Buckle up, folks! We’ve got an incredible exclusive interview to share with you all today. We are introducing The Collection, a Saxapahaw, North Carolina-based indie pop band that’s getting ready to release their new album, Little Deaths!
The Collection’s Little Deaths may just be their most vulnerable album yet. And there are less than two days until it drops. We got to interview The Collection’s frontman, David Wimbish, on everything from making the album to hints about their tour.
Yes, we know you’re eager to learn more. Whether you already listen to The Collection or not, you’re bound to fall in love after reading our meaningful artist interview!
Welcome to The Honey POP! We’re so excited to chat with you today. To start us off, what are three things you’d like current fans and new listeners to know about The Collection?
Thanks so much for chatting with me! The Collection has been my project for a decade now, which is absolutely wild. It’s gone through a lot of iterations, but has been solidly with some of my best friends in the world. We tend to be fueled heavily by Mexican food and fantasy novels, and the songs come out of real, honest experiences around the simultaneous struggle and hope of existing in this world.
Little Deaths
Congratulations on the upcoming release of your album, Little Deaths! What was one of your favorite memories from working on this album?
Thank you! The best memories of creation tend to circle around being surprised. We’d been working on ‘The Come Down,’ trying to get the drums to sound electronic using only acoustic tactics. We paused for lunch, and our producer, Jeremy Lutito, came downstairs to ask our engineer, Reid Leslie, “Do you have chopsticks?” Reid pointed him to the chopstick drawer. A few minutes later, Jeremy rushed back down and asked, “Do you have tin foil?” We all assumed he ate his lunch fast and was saving it for later. When we started tracking again after the break, Jeremy had the snare drum wrapped in tin foil and had Joshua playing it with chopsticks, and it was the coolest sound. It sounded like an 80s drum machine. Moments like that kept us going.
Since your last album release, in what ways have you all seen personal growth as a band and as individuals?
It’s embarrassing to admit, but for most of the last decade, I placed almost my entire self-worth on how well our music was doing. It wasn’t intentional; it’s just always been such a big part of who I am. As you can imagine, it’s been pretty awful for my mental health. When something was going well for us, I felt like I finally was worth something to people, and if it didn’t go well, I felt like a failure, like it must mean there’s something wrong with me as a human being that is the cause.
I think, for Little Deaths, it’s the first time that I finally started finding inherent value in myself, and I think the rest of The Collection has done a lot of work around that as well. We’ve been finding ways to find joy outside of music and touring. Because of that, it led us to make an album that feels, creatively, so much more honest to who this group of people is because the creative decisions came out of what felt good at the moment, without questioning how well it would do all the time. To me, it feels like our most creative release in quite a while, and it also helps me rest in joy about it no matter how well it does or doesn’t do.
Whenever we think of your music, we imagine it as the highs and lows of a summer soundtrack. What would it look like if you could set a “perfect scene” for listening to Little Deaths?
I love to hear that! I feel so much like our last several albums have all been very summer albums, even in the darker songs. This album, for some reason, felt like a fall album to me, which feels very new. Fall is always strange because I think it’s the best weather, and I love the spooky vibe. But winter is always so hard for my depression, and as fall arrives, I’m already anxious, knowing that depression is on its way.
Quite a lot of these songs, from ‘Rain It Down’ to ‘Medication,’ were written in the fall or the early winter. I was walking 3-5 miles every night, usually after 10:00 p.m. when nobody was out, just putting headphones on and trying to walk off my depression. I wrote a lot of song ideas on those walks, and I feel like that’s how I imagine people listening to this album: outside on a walk, underneath the moon, headphones on, bundled up in a jacket and scarf.
The Creative Journey
You’re showing an even more vulnerable side with Little Deaths. Can you describe the creative journey of writing such personal lyrics in tracks like ‘Little Deaths,’ ‘Medication,’ and ‘The Weather?’
I’ve heard people say that when you write something that you feel scared to put out, that’s a good sign that it’s a good song. I wrote a lot of songs for this album; I had close to 100 finished songs and over 200 half-finished songs. There was a lot to pick from. But ultimately, the ones that made the album were the ones that scared me. I was going through a deep mental health crisis, and writing was part of my therapy.
