Delicate Flowers is just one of the many projects that Sniffling Indie Kids label owners Frank DeFranco and Eric Goldberg participate in, but it may be the best one where they join forces to create an amalgamation of homage to 90’s alt rock and spin that with modern indie rock elements. Here’s what the guys had to say about their newest album:
So it's been a while between albums and shows with Delicate Flowers, what has everyone been up to musically since the release of Die Progress Unit 1?
Eric: Donnie released a great solo album called "On the Rise". We were practicing relatively regularly, working on new material before the Pandemic, and trying to get this album mixed and mastered. We had finished the recording for it in April 2018. I personally just got burned out on playing live and going to shows and needed a break. Plus I got married and got a dog and Frank had gotten married the previous year, so we just wanted to play and not worry about anything else band related. Now though, I do miss being able to go to shows and see my friends in the scene. Last year was actually the first year where I personally didn't release any music since like 2008 and the world didn't seem to mind haha.
Frank: Getting a better home recording setup has been crucial in the time between the halves of this double album mini thingy we did. A lot of file sharing has been going on amongst the band (even prior to COVID-19) as well as with people outside of this specific band. Having the ability to do recording and file sharing has been essential in the past few months. It’s made not having people to play with in one room a lot more digestible and presented new ways of writing songs that I really wasn’t accustomed to.
Lots of marriages and kids on the way, how has that effected your lives in general and as it relates to the band?
Eric: We've definitely become grown ups in a lot of ways the past few years and that kind of means putting other things before music, like family and your job. We have an understanding that playing and making music isn't just something we do, it's a fundamental part of our personalities so it won't ever go away fully, no matter what life obligations or obstacles come our way. That being said, I feel a person has to naturally prioritize different things as they go through life or else you’re going to end up hating something that you love. You shouldn’t care about the exact same things you did when you were 20 throughout your entire life. Growing up a lot of times seems to have a bad connotation to it but I think it’s pretty cool. The longer you live, the more you should learn and understand that you don’t know everything. As you gather more information about the world and life via experience, you update your ideas and point of view.
As owners of Sniffling Indie Kids do you want to talk about the evolution of what that label became over the years and the things that have spawned from it, for instance like Max & John's label Pizza Bagel Records?
Eric: We had fun going crazy for a while and putting out a ton of releases but it just wasn't sustainable for us so we made the conscious choice to scale back in a major way. Frank, Joe, and I also had our day jobs get more serious so we don't have as much time to dedicate to it anymore. For now, we're mostly just keeping it as something we use to put out our own musical projects within the band, our individual members, and our close friends, if they want us to do it. I’m glad Cozz and Max are doing their own thing now because they do music for the right reasons.
Frank: The inspiration for starting the label was the same inspiration we had for starting the Tiny Giant Artist Collective back in 2010/2011 - if something doesn’t exist that you want to exist, the only thing preventing it from happening is you and your will to do it. Running our own label at the capacity we did is something I will always be appreciative of having had the opportunity to do. As Eric so eloquently put, priorities are a bit different now. My son was due on 8/24 (stubborn like his Dad, still not here yet). I love SIK and the SIK family that grew over the years, but nothing is more important to me than getting this Dad thing right and that really needs my full attention right now as I figure out exactly what “getting this Dad thing right” means. Music will still be important, it always will be, just not as important as it once was in my life. SIK isn’t dead, just kind of...resting after a years long marathon to recover. We did 50+ releases (most including 1-2 physical formats) in under 4 years. Just need to catch our breath for a bit. And seeing Max and Cozz bring Pizza Bagel into this world, doing it for the same reasons we launched SIK - it is a BEAUTIFUL thing. You want to see something, try something, experience something? You are your only roadblock. Go and get it. Make it happen. Mess up, try again, enjoy the process and learn every step of the way.
Every record Eric works on has so much 90's influence in them, can you talk about what you guys think you sound like or who is your biggest influences? I always hear Smashing Pumpkins and Silversun Pickups but not only that, like all the bands those bands were influenced by like grunge stuff to Pavement to Queens of The Stone Age . What modern influences do you think you have?
Eric: Yea, I can't help it haha. No matter what I do, it has a 90s flavor because it's just deeply instilled in me and what comes out naturally. I'd say our biggest influences as a band are '91 to '96 Smashing Pumpkins, as you've said, Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, Jesus and Mary Chain, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Fugazi, the Stooges, Black Sabbath, John Frusciante, and Kyuss, actually. In fact, Frank and I showed Donnie and Skylar the Kyuss track 'Gardenia' before a practice and right after that we wrote 'In Decay' and 'The God that Bled' I think. I just love heavy, distorted guitar and noise mixed with melody and that kind of is the '90s in a nutshell. I long to be swallowed by distortion.
As you know, if you're a musician, you find value in all kinds of music. We're all deeply influenced by funk music thanks to our love of the Chili Peppers so we listen to a lot of James Brown, Betty Davis, and Funkadelic plus various motown/soul artists like the Temptations and Curtis Mayfield. We like Vince Staples, Kendrick, Tyler, and Run the Jewels. In the past few years, I’ve also embraced my nu metal past and have come back around to listening to the good stuff from when I was 14 like System of a Down, Deftones, Slipknot, early Korn...things like that. If you’re into weirdo heavy music, there’s some great stuff in nu metal. I like some modern metal in the black, doom, stoner, and death realms. Modern music I'm into that maybe isn’t obvious are the new Liturgy album, Krallice, Boris, Kurt Vile, Big Thief, and Donnie and I love just about everything Ty Segall does.
