The keen reader might remember The Love Ways from an interview we published last year. At the time, we were busy listening to ‘Sunset Signs’, a hard-hitting, roaring slice of alt-rock and punk-flavoured charisma. The Brooklyn-based pair has been rather quiet since then, at least until last week, when they returned with another fierce guitar-powered cut, ‘Strange Ceilings’. Curiously, The Love Ways make a point of releasing only one record per year; despite how unconventional that might sound to the casual listener, that is the pace the group is comfortable with.
Furthermore, it allows them to truly quality control their output. Lastly, it also makes for quite a unique feature, something that goes a long way in an industry where everyone’s striving for authenticity. Overall, ‘Strange Ceilings’ is as good as it could ever be, with an intense, eclectic rock arrangement that’s plenty evocative and anthemic. It’s perhaps a tad darker than any of the group’s previous material, but we are happy with it; it showcases their maturity and willingness to innovate.
Intrigued by the project (once again), we caught up with The Love Ways for an update on their artistic endeavours. Interview below!
Hey guys, here we are, more than a year later from our previous interview together in March 2024! In the meantime, society and the music landscape have changed considerably. Has your outlook on art and life changed in any meaningful way?
Mark Shreve: What a question! Yeah, it has been a pretty crazy year, but I feel that crazy years are the norm these days, and the best thing we can do is help those of us that we can help. For me, the seismic changes were more inside the home than outside: my outlook on art, life, and everything changed this year when my daughter Josie was born. Becoming a parent is pretty incredible, and what I’ve found is that with it, my identities and relationships to everyone else in my life change too. I’m a different brother, son, husband, co-worker, musician, citizen… everything now.
I’d say I don’t ever worry too much about how my outlook on art fits into a larger society, but I do think about things like legacy and simple questions like, “Would my daughter watch this music video in 15 years and be proud of me?” I listen to the music that made me love music when I was a teenager, and it makes me wonder what she’s going to be listening to at that age and what her social and societal world is going to be.
As far as how that affects my art and songwriting, I’d say not at all; the goal, as ever and forever, is to write the songs I want to hear, make them as good as possible, and get them out there for you guys to enjoy. That’ll never change. So to go back to my initial point about crazy years being the norm, I’m thinking less about this crazy year these days and much more about the next 10, 15, 20 crazy years. Whatever’s going on in society and everything else outside the home, crazy as it gets, my job is to provide love, consistency, and support inside the home. I just want to do that and to be somebody my daughter’s proud of.
James Langlois: As life (and the world) has changed, the music feels like it’s on a similar path to the one it’s always been on. There is so much to take in, as there always is, and I feel like the songs we make have taken that in but still feel as cohesive as they ever have. So the outlook? The outlook remains taking a lens to the things we experience and making sure that we’re being honest and being fun. As long as we’re keeping those landmarks lensed in the distance, we’re good to go, and it feels like we are.
You seem committed to release one single per year, which by today’s standard is very little. Yet, it seems to be working for The Love Ways. Where does this wide-ranging schedule come from? Is it because you need time and focus to release something you are proud of?
Mark Shreve: I think you nailed it, yeah. At this point in our lives and careers, there’s nobody forcing us to put out anything that we don’t want to, so we always work really hard to make sure whatever we put out into the world is absolutely 100% ready for the world to see. I think there’s also a push from both of us to always be building on what we’ve done before but never repeating. So when we record a song, we want to make sure it fits in really well in our discography but also doesn’t quite sound like anything we’ve done before.
The same thing goes for making our music videos. It’s such a fun thing to work on, and each time we get out our cameras, we really want to make sure we’re doing something bigger and better than we’ve done before. Like, for example, our first video for our song “Desire Lines” from 2022: that was 1 camera, 1 angle, no motion, 1 location, pure performance. And then now we’re here today to talk about “Strange Ceilings”: this video has multiple cameras in constant motion, multiple locations, plot points, and acting beats to hit (laughs). It takes a lot longer to get something like this together.
But to your point about being unhurried, to put it in perspective, we’ve had “Strange Ceilings” recorded since 2023. We recorded it the same weekend we did our last single, “Sunset Signs.” But we didn’t want to just put it out… we wanted to do something bigger, cooler, and better with the video, so we took our time. And to that point (laughs), we’ve got 2 more songs recorded and ready to work on, so we’ll likely continue on our annual schedule. We’ll bring you good content when it’s ready, not a ton of shit content because we’re attention-starved.
