It's been a while since Vertical Horizon was a household name. The band is often tossed into forgotten piles of '90s nostalgia. Their breakout album Everything You Want, especially the title track, played on repeat for most of 2000, but the band's sophomore effort did not fare as well — RCA went through a restructuring, and the album got lost in the mix. Six years later, they recorded Burning the Days, which produced two radio singles, "Save Me From Myself" and "The Lucky One."
Now the band is back with its latest effort Echoes From the Underground. Avoiding the influence of a major label, the band funded its sixth studio release on PledgeMusic. After listening to the album, it's clear that they didn't enter the process digging for radio gold. As they said on the funding site, this album was made for the fans and for the band.
The album is a departure from the guitar-heavy rock tracks that drove past efforts and introduces keyboards to the forefront. Evidenced in songs such "Lovestruck" and "Frost," the album is much more sonically diverse and more time is given to tracks, which more often than not pass the five-minute mark.
Having been together now since 1991, with lineup changes along the way, frontman Matt Scannell says he sees a future for the band, whose fan base is still going strong.
Music Times talked to Scannell about how Vertical Horizon has managed to stay relevant in an industry that has completely changed, for the most part, since the band began, what it was like working with Rush's Neil Peart on two tracks, and why he considers this album the band's best work to date.
Music Times: The last record Vertical Horizon made was in 2009, what inspired Echoes From The Underground this time around?
Matt Scannell: I've always drawn from singer-songwriters Peter Gabriel, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles — the songwriters who have fundamental songwriting nailed. But on this one, I really went back to my Joy Division records, my New Order records, Depeche Mode. I was also listening to Deadmau5, Burial, Bat for Lashes and stuff like that, just different artists who are considerably further outside our traditional realm of inspiration, but purposely so.
This record was funded by our fans, so we were given carte blanche to take inspiration. And that is a powerful and inspiring feeling to sort of do what we want to do with our fans are encouraging that rather than having a record label looking over your shoulder. So I think from an artistic standpoint, this is probably the purest record that we've made. I think as far as this sort of sphere of influence we were drawing from was the broadest as well.
MT: How does this album compare to your past releases?
MS: I think it's my best performance ever on a record as a singer. This is also the first record in which I engineered myself while I was singing. I've generally had an engineer in the room while I was singing. As a result, I think I tried more things because I wasn't embarrassed to fail.
Everything You Want was a seminal moment in the history of this band. And without that record, everything that came after it wouldn't exist. So Everything You Want is an incredibly important record to me, but I would say as far as a musical accomplishment goes, as far as realizing a vision of what music means to me and what inspires me as a songwriter, as a guitar player as a budding keyboardist, as a producer, I feel this record is far more whole and a more fully realized picture of what I want to be. I think that just means including a lot of different styles and not pigeonholing us to one sort of sub-genre.
MT: What was it like working with Neil Peart again for this album?
MS: Neil Peart has been one of my best friends; he's like a brother to me. When I was getting ready to make this record, he said, "Save a couple for me." I knew "Instamatic" was the right song for him. It felt like something he could just knock out of the park. Then I purposely chose "South for the Winter" because it was almost the antithesis of what one would expect from Neil. You know he is far more sensitive to the songwriter than people give him credit for. It felt to me like we needed someone with his sort of gravitas to bring the album to a close. This was sort of the climactic moment as far as the journey was going to go, and it felt like it was safe in his hands. He's as good as everyone thinks he is and dreams he might be if he were working on their song.
MT: What is the process like for that sort of collaboration?
MS: On the last record on Burning The Days, he was up in Canada working with Rush on Snakes and Arrows. I sent him the demos of the songs and just a click-track, and he would record different ideas and send them to me. A slightly different tactic happened this time where we were actually able to get together in a rehearsal studio and record his performances from a reactionary standpoint. We actually have footage of that online on our YouTube channel. These songs were really constructed in the moment with the two of us in the same room. Having said that, "Instamatic" is really his vision.
MT: The music industry has changed a lot since Everything You Want. Has your approach as a musician changed because of that?
MS: My performance is still the most important thing, but I think fundamentally everything else has changed. The presence of the band online is really the focus now so that people can instantly get to us and get their content directly from us. We are just encouraging people to listen, and if they like it, great. And really the bottom line is, we have to stay vital, and as performers we have to stay true and real. So for me to make Everything You Want Part II or whatever would be disingenuous, and I don't want to do that as an artist. I feel like the fans that pledged and funded this record didn't want that either. They told us, "Go make the record you want to make." This is the sort of dream record for us right now. This is the ultimate expression of where we are right now. I know nowadays there are so many distractions and everything is a blip on the screen, but there's so much effort and so much time put into this stuff that we hope people will give it a chance.
