corner club
Photo credit: Helen Liu
Listening to corner club’s music for the first time felt like watching movies. Each song on this debut EP sounds like a soundtrack to a movie, and that’s one of the reasons why I like what they do. Their music is magical. There’s no other word for me to describe what they do. It’s inspiring and beautiful and emotional at the same time. I’m really glad I got to discover them and I can only wish them the best.
Congrats Sav and Mike on the release of this beautiful debut EP.
little love lullabies is now available :)
Photo credit: Helen Liu
Introduce the band - what's your story?
Hey, it’s corner club, aka Sav and Mike! We met through a music group in college and started corner club when we both happened to move to NYC after graduating. We work full-time jobs, but music is a full-time passion for us - we write, record, and produce all our music in our apartments, while pulling sounds from the city and anything in our apartments that make sound.
You're about to release your debut EP little love lullabies - how does it feel like to release your first EP?
M: It’s a strange mixture of excitement and relief… before this, we had only released songs as singles, even though making an EP is something we’ve talked about since we first started making music together. It’s funny--back then, I had made a Trello board with a couple of “long-term” goals for us, and one of them was: “Release an EP by the end of 2018.” It’s 2021 now, but I’m proud of our journey to finally reach this point.
When did you start working on this project? Who helped you create it?
S: I was staying with my family when the pandemic first hit and was reflecting a lot on a relationship that I left behind, so I was sitting at the piano one day when the lyrics “what if you were the one” stuck to me. The idea of creating a larger project to encapsulate that relationship came up during a call with Mike, so we got it rolling once I was back in the city.
Could you describe the songwriting/production process for this EP?
S: Mike and I storyboarded the feelings we wanted to capture together, but the songs are like little diary entries for me. For example, “binary tree” is about falling into a routine when you’ve been with someone for a while, but the title comes from the kind of nerdy approach that my past partner and I used to decide what to eat.
M: On the production side, we wanted to create a universe of sound that captured these feelings and loose memories, while also staying true to the “lullaby” theme. This made it easy in terms of keeping the same piano and airy vocal sound throughout, but we had to do a lot of digging to find the right sounds that mapped to some of the more specific parts of the story we pictured. In a way, we treated the songs like different scenes of a movie, and we actually recorded and put in background sounds from different places to give each song a unique sense of space and time.
What different topics are you talking about on this project?
S: Each song represents a different phase in a relationship. It starts with some of that nervous excited energy of first getting to know someone (I might like you! You might like me!) and cycles through the honeymoon phase to eventually wondering if you made the right decision to move on.
What was the hardest part about making this EP?
M: Staying focused has always been one of the biggest issues for us, as we have a tendency to bounce from idea to idea, even if one idea is literally 90% done. To finish this EP, we basically had to block 3-4 months and write out a schedule for ourselves in order to make sure we didn’t get distracted. Being stuck inside all day made this a bit easier, but going from singles to a whole EP was definitely a big step for us.
What's your favorite thing about this EP?
S: I love how cohesive little love lullabies is! There are a lot of fun little easter eggs that went into the writing and production. For example, the six songs kind of cycle through the circle of 5ths and then backward (C, G, D, D, Gm, C) to mirror the whole idea of going through this relationship journey but eventually ending where you started.
What made you want to name your EP little love lullabies?
S: The EP is a collection of short, dreamy, romantic tunes, so we wanted a title that reflected that! I also love using alliteration wherever I can, so sonically it also works well.
What is your goal for this EP?
M: In general, we try not to get too fixated on numbers or stuff like that. For us, music is about connecting with others, whether that’s people who come out and see us perform (back when that doable) or the fans who stumble upon us on the Internet, so our main hope is that someone out there will relate to what this EP’s about. It could be the whole narrative arc or just a line from one of the songs, but we’ll feel like we’ve done our job if this EP makes someone else feel something.
For those who don't know, what different things artists need to do before releasing a project like this one?
M: There are so many things that happen outside of creating the music itself, like figuring out how to distribute your music to all the streaming services, planning out content/social media to support the release, and marketing your music to the right audience. We try to do everything ourselves, so lately we’ve been busy designing merch and building a website for the first time. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to releasing things, so we try to come up with different ways of promoting our music that we’ll have fun doing along the way.
As artists, what are the biggest struggles?
S: We have so many ideas and not enough time to finish everything! It’s so easy for us to jam up a new tune, but turning that tune into a real song takes time and energy.
What are your thoughts on today's music industry? If you could change one thing, what would it be?
M: Quarantine has really shaken things up, so it’s been interesting seeing how the industry has had to adapt. With the rise of TikTok, it feels like everything is about “going viral” these days, and things just feel like they happen so fast. It’s hard to pinpoint just one thing to change, but in general, I feel like eventually we’ll have to come up with a better way for artists to connect with their fans and make a living without having to worry about so many things outside of making music.
What do you like the most about being in a band?
M: We have really complementary skills, so it’s cool to work together because I feel like we get the best of both worlds all the time. For example, I play guitar, she plays piano; I have a stronger production background, while she comes from a more composition/writing background. Even outside of music, she has a really great eye for design, whereas I have more experience with things like marketing, so it’s nice being able to divide and conquer knowing the other person’s got it.
What do you want to accomplish professionally and personally?
S: We’ve talked about how cool it would be to go on tour one day, and we’d love to play more live shows as well whenever that’s possible again. There are a few songs in our backlog that I personally would love to finish and release, including a little ditty I wrote about croutons.
What biggest life lessons have you learned in 2020?
S: I learned how to cook perfectly al dente pasta. But seriously, I learned that taking baby steps is everything. Mike and I had started the year with a different EP in mind, and when we made the jump to little love lullabies, it felt like we had to start over from square one. But through the process of recording hundreds of tracks, time passed pretty quickly and once we stepped back to review our progress, it felt like everything fell into place.
What are your goals for 2021?
M: Our goal for music has always been to keep doing it. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but because we have to juggle our professional lives with music, each day we get to make music together feels like a blessing to us. Best case scenario, we would love to have another EP done by the end of the year, but in the meantime, we just want to keep making songs and connect with more listeners.
What message do you want to deliver to the world?
Appreciate today and remember that we’re all in this together. And wear a mask!
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