You're listening to song-exploder where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made I'm Rishike Shirway In this episode, Claire and Johnna of the band Yacht will play as their brand new single, Plastic Soul They explain how technology inspired the musically as well as lyrically and the secret to getting the best sounds from your software By just clicking on everything? Here's the exploded view of Plastic Soul by Yacht Hi, I'm Johnna And I'm Claire Together we make something called Yacht Tuh We always start with these points of reference that then when you hear the finish song it's there's no bearing on whatsoever Amanda Lier is this like sort of disco deeply baritone voiced sexy lady who maybe kind of spoken word disco songs Yeah, they're so good. The song that this is the course's model left her is called Never Trust a Pretty Face Never Trust a Pretty Face She's like Nico a little bit Yeah Never Trust a Pretty Face But on that song there's a course harmony of maybe like three or four men And I loved the way it sounded as her with this baritone voice but then also men backing her up We should have hired a choir but we did it with software because I wanted it to sound a little bit fucked up You think you're losing it because You see the things you've met on us So there's an occupant of Fifth You see the man you're following who was Is it a bit wrong in a fun way? Trouble that you brought us calls We always wanted to play with technology And that's why we think we chose to use the plug-in harmonizer and why we use the vocoder for the majority of the track too We wanted it to be about technology and served by technology Yeah, like the human voice sort of drowning in bathing in this amniotic reality of connection and technology Which is why the vocoder is there?
If you only had a plastic soul I think my favorite part of the song is this synthesizer on the chorus And the thing I love about it, yeah, my mom heard it and she's like, oh the organ on this song is so great Oh, yeah, and a couple people have said that like emailed and we're like, oh, what's the organ part? And I love that people hear it as an organ. It's an ARP 2600 plug-in. I can't afford it.
Awesome vintage, $10,000, $10,000 like that But yeah, I don't know. It doesn't register as an organ sound to me But I love that other people hear it as an organ. I think that makes it like romantic in a special way It sounds to me like a cartoon mouse I futs with it for hours and hours And I think that's when we really got to a point when I was like, oh this song is gonna be something that we're gonna love One big thing that I love to do and that I've been doing since I've always been making music Is really recycling and the first thing that we started with I was like going through all of this all these old files on a hard drive That was just about to fail and I found this drum loop that I made But yeah, this drum loop was the first thing that we started with and then I added the drum machine on top of it Once we had the drums and the organ together Yeah, I think I listened to like this whole progression on loop for an hour straight. Do you remember that?
Yeah, I mean everything that you make you listen to on loop Then you first wrote that you would just sit your computer listening to it. It looks so happy We were born at home. Yeah in like John's office I don't know there's something about like living inside the music that you're making I'll be like cooking dinner and this will be playing only for like an hour and a half. Yeah, it becomes a domestic thing.
Yeah, just like I'll be folding laundry I like to just tweak everything just a tiny bit so it gets at some characters. I'm just playing through for instance that baseline Slowly modulates the entire time. I love kind of misusing the software getting interesting results by just clicking on everything Yeah, it's fun. We've only been in proper studios twice Claire and I just went in and basically rented out the place without any engineers We just engineered each other.
We didn't really know what we were doing or how to use any of the equipment. We were just kids The first time that we really got to get a drum sound that we loved the drums on this song that come in at the last chorus are recycled from one of those sessions And they come in like this So they sound pretty shitty now that I'm a super solo This song is a lot about the difficulty of modern life and the superficiality of modern life not to be too high-fooled in about it How easy it is to be stuck in monetary trends and impulses and how much broader and more universal to human suffering is Unlike a massive scale and also an interpersonal scale like the course is all about family And it's maybe saying something a little bit different which is that would be technology also helps us articulate Or suffering as well as it does help us forget it. It's a pop song no matter what we do people will be like Oh, what a summer jam, you know And now here's the full recording of plastic soul visit songexploder.net for links to more info on yott You'll also find a link to the Amanda Lear song that influenced them You can find all the past episodes of the podcast and subscribe to future episodes at iTunes.com slash song-exploder You can also find song-exploder on Facebook Twitter and Instagram. I sent out mixtapes on Fridays on my newsletter You can find links to all these at songexploder.net song-exploder is a proud member of radio topia from PRX.
My name is Richard K Sherway. Thanks for listening There's another radio topia show I want to tell you about called Adeltish. It's an award-winning advice culture and storytelling podcast put together by and for young adults It's produced by YR Media and hosted by Dominique French and Nige Turner in the show Dominique and Nige tackle the ups and downs of their own lives And in the process they bring in co-hosts authors and upcoming stars Their upcoming ninth season has stories about cannabis holding grudges and the joy of drag look for Adeltish wherever you get your podcasts Their new episodes begin on April 20th