The Love Language is an indie rock band from Raleigh, which released their third album Ruby Red today.
Staff writer Charlie Shelton talked to frontman Stuart McLamb about the band’s upcoming show at Cat’s Cradle and the group’s musical influences.
Dive: After two albums already with The Love Language, are there still some nerves on edge with the release of Ruby Red or has it become a normal process?
Stuart McLamb: I am not nervous at all. I mean it has been a little while since the last (album), so it’s just been about getting readjusted to all of that. But it is more of just excitement, like we get to do this all over again.
But it looks good, I guess there is always this pressure that you should stay crazy doing new stuff, but I don’t have any regrets about taking the time to get it right. I feel more genuinely passionate to get back to work than just being like, “Oh man, done,” where it is like never-ending. I thought I would make it a little more refreshing.
Dive: Are you more excited about releasing Ruby Red to the masses or the more engaging release show at Cat’s Cradle?
SM: Well I am hoping the Cradle show is massive, but we will see. It’s big room and it’s been a while, so maybe people have kind of forgotten about it us — we’ll see!
But you know, it’s funny, the Cradle show we put a lot of time and work into it. It is going to be a 10-piece band with horns and strings, some percussion stuff, so it is going to be a really big band. We have put it together and rehearsed a lot over the past few weeks. I want people thinking about coming to the show to know that if you are going to come see us, you should come see us like this. So I am totally excited about that but coming on another note, I am obviously really stoked for people all over to hear it… like wherever, New Zealand maybe, I don’t know.
Dive: The strings and horns you mentioned for the Cat’s Cradle show are also pretty evident on Ruby Red. Are you planning to recreate as much of the sound on the album during the live show as you can?
SM: A lot of the arrangements are going to be as they were on the record, but we also have a few tricks we are working on. We definitely aren’t doing it for every song, but there are some things like horns and bigger stuff going on for the older songs that seem to work well with more of an orchestrated sound.
Dive: The previous albums are pretty consistent with the 60s garage-pop sound. Ruby Red still has that but dives into more of an early 80s vibe surrounding the garage-pop. What caused this transition in style? Is the band going through a musical timeline of influences?
SM: You know, it is tough to say, man. This musical project sort of started as I was listening to older music, stuff from the 60s I guess, on stuff from the first record. I don’t really know where exactly the influences came from, like Motown and girl groups, Burt Bacharach and all that stuff. There was all this stuff for our first couple of records, but then I just wanted to see if I could stretch the sound a little and break the mold of the pre-existing idea of what this band could do. So this one is a little all over the place — some kind of sounds like the older stuff and then obviously some different influences.
That was the idea, not that I wanted to start a new project, but I was just trying to make The Love Language something that could really expand that pop music history throughout the decades and hopefully at some point be progressive even for myself. So this was kind of like the “Jack of all trades,” I guess you could say. But with future influences, it is hard to predict where I’ll go, maybe another lo-fi record down the road. I just kind of want to keep it open-ended, so I don’t really know what to
Dive: How has the band’s lineup changed in this record?
SM: Yeah, well that tends to be the case. I try to focus on the band as approaching people and saying, “Hey, do you want to tour?” But people like Tom are playing again, and he had played on the tours for the very first record and we’ve been buddies throughout. But there are some new people who have come in and out. It is tough to call it a band, you know? I feel like that word is more applied to a really collaborative effort from people, and that is not at all to discredit what they bring, what they are bringing to the live show and making it an actual thing that people can watch and play it live, that is a huge part. It is tough to say like, “Oh yeah, here is the new band and we are all in it forever.” You just never know.
I think I have gotten to the point where I realize that it is more for the album cycle and that is not to discredit them or to say they may not be here long, but I have learned from the past that it is hard to predict or say, “Yes, this is the band forever.” I don’t know, I guess it is kind of like dating and you see what works. But I feel like I haven’t consciously let that collaborative thing with a band not happen, it’s just that it hasn’t totally happened.
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