Sometimes, in order to let go of a difficult emotion or situation, I have to put it into a song. It’s like getting to say, “Hey, I see you, I recognize you, and I’m putting you on a box and onto the shelf so that I don’t have to keep ruminating on you anymore.” Songs like ‘Medication’ or ‘The Weather’ were the ones that, even when I put them on the shelf, kept asking to get taken back down.
Which song from the album was the easiest to record, and which was the most difficult? Why?
‘Firehose’ took us a couple of hours to get down. It was so smooth, like, just one of those songs that every idea we had was like, “Yep, keep it.” I think it’s most of the band’s favorite song to play, too. It’s just such a smooth vibe; it feels easy and relaxed.
‘The Mood,’ on the other hand, was a beast to get right. We struggled with that song since our first time trying to demo it. It was hard to find a concrete vision. I loved the song, and so did Jeremy, but everything we tried for it felt wrong. Finally, Jeremy used this midi-controlled wooden opera-singer toy and put it in a reverb chamber, mostly thinking it’d be funny, and somehow it was so emotional, half of us were in tears on the first pass, and we all knew we’d got it. The song fell into place after that.
How did you decide on the overall message/concept of the album? Were there any songs you had to leave off of this record?
I wrote so many songs for this album; I was just trying to become a better writer. I wrote folk songs, country songs, pop songs, anthems, ballads, and everything in between. It took a while to know what this album was going to be about because the songs were coming from so many different perspectives. I knew, though, that ‘Little Deaths’ was the intro track, that the feeling of “maybe all these little deaths are keeping me alive, like a piece of tired wood beneath ambitious fire” was the perfect theme.
The songs that congealed were the ones that fit that theme – what are the parts of the last few years that, at the moment, felt like things were dying off but ultimately fueled my survival? Whether it was breakups or getting sober or deep derealization, the songs that made it stuck around that theme.
The Collection’s Upcoming Tour
You’re about to go on tour! Which cities are you most excited to visit? Are there any cities that are still on your bucket list?
I’m so excited that we’re hitting some of our favorite cities. The crowds in Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Seattle are always some of our favorite crowds. I don’t know what it is about those cities, but the people there are always stellar, and I can’t wait to get back there. We’ve played most of these cities before, though Jackson, MS, will be new to us! But honestly, a giant dream of mine for bucket list cities is London or basically anywhere in the UK and Europe. Fingers crossed, that’s in the near future.
Which songs are you looking forward to performing live for the first time?
‘Over You’ is such a joy, doing the vocoder live. Joshua is using this fun drum machine for the first verse, and Sarah is just crushing that piano part. Graham is doing some crazy looping horn arpeggio thing. It’s just a wild song. I honestly can’t believe we’re pulling it off.
Can you give us any hints about your tour? What can fans expect to see?
In some ways, I feel like we’ve had variations of the same live set for the last 5-6 years. For this tour, we finally got to invent a whole new set. It still has the energy we’ve always had, but it’s also really new. There’s a lot in it we’ve never done. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but I will just say, expect multiple horns being played at the same time, some of the heaviest sections you’ve ever heard from us, and a lot of beautiful interludes. It’s the most excited I’ve ever been to share music live.
Finally, what is something you’ve done this year that you’re most proud of?
I know the answer to this is probably supposed to be music-related, but this year has been a huge year of personal growth. And I had to reckon pretty hard with some difficult relationships, including my role in those difficulties. I had to draw some boundaries that were tough. After a year of dealing with a physical illness, I was able to get back into running and ran my first half-marathon in a year! I produced some albums for other people that I’m really proud of. I’ve also made some really amazing progress on overcoming body dysmorphia. I started to find joy and presence in small moments. And I’ve learned a whole damn lot about how to love and be loved. So, there’s a few good things.
We’ve been finding ways that we find joy outside of music and touring. Because of that, it led us into making an album that feels, creatively, so much more honest to who this group of people is, because the creative decisions came out of what felt good in the moment, without questioning how well it would do all the time.
David Wimbish on Little Deaths
You can presave The Collection’s Little Deaths here!
We had so much fun getting all the intel from David Wimbish on The Collection’s new album, Little Deaths! What do you think of our interview with The Collection? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!
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