Peach Pit’s Neil Smith on his quarantine survival tips and releasing ‘You and Your Friends’ during a pandemic

Vancouver’s Peach Pit was supposed to kick off a major tour later this month in support of their long-awaited sophomore album (and Columbia Records debut) You and Your Friends, out on Friday, April 3. While all touring has been put on hold as the world struggles with the coronavirus outbreak, Peach Pit frontman Neil Smith has managed to put a positive spin on the situation, noting that more people than ever are online right now and looking for anything to help them get through these uncertain times.

After a nearly 3-year wait, Peach Pit (Neil Smith: vocals/guitar, Chris Vanderkooy: guitar, Peter Wilton: bass and Mikey Pascuzzi: drums) has delivered a new album filled with the sort of breezy indie rock that brought the band so much attention for their Sweet FA EP back in 2017. Produced by heavy-hitter John Congleton (St. Vincent, Best Coast), You and Your Friends maintains the hazy summertime feel of the band’s earlier work while adding in a crunchy production edge that slots in nicely alongside the band’s melancholy lyrics on irresistibly catchy tracks like singles “Shampoo Bottles” and “Black Licorice.”

We caught up with Neil Smith just ahead of the release of You and Your Friends to discuss how he’s filling his days in quarantine, how to avoid the online trolls, and what it feels like to be releasing a new album in the midst of a pandemic. You and Your Friends is out on Friday, April 3. Pre-orders are available here.

Bad Feeling Mag: Are you holding up OK in all this?

Neil Smith: Yeah, definitely. The activity of hanging out alone in my apartment is actually not that off from my regular day life. [Laughs] It’s not that bad. I saw a clip of Larry David that he posted yesterday, just basically calling out people that were going outside. He was like, “What are you doing? You’re passing up literally the one time in your life that you can stay at home guilt-free.”

What have you been doing to pass the time during this quarantine period? 

I mean, I could lie to you and tell you what productive things I’ve been doing. [Laughs] I’ll give you my honest take on how to pass a good quarantine. I’m a golf fan, and on YouTube right now they have every final round broadcast from the Master’s championships in golf, all the way back to like, 1970 or something like that. So, I’ve just been watching golf reruns every day. [Laughs] That’s one of the things for sure. My friends and I really like playing Texas hold ’em, and we made a virtual poker club online, and so we’ve been scheduling poker games and playing on Zoom. It kind of feels like we’re hanging out, which is fun. I won last night, so I’m excited.

How does it feel to be releasing a record in the midst of a pandemic?

It kind of feels like, “Wow, this couldn’t be happening at a worse time.” Our tour has been postponed to the fall which is kind of a huge bummer, but at the same time, I do think more people are on the internet than ever before. So, people are kind of just waiting around for different content to look at and stupid guitar tutorials on Instagram and so I feel like in some ways this might not be the worst time to release an album actually.

Is there anything the band has talked about doing to virtually celebrate the release of the record? 

Yeah, we’re going to announce it tomorrow, but I think Thursday night we’re going to do a record release party live on Instagram, we’ve got a bunch of stupid stuff planned for that. And then on Friday, I think we’re going to do a little live performance kind of thing with a Q&A and play a couple of songs off the record. It will just be me alone playing them, but we’ll get the guys to hop on and have a chat.

It’s been a few years since Being So Normal in 2017; did it affect the songwriting knowing there are people waiting for a new album this time? Did that weigh on your mind when you were putting the album together?

Yeah, definitely. I think it was more stressful than the first time around, for sure. Because there are some people waiting to hear it this time, it’s not just releasing it to kind of whoever and there are no expectations. So definitely this time around was a bit more stressful, and I’m feeling good about the release, I’m excited for it, but I can’t say that I’m not a little anxious as well, you know? And I don’t remember feeling the same kind of anxiousness that first time around, but I think that’s probably normal.

Was there anything different you wanted to try with this album in terms of songwriting or production?

I mean, I don’t know that we put too much thought into trying to be different from how we were before, but I think that we did want to try and have our sound evolve a bit from our last EP, and from our last album, which we definitely did. This record doesn’t sound like Being So Normal. But I don’t know that we put too much thought into, “OK, it has to sound different,” kind of thing.

