On the new Spaceface single from “Be Here Forever”, Jake Ingalls described the record as, “a blissful cruiser about driving an extra block around to enjoy the moment and finish the song that’s playing—feeling lucky in love, living in the moment, and not wanting it to end.”
Being in the moment is something Jake and I spent a lot of time talking about during our interview. Now more than ever, it seems imperative to be present with the art we choose to engage with. A lot of psychedelic rock music aims to take us higher and further away, but at what cost? Spaceface are aware of this dilemma. In Jake’s words, “The true psychedelia is the turning inward.”
In this wonderful conversation with Jake, we tackle everything from the band’s upcoming album Lunar Manor, their upcoming mini-tour opening for Husbands, being online friends with the band Cheekface, and music promotion in the era of Tiktok and streaming.
The spring and more.
I wanted to start with something a bit weird. You posted a meme on Instagram post in March that said, “Me after I take my little walk and remember that nothing is fixed and that everything is in a constant state of transformation and that magic is everywhere.”
What does the spring Equinox mean to you? And how are you finding magic right now at a time where things kind of feel not super magical?
Jake Ingalls: I moved from Memphis, Tennessee. So, I feel like winter there was pretty brutal. Usually it gets cold enough to be miserable, but not cold enough for it to really snow. You get a lot of ice rain and it’s kind of a marshland. When you finally get to spring, it’s like some semblance of hope. I said this the other day to my friend, I’m like, “I feel like every full moon’s about letting go of what doesn’t work anymore.” And she goes, that’s part of the ritual, actually.
I’m still getting in touch with that sort of mystic side. I feel like for a lot of my 20s, I was around a lot of fucking dudes. And that sort of stuff is shooed more. So to me, I feel like the spring equinox is just, it’s more about renewal and letting go of things that you don’t need. I’ve been trying to do less podcasts and more active listening. I feel like a lot of the magic has been more in these interactions that are small, but they build up.
Magic to me used to mean something big and wonderful just happened. And now I feel like something magic can be as little as my partner cataloging. It’s been other stuff. Cooking, walking, finding little joys and avoiding my phone. I’ve also been changing my relationship to my body and food.
One of my favorite writers shared something similar on BlueSky a while back. They were saying that the real test of this moment will be how you respond, not going in right away, not jumping in immediately. It’s responding to things when necessary and if you do respond, respond slowly. And it’s 100% true.
I started doing that stuff. And then somebody was like, “Dude, you look good. How’s it going?” And I go, “Unfortunately, I’ve been drinking less and taking a walk every day. And I’m using my phone less. I hate to report that it works.”
That’s the worst part, it actually does work. [laughs]
It’s fucked.
Spaceface’s past music.
I wanted to ask about the first track from your last album Anemoia called “Universe Whisper”. When I listen to it, the song puts me in a state of wanting to reinvent. It has that feeling of, “Okay, I’m emerging from something into becoming a better person.”
Well, first of all, you picked up on exactly what I was going for. That was a big moment of reinvention for me and for the group. We had gone from being like this six piece gang of bros from Memphis to where suddenly people are like, “I can’t do this anymore.” So, it was a big time of reinvention and thoughtfulness about that. As far as what it looks like, I knew that I wanted Derek Brown, who I was playing in the Flaming Lips at the time still. And I wanted him to be on the record, but I knew he wasn’t ever going to come to the studio just cause he’s kind of a homebody.
We were at soundcheck and that airy synth is straight up a recording from my phone laying down underneath his keyboard. And when he got done, he goes, “what the hell?” I asked him if I could use it and he said, yes. Then I just went into Logic and played the rest of the stuff around it. There’s an orchestra tuning underneath it that I sampled.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been part of an ensemble like that, strings or horns or something, but there’s this neat trick that I’ve always wanted to do. It’s an intoxicating feeling, but our band director in high school used to have this thing where you all warm up in the same key, but you’re all playing different shit. It creates a huge glow out of this cacophony. And I wanted that to feel like that because I think that’s what reinvention sort of feels like. You can focus it, if you can conduct it.
