Ryan Brewer and Pat Elifritz of Good Night and Good Morning believe that, like whatever that wine was, they will never sell their music before its time. At present there is not much risk of that—their last self-titled EP was originally released in 2009 and was rereleased in January 2011 by European label Own, and although they are in the “recording process” in Brewer’s Bucktown apartment, they admit that it might be optimistic in hoping the principal recording could be done by fall, with thoughts of perhaps an early 2012 release date.
The record they’re working on now, which as of yet is unnamed, will be their first full-length, and they plan on giving Own first shot at it again. They loved working with them on rereleasing their previous EP, and indicate that Own has a lot of interest in releasing it, once they hear the finished product.
When asked if there is a central aesthetic behind their music, or what they say when people ask “what kind of music they play,” Elifritz tells people that they play “slow, sad music,” and elaborates that he’s always thought of their music as “very hazy … this is not minimalist composition, and it’s definitely not ambient music, but it requires [listeners] to sit down and turn the lights off—”
“—and mellow out,” Brewer interjects, “this is definitely end-of-the-day type music. We’re just now becoming content with the fact that we’re not ‘party music’; we’re never going to be ‘party music.”
Elifritz said, “We’re not going to sound good in a car [driving] on the interstate, that’s just how it’s going to be.” When asked if it would sound good if one had been driving all night, he says “That’s dangerous,” which is followed by hearty laughter—they don’t recommend it. However the end-of-the-day “when our music sounds best to us, we are totally OK with being a band that really exists for people in that “night, hazy, loungy sort of feel.”
They name influences as slow-core and ’90s indie rock. They recognize there’s an identification with groups like Low and Codeine, but Brewer says he hears a lot more going on. He’s been listening to a lot of heavier, more aggressive music, and says he can hear it in his guitar tone. “The songs just sound bigger and more full to me, and I can draw comparisons to a lot of other bands as well.”
Seminal grindcore act Napalm Death is named almost as a joke, and Brewer indicates their sounds are not far from the mark. He cites Jesu, a side project of former Napalm Death and Godflesh member Justin Broadrick, and mentions he now he writes “slow, heavy, sweaty pop songs that are really amazing.”
He also hears Mogwai, and Elifritz interjects that there is definitely some post-rock influence, and they’ve been listening to post-rock music throughout theire entire recording process. “None of us have been diehard Explosions In The Sky fans or anything, but we’ve always been around that music … a lot of times our songs are written as instrumental songs first and then the vocals kind of flow on the side.”
Their vocals are described as one of the five or six elements of the songs, as its own instrument, “rather than the vocals being on the top and it being purely about the lyrics,” Brewer says. Although he is Good Night & Good Morning’s lyricist, he’s quick to indicate that he is not a “lyrical listener.” “I listen to the tone and the mood of a song way more than the lyrics, so while I sing and I write the lyrics—it’s an important part—but it’s definitely not the most important part.”
Brewer focuses on the vocal pattern of what the song should be and gets a feel for what its word structures should be, and fills in words that fit with the vibe of the song. He takes the word structures that he’s found and molds his own story into them. On the surface it sounds a tad pretentious, but the technique clearly produces compelling results on their eponymous EP.
Although the group has played with another guitarist, a cellist and a harpist in the past, in the almost-five years of the band’s existence, they only began playing with a drummer for the first time last year.
They are most excited about the recent addition of a full-time drummer, and feel like just as the addition of vibraphones added a new dimension for their music with their last EP, Milwaukee’s Sahan Jayasuriya as a permanent fixture will do much the same on their first full-length record.
Elifritz describes the addition of the drums to the group’s sound as “very necessary … it got to the point where the songs that we were writing just needed something,” just as “the songs on the previous EP used the vibraphone as the starting point for a lot of those songs.”
Brewer says before the vibes were added, the sound of Good Night & Good Morning was strictly acoustic guitar and piano, before Elifritz got the vibraphone and Brewer started to play the electric guitar on their songs, and “we try to change it up with every recording that we do, and now that we have drums, that’s really making things a lot more full.”
In the past, Elifritz indicates in his typically animated fashion, it’s been easy to do four- or five-song EPs with a “two person structure,” but now they want to do something “a little more complicated, interesting, involved—so we need some more elements we can add.”
Brewer adds, “these are the first songs we’ve ever written around drums, and it’s completely different” and Elifritz indicates some excitement at the prospect of playing live with drums on new songs.
Both members of the duo are happy that Jayasuriya has joined, even though he can usually only come to Chicago from Milwaukee once a week to work on the drum tracks for their compositions. “Sahan was already familiar with our music and was already devoted to the type of music that we play; it was a really intuitive thing for us.” Brewer adds that he is “one of those people that me and Pat could talk to about music all day … he’s kinda weird like us.” Both of them are quick to add that the new songs are “still minimal and the drums especially are super-minimal, so he’s a drummer that knows when not to play.”
The new album will also be distinct from their previous work in the vein of “static and washy noise that I associate with the aspects of shoegaze [music] that I like,” as Brewer puts it. Elifritz adds that there is still a pop element to their music, but they are adding a lot of noise to their new recordings.
Good Night & Good Morning don’t play live very much, at least they haven’t recently—Elifritz indicates when they play live, they “hope it will be more of an event for people, and it’s going to be more interesting if they haven’t seen or heard anything from us for six months or longer.” They also try to come up with something unique for every show, they always integrate a visual element, and often the live arrangements differ from how the songs were recorded.
Given that they don’t have any live shows coming up, and their focus is currently on recording, when asked about the next step, Elifritz believes just as their music awards listener patience, the whole process of putting their songs together and recording an album requires patience on the part of the group as well. “I think the album will sound better if it just comes together when it does,” he says.
When asked if there’s ever a danger that the tempos will pick up on their next release, the duo share a laugh. Elifritz says sometimes they think the music they’re recording is fast, but when they listen back to it, it’s “seriously slow.”
Brewer says, “We just have such a high tolerance for slow music, that it sounds completely normal to me. We’ve tried to play a song faster, and I’m always, like, ‘this just feels wrong. It needs to be slow.’ It’s definitely possible, but for this album we’re focusing on stuff that is slow, and I dare you to not fall asleep.”
Elifritz says that a lot of people have told him their music is the last thing they listen to before they go to sleep, “meaning that ‘I fell asleep listening to your album.’ I find that alright. I’ve definitely fallen asleep listening to our music.”
Brewer is quick to add though, that there is definitely sleepier music available than Good Night & Good Morning.
They play a track from their recording sessions, a rough cut with incomplete vocals called “Philadelphia” (it’s about a girl, Brewer says), and if the gorgeous, soaring melodies and scintillating sonics are any indication of what to expect from their full-length debut, patient listeners’ patience will not only be rewarded, but will pay off in a big way.
Photo by: Brittany Pyle
