INTERVIEW: Joy Again

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INTERVIEW/PHOTOS BY: Will Kirkpatrick

As they crawl towards the 10-year anniversary of the group’s first record, Forever, and into the release of their second full length effort, Joy Again’s Sachi DiSerafino and Blaise O’Brien join me on Zoom to talk about their diorama cover art, Thanksgiving, dreaming of YouTube stardom, and getting it done yourself.

“Yeah, me and Kieran [Ferris] both have been engineering the whole thing,” said DiSerafino.

“That’s awesome. Do you want to wait, or do you want to jump in,” I said.

“Maybe let’s wait a sec, he said he’s joining now,” said DiSerafino.

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“So do you like Thanksgiving?” I asked in the silence.

“Yeah, it’s probably my favorite of the family holidays. You don’t have to, like do a bunch of stressful shopping or like anything,” he responded.

His favorite dish is mashed potatoes.

O’Brien eventually popped in and it was off to the races.

The lead single, “Let’s Do a Dance,” off the currently untitled LP is an extremely polished pop tune that sets itself apart with its interesting sonic choices and willingness to stray off. Being a self-proclaimed casual fan of Joy Again the cover art of “Let’s Do a Dance” drew me in: a diorama of an angel and ballerina in a semi-Gaelic almost Swiss Alps plain, illuminated dramatically by what is assumed to be the light of God. 

“My mom helped with some of this [“Let’s Do a Dance” cover art]. She helped me make the pattern for the angel’s tunic, like, the top part of the dress. I was kind of stumped on how to make it fit, you know? She just came over and made the pattern out of paper and then we made it out of fabric, but yeah, she’s the goat,” said O’Brien. 

“The person who shot it [the cover art] is Stephanie DeFeo, she works at Urban Outfitters and does a lot of product photography for them. So, she knows her s*** with lighting and photo, you know, that whole jazz. So, we’re like she can take product shots really perfectly. So, I’m sure she could photograph this and get the lighting right, and she’s the one who kind of took it from an arts and crafts moment to looking crazy,” said O’Brien.

O’Brien and Melanie Kleid made this physical real three-dimensional piece of art and had it photographed with artful intentions. There are ‘easier’ ways to make album art, taking a photo in a dope field or a badass factory, slap some fun text and call it a day. The Beatles have done it twice now with the White Album and their new single “Now and Then…”

“Cuz it’s dope,” said DiSerafino.

“Yeah, because it’s dope. I think I have just been really sick of graphic design. And I think that like a lot of, don’t get me wrong it’s super valid. It’s great. Originally, I thought it wanted to be a painting. But then we couldn’t really decide,” said O’Brien.

“As a kid they had those video game systems that weren’t made by Sony or any of those, they were made by like toy companies. They were a plug and play kind of thing I think they had in Japan in the 90s, and I forget what it was called but they had all these crazy covers that were made with these clay figures. They were super playful. So, me and Melanie [Kleid], who makes the figures, started making the ballerina. We were like oh f*** this looks so good. Let’s make it freaky instead of making it realistic. Instead of making it colorful and playful, we liked how surreal and strange it looked.”

Wacked out guitar, three gated snare hits and a drum fill by Kick Block co-founder Will Butera launch “Let’s Do a Dance” into an 80s ballad that on its surface goes through someone struggling to keep up with their dance partner in a 1980s prom movie. But astute poets and high school English teachers would scorn you for not picking up on the similes, imagery, allegory, and allusion. To me, the song is a dance between two long term partners who fell out of love. With the singer still attracted to the subject, he wishes for another shot and lets their partner take the lead knowing their previous pitfalls came from his own doing.

“I can’t believe what you’ve done to me since you’ve fell out of love with who I’ve become.”

DiSerafino exclaims into the chorus that turns the energy up even more with trumpets that duck in and out through the runtime.

“I wrote the part with MIDI trumpets, and I sent it to our friend Henry [Solomon], who kind of expanded on the arrangement and all the sax and horns. But there’s a trumpet at the studio that I fixed. All the old keys were sticking, and I fixed it up. And I tried to play something and I’m ass, I’m so bad,” said DiSerafino.

“Give us money so we can bring a saxophone player on tour. It’s crazy, because it’s something that I never thought would be so sick. But after we did it, I was like, I never want to play without a saxophone again. It’s so fun. We just went to see The 1975 the other week and they have a saxophone player that’s out there for like every song. And he’s just like shredding, and like, it would be so sick to just have somebody just f***ing shred some horn the whole time,” said O’Brien.

What song would you want a sax solo on the most?

“It was great to have a sax on “Looking Out for You.” I’m not gonna lie,” said Blaise.

“Our friend Henry, who did all the horns on “Let’s Do a Dance” was in New York coincidentally, when we played at Union Pool there like a month ago. He jumped on stage and did our last three songs on sax with us. And “Looking Out for You” was pretty awesome. We do like a ska version of it in practice,” said DiSerafino.

You should flesh that Ska cover.

“The Goldfinger ‘Looking Out for You’ version,” said DiSerafino.

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“Lately I’ve been liking engineering more than production because production has turned into a lot of…I guess they kind of go hand in hand, but like drums, is a lot of editing by myself, you know, making it tight and tuning vocals and stuff like that is kind of like, I don’t know. I like just setting up the mics and getting it to sound good. And then when we leave the place, I come back here to my spot, and I edit it all to oblivion. The record is really produced by Joy Again,” said DiSerafino.

Self-producing requires a lot of self-policing and self-criticism but with six people in a band the opinions may get in the way. Or people may feel pushed aside and buried by the crowd because you’re the drummer or you’re the singer.

“At this point, it’s kind of like anything goes, we’ve been doing it for so long. It’s like, just say what you’re thinking. If you don’t, maybe you’ll regret it, you know?” said DiSerafino.

“If you’re hearing something why not just throw it out into the void? Because maybe somebody else is thinking the same thing that you were, somebody who could maybe do it better than you could. If I have a guitar idea or think guitar would sound good somewhere, but I don’t know exactly what to play, I’ll say to Sachi or Kieran, ‘why don’t you try doing something like this and this part,’ and they’ll give it a shot. And if they don’t nail the first time, I’m like, ‘why don’t you try doing this instead?’ And then usually, that turns into a whole new idea,” said O’Brien.

My first live experience with Joy Again came on their April 5, 2022 show at Union Transfer opening up for Snail Mail. They toured the US for a few months and eventually Snail Mail embarked on their odd three band Baltimore tribute tour featuring them, JPEGMAFIA, and Turnstile. O’Brien had been recruited by Lindsey Jordan for this tour and played synth during this time.

“Yeah, it was cool. We played at a lot of the biggest venues we’ve ever played on that tour. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, that one was relatively smooth,” said DiSerafino.

What makes a good tour?

“Making money at the end,” said O’Brien.

“I feel like it’s really up to how the last week feels you know? Because if you really want to get home then it probably wasn’t that great a tour. But yeah, I think on that tour, we got pretty close to being back and we’re like, oh s***, we could keep doing this,” said DiSerafino.

“We rented an Airbnb-like mountain house on one of our days off and we did a little barbecue,” said O’Brien.

“Was that from that one vlog?” I asked.

“You might be the first person who’s watched that vlog,” said O’Brien.

Joy Again is prepping for their new record’s release and are still hard at work every day making music for your ears and beats for your legs to move to.