.png)
InAlternative had the opportunity to interview Nashville-based indie rock band Ducky Neptune. The band is set to release their debut album Insensitive Plastic on June 23rd. Having coined the phrase “psychedelic surf soul” to describe their sound, they craft a distinct blend of indie surf rock sounds and jazz elements. We spoke with members Josh (vocals/bass) and Shane (guitar) about their upcoming album, the Nashville music scene, and their most memorable live show.
Tell us about your latest release Jamesy Boy. What inspired this song? As a single, how does it reflect your upcoming album Insensitive Plastic?
Josh: “Long story short, the inspiration was the cover of a Rolling Stones magazine. It was a cover of The Beatles…It’s about artists working and playing the same songs over and over again to achieve success. Repeating the same thing constantly to get to everybody, so to speak. ‘Jamesey Boy’ is about hard work. It’s about repetition in the sense of replicating the same exact thing to somebody. Metaphorically, like any blue collar job, doing that same thing over and over to give to somebody else. That’s the essence of the song. As far as musicality goes, it’s the same thing repeated. That’s also a little ode to it. Repeating the same action to give the consumer the same result. I believe ‘Jamesey Boy’ holds all the elements that we recorded. As far as horns, electric guitar, organ, and a lot of the same voices. Slightly psychedelic.”
Shane: “Got a little bit of soul– Psychedelic surf soul.”
How would you describe your current sound? Which of your songs would you
recommend to first time listeners?
Shane: “The EP we have out now has three songs from the album, ‘Charlie,’ ‘Mary,’ and ‘Jamesey Boy.’ I feel like they all would speak to somebody. As with any album, everyone has [their own] favorite song from it. That’s for each listener to find out, really.”
What can you tell us about Insensitive Plastic? Has your sound/style grown or changed since your self-titled EP? What part of the release are you most excited for?
Josh: “Absolutely, 100%. We have increased [the] complexity in our music from the first grouping of songs to the last. I also think our voices have changed. We simplified a lot of guitar, and increased space or availability for other sounds, which is what this latest album holds, like, a lot of horns. I don’t know if moving forward we’re gonna do that. We’re actually probably gonna peel back on the other sound and increase the guitar back again. That’s just our own personal artistic endeavor. But, ultimately, I think this album more so than our earlier work allows for less ego to be in place and more of what’s appropriate for the song. That was the idea, was to say, ‘This is the better sound that could suit the moment,’ depending on the song. That’s why at the end of ‘Jamesey Boy’ you can hear a trumpet solo, or instead of hearing underlying guitar tones you hear an underlying horn section that is transitioning us into the next section.
Shane: “The new stuff we’re writing is way different. That’s the evolution of being in a band, you get to know each other more instrumentally. [In terms of the release], I’m most excited for people to just be able to listen to the whole thing. Everything right now is singles, but we really wrote this as an album. We put a lot of work into artwork, concept, order of the songs, the flow of it. At least for me, I just want somebody to be able to sit down and listen to it front to back.”
What does your process look like when writing/creating music?
Josh: “I’d say in general we come up with the base idea, any songwriter that’s in the group, which, I’d say at this point there’s three of us– Me, Shane, or Ari. We try to approach it as though we’re gonna limit ourselves to what we do. So guitar will play its point until it’s time for the guitar to speak, but when it comes time we give everything we can to provide space for that instrument. So, like, yes, organ may be a back layer throughout a chorus but once there’s a little bit of space for horn and organ to speak we’re gonna let them have complete creative control. That’s where it becomes a completely unique endeavor because there’s absolutely, wholeheartedly multiple minds going into the writing process.”
Shane: “Or sometimes it’s like, if I come up with a guitar part, then I’m stern on keeping that part, but everybody else’s part can go around that. I’m not gonna interrupt Josh or try and write the lyrics with him, or tell Ari how to play piano. We work through it to get the best out of the song. But we usually have a foundation that one of us created to start from. Sometimes it changes a little bit, y’know. It’s very cooperative, we’re trying to cooperate with each other. We’re pretty much best friends, and we’re hoping that it gets across. Like, when an electric guitar solo is going on, we’re paying tribute to that rather than anything else.”
Tell us about the Nashville music scene. How would you describe it? What are the best parts about it? Any drawbacks?
Shane: “I mean, we’re here for a reason. There are musicians everywhere. It’s a great place to be for that reason.”
Josh: “Yeah, the networking capability. The drawback is you are a fish in a huge sea. When you start to speak with somebody about networking musically, they’ve heard every story before. The ability to be unique is diminished because every neighborhood has three artists or songwriters that can do it. But also, when somebody does see your uniqueness, it’s more gravitational because of the fact that you’re in this huge pool of amazing talent...in Nashville it’s about playing your part, and that’s a really cool thing about it here.You can find musicians because it’s such a good pool that wanna play their part.”
Shane: “And most of the time your audience is all musicians…so it’s a different thing, but it also has its magic to it. It’s inspiring. It means everybody around us is not choosing the same pathway or genre, but everybody’s trying to be an artist…you’re around everybody who’s still trying to do what you’re doing.”
What’s the most memorable show you’ve played, and what was great about it?
Josh: “It’s so recent that I hate to say it, but probably Cafe Mustache in Chicago. It was one of [the] most memorable shows I’ve ever played. What happened was we played a show here [in Nashville] after Chicago about two weeks later and a kid that was in Chicago came here. He said ‘I was driving down to Florida and I wanted to see you guys again. I was a couple hours away and I trekked over to see you guys play.’”
Shane: “Yeah, we gave him our autograph.”
Josh: “The fact that he followed us and saw us in our hometown was, to this moment, very inspirational. And the fact that he saw what we see in ourselves. That he’d wanna shake our hands and bid us good well is the biggest thing. That’s all we want our music to do is to bid somebody else good well, wherever they are. And you don’t always know that when you’re playing a venue, I didn’t know that when I was playing in Chicago. But the whole vibe of everybody in the city was a bidding of good well. Like, carrying your equipment half a block through city traffic…When we’re in a relatively quiet neighborhood, it’s easy to load in and load out. In Chicago, there was a little bit of work. That’s the kind of thing that makes it memorable, is the working aspect of it all. Yeah, at the end of the show we don’t get the glamorous tequila shots that we want, but we get Malört…Like, you’re getting the hometown shot from a hometown fan. This person never heard of us before, but they wanna buy us shots after? Anytime Malört’s given in that condition, it’ll taste a little less bitter.”
What can we expect from you in the future?
Shane: “The record comes out June 23rd.”
Josh: “Yeah, and we plan on recording more music. We’re gonna get a bit rock-ier and try to gear ourselves towards more festival style music. Something a bit more popular. We wanna send people on the same trip that we send ourselves through when creating the music. We wanna give that to the listener. So really our goal is to get back in the studio, and just to grow our fanbase.”
Keep up with Ducky Neptune:
Stream Jamesey Boy:
Comments