There’s no hiding the fact that we’ve become just a little bit enamored with alt-pop Casanovas Mansions on the Moon. And on that note, we’ve been waiting ever so patiently for their debut long-player like good little ninjas for just slightly over four years now. Yesterday, the So-Cal ensemble finally released their self-titled album and truthfully, some of us have been looping it for just over 24 hours straight. We’ve previously covered a handful of singles –“Radio”, “The Truth”, “Don’t Tell”, “Somewhere Else Tonight”, “Heart Of The Moment”- but our ears have obviously been a bit more glued to the cuts in which we had never previously consumed including “Take A Ride”, “Notice Me” and “All There Is”. We got lead vocalist Ted Wendler to say a few words about each of the ten tracks contained within Mansions On The Moon, and here’s what one of our favorite indie-pop crooners graced us with:
1. “Radio” was written in response to growing pressure for the band to write a breakout radio pop single. We set out to create a poppy track that ironically spoke of the growing lack of unoriginality in radio pop music today.
2. We wrote “Don’t Tell” while we were stranded in Scranton, Pennsylvania because our northeast coast dates were cancelled due to super storm Sandy. We set up a studio in the hotel and made lemonade out of lemons.
3. “Somewhere Else Tonight” has been with the band for a very long time. We’ve been playing it live for two years while we not so patiently waited for the completion of our first full length album.
4. “Where You Are” started with an instrumental foundation laid down by TRAKGIRL. Ted used a TC Helicon processor to achieve the robotic sound of the vocals. Then we went hambodian in the studio to take it to where it is now.
5. The lyrics for “Take A Ride” were written in Missoula Montana in 2006, the instrumental was completed with Paper Diamond in Boulder Colorado and the vocals were finally recorded in a closet in Los Feliz.
6. Ted first recorded the vocals for “Notice Me” over an acoustic arrangement. The band, along with Sunny Norway and David Ott, used the original acapellas and took the song to a completely different space. Maybe someday we will release the original acoustic version.
7. “The Truth” was the last song we wrote for the album. Lane was insistent that it needed to be included in the release. After Baby Jeff laid down the P-Funk the deal was sealed.
8. “Heart Of The Moment” was written by our bassist Jeff and inspired by a spiritual revelation. We played the track for Zee Avi while hanging out at a friend’s apartment in downtown LA. She graciously accepted our request to sing on the song. The version appearing on the album is remixed, re-arranged and remastered from its original release.
9. On “All There Is” Ben wrote the instrumental foundation for his mom as a birthday present. Then Ted used this to write the lyrics. We hope to inspire people to revisit forgotten dreams and goals they had in their youth, no matter how impossible they may seem.
10. Ted wrote “Time” while house sitting in the mountain town of Roanoke Virginia. He spent that month prolifically writing and recording while a English bulldog named Oscar snored in the background.
And there you have it. Now that you’ve got a bit of insight into the psyche of Mansions as they wrote their first album, take just under forty minutes and listen to their worthy entry into the LP format in its entirety below.
’Heart Of The Moment (ft. Zee Avi)’
