It turned out to be the right time for Harlee Case and Josh Smith of New Constellations to believe again, a mindset that has pushed the Portland-based synthwave duo further than they once thought possible. Their debut full-length project, It Comes In Waves, which releases May 15th via Nettwerk Music Group, represents the culmination of years and years of experimentation and, in turn, evolution of Smith’s production combined with Case’s deeply personal yet cathartic lyricism. This moment can’t be overstated in their already successful careers: It Comes In Waves feels like the opening paragraph of a novel you already know you’ll love, a fitting comparison for a band that, while on their debut full-length release, is just getting started, and they aren’t anywhere close to slowing down.
Throughout the conversation with Case and Smith, themes of creative freedom and lyrical expression emerge as essential to the making of this record, but none shine brighter than the theme that it’s never too late to do what you love and that hope is always around the corner, waiting for you to believe again. New Constellations is the definition of that, this interview shows it, and shows that New Constellations believes in you, too.
Hit Parader: Just to jump in, your debut record It Comes In Waves comes out May 15th. That’s super exciting, congrats!
Both: Thank you!
HP: With this project being your first full-length release, what creative choices were you able to explore more in depth compared to the singles and other releases in the past?
Josh Smith: Yeah, I think for me, what was big was, I produced all of our music, and for this album we worked in a studio with a close friend of ours. His name was Cam Spies, and it gave me an opportunity to be just a musician in the studio and not running the session necessarily. So I think we got to explore some more musical ideas, just in terms of having someone there to help facilitate some of the ideas. So for me, I’d be like, “Oh, I’m hearing this keyboard part.” But if it was just me and Harlee in our studio, like we normally do, I’d be like, “Ah, it’s so much work to get the keyboard out, plug it in,” that I’d be like, “I’m not even going to bother.” So this was really neat to just be like, “Oh, I’m hearing this keyboard part,” and then by the time I’m finished with that sentence, the keyboard was already plugged in and set up. And he’s like, “All right, go for it.” So I feel like we got to, I personally got to explore some cool musical ideas that were just a lot easier to explore because we had a third person there facilitating a lot of the sessions.
HP: There’s less of a barrier to entry, in a sense.
JS: Yeah. When you’re the one plugging in the cord and pressing play and pressing record and then playing it, it takes a lot out of you. So it was really cool to be able to just be like, “Yeah, let’s do that.” And the same thing with Harlee and I working together too is that he got to do that for both of us. And so we got to toss ideas off of each other and enter a flow state without having to worry about the more technical aspect of the session, and we got to just focus on being creative.
Harlee Case: I feel like because this collection of songs is written over five years, we’ve written hundreds and hundreds of songs and explored so many different genres and ways that we were feeling with no “this is going to be on an album” at all. So when it came down to actually making the album, we had so much to choose from and maybe chose stuff that we wouldn’t have written if we were sitting down and writing an album right now. So I think the time that we had to explore a lot of different genres was really helpful as well.
JS: Absolutely.
HP: That’s awesome. And with bringing producers like Cameron [Spies], Tyler [Blake] and and Mighty Mike to, in your words, “sprinkle some sugar on the record,” were there any specific moments or songs where they added something to the track that you didn’t imagine previously, but now can’t really envision the song without after?
HC: I bet you we have the same answer, Josh.
JS: I mean, I know one of mine personally is the song “Believe Again” that Tyler worked on. He added these drums. And the first time we heard it, I remember the moment we listened to it for the first time, we were both like, “Whoa.” I wasn’t even sure if I liked it at first. But now every time I listen to it or replay it live, I do the little drum fill he did [air drums], and I can’t imagine that song without it. And I listen to the old demo now and was like, “What was I thinking?” Obviously, those drums he put in, they’re so good, but it’s not something I would have necessarily gone with. What’s cool about that is it unlocks that in our brains now. And so now it’s like, “Oh, I wouldn’t have chosen drums like that, but now that I see someone put those drums on our songs, I’m like, ‘Oh, now I get to do that now.’” Now I know how and where, so it sort of unlocks that opportunity for me too.
HC: And then Mike on “I Disappear” just took out sections so it just has these moments of silence that are so sick. When we’re playing it live, it’s a big theatrical moment now of these pauses, and I just love that part.
JS: It’s like we have that chopped up “wake up,” and so there are parts after the chorus where everything drops out and she’s like, “Wake up.” And it’s just cool that we’re like, “Dang, that two seconds of silence makes the whole song.” And it adds – it’s so weird that a moment of silence can add so much energy live too, but that’s become one of our favorite songs to play live because we can pause and really rock it for a second.
HC: Yeah, it was just wild. I never thought about it like that, that it’s this absence of energy that brings so much energy to the live set, which is so weird.
HP: Super cool. And you mentioned “Believe Again,” and it’s such a wonderful track, and the lyrical content is so pertinent, not just to musicians but a lot of creatives in today’s ecosystem. I’d love to know how your relationship with the song shifted as your life changed since first writing it, and how you want the message to be perceived by people going through some of the same things you were.
