Switching Bodies With LAUNDRY DAY
Photo by Camilla Ffrench
Based out of New York, LAUNDRY DAY releases their fourth album “We Switched Bodies.” Although the band has not released a new album in a few years, they performed at Gov Ball, LollaPalooza, and Firefly music festivals featuring their older music. Etai, Sawyer, and HW also released their own solo albums, which were fantastic, during 2021. Unpublished had the privileges to interview HW and Etai about their albums when they came out, so seeing them culminate in a full band album is extremely exciting. The band's new album, “We Switched Bodies” has been in the works for over two years and is well worth the wait. The band, composed of Jude, Sawyer, Etai, Henry Pearl, and HW, hopped on a Zoom with Unpublished during a practice session for their upcoming tour.
Photo by Camilla Ffrench
[LAUNDRY DAY:] (inaudible yelling)
[UNPUBLISHED:] So much has changed since the last time we talked! How are you guys feeling since your days of secluded recording?
[JUDE:] It's been a long journey. We feel a lot. We're honestly in such a different headspace than we were. When we were talking to you, we were able to put on a smile and have a good time, but there were definitely a lot of low moments. And now we have an album about to come out, rehearsing, and everything just feels amazing! We're all in really good spirits and chemistry has been great. It's good.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How long have you been working on this album?
[ETAI:] Two years in total.
[JUDE:] We started in February 2020 and none of those demos ever made the album. Yeah, but like, that's when we first realized okay, we're making our fourth album.
[SAWYER:] Two years plus and procrastinations: COVID, some hot dogs, a couple of days off.
[JUDE:] It really started fall 2020 at that house. And then we left the house, went back to New York, and made most of the album in Etai’s basement from December to February.
[UNPUBLISHED:] The cover art is insane; who made it?
[HP:] The cover art was done by a man named Jack Kendall. I was out with my friends one day going to a butterfly release and this kid was there drawing on a cigarette box and he was so talented. I talked to him and was like “You need to make an album cover.” And he did it. He goes to NYU. He's a kid just like us and a super talented guy.
[JUDE:] We kind of gave him a rough idea. We wanted the five head thing, what we call the amoeba, and then like he kind of just ran with it. And we're so happy with it. We always wanted it to be very colorful and kind of wacky. We had like all these references like Where is Waldo, the Sergeant Pepper album, Green Day, those kind of just crazy, eclectic covers. We felt like we wanted one of those covers where you have to stare at it for a while to try to figure it out.
[UNPUBLISHED:] In your album promo, who came up with the idea for interviewing each other?
[JUDE:] That was technically my idea, but I really just copied this David Byrne thing. I wore a suit one time and people were saying that I looked like David Byrne. So then I looked up interviews with him and I was like “oh my god, we have to do this.” It was about two years ago too and it was this concept of us interviewing each other. We didn't know what it was going to be. It was never associated with the album. Then it just kind of connected and it made sense to do it with the album.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How did you guys all come up with your the people who interviewed you, your alter egos?
[JUDE:] We had some inside jokes there and pulled from everywhere. It was kind of random too.
[ETAI:] It was method acting. I did lots of research, watched lots of Vietnam veteran interviews and really tried to get in the headspace. I listened to jungle noises when I fell asleep, and the next morning, I was ready.
[JUDE:] He was a different person when the camera was on.
[HW:] It was scary.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How would you pitch this album to someone who knows nothing about you guys in 30 seconds?
[SAWYER:] A group of best friends who translated all of their stupid inside jokes into music. Some of them are sadder than others and some of them aren't. And that's about it. It's funny though because everybody's like, “oh, it's just so you guys and it must have come to you so naturally,” but people don’t know that it took us almost two years to make it, but that’s the goal. We want people to hear it and be like, “oh my god, how did they squeeze all this in? They must have so much energy!” But really it was countless nights of like going over the same little thing, but it gives the effect that it was off the top of our heads.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How, when and how far into the process did you start working with Kevin and Ramil?
[JUDE:] At the very last second. We had a version of the album done very similar to the final and we wanted to see if we could take it up 5-10%. We got the opportunity to work with the producer Brendan O'Brien, who is an alt-rock legend and awesome guy, on “Did You Sleep Last Night.” Afterwards we were like, “oh my god, let’s work on every song again!” So we went back to LA and worked on a few more songs and it ended by working with Kevin and Ramil. But honestly, if you saw it, it was the most boring thing ever. We were making the most subtle changes.
[UNPUBLISHED:] When you listen to the album, it is easy to hear each of your own individual sounds. How do you combine each of your individual styles into one cohesive group?
[SAWYER:] I think that can sometimes be the hardest part about being in a band. When you have a lot of ideas or when you're kind of coming up with things by yourself, it's just you. We listen to our old music and it's super simple and we're like “how did we ever agree upon something so simple?” I think it's because when you're friends with people for long enough, you start to know their habits and their tendencies and what they do naturally and what their first thought is like. When you accumulate more knowledge as a group, it makes new things harder to come by, so it takes a while to really find something that gets all five of our brains going. But then when we do, we know that that is what 's going to be good. It definitely takes all of us really to be on the same rhythm and I think this is the first time where we had to really work to get back to that. Before we just kept making music so quick that there was no time to really sit and think about what we wanted to do.
[JUDE:] We learned a lot about just being persistent and getting everyone's trust. We know that when there's a version of a song that not all of us are really liking, it can't stay that way. So either we have to stop working on it or it has to become something new.
[ETAI:] Just sitting back and sort of the hardest part. It's very, very 2020 2020 2020. We really couldn't, as a band, make an album that any one of us ever thought was completely perfect in every detail. But what we do make is way more interesting and way cooler because it captures our energy that we have together. We came up with 200+ song ideas for this album, but the ones we chose, you can really feel the excitement.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Now I have some questions for you to ask each other loosely based on the game “We’re Not Really Strangers.” We are going to start with Sawyer.
[SAWYER:] Jude, how are you, really?
[JUDE:] I'm doing really well. I think we've been working so hard. And I realized that I really need to be doing something and checking the box office every day to really feel good about myself. So when we rehearse, I can go to bed knowing like I did something that made us better.
[JUDE:] Etai, if you made a playlist for me, what three songs would be honest?
[ETAI:] We already have so much music in common. I have to think of you kids, but I feel like you can pick one set like, right? Jude’s Essential Playlist would have to be track one: “Across the Universe.” track two: “Intergalactic” by the Beastie Boys, and track three would be “Passionfruit” by Drake.
[ETAI:] HW, what is the most unexplainable thing that's ever happened to you? Something that must have been the work of God.
[HW:] I'll go to my twinship with HP.. We have the same birthday, same name, and the coincidence goes deeper. Another one is that we are in a band together.
[HW:] HP, how would you describe me to a stranger? I'm actually going to say HP, how would you describe yourself to a stranger?
[HP:] I would say, yo, there's this guy HP. He is super positive…
[SAWYER:] Wrong!
[HP:] and super smart…
[SAWYER:] Wrong!
[HP:] and super sexy, and he really cares how you are.
[HP:] Etai, if you came with a warning label, what would it say?
[ETAI:] Likely to vomit and prone to remove clothes.
[UNPUBLISHED:] This one is for all of you, if you could switch bodies with one person, who would it be?
[HP:] The recently retired Tom Brady.
[ETAI:] Pregnant RiRi.
[JUDE:] Going off that, A$AP ROCKY to impregnate Rihana.
[HW:] Drake
[SAWYER:] The Queen of England.