MT: You've been making music with Vertical Horizon since 1991. What has kept the band more or less together?
MS: There have definitely been personnel changes over the years, but I think the mission statement of the band is largely the same: write songs about real and honest themes and subject matter and write lyrics that you can sing hundreds, if not thousands, of times around the world and sing with absolute conviction and not just some easy rhyme or easy lyric. Sometimes the best thing you can have when you're feeling down is for someone to be in the room with you who feels the same way. I think this record certainly has its share of those moments. I think we've done that. I've written a lot of the songs, and I've tried to write about what's in my heart and what I'm hoping for and what I'm trying to make better. And that's why I think we are still here.
MT: How has your sound changed? Have you tried to modernize your sound to stay relevant?
MS: The new record was influenced by electronic music in a way that our music has not been in the past. I know I mentioned Joy Division and Depeche Mode. There's a song on the album called "Lovestruck." It never would have been on an earlier Vertical Horizon record. I would have dismissed it offhand as something we "couldn't" do because it didn't fit for us. But that's why I wanted to do that song. Trying to stay relevant is sort of a slippery slope. I think you need to go with what inspires you. I'm not trying to stay relevant, but I am inspired by music that I'm hearing nowadays. So that inspires me to see what bits and pieces of that style of music can fit into ours.
MT: So it sounds like you went into the recording process trying to find ways to challenge yourself as a band to do something different.
MS: Absolutely. Everything You Want, Go, and Burning The Days were sort of like a trilogy. You could sort of see a through-line in all of those records. Burning The Days sort of ended the trilogy for me. It doesn't mean dismissing the past of this band. A song like "Half-Light," for example, definitely fits within the context of the history of this band, but a song like "Consolation" or "Frost" or "Evermore" hint at a new direction. I love not knowing where we'll go next. I feel like we've taken plenty of turns on this record, and I am excited about that.
MT: Do you see Vertical Horizon as a band that will continue to make albums in the future?
MS: I think so. There's a lot of good will out there toward this band, and that's a special thing that I think needs to be cherished and honored. We'll go over to Manila in the Philippines and play Araneta Coliseum for thousands of people who know the words to every song. And they love Vertical Horizon. It's incredible. So that kind of thing is really special. So I do see us continuing. And I want to continue.
MT: Outside of Vertical Horizon, you work with other artists to write songs. Is that process different? What have been some of your favorite collaborations?
MS: For me, fundamentally, the art of collaborative song writing is a finely nuanced one. To sit down in a room with someone and write a song is a really tricky and special thing because ideally you are dealing with real emotions not just writing words that are meaningless. So when someone makes a suggestion, it's coming from the heart. And if the other person doesn't agree with the direction, there is a certain amount of tact that is required because that person has put a piece of their heart and soul on the table and you are saying, "Yeah, I don't really like that."
I think collaboration is a totally different discipline than writing by myself in a room with a guitar. I mean I absolutely love it. It's a dialogue, and I love that feeling of not being totally in charge but also having a real voice where the journey is taking us.
I used to be afraid of it. You know a long time ago I viewed my creative juices as a finite source that over time would diminish and eventually empty out. I literally looked at it as a chest full of stuff, and I didn't want to waste it because I didn't know how much I had. And I think that's a very disrespectful way of looking at creative energy. I think you have to view it as infinite and as something that just needs to be continually harvested. I view the creative process as an athletic event. An athlete will train every day in some way, shape or form, and we as writers need to train every day to keep ourselves fit.
If nothing else's, writer's block and those type of things come from misuse and disrespect of the muse. Every day I want to write something. I know how I write songs, but I don't know how you write songs. So if I can sit down in a room with you, you will learn from me and I'll learn from you, and we'll be better for it at the end of the day.
MT: You've been in and out of the spotlight as a musician over the past two decades. How have you been able to maintain, build and nurturing that career for so long?
MS: It's interesting. I think partly it is by being completely pig headed and stubborn. This is what I love to do, so I'm going to get up every day, and I'm going to do it. If there is an obstacle blocking me from doing it, I'm going to get around it or get through it. I will not allow myself to stop. And that doesn't mean I'm going to be at the top of the charts or selling out Staples Center, but it does mean that I am going to be making records that are true to me and to my vision for the band. And hopefully making music that resonates with other people purely for the fact that really it stems from me trying to deal with stuff inside of me, and I have a lot of stuff to deal with, so I will have enough to write about for a long time.
Echoes From the Underground is out now on Amazon. Listen to it here, and let us know what you think in the comments section below! Find out more information on the band and the album on their website, Twitter and Facebook.
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