In the car parking zone of a burger joint in northern Oregon, the Closner sisters laid their playing cards on the desk. For almost a decade, Natalie, Meegan and Allison had been grinding on tour and within the studio, constructing their band Joseph’s repute as a three-headed indie-folk devastator, teeming with impassioned lyrics, arena-ready hooks and towering harmonies.
But by way of years of tirelessly cultivating their sound and fan base, the ladies had by no means stopped to have a candid dialog — was Joseph a ceaselessly kind of undertaking? Or would the band sooner or later run its course? The pandemic gave every sister loads of time to replicate. So, in that burger lot in 2021, the Closners gave one another the possibility — to talk their thoughts, to step away and to say “I’m done.”
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Though in that second none wavered. Everyone wished to make one other Joseph album, one thing even greater and higher than their 2019’s Good Luck, Kid, which already noticed the sisters shirking a few of their folks roots in favor of ‘80s pop glamor. Suddenly the jangle of their 2016 breakthrough single “White Flag” seemed lifetimes away.
The Sun — the band’s exhilarating fourth LP, out at the moment — affords a new inspiration: remedy, and every member’s journey to self-care and larger realization.
“We all had different bears to tackle,” Natalie tells AltPress, on a current Zoom name together with her sisters.
“This album is you realizing that you are more than you think you are,” Meegan adds.
Ahead of the band’s most intimate and cathartic work yet, as well as a headlining tour kicking off later this month, we caught up with Joseph to unpack their path to power, defeating anxiety and still choosing each other after all this time.
So much of this album is about taking control of your life. How does that message factor into your lives?
NATALIE: There’s a lot of stories on it from each of us kind of recognizing in our own ways, and with our own personal narratives, our own value beyond what different circumstances have told us, or how it felt, mine really being highlighted and “Waves Crash.” And I think Meegan’s on “The Sun” and Allison’s in “Nervous System.” They are completely different factors of, ‘OK, what if this limiting belief that I’m having about myself isn’t the whole story?’ And I feel that is due largely to lots of the remedy that all of us did over the pandemic, which was a blessing and simply lots of private reflection that was actually enjoyable to place towards these songs.
Let’s talk about remedy. How have been your particular person experiences a catalyst for this album’s improvement?
NATALIE: My greatest good friend is a therapist, and she or he advisable this particular person to me who did somatic experiencing remedy, which is all about orienting round your nervous system and studying a map of, “OK, my body’s showing me something, how do I tend to myself?”
And that was extraordinarily highly effective for me as a result of as a lot as I’ve thought in my life, “Oh, I’m this creative person, I’m very emotional, da, da, da” I notice that I’m actually very cerebral and I’m actually residing lots of my life by way of my thoughts.
It’s not about what I obtain or accomplish or do. And the remedy was actually all about rewiring that messaging for me by way of somatic expertise.
MEEGAN: For me, I feel that for no matter purpose, perhaps a part of the best way we grew up and the faith we grew up in, I form of have this bent in life, that I’m not adequate. herapy was like gaining my floor again once more, gaining my very own sense of self. “The Sun” is all about that have. It’s simply not about anyone else telling me how good I’m and that I’ve achieved goodness. It’s about the truth that I have already got it.
ALLISON: “I hope that therapy becomes more accessible to everyone. Because I think it’s so important and I think for each of us, and I know for so many of our friends, it’s really helped them. It helps us calm ourselves and find some sort of inner peace and find a better way to sort through the world.
There’s a greater pop sensibility on this album. Was that a conscious choice in the studio?
NATALIE: We don’t usually go in with a major precise vision. We are sort of like “These are some inspiring things. Let’s see where the songs take us.” And then they end up shaping themselves and becoming something.
ALLISON: On the song “The Sun,” it can be seen as a really heavy song. There were some people around the song that were like, “We should make this like part two of ‘Revolving Door’ from our last album, which is just an intense ballad.”
Leggy Langdon is the one who produced that one. And we walked in and he was like, “OK, I’m going to take this a totally different direction than you might think.” And we all were like, “Holy shit.” We started crying.
Let’s talk about some specific tracks, beginning with “Waves Crash,” which does certainly hit like a 100-foot tsunami. How do you construct your epic harmonies like these?
NATALIE: We switch with all the harmonies and everything, sort of the way we usually do it is whoever is leading the song, they’ll just start singing it. And then the other two will just find whichever one feels the most natural first, and then you just stay in that. There’s not a lot of method to it, it’s just intuitive, whatever works.
NATALIE: That song specifically is really just, again, how do I get out of my head and into my physical being? That song really culminates with this yelling moment.It just was this sort of primal moment of just an assertion of, “I’m OK, I’m only a factor that is alive and I’m not outlined.” That all these other things in nature are just being, and nobody’s telling them they’re a piece of shit.
Onto the single “Nervous System,” which has the best line in “No, it’s not selfish if you save yourself,” which should be a T-shirt!
ALLISON: That specific line … that idea came from something I heard a long time ago, that if you see that somebody is drowning, you have to be really careful about how to save them and really know what you’re doing because they can end up drowning you in the process of you trying to save them.
And I was seeing this thing that was happening with me and another person, and I was like, “I really feel like if one among us tries to leap in and save the opposite particular person, we’re each going to go down.” And so it was that idea of just how do we both exist in our own feelings, but both be OK on our own?
I’m sure you’ve been asked a million times what it’s like to be in a band of sisters. But I am curious how your relationships have evolved over time, working together for a decade and being siblings as well as colleagues.
NATALIE: We’re closer than we’ve ever been. I think a lot of that is just because we have been through so much having done this for 10 years, and we’ve put in the tough moments to have conversations sometimes of like, “Hey, are you continue to on this?” In the start, it might be actually limiting for one another to be like, “OK, well you’re my sister, so I can’t become something in front of you.” But then permitting one another to develop and alter will be one thing extra than simply the roles that we performed in our nuclear household, our household of origin.
MEEGAN: With our final album, we had this second of, “All right, really, is this too much for us? Is this too hard? And is this good for our relationships?” But between that album and this album, we had this second through the pandemic years. Then we had this gorgeous massive second the place mainly all of us simply put the selection on the desk the place we’re like, “Hey, you know what? Actually, we can take the elephant out of the room.” It was so risky and vulnerable because it was kind of the first time anyone could actually say, ‘Yeah, I’m done.'” Collectively we have been all like, “OK, I want to make a choice to be in this and let’s choose another album.”
With all of this, what do you hope listeners take away from this record?
NATALIE: Just a companion in their effort to recognize their own “moreness,” and just so many moments to be able to find your way to that and then to celebrate it once you’ve found it.
MEEGAN: I think often we’re very limiting to ourselves. And I think just imagining, “Oh, perhaps I’m extra,” it is simply extraordinarily highly effective. What are you able to do then, ?
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