Straylight Run 'The Needles The Space' album

Do John and Michelle Nolan think too much? Straylight Run’s sibling frontpeople – both sing, write, and play guitar and piano, ably enabled in their musical ruminations by bassist Shaun Cooper and drummer Will Noon – don’t seem like eggheads; but there’s no doubting the intelligent design of their gloriously adventurous off-kilter pop and the existential underpinnings of their lyrics.

Asked about “Soon We’ll Be Living in the Future,” the emotionally charged first single off Straylight Run’s forthcoming album, The Needles The Space (Universal Republic Records), John confides: “I’m really happy with how that song turned out because I was finally able to put a finger on a feeling I have about living and dying. It’s a frustrating and terrifying experience living with the full knowledge that at any point in any day you could die, and what would your life have meant? Everything you’re doing – what does it actually mean in the context of your life as a whole? It’s something I probably think about too much. It’s not a good idea to be too thoughtful about such things.”

“The Miracle That Never Came,” meanwhile, is perhaps an even more distinctive example of Straylight’s brand of thinking-man’s pop. It flies out of the starting gate without warning, galloping along on Shaun’s insistent bass line, Will’s four-four beat and Michelle’s fevered vocal, the unexpected ring of glockenspiel spurring it further. Just as the see-sawing melody has lodged itself intractably in your cerebellum, “Miracle” gives way to a swooning, two-tempo waltz bridge that finds Michelle singing, “Oh, look what I’ve done here/ Let these thoughts creep in/ Let them seep right in.” Another standout, the lovely, accordion-laced “The Words We Say,” begins with “We’ll wait in line for most our lives.”

And yet, there’s nothing pretentious here; despite their emergence as songwriters to watch, John and Michelle are just a couple of kids from suburban Baldwin, Long Island. John did take guitar lessons for a time, but neither has received any real formal training. And though she sang some backup for John’s previous outfit, Taking Back Sunday – of which Shaun was also a member – Michelle had never been in a band before Straylight Run.

They did grow up with music, however. “We had an old upright piano in the house and our mom had an electric keyboard,” John says. “She played and sang in church and listened to a lot of music at home. She has tapes of me when I was three years old singing Beatles songs. That was probably my earliest introduction to music.”

For her part, Michelle notes: “I loved musicals. I watched Gene Kelly movies, all that stuff, over and over. There was so much harmony. I think being able to sing harmony is my main strength, so it’s fair to say those movies had an influence on me.” She also claims a fondness for the work of Fiona Apple, echoes of whom can be heard on “How Do I Fix My Head.”

Michelle and John’s father is a pastor, and the two were strongly discouraged from listening to secular music for most of their growing-up years. As his teens unfolded, John says he went through a Christian death-metal phase, explaining that the music was okay with his folks because the lyrical content was appropriately spiritual.

Of course, once he got older, he increasingly came into contact with mainstream music: “When I heard ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for the first time … There was just a feeling I got whenever I listened to it – I knew I needed to get that record. That was the big changeover for me.” Says Michelle: “I was still pretty young then, and I was so worried about John because I knew he was listening to that ‘bad’ music.” She laughs, then confesses to later “going into his room and listening to Nirvana’s Unplugged and [Soundgarden’s] “Black Hole Sun.”

The siblings have always been close, so when Michelle started writing songs on her own, she naturally went to John, who by then had been in a couple of bands, for pointers. “I remember going through a hard time and just naturally turning to writing,” she recalls. “I didn’t really know why, but it was a way for me to get stuff out. I’d show my songs to John and he’d give me tips on how to make then better. Eventually, I’d show him a song and instead of saying, you might want to do this or that, he’d just say, ‘Hmm … that’s really good.’”

In 2003, John and Shaun parted ways with Taking Back Sunday. “Then,” Shaun continues, “we got Will involved and spent another month writing and recording, just the three of us.” At the same time that John and Shaun struck out on their own, John moved into the apartment where Michelle was living, which deepened their musical relationship. “I’d had it in my mind since I started working on new material with Shaun that she might want to do something with us. The more I heard her playing and the more I heard her songs, the more convinced I was that she should be in the band.”

John and Shaun’s reputation from Taking Back Sunday, coupled with considerable buzz generated by demos Straylight had posted online, resulted in a sold-out hometown crowd of 600 for their first performance – Michelle’s first show ever. In 2004 the band released Straylight Run. First single “Existentialism on Prom Night” made inroads at Modern Rock radio, and the following year SR issued the EP Prepare to Be Wrong. Word of mouth, frequent touring and glowing reviews pushed combined sales to more than 200,000.

That sort of success tends to bolster a band’s confidence. In fact, The Needles The Space (produced by Straylight Run and engineered by longtime SR associates Bryan Russell and Mike Sapone) reveals SR as a more cohesive unit, with the technical grasp to match its creative reach. “I’ve become a better musician so I’m not as limited in my songwriting,” Michelle confirms.

Says John of Straylight Run’s evolving sound, which he concedes is difficult to pigeonhole: “I love pop music; I love hearing a well-written pop song. And I like a lot of music that’s experimental and weird. I’m always looking for ways to take a pop song and rearrange it into something interesting and fresh and original.” Michelle remarks: “We’re very lucky because our fans seem to be open to whatever we do. That gives us the freedom to explore any idea we have.”

More and more, Straylight Run is defined not only by its creative fearlessness, but by the interplay of John and Michelle’s voices; Michelle’s counter-melodies lend The Needles The Space considerable depth and texture (gorgeous string arrangements, among other instrumental flourishes, don’t hurt either).

There has even been some question about where she leaves off and he begins. “At one point on the record,” Michelle points out, “there are a bunch of harmonies, and I’m not singing, but I could swear that I am; the high harmony John’s singing there sounds so much like me.” With the aid of a good pair of headphones, one might be able to tease out who is singing when. Then again, perhaps it’s best not to think too much about it.

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Straylight Run - The Needles The Space