In a new interview with The Razor’s Edge COUPLING Bassist Daniel Maines talked about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the group’s successor to “Sunrise at Slaughter Beach” Album, which was released in September 2022. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We’ve been pretty busy this year getting together when we’re not touring, getting together and just bouncing ideas off each other. And we have a nice set up at home where we basically rehearse – I shouldn’t say ‘rehearse’, because we don’t rehearse, we jam – in a studio, so that when we’re together and one of us has an idea that we like, we can record it right away. And so we’re kind of constantly creating this pool of ideas. And we don’t dwell on it while it’s happening. If something comes up that seems worthy of documentation, we record it and then forget about it and move on to something new. And then after about a month, when we’ve collected those ideas, we start going through them. And we’ve been doing that since the beginning of this year. And I’d say we’re at least halfway through solid ideas for an album, and probably more. But yeah, I’m excited about it. The stuff that we’re cooking up right now, I think it’s really good. The plan, if all goes well, is to record something related to the album, if not at the end of this year, then early next year.”
Beginning of the month COUPLING Frontman Neil Fallon confirmed to Bloodstock TV Oran O’Beirne that he and his bandmates recently recorded the first demo session for COUPLING‘s next LP with producer Tom DalgetyHe said: “We’ll maybe try to do (another session) in January and then another one right before recording. Hopefully we’ll have 15 tracks and then maybe pick the 10 best ones, release those and maybe save a few for a rainy day.”
Regarding COUPLINGCollaboration with Dalgety, Neil said: “Tomis great. I think sometimes the personality of a producer is half the battle, because he can have all the skills in the world, but if he’s an asshole, you don’t want to work with him. Tom is anything but that.”
As for the question of whether COUPLING Fans can expect the band’s next studio LP in spring or summer 2025. Neil said: “No, it would probably be the third quarter. Nowadays you have to have that kind of buffer. With vinyl it will be better, but we have to plan that far in advance.”
O’Beirne also asked Fallon about the possibility of COUPLING to play some of the new songs live before they’re released. He said: “Yeah, we try. It doesn’t always work though. Playing a song live in front of people is very different to doing it in a studio where you can stop and say, ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’ There’s an urgency that changes a song. Sometimes something sounds great and then you bring it on stage and it might not be so great, or vice versa. So we like to do that.”
Last month, Fallon told Neil Jones of TotalRock that he and his bandmates “have been getting together every now and then this year just to write. And then sometimes that just means writing a riff, not necessarily a song,” he explained. “But right now, as we speak, behind me, Tom Dalgetyhe flew in from Bristol (UK) a few nights ago and has made a lot of albums, he made our last record, “Sunrise at Slaughter Beach”. We’re doing a pre-production session this week. We’ll probably do another one in January. And then again just before we record, hopefully in March. And that means we’re just working out those demos. Then when it’s time to record them, we know them and we have no excuse to say, “I don’t know how to play this song.”
When asked how far back the musical ideas for these demos originally went, Fallon said: “I think the first ones are from maybe March of last year, but it was pretty fragmented because we went on tour and then after a show nobody really wanted to get together and say, ‘Hey, let’s jam.’ So it was kind of fragmented, like I said. But there is one riff that Tom said we did it at the last session almost three years ago and he would like to kick it further, that was actually from — I think we have been kicking this riff since (2015) “Psychological warfare”. It’s kind of this orphan reef that – it’s good; it just needs to find some friends to live with.”
As for the way he comes up with the topics of his texts, Fallon said: “I wish I knew there was a very succinct system for this. But lyrical ideas come to me. I jot them down in a notebook or in a voice memo on my phone and a lyric comes to me. And sometimes they seem to write themselves. Other times I say, ‘Well, they don’t sound really good. Let’s try this song.’ And eventually it’s like… I don’t know. You tweak things until you find their final form. I find that songs that have stood the test of time are the ones that were written the fastest. The ones that take months, but usually those don’t last very long as far as live rotation on stage goes.”