HC: That’s actually one of the last songs that were written on the album, and that song was specifically me writing it to myself about 10 years ago, having the bravery to try again. And I think that every time I personally listen to it, I get so much energy to keep trying again and to reinvent myself in new ways and to believe in myself more and just continuously want to push the message to people that you can take breaks. You can completely put down your craft if it’s not the right time for you, but it’s also completely okay to pick up and try again and that it’s never too late. That quote, “never too late to be what you could have been,” I love that so much. And Josh and I put out our first singles of our entire career, our whole lives, at 30 and 33 years old. There would have been a point in time where I thought I was too old to make it as a musician anymore because I should have been something by a younger age or whatever. And I love to get to be an example of that, that it’s not true at all. It’s all up to us when we want to do things, and it’s just never too late.
JS: I think a song like “Believe Again,” what’s cool too about growth and evolution is that it’s never done. So this song is talking about a growth and an achievement that has happened, but that doesn’t mean that we’re done growing and achieving too. So I think a song like “Believe Again” can speak to the ongoing driving and achieving and changing and growing, and not just, “Oh, I got there and I’m done.” It’s like, “Oh, I got there, and that proved to me how much further I’m capable of going.”
HP: Love that. And you also mentioned some of your first singles, and “Hot Blooded” is actually on the track list for the record. When you think of the track today, what parts of its personality or lyricism still resonate with who New Constellations is today after five years of dropping music?
HC: I have a pretty bad habit of nearly all of my songs, all of my things that I write, coming from this hopeful, yearning space. And I recently found footage of me when I was five years old, and I was writing songs like that. So I think that there’s something embedded in me deeply that will always have this desire and push and pull that’s within me. And so I don’t think this song will ever go out of style with just the way that I naturally feel about life.
HP: And with the topics discussed on “Dandelion” and “I Disappear,” how do you approach vulnerability in lyricism in a way that’s healthy to you and cathartic?
HC: Yeah, I tend to freestyle, and I think that that in itself is a type of therapy because I am allowing everything to come forward. And sometimes there’s stuff in there that I don’t feel should be out in the world or that I want to be repeated a bunch of times, but the majority of the time I feel like it does. I feel like just being really honest with myself about how I’m feeling and allowing myself to just put it all out there is really healthy. And I think too that I really try to reflect on every song, that I’m like, “Am I putting too much blame in someone else’s court?” Because I always like to bring it back to, “I have a part in this. I have a part in the relationships that I’m in.” And so a lot of the editing process for me a lot of times will be, “How can I own my part of whatever I’m saying if it’s including someone else?”
JS: I think what’s great about a lot of this stuff is as personal as it can be, there’s a lot of it that’s universal too. And what we’ve discussed in the past is Harlee writes these super personal songs about super personal moments in her life, and then sometimes those moments pass and you’re like, “Well, I’m not going through that anymore. I’m not that person anymore.” But what is cool about it is that somebody is going through that at all times. And so when you write a song about a situation, even if that’s not a situation you’re struggling with anymore, you having written that song – or her having written that song – helped her process and go through that time. And now people can hear that song, and it can help them process that and go through that time as well. So I think we’re able to continue to sing these emotional, specific songs even once we’re past those moments because we know that it’s helping someone else, potentially, that is going through that at the time.
HP: Music is always a very personal medium of art, and it can always be interpreted in different ways; I love that viewpoint on it. So just to wrap up, if after listening to the new record the listener had to come away with one takeaway or feeling from either the lyrics or the musicianship, what would you most hope that to be?
JS: Harlee and I talk about wanting to inspire people and inspire hope a lot, but we don’t necessarily want to tell people where to spend that hope. So my hope for our record would be that if someone listened to it, they would feel an inspiration or hope to then get to use however they feel like they need to use it in those moments. But I would just want someone to feel better or something afterwards, energized in some way. But I don’t want to tell them how they should be feeling. I just want them to be feeling something.
HC: Yeah. And I mean, being an artist is so special because I get to feel so understood in writing these songs and then get to hear how people felt understood. And so I hope that the lyrics and the music can help them to understand themselves more and be like, “Oh my gosh, that is straight out of my own brain. I couldn’t put the words to it, and that’s exactly how I feel.” And sometimes music has helped me so much in those ways to even move through challenging feelings. Sometimes putting a name to it is the first thing to being able to release it. And so yeah, I hope that people can understand themselves more and relate to themselves and us more and have faith for the future and hope for the future for themselves. The last song we wrote on the album, “Edge of the World”; I really hope that a lot of people really love that song because I feel like there’s something really powerful about seeing the world as your playground and being able to receive the goodness of: we’re having a really hard time, but there’s also a lot of beautiful things to come.
New Constellations’ debut album It Comes In Waves is out now.