By Andrew Chadwick
Love Spirals Downwards create haunting tapestries of beautifully layered ethereal guitars and stirring, golden female vocals which seem sometimes like a shaft of sunlight making its way through the smoky gloom. Their debut album, Idylls, invited listeners into their shimmering world. With Ardor, their second release for Projekt, Love Spirals Downwards seem to have become more comfortable with their listeners and embrace them with their bare souls. In February, I spoke with the two members of Love Spirals Downwards, Ryan Lum and Suzanne Perry, about the change between albums, the band, and their impending tour.
Idylls seems a lot darker than Ardor.
Ryan: That’s interesting, because some people who we showed Ardor to before it came out said, ‘It’s not that different,’ and other people said, ‘You guys have really changed a lot.’
Your fundamental style has stayed the same; I think it’s just your approach.
Suzanne: Yeah, it’s definitely a little lighter – not much lighter, though. You couldn’t describe it as light, but when you compare it to Idylls, its kind like one step about suicidal, you know… (Laughs)
Ryan: I don’t think it’s suicidal.
Me neither. Melancholy, maybe.
Suzanne: Yeah, it’s not angry enough to be suicidal.
Why do you think it got lighter?
Suzanne: I think it was this drive to create something different, and then that just happened to be the product. It’s not something that we think a lot about.
Did things in your life start going better? You’re not suicidal anymore?
Ryan: (Laughing) We were never suicidal! Probably now I’m more suicidal than I was during Idylls, so… Not to say I’m suicidal but if you had to put it into degrees, I’m probably more than I was then.
Suzanne: I think [life is] pretty different, but I don’t know how much it’s reflected [in the music]. Huh. I mean, I don’t notice a serious change in my psyche where I’m going around with a bigger smile.
How did Love Spirals Downwards come about?
Suzanne: Well, Ryan has been doing music for a long time, starting out with guitar and stuff, and I’ve always been singing, but I never really thought of singing professionally or singing to produce something like a CD, or to be in a band; I always just sang. It’s actually been this really natural drive to use my voice and sing, but I never thought of it until Ryan and I started going out romantically. About a year and a half went by and it never occurred to us, ‘Hey, let’s do something musically together!’ One time we just got in the studio and the first song we ever made was “Forgo,” which is on Idylls. I had never written a song before. I just got in there and started humming in the microphone and that’s how it happened. We listened to it and thought, ‘Hey, that’s not too bad!’ Then we just made a couple more and sent them out.
How are your songs written?
Suzanne: Underwater. We do everything underwater.
Ryan: For the most part, I’ll always have the music almost done. Sometimes I won’t have the drums finished, or I might have a guitar part or two left, but the music’s done first. Once I have that done, I’ll bring it over to Suzanne and she’ll start humming and making up vocal parts. From there, we’ll start getting the words fitted into it, record that, then I mix the song down, and we’re done. It could take many months.
So you have a live tour coming up?
Ryan: That’s being discussed right now. That’s not certain or finalized yet.
Suzanne: Well, that’s what Pat [from Projekt] is telling everyone.
Yeah, he sent out a letter to everyone saying that you might do a tour.
Ryan: Oh, is that how it happened?
Suzanne: Yeah, ‘cause he knows better than to say it’ll definitely happen. Let’s just cut to the chase on this one. The thing is, I wanna do it, but Ryan’s kinda dragging his feet on it, so I figured if I told Pat we would do it, and then he sent out a letter, then we’d do it.
Suzanne: Kind of…
Ryan: (Laughing) you went around me behind my back? Thanks.
Suzanne: No, we didn’t go around your back, but you were there when I said, ‘I think we can do it.’ ‘Cause at first I was starting to doubt whether we could do it, but now I’m thinking we might be boring, so…
Ryan: Yeah, we could do it. It’d just be the two of us. It’d be acoustic, with her singing and me playing acoustic guitar.
Suzanne: It could be boring, Andrew.
I don’t think it would be boring. I think the type of people that it would attract would do there expecting the type of music you play and be overwhelmed by your performance.
Ryan: Maybe so. Maybe if we do it I’ll be really surprised that people won’t be yawning or throwing beer cans at us or something. We’re really not much of a live band as you can tell from how we make music; it just kind of emerges from me messing around in the studio — so we never really rehearse our songs.
Suzanne: When I think about who we would play with… I guess that’s not how I think about our music. It’s definitely a lot more isolated, and just my whole way I think about myself as a musician, I don’t even think about it like that. It’s not part of my identity. I don’t go around saying, ‘I’m in a band.’ That’s usually, like, the last thing I mention. It’s not that I don’t love it, but I think it has something to do with my scorn for those musician types who go around and carry a guitar or something – ‘I’m in a band!’
Ryan: They give you their guitar picks after you meet them.
Suzanne: It’s just seriously lame and I can’t stand that.
Ryan: I was kinda joking ‘cause Suzanne liked this one guy she worked with…
Suzanne: Yeah, I was, like, 18.
Ryan: He was a bass player, and he gave her his guitar pick.
Suzanne: This happens to women all the time, I don’t know if you know, Andrew.
No, I never heard of this.
Suzanne: When I was going to clubs a lot, I don’t know why, but men will pick up on you and they will give you their guitar pick. No kidding! There’s no phone number on it, there’s no name, just a guitar pick. They will give it to you, and they think that that will turn you on.
Ryan: I never knew that. I sorta tried it since she told me about it, and it works!
How many guitar picks do you have?
Ryan: Oh, I have hundreds and hundreds.
Suzanne: No, he’s asking me.
Ryan: Oh… [much laugher] Yeah, how many do you have, Suzanne?
Suzanne: Well honestly, I lost the ones that I had gotten. I didn’t have a collection. Maybe five or six?
You should’ve made a necklace of them.
Suzanne: Yeah, that’s not a lot, but those are the ones I took. “I can’t take that from you. Like, it’s so valuable. I cannot take that, you need it for your performance tomorrow.”
The conversation started to ramble around then. Talking to Ryan and Suzanne felt more like taking to old friends than actually doing a standard band interview, proving that not all gothic or ethereal oriented musicians are pretentious and self-obsessed, a nasty preconception that many have about people involved in this genre. Check out Ardor if you can. And keep your eyes peeled for upcoming tour dates because if they do plan to tour, Florida is on their itinerary. That’s a concert that should not be missed.
Download a PDF of Love Spirals Downwards interview in Ink Spots 19 from April 1995