When asked whether he and his COUPLING Do band members ever think about how the songs will be received at live performances while working on new material? Fallon said: “No. And I think that is one of the things that COUPLING Fans like us. I think there is a sincerity. If you do it in a way that is intentional, it becomes less of an artistic endeavor and more of a marketing plan. And I think if we like it, then COUPLING Fans like it, because that’s what we’re all here for as far as this band is concerned. There have been occasions where we’ve had songs and I’ve listened to them and said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this thing.’ And then those became some of the most popular songs we put out. And so I’m not a good judge of that.”
At the beginning of last month COUPLING drummer Jean-Paul Gaster Del Rock told Colombia’s El Expreso of his relationship with his bandmates: “We see each other all the time… Usually after a tour we take a week or two weeks off. We just go home and do stuff at home, but then we’re back in the jam room, and we usually do that three times a week. And when we get together, we usually write new music. If there’s not a show coming up, we just start playing riffs. And we always have all the equipment mic’d up, the computers ready to go. So as soon as someone has an idea, boom, I press record and we document that idea. And sometimes that idea turns into a song, and sometimes that idea is just something we’ve been working on for an hour. But that’s okay, because you have to keep playing.”
He continued, “Sometimes I play with musicians on projects and stuff, and they kind of get very focused on one idea: ‘Oh, this is the song and this is the idea, and this is the only one there is.’ We try not to do that. We try to come up with a lot of ideas. ‘Okay, this idea is cool. Great. Let’s try something different. Let’s see how this idea turns out.’ And we just try to put as many of those things together as possible. And then when it comes time to make a record, we go through those things. We say, ‘Oh, well, what we did last month was really cool.’ And then, ‘Neilyou’ve got this new riff. Okay, let’s put these together. This could be cool.’ And that’s how it works. It’s very organic. There’s no set way that things come together.”
In a separate interview last month Maine Chiles told iRock that he and his bandmates are “in the middle of some intense writing sessions.” “We’ve been meeting quite a bit, but we’re all focused on new material and trying to write songs for a new album,” he revealed. “It’s going really well. We meet in a studio and just record every single idea that we have. When we get to the point where we have two parts together that are similar to a verse and a chorus and everyone is happy with it purely musically, we record those ideas. And then we put that aside and move on to something else. And we upload those files so all four of us can listen to them at home. And Neil listens carefully to them and thinks of vocal ideas for those parts. And we start piecing things together. Sometimes he’ll listen to something from one day that he thinks could work really well with something from the previous week. And if there are tempo or key changes needed to blend those two parts together, we work on that. But yeah, it’s a pretty organic process. Right now I’d say we probably have about 10 solid ideas that you could call songs, but they definitely need some fleshing out. But yeah, it’s exciting.”
When asked what music inspired him and his COUPLING Bandmates nowadays, Dan said: “Everything, everything. The four of us draw from a lot of different sources and try to take those influences, whether it’s blues or something heavier, doom-oriented or something funky, and just throw them in a blender and make something new out of it. But sometimes, like the last time we met, we’d think, ‘Well, let’s try to write something uptempo, something over 100 beats per minute.’ And at the end of the day, we’d have something that we all thought was great, but the tempo was around 70. So you can start with an idea or a direction, but at the end of the day, the result could be completely different. You just never know what’s going to come out of it.”
“Sunrise at Slaughter Beach”recorded on The Magpie Cage Recording Studio in Baltimore, Maryland, was produced and mixed by grammy-nominated producer Tom Dalgety (SPIRIT, ROYAL BLOOD, Elves), with additional technical support from J.Robbins (JAWBREAKER, AGAINST ME!, The Sword).
Last April Fallon confirmed to Total Rock‘S “Hobo on the Radio” show that he and his bandmates were working on new music. “I’m definitely the slowest of anybody when it comes to writing lyrics because I try the same lyrics on different songs and try to figure out where they hold up,” he said.
He continued: “We probably won’t start recording until next year. And I will say, hopefully the album will be out in the third or fourth quarter of 2025. That sounds like it’s a long way off, and I think it is to some extent, but for us it’s going to be pretty quick. We’re going to do it with Tom Dalgety again. It was great. But that never stops us from playing these (new songs) live, and then inevitably they’re going to be everyone’s favorite version and they’re going to hate the version on the record, but that’s the way it is.”
