attaboy

A T T A B O Y

interview by LAURA GERHÄUSSER photos by MAYA RICHARDSON

Atta Boy are back! After releasing their first-born, Out Of Sorts, back in 2012 (with no expectation of success), the LA-bred band—made up of Eden Brolin (vocals), Freddy Reish (guitar), Lewis Pullman (drums), and Dashel Thomspon (keys)— earned a lot of love on Spotify and other streaming services. Despite their rising success, they took an eight-year break from music soon after.

Thankfully, on June 26, the band finally released their long-awaited second album, Big Heart Manners. Warm, compassionate indie-pop meets country sounds that wrap you in a cozy blanket on this wonderful compilation of feel-good-songs.

Before the release, I sat down for a chat on Zoom with Eden and Freddy to discuss the reasoning behind their eightyear-long hiatus, the process of getting the album together, and what’s in store for them next.

It’s not long until the second album is coming out. Are you excited, nervous?

Freddy: I guess I’m excited... it’s been a long time since our first album came out and then, also, with all of the protests going on in the US, [the release of the album] doesn’t feel as important.We had lots of talks as a band to push the release day, but then Eden brought up a good point the other day—that there’s no point in waiting until things are back to normal. The protests are going on because things shouldn’t go back to normal. Personally, I’m excited to have the music out there, and it was so much fun to record. We got it done right before quarantine started.

The recording itself?

Freddy: The mixing. My last day in the studio was a Thursday and then, the next day, everything started shutting down. Eden: I’m excited and it’s one of those things- cause we’re kind of strange as a band. For the last record, we just put it out there without any sort of expectation. Music has always just been a fun thing for us to do; it hasn’t been terribly consistent. We just felt out when it was going to happen again and then, it happened. So, I think releasing it just sort of as-is, and letting people that want to listen to it, listen to it, and letting people find it- I like that it has stayed [in] this low-pressure situation.

It is quite unusual for a band to release their first album and then, 8 years later, release the follow up to that. You guys started as a high school band, so is the first album a collection of what you were up to in those days?

Freddy: We started in our senior year of high school. As far as the first album goes, the song, “A Dog’s Adventure,” was Lewis’ jazz-band composition. We all had to write compositions for our senior project and that song was his. Eden hadn’t put any lyrics to it at that point; we hadn’t even considered taking it on as a band. We graduated from high school in 2011, we recorded the album in 2012, and when Eden: It’s just always been kind of nice to be like, “Do you want to do this?” And we got really lucky ‘cause we had friends and family supporting us financially and emotionally. But, at the same time, as much as I missed the boys over those eight years, I’m happy that it happened this way, as strange as it is. I just think it’s kind of a funny story, and I like that it’s part of our lives and story.

Is that also the plan for the upcoming album? To just see what is going to happen?

Freddy: I think the whole idea behind the band is this low-pressure situation. We’ve talked about it- our intentions are to just disappear for eight more years. We were talking about touring before quarantining happened and we’ve had people reach out to us and talk about touring the album. Right now, we’re not in a position to do that, but we definitely wanna play shows.

What was the first initial spark to start making music together again?

Eden: Okay, Freddy doesn’t get enough credit for that part! Because he’s been asking at least once a year if we’d be willing to get started againeven the most minimal thing...

My own relationship with music was very iffy. Freddy kept coming back to it and asked us consistently. Lewis, our drummer, said,“You know what we should do guys?

We should record another album!” And we were like,“Yeeeah, let’s do it! Why didn’t we do that before?” That was when we started to share more music and to get the

That was when we started to share more music and to get the ball rolling on setting dates on going to the studio.

How did the songs come about?

Freddy: Each song was pretty different. Sometimes, two of us can go off and work on a song. Eden, with both albums, came with about three songs that [were] just done. And then, the rest of it is just me,

Dashel, and Lewis struggling and asking Eden if she likes the chords we’re playing.

Eden: We just toss ideas around and the boys are sharing musical ideas with me and wait for me to have something to sing to, which is a slow process for me, for sure. The aspiration and short timeline put a comfortable pressure on it. I think that was kinda nice ‘cause a couple of neat ideas came around.

In the song “Lucky,” you sing about “Big Heart Manners,” which is also the title of the album. Does that have any specific meaning for you?

Eden: I love that song, ‘cause we all wrote it together and it was awesome. Freddy, you came up with that title, didn’t you!? It’s just another saying for good manners. Even if people treat you like shit, as a person, you’ll still turn around and do the best you can, by just being kind- acting with your heart, rather than your brain and ego.

Do you have any musical inspirations before writing and recording? Can you share the last couple of albums you’ve been really into?

Eden: I think it was Lewis who started a Spotify playlist with stuff we’d been listening to.

He’s really good at sending us songs with specific sounds that we could try with our own songs. He’s the first to throw in influences directly; it’s so helpful.

Freddy: We just test out a lot of different sounds. We hear the lyrics, and then we’re just figuring out the best way the song is going to sound, and the most fun we would have playing it. But, I don’t think the point of our band is to be defined by our sound; I don’t think we wanna be trapped in that.

All of your songs’ titles on the album are one-worded. Did that happen organically or was it part of the plan?

Eden: When we were working with the original song titles, I just didn’t like the way it looked. When we decided to order the tracklist, there was just something about the length of the titles that was just really bothering me for some reason.

Freddy: Most of them were one-worded already, anyways. Six of them, I think.

And then it was weird having every other one [be] more than one word. We had a lot of working titles, as well.

“Broke” was called “Eden’s piano song” and “Night” was called “drone thing.” We’re also going to have vinyl with

Lewis’ handwriting on the back and it looks amazing.