At that point, the record label had taken its eye off the ball. There was an industry shake-up underway, a seismic shift in the way music was being shared and listened to. While people like Jimmy Iovine and Tom Whalley at Interscope were scrambling to steady the ship, we found ourselves in an altogether different kind of space. We were recording in Jay Joyce’s basement studio, Tragedy Tragedy. And when I say “basement”, I don’t mean a demo cave. This was a purpose-built, state-of-the-art studio tucked beneath his home, loaded with serious gear, rare instruments, tape machines and sonic possibilities most major rooms would envy.

The original plan was to sketch the songs there and then move up to Woodland Studios, one of Nashville’s most revered recording rooms, all hardwood floors and glass, iconic and historic in its own right. That was the trajectory in our heads. But something unexpected happened downstairs. In the middle of industry confusion and label uncertainty, we hit a massive surge of creativity and natural momentum. The sounds coming back at us were alive, unvarnished, dangerous in the best way. Creative freedom that you would normally never have on a major label fell into our laps, almost by accident.

We were so blown away by what was happening in that room that we made a covenant with limitation. We asked Jay if we could stay, if we could resist the temptation to scale up and risk losing the spark. Woodland was cancelled. We did some additional tracking at New Reflections and East Iris Studios for a change of air, but the heart of the record was forged in that basement. In choosing that room, we chose intimacy over prestige, truth over gloss. It gave us a record that felt completely our own.

This album was recorded for Interscope — a second attempt at the record we'd made in Los Angeles. The first version hadn't worked. We didn't believe in it. So we went to Nashville and started over with Jay Joyce. It felt like a new beginning.