There’s such a great story behind that.
Lyrics wise, I wanted it to feel like you’re joining a cult, but it’s like a party cult. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Beyond the Black Rainbow, but I was pretty inspired by the beginning of that. I think just part of how I was feeling at the time seeped into that little prose.
Then, Jarod [Evans] just took that phone recording, put it in Pro Tools, made it sound a little cooler and then took all of my shit that I recorded on top of it and made it sound a little bit nicer than it did in Logic. And my friend, Laura, who did our last press photos, is cool in French. So I asked her to read it and she read it.
I always want it to feel surreal. I want us to sound or look like this band that’s been lost to time or like we’re from the future.
You mentioned Jarod Evans and I wanted to ask about something he said to you back when you were working on Sun Kids. In an interview with BlissPop, you said that he asked you, “Why doesn’t the music you make, sound like the music that you like?”
When you first heard that, what went through your head at the time? And when you’re in the studio now, when you’re working, do you still ask yourself that question?
Constantly. That was a big turning point for me. I wish I had said something more profound, it just cracked me wide open. I was just a little lamb in his hands at that point. I think about that all the time now.
The thing that he really encouraged me to do was get better at recording myself at home. Cause there are a lot of times throughout that record where I was tossing out ideas and he’d be like, “Dude, if you could just learn how to do this better, just a little bit better, you’d be unstoppable.”
Influences and contemporaries.
Which artists are your North Star when you’re working?
I don’t consider myself a super fan of stuff, but I’m sure if you asked me about the right people, I would go fucking on and on – I try not to keep North stars in general.
I feel like I miss a lot of cultural touchstones because I’m listening to my friend’s music. Once you’re in music and you know all these people, somebody’s always fucking putting out something and you’re always like, “Oh damn, my friends are good at music.”
But if I were to just like rattle off a quick list: Broken Social Scene, huge for me. Broadcast, huge for me and Eric [Martin]. I think the next record after this one, we’ll probably try our hand at some more Deerhunter and Black Moth Super Rainbow stuff.
Recently I’m just deep into Cheekface. I fucking love that band right now. We’re sort of internet friends and I want to be like, “teach me how you write lyrics.”
Also I really like Megan Thee Stallion, at the moment. I bet people think I’m listening to Tame Impala.
When I listen to a lot of your contemporaries, a lot of the music feels very escapist to me. It feels like it wants to pull you out.
[JI]: I know what you mean. I feel like I get tired of that sometimes.
What does a grounded psych rock album sound like in your opinion?
I feel like there’s a lot of like early, like, or like late ’60s, ’70s, Japanese, like psych folky stuff that feels a little grounded. Have you ever heard of a group called Mid-Air Thief? They’ve got a pretty crazy record.
I feel like Grizzly Bear touches on a little more grounded psych rock sometimes too. I think maybe for us, it’s about using natural sounds in your music – I try to put birds and shit in the background of our stuff a lot. I need some Earth in here, man. Like I need some sounds from my life in this.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since last February. I got to see Feist at the Belasco. And I mean, her and I think Solange both, some of my favorite shows of all time.
And it was weird to me because I usually like crazy, crazy spectacle, but there was something very psychedelic about both of their shows. The true psychedelia is turning inward. You know what I mean? Like that’s what you’re supposed to take mushrooms for anyway.
Panda Bear’s music also feels very grounded to me. On Sinister Grift especially, because it’s about his divorce and everything. He’s taking the elements of dub and psych music and putting it into this really beautiful blend that feels very present.
Maybe that’s what it is. It’s you’ve got to carry your past with you. Less about leaving this plane, and that makes it more psychedelic. This is who I am. I’ve done the journey inward, and I’m sharing it with you. It’s like inner peace.
Life on tour.
Let’s talk about the upcoming tour. You’re going to be opening for Husbands on May 19th. Somewhere in my brain, there is a paper or an essay about touring and going to shows post pandemic.
