SADIE DUPUIS + SHAMIR:
on recording their new albums
“And if I’m gonna produce it I want to put in everything I like.”
for Women in Sound #8
October 30, 2020
portraits by Maggie Negrete
Shamir Bailey and I met IRL in 2015, but sometimes we’re so in sync, it’s like we’ve been friends forever. We both grew up playing in small bands and recording to four-tracks, later finding success with our respective debut albums, Shamir’s Ratchet, which skewed pop, and Speedy Ortiz’s Major Arcana, which leaned rock. In the five years since meeting, we’ve both expanded our sounds in ways so coincidentally similar it makes us laugh. I’ve cheered from the back of the basement as Shamir incorporated freak folk and garage guitars into live shows and albums and he has unwaveringly supported me as I adopted the producer name Sad13 and dived into synths, samples and drum machines. In 2016 we both moved to Philly and each started running small record labels: my label Wax Nine and Shamir’s Accidental Popstar, which he describes as “more of an artist development house.” Would you believe we both have new records, closer in sound than ever, out only a week apart? Sad13’s Haunted Painting hit on September 25 and Shamir’s self-titled album arrived on October 2. (No surprise: we both chose purple hair to promote these Libra albums.) While we can’t hang out for a vegan diner meal, it was a real treat to talk to my friend and fellow Philadelphian about our perspectives on music work. Shamir started by asking me for my album’s mission statement, I balked at the concept, and turned the question right back around on him.
-Sadie Dupuis
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Shamir: It’s two things: Shamir is my most commercial-leaning record. Like you said, minimalism is very in now with pop, and I think the same thing can be done in a minimalistic way in pop music that’s not just electronic but also guitar-based. I kept it relatively lo-fi but still clean. The second thing is I wanted it to feel cinematic and coming-of-age. Listening to it from beginning to the end kind of feels like a movie. That’s why I have little clips of my friends being weird. Those are my two things, what I want people to take from it and my mission statement.
Sadie: Sometimes when people ask about mission statements, I assume they’re centering lyrics. Obviously, when you're in a conversation with another artist, especially both of us as multi-instrumentalists and producers, we’re not listening to the same things as people who listen to music but don't play music. It’s easy for me to define my mission in terms of what things sound like, and I think it’s not dissimilar from you. You and I both are voracious fans of all kinds of genres of music. You came to success doing pop and then felt cut off from all your rock influences, whereas the first thing I did that got popular, people heard it as grunge, which is only one thing I like. The first music you did post-Ratchet was lo-fi and guitar-based. When I did the first Sad13 record, I was like, Let's do a lot of synth and bedroom pop. For this record, obviously I wanted to produce it myself, but I wanted it to sound big, and I didn't want to feel afraid of putting guitar in. The distinction between Sad13 and Speedy isn't that one’s rock, one’s pop. It’s that I produce Sad13. And if I’m gonna produce it I want to put in everything I like. Not to psychoanalyse you from afar, but I feel that's similar to how you got to where you were going on this record.
Shamir: Totally. I mean, there's so many parallels with our records. We also run labels, it’s so funny. I think what’s really similar about these records is that they're both unapologetically pop, and equally as unapologetically rock.
Sadie: And there's weirdness, too. I love that we both put dissonant strings in these records.
Shamir: I feel like I've really found my stride as an artist five, six years in the game. I've always loved dissonance, but dissonance has always been associated with the avant-garde, and that’s another reason why I romanticize the ‘90s a lot, because a lot of ‘90s pop involved a lot of dissonance. I was even thinking more like how alternative rock was just so popular in the ‘90s, but also going into Timbaland and Missy, that shit was weird and still weird now, and it was on the radio in the ‘90s. There’s weird shit that’s getting popular like 100 gecs, but will it ever be on the radio?
Sadie: Billie Eillish kinda gets into that zone. I was thinking about that production on my record a little bit too ‘cause her brother uses lots of Foley sounds to construct beats. That’s been returning to pop and I was doing it on this record. I like that we made space for weirdness on records that as you said are commercial-leaning, but there's nothing boring or phoned in about your record at all, it's well constructed and thought-out and arranged.
Shamir: I think that’s where my strengths as a producer lie. I'm really good at arranging and curating. I know how to make things go up and down. Were you also inspired by ‘90s or early 2000s stuff?
