Modern Lovers

As modern times have evolved, we, being the investigative and boundary-pushing species we are, decided that this wasn't enough, and we needed to represent all sides of this all-consuming emotion. Chief among those examining every facet, from the manic depression that it can bear, to the euphoric highs, songwriters have taken these feelings and turned them into epitaphs we've all at some point or another leaned on.

Some might say that we're at such a point of creative indulgence around this meaning that it's rare to find a song not focused upon it and for a good reason - it's timeless. There's always an audience; there's always a new generation looking for that hit or tucked away album track to resonate in the most perfect way possible. It's no different for the spunky trio of Dude York.

Today I'm chatting to the three of them over Skype; they're in Seattle, which drummer and vocalist Andrew Hall currently describes as looking "a little bit like Scotland outside today. If people wonder what Seattle looks like, it looks exactly like Seattle looks like outside right now". Our chat comes ahead of the release of the band's fourth full-length album (though one of these is a novelty Christmas one), Falling, a record with an overarching theme centred around, you guessed it, love. Well, more specifically, the many facets that constitute a modern relationship.

"That's what I tend to write songs about." Bassist and vocalist Claire England muses on their decision to pen an album on a subject some could call saturated. "I can't get away from it. And I think 'Why should I?' Because that's a forever resonating song premise,"

There are echoes of truth throughout this statement - love is something we all come back to. Dude York's take upon this everlasting notion is one that burner-blasts throughout marrying melody and clever word-play.

There can be a case said for age defining our expectations and experiences of love. By no means are Dude York a band who've experienced all of life, but that doesn't lessen their perspective. They've been through the stereotypical tropes of youth that build us into who we are by looking back through maturer eyes. One instance of this falls to the second track on Falling, 'Box'.

"I think of the chorus of that song as being a pretty funny joke, just like imagine that nineteen years old who's just like 'I will NEVER love again, as long as I live that'll never happen'," guitarist and vocalist Peter Richards bellows. "It's like 'You're so cute the way that you live by these absolutes, you're gonna change over and over again in your life in ways that you can't even imagine and won't be comfortable with, but here you are just like living this momentary truth of one relationship' I think it's hilarious!"

"I imagine that nineteen years old who's just like 'I will NEVER love again, as long as I live that'll never happen'" - Peter Richards.

As Richards divulges this, his intonation comes across as someone who's been and seen, loved and lost and used those utterances of defiance more than one. Perhaps more intriguingly, when you listen to ‘Box’, you might recognise the opening lines; "It started out with a kiss, who'd have thought it would end up like this". A seemingly direct nod to the modern anthem of the lost lover, 'Mr Brightside', makes total sense post-Richards explanation - it's a sense of youthful longing that only an anthem of that magnitude can bring and with "Box", Dude York are firmly building their world around it.

Falling, as an entity, by name and nature, digs deep into the bits and pieces between the extremes of love. It spotlights that free-fall of chaos that happens where you can't latch onto an idea, instead of being unsure of what everything means and hurtling through these often traumatic times waiting for an absolute to appear.

With England stating that she writes about love because that's what she errs towards more-so the narrative of a relationship, but never crossing the boundary lines into conceptual. Falling is an album that's pieced together to represent, not to show and tell.

"For me, the songs that I had written were about that anyway," She says. "We started to mould around that theme and thought that maybe we should make it more like a relationship album, and try to create a story out of that. For a while we thought maybe we should even make it an actual storyline, a concept almost, but we ended up dialling back from that to more this is a relationship album that's spanning all stages and different types of relationships and love."

Dude York and Falling may be focused upon the romantic aspect of love, but the truth of the matter is there's far more to this wide-cast notion than just romance. The love of being a band and creating, for example, is the reason the three of them came together back in 2016 with sophomore release, Sincerely. Over their course of being a band, their previous albums were dogged with having to do without dedicated studio time or actual freedom.

But without getting bogged down in the ins and outs of how Falling came to be, it's more prudent to focus upon what it represents. Romance aside, it's a step forward for Dude York in terms of learning to be the band they want to be as opposed to who they think they should be, which Hall explains.

"It was constantly figuring out how we're going to make a record that's going to tell a story and really resonate with people and also be fucking good because it's, partially about making something for yourself that you love," he starts.

