New music interview: A Place For Owls

Hello APFO nation! If this is your first time here, welcome. My name is Crit, and this blog is a place for me to talk about new music and share the love. Here’s a link to my most recent playlist. I hope you’ll take a moment and subscribe.

They are the Twitter kings. They are Denver rock band A Place For Owls. And today, they released two beautiful brand new songs out into the world.

You can listen on Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music.

Ben Sooy took a few moments to chat with me about these new songs and what the band has planned for the rest of this year as they continue their meteoric rise into the hearts of music fans everywhere.

CRIT: Put these songs in the context of your other work. I know you’re working on LP2 and you said these aren’t on there so talk a little about that decision to release these two now.

BEN: We recorded the songs for LP2 in late 2023 with Dave Wilton, one of our heroes. Dave's in an indie band called A Boy & His Kite, he writes really beautiful indie folk and he is also a really accomplished engineer and producer. He records some Colorado royalty (Gregory Alan Isakov, Covenhoven, among others). He's got a studio in Lafayette, Colorado, outside of Boulder, and he's one of those folks who has transitioned from "hero" to "friend."

LP2 has this really song narrative arc: it's songs from what was essentially the hardest year of my life - my wife Kate and I have a deep desire to be parents and we were trying for kids, got pregnant, we're really stoked, but then Kate had a pretty brutal miscarriage. These songs from LP2 are from the season right after that. I was the most confused and discouraged and angry I've been.

We have 12 songs tracked for LP2, but we've also been writing and recording a bunch of other songs too that didn't fit on the narrative of the album. Two of those were older songs that I kept singing and wanting to play live: My Own and Tell Me You Are. They're probably two of the songs I'm proudest of lyrically and like message-wise. They're also songs that when we play them live, they're pretty different than the recorded versions that are out there. My Own was a rock song that we often play pretty and acoustic, and Tell Me You Are was an acoustic song that we often play loud and electric. It seemed really compelling to us to record versions that "reversed to polarity" on each song.

CRIT: Tell me a bit about how and when these songs were written/recorded, what was the process like?

BEN: Our drummer Jesse Cowan recorded, mixed, and mastered these two songs. These two songs capture some of the elements I love best about our band: gentleness, togetherness. We recorded 8 layers of gang vocals for My Own. Gangs are an important part of how we record - singing together all five of us in unison.

CRIT: Anything else you’d like to add about the upcoming LP2 and the band’s plans for the year? Give the people what they want: hints about APFOLP2!!!

We've got one or two splits coming out this year with bands we really love!! Then we'll self-release APFO LP2 in late 2024.

Many thanks to Ben for taking the time and being so open. Much love to his family and the rest of the band as well.

Thanks to you for reading.

Enjoy the songs.