This kick off with a contemplative mood, on Follies & Vices’ song “Red Wine.” But the Seattle band, now living in the City of Angeles, quickly picks it up. You'll probably notice your head nodding from the start gate right to the finish line. Essentially, Rob Auerbach and Tanner Houghton have dropped an action-packed song that’s staged-managed to perfection. There’s a lot of meat to it. You picture the blinding sun almost bringing them to tears. Because the lyrics touch on a difficult situation. “It felt like love,” you hear. “And I think I’ve had enough.” The questioning, the frustration, the laments. It’s all so disheartening. Or at least that’s what you would think if you just read the liner notes. In fact, the song just sounds fun and hopeful. It’s a pop number with a lot of energy.
And btw. It’s a big win on the kid vocal snippet. Plus the muffled attack that follows is only marginally so. The song lets the guitar run of into excess. But even that fits neatly between the raucous body of the track and the final chorus, which functions almost as a fade out.
I’m just left with one question…
Why did they decided to write a kind of tragic song that leaves you feeling so damn good?
The only thing we can figure is they want us all to remember life is for living, and that you should have fun even in your failures.
Listen to "Red Wine" here, and learn more about Follies & Vices in our interview below!
What made you pull the trigger on the move from Seattle to LA?
When we got started with this version of the project in mid-2017, we were huddled away in Seattle writing and producing in solitude. After finishing three demos that we were proud of, we sent them out to producers and one of them invited us to his studio in LA to record for a week. As they shopped us to major labels we felt like it would be best for us to make a permanent move here.
Have you been touring, and if so what’s that been like?
We haven’t toured on this material yet, but we would like to as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Last year we mainly focused on getting better at writing and producing so that we can have a body of work out that we really believe in.
Who is the yin and who is the yang?
I think that Tanner is the yin and I (Rob) am the yang. Early on, I noticed that some of Tanner’s demo lyrics had a nihilistic undertone with no positive twist or ending, and I would always try to convince him to write something a little more inspirational. I also had a tendency to write celebratory sounding instrumentals and he would tell me they sound too cheesy.
What’s up with how Red Wine sounds super positive, even though the song itself is kinda sad?
It mainly has to do with the separate roles we play in the project. I listen to a lot of dance music and my role in the band is to write and produce the instrumentals, so I made what I wanted to hear. Tanner’s role is to write the lyrics, so he wrote about a difficult situation he was going through as a means of catharsis. If Tanner was writing the instrumental, the beat probably would have matched the underlying tone of the lyrics.
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