"And when you're one-hundred-and-twenty years old you can tell your great-grandchildren 'I played on this rock record'," He adopts a mocking aged voice. "And they can say 'SHUT UP GRANDPA!' And that's great. But, it's also about making something that's going to have a chance to connect with people that you can also be very proud of."

"It's also about making something that's going to have a chance to connect with people that you can also be very proud of." - Andrew Hall

One thing that's expected of songs written about love and heartbreak is the factuality side. When you hear a song, you'll often posit yourself in the protagonist viewpoint, while assuming the writer is pouring themselves into every syllable. For England, it's a duality, with songs coming from sheer creativity, "or I'll think of a theme or an idea for a song and then pull memories of different emotions. Usually, if the emotions are more distant, sometimes that's better than if they're more immediate because you feel more comfortable putting that into a different narrative."

Richards offers his side of things, more important given that Falling is the first time the two of them have shared songwriting responsibilities and each takes half of the album's tracks. "I think that two of the songs that I sing are autobiographical, and the other four are fictional…"

So, which ones are they? I ask, intrigued. "I'm not gonna tell ya!" He loudly jokes before swiftly giving up the information. "'It Doesn't Matter Anyway' is autobiographical, and "DGAFAF" is also."

How does it feel for you both to have that aspect of your lives open in such a public manner? England is the first to respond. "Sometimes…I think," she pauses. "So for me, 'Unexpected' and 'Falling' on the record are. Those are the 'love' songs for me, and those are autobiographical, and sometimes it feels a bit 'TMI', but also if it's a good song, then you wanna share it."

Richards viewpoint is somewhat similar; "I think that autobiographical songs are incredibly daunting to write and perform, and I've only recently felt masochistic enough to try."

"I guess I always feel like it is daunting, and it is…" England starts once again. "I always find it very questionable for myself like how much of real, or immediate emotion, should be put in, but also I think that when you hear other peoples songs, you value it so much, that feeling, like, 'Oh, they really put themselves into it'". "But then again, how do you really know?" Richards queries.

"Exactly! So that's the correct answer, make it sound really autobiographical but not be able to recognise it."

"I just love stories about songs, but I'm too afraid to tell the stories about our songs," Richards says with an audible smirk. "I think about it like this; the best song is gonna carry the least specific meaning because it's gonna be an empty vessel that the listener is gonna fill with themselves."

"The best song is gonna carry the least specific meaning because it's gonna be an empty vessel that the listener is gonna fill with themselves." - Peter Richards

Lyrics are undoubtedly a cornerstone of a song that devotes itself to emotion. Around the world, people have tattoos or scrawls across notebooks of words that have resonated in a specific period and given understanding to the difficulties of life. On the same length, you easily envision the line in the sand chorus of 'Box' being etched into a desk in a high school somewhere, but it would seem that the Dude York camp sees the words slightly differently.

"I recognise that lyrics are crucial to rock and pop songs," Richards explains. "But it takes me like twenty-five times before hearing a song before I can even start hearing the lyrics, I think melody, emotionally supersedes literal meaning, that's me talking personally. I fully concede though that lyrics often make a song, when I'm looking at a lyric sheet, and I'm enjoying what I'm seeing, it's important."

England quips. "They can make a song…but they don't break a song…". Richards agrees.

However, Hall disagrees. "They can break a song, but it's really hard. Melody clearly trumps lyrics because Baby Shark is possibly the most popular - well I don't know if it's still the most popular song of all that's probably Old Town Road now, and that has good lyrics. But if you want to take over the world, all you need is the word baby shark and doo doo doo doo. That's all you need."

To which I'm briefly treated to a Dude York acapella version of Baby Shark which is currently still in my head, and now hopefully yours too.

Indeed, there's a lot to be said for the weighting of lyrics, matching with the melody to create an unstoppable force that sweeps you away, but from the other side of the recording booth where someone has laid everything bare, numerous things take place. It's a devotion to craft, and a trust in that it's the right thing to do, to share such intimate moments and see where that process take them.

On "How It Goes", a Richards penned track, he found a personal comfort. "That's the point of that song, that when I hear it to remind me that it's not as bad as it feels, to stick with it, don't give up. There are sadder qualities to that song, but the effect of it on me personally is one of an appropriately cautionary tale to try and stay positive, so I feel like there's a utility in some of the songs like that. To remember a negative emotion and to move past it."

