On SPARK, Whitney are rebuilt in glass and neon – The FADER

We talked for an interview in the summer of 2020 about making Candid and how difficult it was for Julien to inhabit the voice of David Byrne, for example. How much did making that record influence how you wrote SPARK particularly the opener, Nothing Remains?

Julien Ehrlich: That was a transition into me trying to utilize the low end of my falsetto and pull as much warmth out of it as possible. If you go back and listen to Light Upon the Lake and some songs on Forever Turned Around, it's way deeper in my throat, like Kermit the Frog. While making SPARK, it felt a lot more comforting to sit into a warmer zone in my voice.

There are parts where there just isn't falsetto. It was one of the first things that hit me about the record, like, "Oh, this is quite a big risk." Were there nerves about that?

JE: The thing that feels most risky is performing the new songs live: It's way harder to drum or do anything else while focusing [on the vocals]. Where I'm singing on most of SPARK is the most delicate [part of my voice]. To do Kimmel, I really had to work on breathing at the right times. It was so much more meticulous than any of our ramshackle songs off Light Upon the Lake, where I can just soar. As far as recording it, a lot of the record does feel risky to us, but for different reasons.

Max, I know it took a lot of work to try and fit the covers on Candid into the Whitney universe. Did that arrangement process have an impact on you guys blowing up the sound on SPARK?

Max Kakacek: Candid, to me, represents the most organic capture of the live band. We'd pick a song in the morning and everyone would take an instrument, and the whole start of the cover would happen completely live. Then we'd add in arrangement parts to bring out certain melodies people were playing.

On SPARK, partly as a function of us being isolated from the live band in Portland, it became a much more meticulous studio project, where capturing a live performance wasn't the focus; it was more creating a world, just the two of us.

JE: That Kelela cover with Tucker Martine, which we did after recording the bulk of the live band stuff We mixed, mastered, and basically finished it all in one day. We started SPARK two weeks later, and it was like, "Oh, shit. We can probably make a really crazy record together."

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On SPARK, Whitney are rebuilt in glass and neon - The FADER