Interview: The Shrubs - Slowglider

The Shrubs released their track 'Slowglider' on November 17, which will capture the hearts of listeners from day one. Their unique style is very well known in the music community and listeners always look forward to their release. The Shrubs hail from the United States, Houston, TX. According to the announcement, the song 'Slowglider' is going to be a part of their upcoming LP, which is scheduled for January 2022. I think it's worth waiting and in the meantime check out the interview I did with The Shrubs. There is some valuable information there.

By Kamil Bobin

Discovered via Musosoup

Hey The Shrubs, super nice to have the chance to chat with you. What have you been up to over the past year in this big old mess?

We have both been very busy really, with music mostly of course! Neither one of us are extremely social, so our day to day lives didn't really get subjected to a complete upheaval like lots of others have.

How do you balance your time in the studio with other commitments such as a part-time job, family, admin?

In that regard we are also really lucky to have people around us who are pretty understanding and patient. We do spend a lot of our time writing and recording....so we are probably very unbalanced!

Your latest song is 'Slowglider'. Can you tell us more about the making of it and if there were any unusual things happening during the process?

Slowglider was actually written and recorded as an instrumental demo a few years ago, with the intention of one day doing something with it. When we started writing songs for this album it was revisited and rearranged and finally given lyrics. Since the track was older, recording sessions for it went a lot faster than many of our others do! I (Miguel) really spent a lot more time than I usually do on tracks to get all those vocal harmonies down.

Can you tell us how you came to form the band? How did you meet?

Well, we are brothers, so that's how we met! haha. I (Miguel) had a high school band but our drummer was very unreliable, we would rehearse in my moms garage, and my little brother (Josh) would always hang around with us. One of those days when the drummer didn't show up, we just put Josh on drums and had him keep a beat while we tried to practice over it. So that's how we started making music together.

How do you share the responsibilities of music? Are you in agreement in your cooperation?

We both contribute in complementary ways, a lot of the arrangements are dictated by Josh's drumlines, sometimes we actually start with his drumming and build a song around the drums as the primary instrument. The melodies and vocals are mostly done by myself ( Miguel), but I think we have a very egalitarian approach overall.

How do you know when a work is finished?

That really varies I suppose, some songs are nearly totally planned out before we even start recording, others we may keep adding parts to them until the additions start to diminish the song, really it just depends on the song and how it "feels." Songs tend to just feel complete when they are.

Can you write what was your best performance in your career? How do you remember it?

They are all great! Ha, I mean, Josh enjoys performance more than I do, to me I always feel like we could have done better.

Do you have a mentor or coach?

Hmm, that's not really something I've ever considered.

Who is your favourite musician?

There are really too many we enjoy to pick just one. A few would be Ronald Jones from the Flaming Lips, The Pixies, Foxygen, The Beatles, Windows 96 and Foxes in Fiction, there are many many more, but those are the first that come to mind!

What are your plans for next year?

Same thing we do every year, try to take over the world!!