MELT Exclusive: villagerrr

Photo by Juliette Boulay

I caught Villagerrr just before their show at Off Broadway in St. Louis— the first stop of their extensive tour across the Western US & Canada in support of not only their genre-counterpart Ratboys but also their forthcoming album Carousel.

Steeped in the same rawness that earned Mark Scott’s earliest, bedroom-recorded releases their initial admiration, Carousel is, in a way, a realized version of these sounds. With an accompanying band composed of Zayn Dweik (drums), Cam Garshon (bass), Alec Cox (guitar), and Henry Schuellerman (pedal steel), Scott’s trademark premeditation and delicacy is brought to rest in absolute perfection in its live incarnation. 

Carousel, across its 11 tracks, is a soft Appalachian mud, a shaking of the earth, a testament to the openness and pure vulnerability that is communicated through Scott’s careful arrangements.

With Scott and each accompanying member of the band having benborn and raised in various corners of Ohio, Villagerrr’s sound is not Midwestern through a necessary intentionality but through a plaintiveness soaked deep into its pedal-steel veins. It is a force of nature, a delicate breeze swelling over an open plain, and Carousel is just the latest step down this path for Scott and his rotation of collaborators.

Carousel is out on all streaming services on May 29 via Winspear. Listen to the lead single, “Locket”, here.

The transcript below has been edited for the sake of brevity and clarity.

What stop of the tour are you most excited for? Is there a city you’re most looking forward to playing?

[Mark]: St. Louis is cool. We've never really played here. We're also going to get to Vancouver. 

[Zayn]: That's the one I'm most excited about. I've never been there, to British Columbia. I've never been on that side of Canad. And we f*ck with Seattle and Portland. We're super green and cool that way, so I'm excited to see the Canada side of that. But we have friends in L.A. that we're excited to see. We've played there.

One of the biggest shows we ever played was there, I think, last summer. So it'll be cool to go back and play there again, too.

[Alec]: I have a lot of friends in Texas– in Dallas. Our friends Brody, Carlos, Jake, all of them. Drew and Austin. That and L.A. Sunshine. I'm just excited for it. 

You haven’t played with Ratboys yet on this tour, but how do you anticipate your two sounds complementing each other for a live audience?

[Mark]: I don't know. They seem like they have a lot of upbeat songs. I feel like we're a little more mellow maybe overall. I think that'll be cool to ease into.

[Zayn]: Feels like we'll be opening it up and getting people warmed up in a good way. And I think they'll just knock it out of the park. They sounded huge. They sounded massive. The guitar sounded great. So I feel like that'll be really nice. I'm excited to see what their fans think of us.

I'm sure some people have heard of us, know us, but hopefully a lot of people haven't. And that could be a cool thing. We've got a couple more rocking, noisier songs in the set and a couple more mellow ones. So hopefully we don't put them to sleep [laughs]. Hopefully they're ready for Ratboys when they come on.

[Alec]: This feels like the most rocking set we've had. At least since I've been playing, so I think that'll probably also complement them. They've got a lot of energy.

[Zayn] I think both the sounds are pretty... We both have pedal steel. Two guitars, one pedal, so basically it's the same thing. I think the songs are very hook-laden across both of us. Maybe a little bit different tempo, but I think Mark's got some hooks in there, man. So does Julia.

So I think we'll sound cool together. 

I want to focus in on your new album [Carousel]. From an outsider’s perspective, this project sounds a little more orchestral and a little more polished than some of the stuff earlier in Villagerrr’s discography. Do you all see this album as a step in a new creative direction, a continuation of what you started on your last project, or something in between?

[Mark]: I think it's kind of a mix of both. Henry and Zayn played on this album and Cam sang on it. But I did a lot of it by myself. But I had some friends and other musicians from other bands play.

Yeah, maybe the more polished sound or something comes from just more time spent on the songs and trying to work with the arrangement of the instruments a little more than usual. But, yeah, I think it's a step forward maybe with the writing and stuff. But it kind of feels like the same thing that I've always done.

And you had h.pruz and Carolina Chauffe from Hemlock feature on the album, right? What do you think bringing in those kind of additional collaborators and creative voices adds to or contributes to the sound of Villagerrr?

[Mark]: I think it's cool. I mean, obviously, I think we share a lot of music taste with our friends and stuff. For the most part; sometimes Zayn doesn't [laughs]. 

I mean, obviously, I love to work with specific people, but it's kind of cool how the project feels a little more open-ended, and no matter who's singing or playing on the recorded track, somebody can, in a live setting, reference that and just kind of change it. I like to think of it as— I value the specific people who did it, but it could really be kind of anyone doing it.

I don't know; I'm more thinking about the sound that they can produce more than who it is.

[Zayn]: It's kind of cool that I think all the features we have played with before, I think we got to know them personally, which feels really nice. Having either been fans of them or become fans of them playing live with them, that feels like a really special connection. So it feels good that even if the live versions are different between who's singing what part or who's playing which part or how it sounds, it's cool that the cemented versions are people we really f*ck with.

That feels really good to have those names along the album. That's good company.

The new album is obviously called Carousel. I think the lyrics of the title track will give listeners some clues, but could you talk about what the name of the album might indicate about the themes and subject matter of the project?

[Mark]: I feel like it's a little hard to answer that. But I think I've noticed that, during that time, I was just writing about maybe just how trivial a lot of things can feel and how chaotic the world has been. And meanwhile, you're trying to make music and promote it and support yourself.

