Interview with the Sullivan Brothers Band, A.K.A. Joyer
Image Courtesy of Joyer’s Twitter // @joyerband
Fresh off the heels of their recent album Perfect Gray, the brother duo Nick and Shane Sullivan, otherwise known as “Joyer,” sat down for a virtual conversation with Five Cent Sound writer Grace Chapdelaine to talk about their creative process, how they’ve grown as artists and what’s up next for their music.
Grace Chapdelaine: To start, where are you both from? And could you just tell me a little bit about how your band came to be?
Nick: Yeah, if you don't already know, we're brothers. We're both from New Jersey, but Shane's in Boston right now. I'm actually currently driving out from New Jersey to play a show in Boston. So I think I’m in Connecticut right now.
GC: Gotcha. Well, thank you so much for stopping to Zoom on the drive.
Nick: Yeah, it's all good. We were stopping for lunch anyway.
GC: Perfect timing!
Shane: I guess we just got started because both of us grew up around a lot of music and our parents were super into music, so it made the most sense just to play with each other because we were always around each other and had instruments around, and both really liked the same music.
GC: Is there a story behind your band name?
Nick: (laughs) You go for that, Shane.
Shane: We get asked that all the time. Not really: I wish there was a cooler story behind it. We just thought it sounded cool and it was just on a list with a bunch of other names, and we just decided that it fit the sound.
GC: You guys have a really interesting sound. What kind of genre would you classify yourselves under?
Nick: I feel like I don't really try to write in a certain genre. A lot of people say that we're slowcore, which I guess kind of makes sense, but it's a very niche-sounding thing. So I usually just say indie. I think a lot of times, our music comes out slow just because we're low-energy people anyway. Like – we're not low-energy, but mild-mannered. I don’t know what the right term for that would be. But, I usually just tell people indie, I feel like it sounds pretentious [to say,] “We’re a slowcore band.”
GC: I wanted to talk a little bit about your most recent release, Perfect Gray. Tell me a little bit about your writing process, where you guys drew inspiration from, and how you went about creating the album.
Shane: It kind of sounds stupid and cliché now, but we wrote it over quarantine, like a lot of albums that are coming out right now, so I guess that kind of impacted it. [Quarantine] gave us a lot of time to really hone in on the writing process and actually flesh out a new sound. We were just together all the time because we were both at home, so it gave us a lot of opportunities to work closer together because with the previous albums, since I'm [in Boston] for school, we would only have the summer months to collaborate and write and record demos and stuff. It really gave us just a lot of time to make something that we felt really proud of.
GC: To get into more specifics, how are you dividing up who's playing versus who's singing, and is the process uniform across all of your albums?
Nick: There's no set way. A lot of it is: I have a riff idea; I could either write the whole song, almost, and then have Shane give me notes or add a thing here or there, or I’ll ask Shane, “Help me flesh it out,” and we'll write it together. It really depends on the song, how it's going to come about. I don't think that we try to approach it in a certain way. I think with writing music in general, it's not like we're going to sit down and write this; it kind of just is like, “Oh, here's something I thought of, so let me do this now,” type of thing. It's just whenever it hits us.
Shane: It unfolds naturally. But I would say for most of the songs, whoever starts out with the main idea or the riff or main structure, this song ends up carrying that over into the lyric and vocal writing process. But, that's not always the case. It changes depending on songs, but it's nice having each other if we ever get stuck when writing a song; we can help each other out and get a fresh pair of ears to add something if we feel like something's missing.
GC: Speaking of your other albums, I was wondering if there's any particular album or few songs that you are particularly proud of?
Nick: I always thought of it as every time we released something, it's been closer and closer to exactly what I want, and Perfect Gray is the closest we've gotten. I'm definitely the most proud of this album in terms of writing and production and things like that. But we, at least I still like everything that we do for the most part. We still play a lot of the old songs live and things like that. So I never thought of a favorite, really. There are definitely ones I like more than others. I don’t know about you, Shane.
Shane: I feel like whichever album is the newest, I ended up liking it because I kind of get sick of the old songs. They just naturally grow old; not that I don't like them, but I just get excited with the new stuff being released. So I would say Perfect Gray too, just because I felt like some of the songs on there were some of our strongest songwriting efforts. But I’m excited to write new stuff in the future, I'm sure.
GC: On Perfect Gray, are there any songs that you think stand out from the rest?