Sadie: I was thinking about 2000s synth and guitar pop, Sleigh Bells and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Metric, Broken Social Scene. I feel like I hear that on your record, too, a lot on "On My Own.”
Shamir: For me it’s more ‘90s-leaning, but also dabbles into some early 2000s stuff. I wanted to make a modern grunge pop record. Specifically, "Running," which is the next single, is heavily influenced by early 2000s, pop-era Gwen Stefani. I love the whole art direction of this era [for you]. Haunted paintings, ghosts, vampires...
Sadie: It’s funny, people are saying, Oh, [“Haunted Painting”] is so spooky, but in a lot of the Speedy videos, and even the early Sad13 videos — you pointed it out, you were in the “<2” video where we did blood facials — I’ve done horror homages. I like that goofy Halloween-y aesthetic. I'm just fully accepting it.
Shamir: You’re taking that very camp horror nature and mixing it with a lot of pastels and bright colors and that’s what I personally love, you know? That’s very your energy, like, pastel horror.
Sadie: Every time that I heard a song on your record and latched on to a particular instrument, it happened to be the instrument that you were performing on that song. The bass on “Running” [which you played] is the leading voice. I assume you're arranging these songs before you go into the studio, so how do you decide what you're going to perform on?
Shamir: A few people played a few things on the record, but for the most part I still played everything. [Producer] Kyle [Pulley] played bass on "On My Own" and Danny [Murillo] did all of the live drums, and the only other thing that I didn't play was maybe the programmed drums and a few synth parts. I did the drums on “Paranoia.” I wanted to push myself to go back to having at least a few collaborators. I thought it was gonna be kind of a headache, but it was actually pretty easy and everything flowed. Kyle's amazing and we work really well together. He was the first producer throughout my whole career who hit me up to work with me. A lot of producers hear how weird my music is and don't really get it or know where I'm going next, so they don't wanna engage. It's funny ‘cause some of those producers are running back, like, Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn't respond, blah blah. You know, now that it’s doing well.
Sadie: No one wants to take a chance. I think it’s really cool how many different energies are on the record. "Other Side" is cowpunk. There’s some Cocteau Twins, dreamy stuff going on. You did this at Headroom [Studios in Philadelphia], right? Was there any gear in particular that was cool to use?
Shamir: I’m not much of a gear head. I went in knowing that I have boxed-in parameters when it comes to how I wanna make this record. I wanna be able to play this record as a three piece, without any backing tracks, and I still am the sole guitarist in my band. All of this has to work within those parameters. We worked with a few pedals, maybe a phaser pedal, but it was just me getting the most out of the board I already have, which is not really that expansive. I have my Metal Zone, I have my Boss Distortion, a Boss Reverb and an Electro Harmonix synth pedal, which is the synth in a lot of those songs. Like “I Wonder” — all of the synths are from my pedal. On “Running” we did a few actual keyboard synths under it to make it fatter. I feel really comfortable with my board now and like how simple it is, but also how much I can get out of it. I noticed when I was reading your credits, you worked out of, what? Five different studios?
Sadie: Six at the end of the day. Part of it was geographical. I slotted sessions in between Speedy's tour dates. We flew to do a festival in San Francisco, so I stayed longer to work at Tiny Telephone out there. We had a festival in Chicago and Anne Gauthier, an engineer I worked with, picked me up from the show and took me to Louisville to work for a few days. I did the first Sad13 record locked in a room for two weeks, playing everything in my bedroom, and then never had to think about the parts again other than mixing. I knew for this record I wanted to write and play everything, but I’ve gotten more into production, and I like big-sounding records. For some drum sounds you need to be in a huge room. Or to use the expensive studio gear you'd never be able to touch if you didn't rent the room for a day. I kinda tricked my brain, thinking, You only have to do two songs a month. That made it easy to memorize all the parts and arrange them to the studios’ gear list. Tiny Telephone has a wild vintage analog synth collection, so I was able to say, This is the part that'll be played by a Moog Source, this is the part that'll be the ARP Solina. I worked at New Monkey, Elliott Smith’s studio, and apart from the Trident board that he installed himself, and the Fairchild compressor which was his favorite equipment, there’s his piano. I know what that piano sounds like so I’d arrange a part for it. For me, working in the studio is like free samples day. I wanna play all the stuff I don't get to use at home.