Frank: I know the question was on the 90’s, but Eric just listed a lot of bands and didn’t include Talking Heads. That upsets me.
Why an album in two parts? Do you feel like this new record is a continuation of the last record, a sequel, part two like it should have been a double album? Is there a part 3?
Eric: We just wrote a ton of songs in a very short span of time and decided we liked all 17 enough to record them. Sky did all the drums in 2 to 3 days including set up. Frank and I kind of pushed the band into the idea. I think Sky was worried that it'd be our undoing but all of us agree that it worked out in the end now that it's all over. While we thought the idea of a double album was absurd in a cool way, we're experienced enough to know that dropping 17 songs at once as a relatively unknown band is a stupid idea and would lead to most of the songs not being listened to. So we thought splitting them up was a good way to highlight them. Plus with the songs broken up into reasonable chunks, they fly by and maybe leave a person wanting more rather than getting sick of it two thirds of the way through. I think albums from the '70s are cool like Sabbath and Zeppelin for example, where it's just like 8 or 9 songs. I love Soundgarden and love all of their albums but I personally don't want to make albums as long as Superunknown or Down on the Upside.
Frank: What’s funny is that DPUI and DPUII combined is just less than 50 minutes. Blood Sugar Sex Magik is 73 minutes long and isn’t considered a “Double Album.” Digestibility.
Frank has been known for his expertise in guitar pedals and tones, do you want to talk us through interesting things that were done sound wise for this record?
Eric: Frank plays bass live with the band but added a ton of third guitar parts to the songs to fill it out. He really understands sound and what's going on in our favorite recordings in a deep way. He's a genius on guitar and guitar effects so it was great to utilize that aspect too.
Frank: Eric is too kind here. Writing and recording guitars and sounds is my favorite thing to do. I also can’t take full credit because Skylar Ross Adler is also an unreal recording engineer and I love working with him. On this record we used mostly amps distorted by fuzz and distortion pedals (Eric wanted his guitar “to sound like it is tearing through the speaker”) but accented with a bunch of fuzzed out DI guitars for that “in your face” sound. Also, space is everything for dynamics, so always being conscious of that was key. One little secret is that there is not a single synthesizer keyboard on either record. We did get to use a real Mellotron on “The God that Bled” while at Lakehouse recording drums with Erik Romero but other than that, we manufactured our own “synth” sounds. I set up a loop pedal. Then I would have Eric or myself loop the same note 10-20 times without capturing the attack of the pick sound (strum, wait five seconds, then hit record), running it through some chorus, delays, and/or reverb to create a warbling drone. I would then record it to one track on a 4-track cassette player and drink a beer for five minutes. Then create another loop of another note, hit record on the next track, drink more beer. Do this for all four tracks so like Track 1 = E, Track 2 = F, Track 3 = A, Track 4 = G. I would then run a delay pedal and reverb pedal after the output of the 4-trackl, DI into the computer and play the 4-track like an instrument by riding the fader on each track to switch notes. This is producing the “synth” sounds on “Your Wish is My Demand”, “Wary of Well Meaning Strangers” and “Strange” on DPUII and was also used on DPUI as well. Thank you Alessandro Cortini for the inspiration behind this technique.
How was finishing up a record during quarantine? easier or harder than normally? Where was this recorded, who produced it and who had the most influence over the overall outcome?
Eric: We finished recording in 2018 and meant to release it in 2019, maybe 6 months after the release of the first one. Unfortunately, life got in the way and it just took forever to mix and master the tracks for a bunch of reasons.
Frank: Our drummer Skylar Ross Adler who runs Skyler Ross Recording recorded everything except his own drums, which were recorded by Erik Kase Romero at Lakehouse in Asbury. Then we had the record mixed/mastered by a very old friend of mine, Jeremy Cimino. I may have helped dial in tones, but collaboratively as a band, we carved out the sound of the record. Skylar really gave it its life and body and Jeremey gave it its depth.
What is next for everyone involved musically? More Delicate Flowers? Or other stuff?
Eric: Frank and I have a new electronic/rock project called Titanoboa. We just finished a five song EP that we’ll be releasing later this year. Sky mixed and mastered it and we’re psyched about it. I also recorded six songs in a similar electronic/rock vein that I’m going to release as an EP at some point, probably under the name 3ric Goldb3rg. Donnie is working on more solo material as well.
Frank: I also have some other stuff cooking in the kitchen with some friends I’ve spent years collaborating with in the past...more on that to come.
Eric: We also have a bunch of song ideas in the works for Delicate Flowers but since we can’t really practice, we’re trying to adjust to some way of writing and putting the songs together in isolation. Maybe doing it this way will result in some kind of cool take on what the songs can be. Time will tell. Releasing Die Progress Unit II and getting the positive feedback we’ve gotten about it has definitely energized us to continue working on the new material.