I feel like from an audience perspective, it’s gotten way worse in terms of tickets being more expensive, LiveNation owning all the venues, and general disinterest from some concert goers. Do you kind of have that concern of fans being more distracted?
I’ve tried to do moments like that where you sort of acknowledge it. I just like playing, I like performing. I have yet to really experience true rudeness from a crowd either as a member or as a performer. But I can say on the touring side, it’s brutal because there’s less money. There’s something the dude from Beach Fossils said to us once. He said, “Well, I’m an alcohol salesman.” And that was really depressing.
I think in a way it’s kind of true. I do think it’s good that people are drinking less, but the unfortunate thing is that venues are trying to figure out how to make money without selling $20 Bud Lights. I struggle with that with merch too. I’m like $40 for a freaking hat? No way. The shirt costs more than the vinyl. What does that say about the value of the music?
It’s an interesting question, right? When I saw Father John Misty and Destroyer in February, I bought a hoodie and two t-shirts that ran me over a hundred dollars. I think it has gotten incredibly difficult especially in an age where people want to leave streaming behind and engage more music in-person. The real side of that is acknowledging that I need to have money to be able to get gas to go to the show. I want to buy merch. I have to have money for that too.
Did you feel that was a standard?
[MW]: I don’t think it was, but I didn’t mind paying for it. I had a great time.
It feels a little like charity. I feel it at the merch booth. People are like, “yeah, just keep the other $5”.
On the subject of digital streaming and promotion, there’s a video you did on TikTok where you were promoting the new single, “Be Here Forever”, and you were doing it in a way where it was like, “I’m a millennial promoting my single on the internet.” What was it like recording that?
That was real. I woke up with “the fear.” Do you ever wake up with “the fear?”
Oh, of course, Every day.
This was an intense one. I woke up and thought, “I need to make a video. I need to go work out and I need to do everything that I’ve ever needed to do today.”
Originally, it was a two minute video. My partner gave a note, she goes,”you can be funnier.” Shout out to Shana and Quinn. They’re only like two, three years younger than me, but I call them my Gen Z friends. And they introduced me to CapCut and told me “More chaos, more of your chaos moments, more of this.” And then I just put it all together, but that was all real. For a person that likes attention as much as I do, I hate cameras and being in front of them.
Seeing how music promotion has shifted over time really fascinates me. Having genuine bonafide stars coming from an app is still wild. I still can’t even fathom that. I miss when algorithms didn’t decide these things.
It has gotten strange. I feel like the other trap you see stars coming from the app is people getting big for a joke and then they can only do that joke. And it’s really because they’re trying to promote their music.
The new album Lunar Manor.
So, let’s talk about the new album. It’s called Lunar Manor and it’s set to release this August. This was recorded with Taylor Johnson at Lunar Manor studios. According to Tidal’s song credits, it said he had a hand in engineering Anemoia?
Yeah, no, that’s correct. Jarod got busy or something, but I felt like there were still a couple songs that I wanted to put on [Anemoia] like “Ludus Love” and the other spoken word one, “Jamais Vu”. Those were two things that I really wanted to do, which is just sort of my bad habit. My toxic trait in recording is tossing aside an idea and then saying, “let’s just try to write some bangers.” And I’m always trying to repackage it and bring it back up some other way. And Jarod even says that to me, he goes, “It’s not gone forever. You’re Spaceface. You’re going to bring it back up.”
But over the course of that re-imagining and like you were saying, sort of rebuilding yourself, it had been revealed to me that I had been essentially just bogarting the creative process of finishing it. Cause I would just take demos that Eric wrote, and just be like, “check it out, me and Jarod ripped out those three parts, fuck that forever. But these parts are great. We took your ending and turned it into a chorus. You want to come to Oklahoma and sing on it?”
I didn’t think anything of it because I was thinking, “Well, the wheels are turning and I’m the one that’s doing that. So that’s fine”. I had created a nice, intense, cool, fun bond with Jarod. And I guess Eric didn’t feel seen in that. So, that’s where Taylor comes in.
