Silver Liz is the New York-based project of Carrie and Matt Wagner. Their latest record, III, is out now via Extremely Pure.
Carrie Wagner: Beach House was one of the bands that we bonded over when we first met, which was back in college. We listened to the song “Levitation” together — I feel like that’s probably my favorite song and something I come back to a lot. We talk about Beach House as one of the bands in our top five, I would say. Do you feel like that’s accurate?
Matt Wagner: Yeah, for sure. I got into Beach House in high school, senior year. I think it was when Teen Dream had just come out. I had just discovered Pitchfork around that time and they had given “Zebra” Best New Track. It was one of those moments where you hit play and you’ll never forget the time and place you were when you first heard it. Then my friend gave me this massive data CD with tons of albums on it, and it had all the Beach House records on it. I remember listening to the first Beach House record a lot throughout high school; that one really resonated with me. So I go way back with Beach House. The first time I saw them was on the Teen Dream tour in Pittsburgh, at this tiny club where maybe less than 100 people were there. It was called Club Diesel, it’s not even a venue anymore. It was really cool to see them in an intimate venue, because we’ve seen them five times, and every time we’ve seen them, the venue has just gotten bigger and bigger.
Carrie: Also, when we got married, our song that we danced to together was “Take Care.” So it’s been a very important band to us in our relationship.
Matt: I feel like they’re a band whose discography has perfectly soundtracked our lives from the beginning. Like Carrie was saying, we listened to them a lot in college. Teen Dream as a record is just a perfect romantic, young love college record in a way. And I feel like their discography has really matured with our maturation as well. So I think that’s why they’re a really special band for us. Certain songs from each record have synced up with an event in our lives in a really magical, serendipitous way. They have a sort of spiritual connection for us.
Carrie: They’ve evolved so much sonically, too. [Victoria Legrand’s] voice has changed throughout the albums. And I feel like it used to be more like classic songs in a way, and they’ve kind of delved into this part of their discography that feels like they’re trying to make really unique and unpredictable sonic choices, with chord progressions and the overall atmosphere that the song provides. So it’s cool to hear how they’ve evolved in that way, too.
Matt: Their original sound was so unique and idiosyncratic. It was just basically organ, keyboards, and slide guitar. And I feel like for dream pop, that particular combination was not really a thing. It’s such a beautiful, minimalist combo, and that’s been kind of the core of their sound throughout their entire discography, too. They’ve added more complex arrangements, but that organic, “Here’s what I play, here’s what you play, let’s see what happens,” sort of collaboration is really unique to them.
Carrie: I feel like they really created a trend and a lot of bands copied it. They made something really unique and organic, and no matter how they’ve evolved sonically, you can still tell it’s them, and that is really hard to do. Among all the saturation and noise, it’s really hard to be like, “Oh, I can tell what artist this is.” They have their distinct sound.
Matt: Their influence on us is on a really subconscious level. I think the sort of dream-like, melancholic, almost Lynchian quality of their music resonates with us so much that it just comes out in our own music. We never set out to try to write a song that sounds like Beach House, but inevitably, a lot of people have still compared aspects of our sound to Beach House. There’s something at the core of their music and vibe that we match on a frequency that I think just comes out.
Carrie: I don’t think you would necessarily draw Beach House as an influence from our music — except for maybe the more shoegaze songs that we have. With “L.I.F.,” which is a slow song on our second record, It Is Lighter Than You Think, that’s almost country-ish, shoegaze-y…
Matt: There’s also a sleepy quality. One of our friends has, from the beginning, described our vocal styles as detached and sort of disaffected. I think that’s a turnoff for a lot of people with Beach House — they’re too aloof or whatever. And I think that quality is something that people relate to Beach House, so when they hear that in our music, it reminds them of Beach House, too. This sort of disaffected—
Carrie: Yet moody.
Matt: Like you just woke up from a nap and you’re singing or something… “23” is probably the most Beach House-sounding song on our new record, because it actually is just keyboards, and there’s slide guitar on it.
Carrie: When I wrote that song — I truly am so amateur when it comes to recording things myself, so I kind of leave it to him, because he’s a professional when it comes to producing and arranging — but I just recorded a keyboard into my laptop, GarageBand, and then I put this very alien-like effect. I don’t even remember what it’s called, but I feel like it’s a Beach House-y effect in a way. I feel like sonically, that one would match their sound most out of any of the songs. And then I have a little hook in it that feels very Beach House-y, too, almost like a classic song from their album Thank Your Lucky Stars.
Matt: Because it’s a very minimalist arrangement, in the way a very early Beach House song is.
Carrie: Music is really the first thing that we bonded over. We met in a music practice room at our school, and I overheard him and his friend talking about The Strokes’ new album at the time, Angles — this was back in 2011. So that was always something that brought us together. It permeates a lot of our conversations and always has, and I feel like it was almost organic for us to start working on music together. We started doing covers together back in college, did some performances at our school, and then we started writing together in, I want to say, 2015.
Matt: I think people’s music taste is so personal and private and intimate. I think that when you find somebody that you can bond about that with, it signifies a connection on a deeper level than just music itself. Your entire being and background and experience influences your taste in music, right? So when you meet someone that has that similar music taste, it’s kind of indicative of other things in common, other shared life experiences or traumas or whatever. We did later find out that we had a lot in common outside of music and similar backgrounds.
I feel like shoegaze and dream pop are not the most popular and understood genres among most people. I hate to stereotype, but I feel like guys who make shoegaze and dream pop tend to be kind of loner, quiet types. They’re probably also very idealistic… I think there’s just this romantic dream of making music with someone you love that has the same taste in music. For the longest time, I thought that Beach House weren’t actually a romantic couple. But in a big Pitchfork profile for their last record, they coyly admitted it’s not not a romantic relationship. So even though they probably don’t label themselves as a monogamous relationship, I think that relationship is extremely romantic and loving. Whatever you want to call it, it’s definitely more than just a musical collaboration.
Carrie: I feel like there has to be a level of vulnerability and bluntness when you’re collaborating, especially as a duo. Whenever you’re creative collaborators and also partners, you feel more freedom to shoot down ideas. We’ve gotten to the point where we can be pretty blunt with each other about, “OK, that doesn’t work,” or, “I don’t really like this,” but still trying to remain objective about, “Maybe I don’t like it, but maybe we can compromise as long as we’re both pretty happy with how it turns out.” Even with a friend, I feel like it can be hard to creatively collaborate, because I don’t have the same level of comfort being blunt as I do with Matt. So I think that’s really important when you’re putting your name on music and you want to be as happy as you can with the finished product. That, I feel like, is a huge ingredient to making that happen.