If any emotion were ever in need of utility, it's love. And as Dude York find themselves pushing into these realms of self-understanding, it begs the question - what forms of music represented for them what they're trying to achieve with Falling?

England is first to offer hers as "listening to a lot of Paramore", in particular, the Nashville bands third studio album Brand New Eyes for "emotional catharsis". After she finishes explaining, there's a bit of silence with both Richards and Hall seemingly stuck pondering.

"I'm thinking about this because I definitely feel like I should have an answer." Hall finally piques up. "The question of 'what music does this for you', is so much harder to answer than I think it should be. There's a part of me that wants to use the cop-out answer and just say XO by Elliot Smith is a record that I still connect with really hard."

"[Lyrics] can make a song...but they don't break a song". - Claire England

"I don't know if it necessarily helped me through anything, but it's something I think about a lot. It still resonates with me for all the same reasons it did when I was sixteen which is cool because I feel like a lot of the music that I listened to as a teenager, especially as it was written mostly by men, just feels childish and vindictive now."

Richards takes a slightly more off-piste route in almost-answering. "I feel like that happens to me every six months, to twelve months, so there's so much material, and it's hard to remember what it is, and so much of it is movies also. Trashy ones, like horror movies or the Cars movies. name it, if it looks dumb I'm probably watching it, same with music if it seems like it's going to be dumb."

While we may have discussed the most popular, and perhaps cliched, element of love and romance, the truth is they also take different forms. They might not necessarily be between romantic partners. It could be between platonic friends, a pet, or even your home city. Hall has found that his love affair with Seattle has become bastardised by the ages, though he's acutely aware of sounding like a generational old man.

"I think it's also a matter of being in your early twenties and living in a city, an nobody has serious adult jobs yet," he says reminiscing. "All your friends are also in bands, and everybody hasn't moved to Los Angeles or New York or London or wherever so it just felt like five-six years ago everybody was a lot more willing to party, there were a lot more shows. With the changing landscape of the city itself in terms of who can afford to live here and what's going on, just between how much more expensive it's become, there are a lot of good things that have happened, but I think being a young band here has a lot fewer opportunities, it's hard.

"I guess I'm old now, so I'm talking like every old person ever, but there's a part of me that feels like it might've been a little bit easier to start a band in Seattle, and to get people to come see you and care about what you're doing - a while ago before now,

"There's going to be somebody who's twenty-one, and in a fucking great band I'm never going to hear saying Andrew from Dude York is full of shit for saying this! And I really want to hear from that person. I want to be proven wrong about everything I'm cynical about being a band in Seattle. I really, really, want that to happen, but it is how I feel a lot of the time, and I still love this place, and I love being from here but I also definitely feel for people who struggle here a lot."

Whatever the facet of love you're staring at, from looking at the rubble-end of a deeply cherished relationship that's scarred you forever, or ranting over Skype about the changing social landscape of your hometown, Dude York have your back. They're here to alleviate through joyous melody and to impart as much of their life-earned knowledge as possible, no matter what the world is offering in terms of darkness.

"We wear this goofy badge of being America's band," Richards jokes. "And since 2016 that's become a much more complicated idea. We…" He pauses, collecting his thoughts, moving into a decidedly more politicised tone.

"There's going to be somebody who's twenty-one, and in a fucking great band I'm never going to hear saying Andrew from Dude York is full of shit for saying this! And I really want to hear from that person." - Andrew Hall

"I think it's been present, but I think it's always been an unspoken hurdle that we've been defiantly climbing. Maybe it's been conscious…there are elements of it that are conscious, always being anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic as much as we can, and while not occupying the space of the people who are the marginalised communities whose voices are suppressed and at the same time trying to make good…not escapist music, but definitely fun music. It's been a conceptual challenge, for sure, and especially in the execution of it, it's…maybe it's not something that we directly talk about because that seems self-aggrandising, but I can't think it's not on our minds."

Truthfully, love is something that has made the world go through some of its most turbulent times - be it an infatuation with a belief system, or another human being, it's almost always a central focus to a turmoil. But as long as bands like Dude York find the space to create and put a melodic dot-to-dot to these notions for the rest of us, it all feels like it's going to be okay.