Shamir: So you wrote in the studio?
Sadie: Not in the studio, but to the studio, if that makes sense. If I play you the demos of these songs, they're, like, exactly the same, just made on my computer. I redid every track in the studio, but in terms of choosing my MIDI instruments, I was trying to find a synth patch that sounded like the synth I'd be redoing it on. Or if there was a marimba there, I better write a marimba part.
Shamir: Okay, that’s dope. So you kinda came in with the demos and the skeletons and everything but you merged the production around whatever studio you were at?
Sadie: Yeah. I basically pre-produced everything at home. I would send 125 tracks per song to the studio, and we would just go down the list of files to redo or keep.
Shamir: So your music is really layered! I don’t do that, actually. Even “Paranoia” — it’s maybe eight tracks with one vocal take, one guitar track, one bass track, and then it’s like, kick, snare and cymbals. I don't know… I get scared layering and using so many tracks, because, like, do you get scared that everything's not gonna have its moment?
Sadie: Yeah, and it makes it difficult for me to work with a mix engineer ‘cause I'm super hands on. Luckily I worked with Sarah Tudzin, who tracked a couple of the songs. We went to Sonic Ranch just outside of El Paso and they have an amazing SSL board. Obviously it becomes a challenge tracking so many things in ProTools and then trying to run it through a board with only so many channels, but it came out really cool. Even if I'm the only person who hears the really tiny 99th detail.
Shamir: I don’t mind confrontation, but I don't like confrontation. This record was mixed remotely. Just doing the email back and forth is a lot. But even having a close relationship with my engineer, it’s really hard to vocalize exactly what I want. When you don't know about hertz and decibels and you can't do the technical speak. That’s why I keep it fairly minimal when it comes to tracks. I definitely want to go bigger with the next record and be able to layer a lot more. When I did my post-Ratchet sessions — when they were trying to make me Taylor Swift, essentially — a lot of those pop LA sessions, you do the writing in-studio. I have a lot of demos now but for the next record I want to do some in-studio writing with all that’s around me.
Sadie: That’s my problem — I’m not really interested in writing in the studio because it's so expensive. I wanna come in with the most strict plan imaginable and adhere to it. If I wanna explore, which I do, it’s with the hundreds of hours I spend at home getting stuff ready for the studio. Granted, you have to be flexible. Sometimes you show up and the $15,000 synth you wanna use is out of commission for that day so you have to dial in some different sound. But I’m very control-freaky and that’s part of why I've done home recording, and why being in the room for the mix is important. If I’m not there my email notes are gonna be 10 pages of highly specific questions. If I’m in the room I can be like, let’s try this plugin at this depth and this rate, and I can just nudge the knob slightly myself, rather than endless, endless notes. I’m lucky that I have the personality type that allows me to be annoying in the studio, when I think a lot of people don't see themselves represented in the studio, so have fear about being specific and demanding.
Shamir: Another thing that's kind of less worrisome when you're working with other women in the studio — you don't feel like a problem stepping on a man's toes. Even though the guy who mixed my record is so sweet and gracious, there was one collaborator in there where I did have a slight problem. I felt like what I was asking for was very minimal, and I felt like he didn't want to do even the slightest bit. It’s like, Maybe I thought you wanted this track to be as exceptional as I wanted it to be, since your name was on it. Luckily the guy who mixed it, Justin [Tailor], helped pick up a lot of the slack.
Sadie: On the last Speedy record, I hosted a panel for Sonos that She Shreds co-sponsored as well, basically women in audio engineering. We had Emily Lazar, Suzi Analog, Natalie Hernandez from Death By Audio and Danielle DePalma, who manages production at Bowery. So these four different corners of audio engineering were represented, and I was psyched to curate it. But I kinda walked away from it like, What is wrong with me that I recognize this imbalance and I continue to hire so many cis men to engineer my music when they comprise 98% of audio engineering? So something else that was cool on this record is it’s the first time I've exclusively worked with other women engineering. When you're working with other women, there's just no fear ‘cause we all know how it goes.
Shamir: It’s really cool to like, not even just work with other women, but with other people who know what it’s like to be spoken over. And who know what it’s like to know what you want without having the preconceived notion of being "difficult.” I hate that word. Men are never difficult, right?
Sadie: God, the most difficult.