But when we got paired up with John Congleton to record the record, he produced it, and that was the kind of thing where I feel like John really did produce the record, you know? The way it sounds, and allowing us to have this body of work at the end of it that does kind of seem cohesive, I think John really helped us with that. Before we started recording with him, I don’t know that we really had a specific vision or anything, but after looking back at all the songs and listening to them all together, it does feel like an album. I have to attribute that to John, for sure.

Did you discuss any of the bands he’s worked with previously or any specific albums that inspired you all? 

Oh, definitely. When we were in the studio with him we were constantly asking him to tell us stories about different bands that he’s worked with, different albums that he’s worked on, because he does have a very impressive list of credits, and it’s a lot of bands that we’re super big fans of. He recorded the last Alvvays record, and obviously every Canadian band loves Alvvays, and everyone should because they’re awesome, so it was cool getting to hang out with John because he was happy to share stories about recording with different artists over the years.

As far as any bands we were kind of looking to for what we wanted to sound like…I hate answering that question because I feel like if I say something people will be like, “That doesn’t sound like that record, what the fuck are you talking about you fucking self-righteous piece of shit.” [Laughs] Throughout the recording process and throughout the writing process last year, I definitely, and the other guys too, really got so into The Beatles. And I never had been so into The Beatles before. I don’t know if there’s any correlation between that and the record that came out of it, but I’m just the biggest Beatles fanboy at the moment.

You’ve said that these new songs are about the band and their close circle of friends; do they know which songs are about them? How does that process work when you’re writing about people in your life?

It really depends on the song, for one. There are a few songs on the record where I just explicitly drop people’s names in the song, and I’ve only done that with…there’s a song where I talk about my sister and her husband in it, there’s a song where it says my friend’s name in it, and then they’ll just know, or I’ll be excited to tell them. And I don’t know if they like that or not, but usually, I’ll say. But any other person that’s maybe a peripheral person or I don’t explicitly say their name in it, then I’m probably not going to say anything, just because it’s quite an awkward conversation to have. You never know if someone’s going to be like, “What the fuck?” or they’re going to be like, ‘Oh, that’s sick,” so I usually don’t even roll the dice and I just keep it to myself.

The band has been staunch supporters of the Vancouver scene; are there any bands you’d recommend people check out?

Oh, absolutely. I think right now, one of my favourite Vancouver bands is this band Babe Corner. They’re putting out really, really great music. It’s an all-girl band, we’re buddies with all of them, and actually their front-woman and the songwriter is our guitar player Chris’ girlfriend Lindsay. She just put out an EP a month ago and it’s very, very good. Definitely got to take a listen to Babe Corner.

Oh, I became friends recently with this band called Brat Boy, and they are going to be putting out an album this year. They’re kind of a super aggressive rock band, but they’re sick. And if I was going to pick one more to round it off that I’m really enjoying right now, I’m really enjoying Haley Blais‘ music. She’s another friend of ours, and she’s actually going to be supporting us on the North American portion of our tour this year, so people will get a chance to see her if they come to any of our shows. She’s fantastic.

There really seems to be a tight connection between the band and fans; how do you keep that up while still maintaining some boundaries? 

It’s really great but at the same time, it can be tough for sure. Like everyone, if there’s something you put out into the world and there’s going to be hundreds of comments of people talking about it, you can’t help but want to look at them. And at the end of the day, I’d say 99% of the comments are positive, and then there’s that one comment in there that’s just like, “This song is a piece of trash!” And you can never remember any of the good comments. So, I try on social media to respond to our fans, because again, almost everyone is super nice and kind to us, but, you know, I tend to not engage on YouTube because otherwise I just get really depressed because one person said they didn’t like me.

What do you hope fans take away from this record? 

I kind of hope people will be able to understand what the lyrics and the songs are about. I think sometimes my songs are very literal, so it’s super obvious and easy to understand, and then there’s a couple of songs on the record that are a little bit more abstract, and I hope they’re not too confusing for people, and they can enjoy those songs as well. But at the end of the day, I hope people will like the album and listen to it because we are having a lot of fun getting to do all the stuff we get to do and touring all over the place, and getting to release music and do music videos, so I kind of just hope that can keep going for us.

You and Your Friends is out on April 3. Pre-orders are available here.