It just can all feel a little bit funny. But that's not really what the whole thing is about, I guess. It also just feels like, with the carousel imagery, it kind of reminds me of a carnival or something. The songs span a pretty wide sonic palette, I feel like. And there's so many different people playing on it, so I feel like it just feels like a big, messy thing. But in a good way.

The album art is also pretty crazy, so it [all] just feels like a big mosh pit. 

It seems to me, again from a listener's perspective, that there’s an intentional sense of space in all of Villagerrr’s output, but especially on Carousel. Would you agree with that assessment in any sense?

[Zayn]: We'll get the f*cking voice memo of [Mark] in his room, and then get the draft of the song, and then have other people play on it. So it's really cool to hear all of the differences— some big and some really small.

I think it's really nice. I feel like I have a lot of trust in him arranging the songs and having it be a certain way. I think he is really creative with a lot of sonic palettes in ways I know that I don't always think about myself, and probably these guys included. It feels like he's a good steward of the song. Any song that Mark brings is cool. 

We know we'll go through some changes just on the recorded version, and then on the live version we spend time figuring out that arrangement. We spend a lot of hours. Sometimes just the string players get together. We were working on vocals the other day.That all feels really cool. So I think a lot of it feels really intentional from the jump, from getting the initial song structure and everything from Mark to then what gets recorded on top of that, how the volume levels are adjusted, what gets taken away, put back. It's really wild, all the changes that each song goes through.

Some of these songs we've been playing for years now, live too, which is so crazy. Sometimes hearing the final recorded version, you're like, ‘Whoa, I forgot what this sounded like.’, because we've been playing this for two or three years. 

[Alec]: There's a couple of them that have gone through several full recordings. Then they'll send you the new one or you go to listen to the album and it's like, ‘Oh, I didn't even listen to this version yet. This is what's on the record?’

[Zayn]: So I think that's really cool. That all feels like signs of it being intentional. And obviously when we're in the room together trying to arrange it, I think everyone comments on everybody's parts. Not in a bad way, but very much like, ‘Can we do this here or can there be a better fill to indicate that or can that part be less busy?’ I think we're all really…

[Alec]: …trying to listen to one another. 

[Zayn]: Yea, almost like self-conscious in a good way, which feels like being aware of the space we're taking up at least. It feels nice. 

[Alec]: I think that carries over from what Mark brings to us too. I think when you respect the recording so much, it's like, ‘Oh, I want to f*cking serve this thing’.

[Mark]: You guys are gassing me up [laughs].

I know you all are short on time, so this will be my last question. We’re in the Midwest; I’m Midwestern. In a lot of reviews of your music, people comment upon the “Midwestern” sound of Villagerrr. From your perspective, is there anything quintessentially Midwestern about the sound and influences of the project?

[Mark]: Yeah, I think so. I mean, we all are basically born and bred and lived in Ohio; maybe a few of us have lived somewhere else for a handful of years. I imagine that does influence the sound, at least I know a lot of music I'm into. The past few years especially, maybe five years or so, I've tried to listen to a lot of bands and artists that are from around where we live. I think it's definitely cool to try to sound like what you're geographically close to.

Everybody, especially live, has a different flair they bring to it, so I think ultimately it can be kind of diverse what we're pulling from. 

[Henry]: I like the lyrics; it's so rich lyrically and meaning and stuff that, in my head, every song I see a different scene or something. It's like a different movie or book or whatever, and a lot of those scenes kind of look like southern Ohio [laughs].

[Mark]: That's where I grew up. 

[Henry]: Maybe I'm putting it in my own head, but... 

[Mark]: No, I don’t think so. Sometimes I'm just not really writing and thinking that I'm trying to make something sound like Ohio [laughs]. Ohio's also just an interesting state. It is Midwest, but it feels like its own thing. So I feel like a lot of bands and music from Ohio sound different. 

[Alec]: Because where you're from is like the foothills of Appalachia; that’s like where it starts. 

Zayn]: Everyone's kind of from a different corner of Ohio, which is cool. I feel like there's something about a lot of Midwestern music in general, I think beyond Ohio.

If you're an emotional person and stuck in the Midwest in a way, I think there isn't maybe the same number of distractions or the feeling that there's a lot going on like there is in other places. When we go visit our friends in New York, or we were all in LA for the first time this past summer, I think those were not negative, but definitely can be their own jarring experiences of the hustle and bustle of everything. I think there's a reflectiveness to being in a place where there isn’t nothing going on– we have stuff that we like doing there– but definitely there's not a bar on every street, and you're not walking by famous people.  I think there's a boredom that can create its own reflectiveness. I think it's nice that it doesn't feel like our music has to be like anything.

I think it comes out the way that Mark writes it, and then we play it. It is like Ohio music, just because we're from Ohio. It's not putting on anything. It's funny; when we talk to other people from other cities, they think it's funny that we live in Ohio. I think people assume that we don't. Everyone assumes we live in Chicago or somewhere cooler in the Midwest.

We’re like, ‘No, we're from Columbus’. They don't even know where that is. 

[Mark]: They don't want to go there.

[Zayn]: No, they're clowning on us the whole time. I think we're happy with where we're from, and we rag on it and stuff too. We're allowed to. We are from there, which is cool. 

I think we forget that until we go to other places where a lot of people are transplants from some other place, which is cool too. I think it's cool. There's a lot of cities I'd like to explore and be in.