet each other, it creates a dialogue. People are gonna be outside smoking their cigarettes shaking hands, chatting, being like, "That was my favorite song," "That was my favorite song, too," and "They sucked ass." As long as people are chatting. [Laughs] As long as people are networking.

Photography: Shervin Lainez