"We like to play at night. We like being in the dark," Sarah Barthel, one-half of the band Phantogram, explains.
The band—comprised of long-time friends Barthel and Josh Carter—create lush, complex walls of sound. On most songs, Barthel wails and pines with breathy vocals that could break your heart while deep bass and synth cackle behind her. Equally suited for the club and the lonesome drive home afterward, this isn't easy music to get under one's thumb.
But while their music is dark and moody, the last several years have been anything but for the duo. Buzz grew so quickly for their debut album that they released it earlier than they had initially hoped.
"We kind of released Eyelid Movies really quick because we got some attention and we wanted to release it so we were like 'It's done' but it wasn't really done," explains Barthel.
Even though the duo felt that the album wasn't quite finished, audiences didn't seem to mind, packing shows all over the globe.
"It's been a lot of fun," Barthel says. "We've been able to see a lot of places we never expected to see, you know. When Josh and I started out we weren't planning on all this happening, at least for awhile...We're just holding on to the ride and having a good time."
Their tour took them to Moscow, Mexico City, and the Dominican Republic as well as all over the States and Europe before they headed back home to begin work on their next release—some have called it a mini-LP or a long EP—Nightlife. The six song album offered the band an opportunity to create a more fully realized album.
"For Nightlife we felt like we've been able to evolve in what we were learning with recording and writing Eyelid Movies," Barthel explains. "We were able to hone in on this particular sound and emotion and heaviness. And you know dynamically it's a lot different and it's a little bit more evolved in what we want."
The writing process for Nightlife was also different.
"For our first record it was Josh and I in a barn not leaving each other's side and writing and adding everything and producing and recording all at once," says Barthel. For Nightlife, however, "the majority of [the songs] we wrote away from each other and then kind of compiled all the ideas and kind of just what we wanted to portray together."
What they've portrayed is a bass-driven, haunting nightscape—that isn't bad to dance to, either.