Taylor had Lunar Manor and he’d been partying with some of the drummer dudes from The [Flaming] Lips. I started hanging out with him and I thought he was cool. Taylor actually used to work with and for Jarod. So, they’re like tight homies, but he sort of used to be his protege and now is doing his own thing. There’s a familiarity already with just like sounds and stuff that we both like.
I booked some time while I was out there doing Flaming Lips stuff with Taylor. I thought, “Well, I’m getting paid to be there. So, I can just use this money to explore this, but nothing too much.” Anemoia is not even out, but he and I just started digging up some other stuff and started going through some of these ideas. There’s a shared language of interests and it went really well. So, I texted Eric and was like, “Hey, I don’t know when you can get out here, but let’s schedule a time.” And he was like, “I have the next four days off.”
So, I extended my stay and Eric drove from Memphis to Oklahoma and had barely met Taylor. Like literally, I have a video of it. I’m like,”This is Taylor, Eric, Taylor. Eric’s got a really cool song called “Be Here Forever” that I want to add a bunch of kooky synths to. And I shit you not, he just started playing. And then they start joking around and fucking around.” That set the tone for the next bit of the record. And we weren’t done with the other ones. So it was pretty encouraging.
Going back to our earlier conversation about grounded psychedelic music, when I listen to “Be Here Forever”, I feel a sense of wanting to exist in this moment, but also hoping to eventually go further. It’s very dancey and active.
I was trying to do more of a blend of us. I’ve been joking that Eric is Burt Bacharach and I’m Wendy Carlos. Eric’s always like, “What if we just played the same four chords over and over again?” And my instinct before has always been like, “no.” And I’m trying to be like, “yes.” It’s one of my favorite songs of ours. I’ve texted him a whole lot. Like you wrote a certified banger as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve been playing it so often myself. I love that track.
And it doesn’t hurt that that hook happens every three seconds.
Lunar Manor, the studio.
The studio is called Lunar Manor, but the album is Lunar Manor as well. Was being in that space where creativity could blossom the reason you decided to name the album that?
Well, we’re a little lucky actually too, cause they actually lost that space. It was just a wild little spot. He had an actual plate reverb. I hate when you go to work with somebody and they have no toys in their sandbox. I’m a tactile person. I want fun, new toys to fuck with. Like, otherwise, why aren’t we just in my living room? If you can just do it on the computer, like, what are we doing here?
[Taylor] had this access to this huge loading dock pit thing, chasm that they didn’t use anymore. And we put the plate reverb in there and like thought that chorus said that “Be Here Forever.” Part of why it sounds weird is that he set up a speaker and it’s in this giant echo chamber.
It’s stuff like that. Where you’re like, “Wow, this is so fun. That’s cool.” That’s a big part of it for me. We did create everything mostly there, it just felt right. It felt right. I like that you said blossoming creativity and stuff, but it was just, it’s a cool name. Also, it turned out that we were the last record that was made there before they moved too. So, it kind of seems kismet to me. .
What do you hope fans will take away from this new album?
I want to provide a nice moment of joy for people in a chaotic world that wants to translate all of our feelings and art into loveless data. Eric called the record something not too long ago that I really liked.
He said, “Each song is like a small moment in time that you could take and enjoy fully for just three minutes as you would like going through the market on a shelf. It’s just like, this one is about enjoying the moment. This is, I don’t know what I’m doing, but it’s going to be okay. This one is I’m on mushrooms. And my friend thought that there were fireflies in Southern California, but I know that they’re not.”
I hope that people take away that even if all we have is now, you can enjoy that. And there’s a version of yourself in the future that’s watching you right now through memories.
In hindsight, when you watch yourself through memories, a lot of what I think about is, “Ah, I should have relaxed just a little bit, not like relaxing in a political world. Stay political, stay active, fuck the man. But yeah, there’s still a lot of life to be had still.”
I hope that I like it.
Be sure to check out Lunar Manor by Spaceface this August! You can pre-order the album here.
Photo by Erika Mugglin, courtesy of Mothland