James Langlois: It’s the steady progression that works best for us. There’s miles ahead on the road, and I’d say we’re not reactive as opposed to proactive planners. We want to keep going and stepping ahead. The pace may change year to year, but we’re also in no rush to do anything but construct the worlds we want to construct when they feel ready. The benefits of progression.
‘Strange Ceilings’ is your latest single, a sharp and fierce slice of alt-rock charisma with a rather evocative twist. Are we correct in thinking that the record is a tad more reflective and brooding than your previous offerings?
Mark Shreve: I mean, hell yes. When I was writing this one, I wanted very much for it to be something that digs under your skin and lives down there, burrowed real deep. A darker song for darker times, if you will. When I think about our catalogue and the types of songs I want to write, I wanted to have something with a ton of energy but that was extremely moody; not a slow song but a high-energy song that broods. To create a “powerful sense of dread,” if you will.
James Langlois: When writing the lyrics, I started with a very specific image from Neon Genesis Evangelion (for the heads) of a dislocated boy in a place that he belongs but doesn’t want to belong to, and then worked from there into a world of storms. So I think you’re right on the money.
From a sonic standpoint, the arrangement feels more eclectic, with a cleaner sound and an almost progressive character. What were your main influences for ‘Strange Ceilings’? How did the recording process unfold?
Mark Shreve: We worked really hard in the studio to achieve that mood for the song as well. We focused with our producer Rob Freeman on basically doing everything backwards, or doing the opposite of what we normally would. The parts I’d written for synth we ended up playing on guitar, the live bass parts became the brooding, dominating low synth. We used electric bows for guitar parts, we recorded all live drums instead of using the drum machine. But the result, I think, is exactly what we wanted.
To be specific, my goal when writing the song was to land something that falls in between “Immigrant Song” and “Thriller,” but with our usual influences and TLWs ethos. I have a specific moment in my life that I was thinking back on: when I was in the theatre and I first saw the trailer for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The song on the trailer was the Karen O + Trent Reznor cover of “Immigrant Song,” and it just floored me; it was the first time I’d loved electronic music. The tagline for the movie was “The feel bad movie of Christmas.” I wanted all of that in “Strange Ceilings.”
I think it’s interesting as well that you pointed out this one being far cleaner and more progressive — that’s dead on and was super intentional. Again, we recorded this the same weekend we did our last single, “Sunset Signs,” which is a big, guitar-driven rock song. We focused on that one sounding dirty and sloppy, the focus was on feedback sounds and the whole room rumbling. Doing “Strange Ceilings” at the same time, the focus was to do very different things to that, to do something that shows a very different side of us as artists and introduce our audience to more of the shit we can and want to do as a band.
James Langlois: The feeling was so important on this one. Mark and Rob had great ideas on how to juxtapose different sounds, and in the end, it made sense with every piece of the affect putting together a touch, and every part of that touch (we hope) will put someone in the place to feel a little scratchy, a little grand, a little dirty, and a little poetic.
I am going to be honest with you, the single is very well made, it sounds polished to the max, and it is, objectively, a great record. Has anyone from the industry reached out to you for any future opportunities? If that were to happen, would you consider pursuing The Love Ways as a full-time endeavour?
Mark Shreve: That’s really kind of you to say. We definitely try and put things out when we think they’re ready and are as good as they can be, so it’s great to hear that this one feels, sounds, and looks that way to you. I don’t think we’ve ever been any kind of big band (laughs), but I view this stage of our career as a kind of later stage rock band’s lifespan – we’re best friends, we love working together, we work on what we want when we want, but touring isn’t quite in the cards. In the past 2 years, both James and I have gotten married, my daughter was born, we both have full-time jobs… it’s a lot of responsibility and a lot to leave behind to jump back on the road.
We do have industry people reaching out, but I’m yet to get an offer or opportunity that’s an “offer I can’t refuse” (laughs). I think anybody who ever picked up a guitar or wrote a song would love the opportunity to do it full-time, so it’s not that we’re closed to that path, but I’d say the offer would have to be especially sweet for me to leave my current job and say goodbye to my wife and daughter for a while.
That said, if somebody did want to give us the resources, I am extremely confident that me, James, and The Love Ways would make good on that opportunity. I’ll put it like this: right now we have limited resources, and I think what we’re doing is way fucking better than what most other bands are doing. With substantially more resources and a wider audience, I have zero fucking doubt we’d be one of the best bands on the planet.
James Langlois: It would have to be a helluva amount of resources to put a fuller world to life. We love the pace and the depth of what we do. The ability to mine a deeper well or climb a higher peak with things like money and exposure would really have to be an offer and a half.
