We’ve been closely following the sister duo Deer Park Avenue since last year. Our first introduction came with the fuzzy, bluesy and hard rock gem ‘Strut’, and then we fell in love with their genre-bending stunner ‘Darkness Hides Me’. They’ve steadily released some seriously impressive stuff since then, and today they introduce the world to ‘Crucible’, the title track from the pair’s forthcoming album.
Deciding it was time to sit down and chat with the sisters, I was over the moon when they agreed to an interview. Taking us through their earliest memories of falling in love with music, who some of their biggest influences are, how they take an idea and turn it into a song, and what their plans are once the new record is released, please welcome our friends Sarah and Steph of Deer Park Avenue!
Hey Sarah and Steph! How is everything? I’m so excited to re-introduce you to our ever-expanding audience! For those who haven’t discovered your musical prowess just yet, who is Deer Park Avenue and when did each of your love affairs with music begin?
Sarah: Thank you for having us! We’re a sister rock duo currently based between Munich, Germany, and Basel, Switzerland. We’ve been playing music together since we were kids. We both started learning piano when we were small, then one day Steph said, “I want to be a drummer like Ringo.” She was 7!
Steph: The first time we played a song together was when our cousin Gregg Bissonette (who tours with Ringo Starr) showed us how to play ‘Eight Days a Week’ by The Beatles. We were in our living room in California, and I had a snare drum and Sarah had our dad’s old acoustic guitar that had been in the closet for too long. Our first performance was a house concert for family when we were 7 and 10. It’s still a family business! We always grew up with music in the house, and our parents really encouraged us to learn music. When I started learning drums, they set up a drum set in our living room! I still don’t know any parents who would do that.
Sarah: We grew up between California, Long Island, and Switzerland, and Deer Park Avenue comes from the street where we grew up on Long Island. It was the longest we had ever lived in one place. So when we started the band, all these songs were about growing up, relationships, change, and just life, and that was Long Island for us. Our friends, our church, our favorite pizzeria, dance studio, and deli – it was all off Deer Park Avenue. We started playing in our dad’s church with our friends and loved it! We were always listening to music with our friends – classic rock from the 60s and 70s, grunge and pop from the 90s and 2000s – and it’s definitely a mix that has influenced our music.
Steph: And maybe we also listened to Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. Maybe we can still sing any harmony from almost all their songs. (Maybe we definitely can. It’s just fun music!)
I’ve been fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at your brand new single ‘Crucible’ and it’s an absolute showstopper! It definitely showcases a more mature and refined sound (and that is no reflection on previous tunes which I loved). What do you want the world to know about ‘Crucible’?
Steph: We love that description, thank you! This whole album represents the twists and turns in our journey. The record is called ‘Crucible’, and this song is the lead track from this project, so it sets the stage for the whole story. It’s about going through a trial by fire, which all of us have to go through, but the biggest challenge we ever faced came to us during the recording of this album, so it gave an even stronger meaning to the song for us. A crucible is where you melt metal in extreme heat to make it stronger and purified, and for us, it’s a metaphor for life. It’s a reminder that when you walk through the fire, you never walk alone – and that everything we go through shapes us into the people we’re meant to be. So we hope it’s a song that encourages people, whatever they’re facing.
Sarah: Musically, ‘Crucible’ really shows our alt-pop beginnings as a band, and it also has a lot of our grunge and rock influences. It’s such an interesting time for music that artists can make their own fusions of genres and styles, although it’s a challenge because algorithms don’t know what to do with it! ‘Crucible’ is all of our influences coming together – pop, indie, grunge, and ambient sounds, even film, cinematic. There’s a lot going on sonically. We got to create this in a space where we could do anything, so we weren’t limiting ourselves. We just let the song take us where it wanted to go.
You teamed up with Grammy-winning producer Reto Peter who’s worked with the likes of Green Day and Modest Mouse – what was that experience like?
Sarah: Working with Reto is always so inspiring, not just musically but as people. He is insanely creative and has amazing life advice, and we always learn so much when we’re with him. He’s never afraid to try something. There will be times when we come up with weird ideas to try and he never says, “That’s just crazy.”
Steph: There’s one part in ‘Crucible,’ in the second verse, where you hear a percussion sound, these clave-like hits. That came around because I said, “I think it needs percussion. We need to find something like…a cake pan.” And Reto said, “Well, where can we find some cake pans?” So we literally went down to the Migro’s (grocery store in Switzerland) and picked up some of those aluminium cake tins! That’s what you’re hearing in the song.
Sarah: We (half) joke that the way we work is like comedy improv. You never say no, you just go with the flow and add to the other person’s story. That’s how Steph and I work creatively, and that’s always our process in the studio. It’s just this mental jam session, a creative freefall, and it’s totally liberating.
Who are some of your biggest musical influences? And who would I see under “Recently Played” on your streaming service of choice?
Sarah: Our taste in music is so diverse. The music we listen to isn’t necessarily all in the genre we make…I love rap, opera, classical, R&B, pop, and of course, lots of rock. Some of my favorite rock artists are Jack White, Gaslight Anthem, The Black Keys, Bruce Springsteen, Alvvays, Beck, and newer bands like Coach Party and Swim School. We grew up listening to lots of classic rock like The Who, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles, as well as Motown, Alanis Morissette, Bruce Springsteen, The Doors, French pop, Bollywood, and just everything.
