Sylvan Esso has two members, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, who met while they were both working on other projects. Amelia asked Nick to do a remix of a song by the band she was in at the time, and when that remix was done, they both loved how it turned out. They emailed song ideas back and forth for a while, until they found a time to be in the same place. It was at that point that they first started working on the song, “Coffee.”

In this episode, Nick and Amelia talk about the origins of the sounds and lyrics within the song, from a Little Tikes xylophone to “Hanky Panky” by Tommy James and the Shondells.

Buy “Coffee” on iTunes.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes
Mountain Man – “Play It Right”
Nick’s remix of that Mountain Man song became:
Sylvan Esso – “Play It Right”
Tommy James and the Shondells – “Hanky Panky”

10 Cedarwood Road is the address of Bono’s childhood home in Dublin. For the U2 song “Cedarwood Road,” Bono looked back to his life there as a teenager, when skinhead culture seeped into his neighborhood via the Seven Towers, housing projects that were built around that time. In this episode, Bono traces the arc from those memories to the lyrics of “Cedarwood Road,” and The Edge breaks down the process of how the music was written, with the original demo and the isolated tracks from the final recording.

U2 is currently on tour throughout North American and Europe.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes
Bono’s best friend is Guggi, a visual artist who grew up at 5 Cedarwood Road.

Will Butler is a member of the band Arcade Fire, and he co-wrote the score for the film Her, which earned him an Oscar nomination. In March 2015, he put out his first solo album, Policy, and in this episode, he breaks down the song “Anna” from that record. This interview was recorded live at SXSW.

Buy “Anna” on iTunes here.

Watch the music video:

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes
The site Vintage Synth Explorer, where you can read more about the the vintage Korg MS-20 synthesizer.