In true The Love Ways fashion, ‘Strange Ceilings’ ships with a music video, like its predecessors. More and more artists are opting not to invest in a proper music video, instead focusing on short bits for social media. Do long-format visuals still hold value for you?
Mark Shreve: 100% absolutely yes. We make art, not content. I wonder about this a lot; we grew up watching music videos. For me, it’s intrinsic to the artform. It’s this opportunity for the artist to show, not just tell, the audience how they want their song to be understood and consumed. It’s also such a fun medium to mess around with. Making movies is fucking fun and rewarding. We’ve both always absolutely loved movies and music videos, so I don’t think for the two of us there’s any question about NOT doing videos anymore.
But that said, the other part of your question, the constant social media bits, it just truly doesn’t interest us. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. I’ve heard pitches from PR firms on how they’ll teach us TikTok, and I just can’t imagine anything I’d like to do fucking less than that as an artist. But yeah, every time we start working on a music video, we want it to be a statement and to be an artistic complement to what we worked on in the studio. We have a strict “no filming with our phones” rule, and every video we do, I think we get better and grow and build on what we’re capable of.
I think as well, the last ~10 years of how music’s been made and consumed is a fluke. Like, talk to anybody about it – artists, fans, industry people – they all fucking hate it. It’s been awful. I actually think about this story of Denzel Washington telling Michael B. Jordan to stay off social media, “Why would they pay to see you on the weekend if they see you all week for free?” The artists I like and respect aren’t pandering on TikTok and Instagram to 5-second attention spans. I think that shit’s on its last breath.
Look at what Idles and Turnstile are doing: they’re not just making videos, they’re making fucking incredible videos. It’s built deeply into how they go to their audiences. Again, they make art, not content. That’s what we’re trying to do. People are hungry for it, and yeah, I think we’ll look back on the last 10 years as an unfortunate misstep in how artists put their work out there to their audiences.
James Langlois: We love the challenge that a music video brings. It’s a project unto itself, and it stretches the art into different realms. The short-form content definitely creates moment and launches a certain type of rocket, but there’s always going to be something attractive about the larger piece those cutdowns are cut down from. We also just fucking love shooting material like this, and we’re not going to stop.
I am aware that you are not touring right now; for the sake of fun, let’s say that you had the opportunity to support your favourite band on tour… who would that band be?
Mark Shreve: (Laughs) Despite us not being on tour, I’d say this is something I think about every single day. It’s interesting; I think James and I have different influences and favorite bands, so our answers may be a bit different. I’d love to open for Every Time I Die, because that would mean that they’d gotten back together and were touring again, but alas, I don’t know that we quite fit that bill (laughs again).
To that point, there’s an aspect of not just who are our favorite bands, but what’s a band that we’d sound good against and really do justice to with our support? For me, it would be Brand New. I’d like to believe that if you paid for a ticket to the Brand New show, and we got up there first and played our song, that you’d enjoy them. I never thought they’d tour again, and I’d love to be up there supporting them. James is going to say Idles though, and that works pretty perfectly too (laughs).
James Langlois: Can’t say no to Idles, for sure, but it would also be so fun to be on a more country bill opening up for Tyler Childers’ band or someone like that. Big, fun, dancin’.
What are the next steps for your project? Anything exciting on the horizon?
Mark Shreve: Always. Trust us to not rush, but you can also trust us to keep our output consistent. We’ve got two new songs that are unreleased that we’re going to start thinking up videos for now, and we’ll be trying to do something different and special for each of them. Outside of that, I think it’s looking more like we’ll go back to Audio Pilot Studios to work with our producer Rob again at least once more, I’d love to get to a point where we have 9 or 10 songs fully done and then look at compiling them into an album (like a true vinyl) that we release.
I love the idea of doing it backwards, rather than the traditional cadence where you’d record an album then put out the singles, we’d be recording the singles, making a music video for each, and putting them all out, and then, to tie it all together and put a stamp on it, we close that chapter out with a true vinyl release of everything.
For me especially, I’d love to have a tangible, physical record to give my daughter. I’d also expect us to at some point do an EP — each time we go into the studio now, we focus on creating two disparate singles, trying to focus on showing as much of what we can do as possible. I’d love to take a bit more time and go in and do a 4 or 5-song cohesive artistic statement.
James Langlois: An album of the era would really be something. The path we’ve been on, the twists it’s taken us through, having an artifact to refer to would be an incredible way to look in a backwards mirror and reflect. But as always: onwards, inwards, outwards, and always. The Love Way Never Die.