Nick: Yeah, I like all the singles, like “Worst Thing,” “I Was Wrong,” and “Cranky Boy.” I also really like “Lucky,” “Breeze.” I feel like I'm naming the album at this point, but those are all really cool ones, I think.
Shane: (laughs) Yeah, I like “I Was Wrong” and songs like “Creek” and “Breeze.” They're still similar to our older stuff, but I feel like we went in a newer direction with them, in terms of different instruments. I like how “Creek” and “Breeze” are more piano-heavy: That was kind of a new thing for us to try out. So I really liked those.
GC: Your first release was back in 2017. I was wondering how you feel you've grown and evolved since then.
Shane: I definitely feel like we've changed a lot since then. That came out when I was still in high school; Nick was right out of high school or something. I definitely feel like we matured a lot as people. Also, at least for me, that was the first time I ever wrote music. As we came out with more albums, I feel like we just got more comfortable with writing music and it came out more naturally. Also, we recorded [Joyer] ourselves and we didn't really know what we were doing in terms of recording. It was definitely more of an experiment, and its quality is not as good as some of our newer stuff, so it's sometimes hard for me to go back to listening to that stuff, but I still like it. What about you, Nick?
Nick: I did most of the recording on the first one, and I did something wrong when we released it. If you listened to it on some iPhones, you couldn't hear the drums at all through the speakers. And that was, like, crazy. We didn’t know what happened and then we ended up fixing it. Now, when we record things, it's much different and you can definitely hear the drums. Another thing is, Shane sings now. He didn't sing on the first album, and now he writes half of the vocals, if not more. I think we have more control. Before, we kind of sounded [that] way because we didn’t know how to do anything else. We were just trying things and now, we have more control over how we want to sound.
GC: How has creating this music and performing shaped your college and life experiences?
Nick: For me, it was kind of weird because there wasn't really anyone at my college – I went to SVA – who was involved with music or anything like that. I had friends from college, and it was very separate from my music stuff. But I think being in this band really gives me things to do because it’s always like, I'm writing music, I'm recording music, I'm going to play shows, or seeing my friends’ bands play and making friends with all these [other] bands. I think we've made some of our closest friends making Joyer music, by sharing it with people and playing shows.
Shane: That's definitely my favorite part: the community aspect of playing music. Everyone is so supportive and nice, and we've met some of our favorite people in the world from sharing music online and talking to people online or playing shows. And also just being [in Boston] and playing music at Emerson has been cool, to have friends come and support. My roommates and I are living out in Allston now, and I have a basement where we put on our first show last month, and we're trying to put on more shows and stuff like that too. It's cool to be in a college environment and be able to play music for people that are excited about it.
Nick: To add to your college experience, Shane, every one of your roommates has made a music video for us. So they're very involved, and they like to collaborate even if they don't do music stuff themselves.
Shane: That's what's also cool about Emerson, because I study film here, so all of my friends are film majors. It's cool to be able to collaborate with them and blend making music and making visual art, and stuff like that.
GC: Going off of your conversation about your shows, I see that you guys have some shows coming up and you've had a few in the past. How has your experience of touring and playing around the area been?
Shane: It's been a lot of fun. It's probably my favorite part about the band – just playing shows – and it's nice that shows have now come back. It's a little bit tough for me during the semester to play shows because we get offered a lot of shows in the New York area because it’s close to where we're from. So it's a lot of traveling, but also, Nick has to do a lot of traveling to come out to Boston. But it's been a lot of fun. Nick, do you have anything?
Nick: Well, it's just crazy because a good amount of bands that we play with are bands that we’re really into, even before we started making our own music, and now we get to play with them. It's weird being on the same level as them and also because, like, “I was so into your music before I even made music!” We're not playing with huge bands, but we're both super music nerds, so a lot of bands that we never thought we'd even meet, we've been able to play with, which is cool.
GC: Speaking of collaborating with other artists, can we expect any sort of collaborative releases with other local bands in the near future?
Nick: I don't think he cares, but we did track some stuff for the band sundots. He's really close with us and he asked us to track some things on his new release that’s coming out, so there’s that. Other than that, not so much. If someone asked us, we would definitely be down.
GC: I saw that you have a song coming out soon. Aside from that, what is up next for your band? Do you have any plans or aspirations for the future?
Shane: We’re in the beginning stages of writing the next album. Also, we’re planning a tour from late December to January, which is going to be about two weeks. We’re going to the South and then back up the East Coast, which we’re really excited about. Probably more shows around here and in New York too.
To keep up with Joyer, you can find them on Instagram @joyerband, or through their Bandcamp.