Steph: The bands who really made us want to be a band were probably Foo Fighters, Green Day, and Nirvana. And there were movies like School of Rock and That Thing You Do, or Freaky Friday, where we just thought yeah, that’s fun. Let’s do that.
That has played such a huge part in our career in music. Just, “Let’s do what’s fun.” There’s a lot to being a band, and you work so hard in music, or any kind of creative work, but it also has to have meaning and perspective. Music has to stay fun.
We’re always intrigued by the different approaches bands and artists use in their creative process or processes. Can you tell our readers a bit about yours? How do you take an idea and turn it into a complete song?
Steph: Our creative process is pretty fluid. We love trying new things and making styles of music that no one else is. When we did ‘Cave,’ we had this grunge song, and then Sarah made a joke, “I feel like it needs some ambient drone sounds!” And then we thought…why not? If no one is doing it…that’s what we want to do.
For songwriting, sometimes I’ll have some lyrics and Sarah will have a melody, and we’ll put the two together and they just work, or often we’ll have part of a song and bring it to practice to work on together. Other times we’ll jam on something that comes to life right in that moment, and then we finish it later. That’s what happened with our song ‘Shut Me Out,’ which is also on the album – and it’s a song we co-wrote with our mum, Shirin, so that made it even more special!
Sarah: She was a co-writer on another song on our album, too! When you get to work with family and friends, it’s the best thing in the world. We’re generally very un-serious in our approach! Like Steph said, we’ll bring ideas to each other and then just workshop them together. From there, it becomes a demo, which we’ll just record on our phone at band practice. Then we take it to (producer) Reto Peter, and we all get together in a studio and build it out together. We dial in amp sounds and drum tones and then build it until it feels right. And sometimes beyond that, and then Reto will go, “Let’s un-produce it a little, keep it raw.”
What are your thoughts regarding the music industry of today? And, if you could, what changes would you make to it?
Steph: There is so much that’s great about the music industry today, in that artists have direct access to their audiences and they can have an immediate connection with your story. It’s easier than ever to create music and get it out there – you don’t need a big label or super-expensive gear. But there’s plenty of room to grow. There’s a lot of debate right now about how AI will change the industry, or even shape how people make music. It puts so much focus on music as a product, and making money off the product, that you can lose the joy of creating, connection, and art, and the reason people come to music in the first place. Even with algorithms, there’s a huge benefit that your music can reach listeners who never knew about you, which is amazing! But a downside is that sometimes people make music specifically for algorithms when they might have been more creative or tried something more unique otherwise.
Sarah: We’ve always wanted to keep our music as real and organic as possible. It’s a weird era where sometimes people get into the studio and autotune their music and take some of the humanity out of it, but when everything is perfect it doesn’t sound like music anymore. Even in culture, there’s so much focus on perfection, whether it’s the way you look, the car you drive or where you live, just these impossible standards we put on ourselves and others. It’s bland and sterile.
For our sound, we never sat down and said, let’s sound like these three bands, and get onto these playlists. That’s more of a production thing or a marketing tactic. But when musicians get together, they just try stuff and play around with melodies and sounds and then put different stories into words. There’s so much feel to creating music.
Steph: That’s why we love rock. It’s real, it’s raw and genuine, an in-your-face wakeup call. Even when we do more pop-oriented songs, we keep them on the raw side, like we did with ‘Crucible.’ Working with Reto, we’ll ask, “Should we do that again?” Or “That drum fill wasn’t perfect” or “There’s a break in the voice, should we try and fix it,” and he’ll just go, “No, it’s got an energy, that’s what makes it unique and cool.” We like leaving the little emotional, quirky, human stuff in our music.
If you were allowed to collaborate with any musician or band, who would you each choose and why?
Steph: In this album, we got to collab with one of our favorite musicians and favorite people in the world, our cousin Gregg Bissonette! He plays the amazing drum solo in the middle of ‘Strut,’ and he did some cool double drum parts on ‘Shut Me Out,’ too.
Sarah: And that’s our producer Reto on bass and a few other instruments, he’s incredible to work with. And in our last EP, we got to work with Matt Bissonette, who is another of our favorite musicians and just one of the greatest people. We are super lucky.
Steph: We love rap, and it would be so fun to have a rapper guest on a song someday. We love Eminem, KB, NF, Twenty One Pilots…the way they mix different sounds and genres together.
Sarah: We’d love to collab with Beck. He’s always been one of our favorite artists, and the way he switches between genres so effortlessly – it’s exciting. Whether it’s something ethereal like the ‘Morning Phase’ or absolutely vibey like ‘Dreams,’ whatever he does, it always sounds like, of course, this is the style of music he’s playing right now. We’re also massive Jimmy Gnecco fans. He’s been such an inspiration to us – his music has gotten us through some of the tough parts of our lives.
Thanks so much for chatting with us you two! It’s been an absolute treat! We can’t wait to hear the new album. Is there a release date for it yet? And, I guess, in a broader sense, what do you hope your musical future has in store?
Steph: The release date is set for September 20th, 2024. We have a pre-release party coming up in Munich on September 6th, where we’ll play through the whole album in its entirety and have some special guests and merch! We’re really excited to let people hear the new album live in real-time.
Sarah: We want to take the band on the road and meet more people! And to keep making new music. We’re already three projects into the future, which sounds crazy when the new album isn’t even out yet. But it keeps us creative. We’re so thankful we get to do this and that people are listening.
