Around a year and a half ago, vocalist Harlee Case stood up on the couch at a New Constellations band practice and made a declaration about their jobs.
“I was like, we need to quit Jan. 1. I’ll figure it out money-wise. I know in my heart that we’re not jumping hard enough and that the universe will have us and I just know it,” Case recalled. “It was really amazing because two simultaneous things happened within a month of that.”
The dream pop/synthwave duo received a record deal offer, which they signed around six months later, and their streams shot up around 300%, allowing Case and multi-instrumentalist Josh Smith to quit their jobs and pursue full-time the band they had started together nine years ago.
“So I don’t know, jump and the net will appear,” Case said. “There is really something to that, just going full-on. I definitely am really proud of us for inching into it too, so there wasn’t that stress on the band to, ‘We have to play another show or we can’t make rent’ or whatever. I think that’s what made us be able to stay in a band that was just a hobby for so long.”
The leap of faith paid off, as the band will release their debut album, “It Comes in Waves,” on May 15. The album features their biggest song, “Hot Blooded,” which has more than 125 million streams on Spotify. New Constellations is also playing at Lollapalooza this year with a European tour in the fall. Currently, they’re on the road with The Midnight, with the tour stopping April 25 for a sold-out show at the Roxian Theatre in McKees Rocks. It will also be New Constellations’ first show in Pittsburgh.
In a March 31 phone conversation from Portland, Oregon, Case and Smith spoke with TribLive about the album, what it was like to quit their jobs and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.
You have the new album coming out, so what do you want people to know about “It Comes in Waves”?
Case: I think that a lot of people have been awaiting this since our first song came out five years ago, and we put out only a few songs in that time. So I think that, especially tying into our first track, that there’s a lot more similar tones in there, a lot of yearning and a lot of hopefulness, and there’s the full spectrum of human emotion on this album, I’d say.
Smith: Harlee and I are both really proud of this record. It’s our first album ever. We worked really hard on it, and we’re both really proud. We’re just excited to get to show people a full-form album that represents us. We’ve just released a lot of singles up until now and we’re just excited to have a whole thing that you can just digest at once.
Do you think there’s an overall theme? Just from listening to the songs that are out there, I definitely picked up on relationships, good and bad, that might be on your mind.
Case: Definitely. These past few years have been a lot of ups and downs for me relationship-wise, but there is an overarching theme of ownership of your own experience and not staying in negativity too far, but experiencing it all at the same time. I think there’s a lot of reflection in this album. It’s like a mature breakup in my mind or something like that. (laughs)
Smith: Yeah, I think the name, “It Comes in Waves,” speaks a lot to the overall theme of the album, like nothing’s permanent, everything ebbs and flows, love and loss and friendship and distance and closeness. It’s just a reflection and an acknowledgement of just the way that life changes and moves and is always ebbing and flowing, so “It Comes in Waves” is the theme that everything comes in waves and life is just what it is in that moment, and that’s temporary.
How did you decide which songs would make the cut? Just as an example, “Does It Feel Like This?” was one that stood out to me, but that’s not on the album.
Smith: No, that was a single from a little bit ago, and we love that song and this album was a good opportunity for us to halfway showcase some songs that we’ve been playing live for years and some songs that we wrote specifically while we were in album mode. It just started to take a natural shape. These were just a lot of songs that were standalone individual songs, but when we started listening to them together and thinking of them as a whole, it all fell into place and started to make sense as a whole piece and individuals simultaneously.
This is the first album, but you have been together for nine years now, so what would you say is the oldest song on the album?
Case: “Hot Blooded” is the oldest, and I think for us, we wanted to put it on there because it has been such an iconic song for our career and really made it possible for us to become full-time musicians and not do this as a hobby. So we’re like, we have to have “Hot Blooded” on the album.
Smith: The last song on the album is a song called “Do What You Want,” and we played that as the ending song of almost every single show we’ve ever played, and it never got recorded. It’s just been a live staple of ours since our first show basically. So we’re excited to record that and it’s kind of appropriate that it’s the last song on the album too and it’s generally the last song we play live, so that’s one that we’ve been playing for quite a while.
Do you feel like there were any specific influences or inspirations for this album?
Smith: For me, production wise, I was really into ’90s shoegaze and trip hop, like Portishead and My Bloody Valentine and that kind of jangly, early ‘90s Brit rock like the Cranberries. That sort of stuff was a big influence for me.
Case: There were a couple of times where I was really trying to embody something that was more edgy. There were a bunch of times where I’m like, can we try to go like a Phantogram route and a little more oomph to it? But I really find a lot of inspiration from vocalists like Sylvan Esso and Florence the Machine, trying to balance that delicacy and also massive big moments and trying to fit a lot of that in small amounts, like kind of going back and forth a lot.
In “I Disappear,” there’s the lyric of, “I make believe the future will be as I see.” What do you see for the future of New Constellations? What are you visualizing for the band?
Case: This year, we’re so excited. We’re finally getting to do some international touring, which we really do hope that this is going to be a worldwide band. We love to travel so much and experience different cultures. We hope to be able to start working on our next album in different parts of the world, which would so incredible. I hope to see more collaborations with our peers and people that we respect and love in the coming years.
How did it feel then to give two weeks notice, or did you just quit?
Case: I had been working for myself my whole life and that last year I had to get an actual job for the first time, like not getting my own clients. It was this really big hit to my ego, but I worked for two of my friends who were so supportive. The only way I could do it is because they let me go on tour and come back to the office and stuff. It was a really magical moment for me because it was announced to the whole office and everyone was like, ‘She’s quitting! She’s doing music!’ So it was this cool thing where they’re like she’s doing this for a minute so she can go on and do that. So I gave two months notice there.
Smith: I worked in coffee at the time and literally the same kind of thing. Everybody was just so proud and waiting for that moment so when it came, it was very much like, hey, I’m actually gonna do this guys. Everybody was just really proud and happy to usher me into the next thing.
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You mentioned the European tour, but it looks like Lollapalooza is also on the bill. This has got to be an awesome year for you.
Case: We’re so excited. We’re (going on) tour with The Midnight. And it’s still so kismet, because the last show of the tour is a 4,000-cap room, which is the biggest room we’ve ever played in, almost by double, and it’s the day our album comes out. This is just a really momentous year and everything has been building so beautifully. It feels like we’re just getting teed up for this album drop, which is so nice.
With the band’s history of DIY for years and starting later, what can people take away from the band’s story?
Case: I would say that even a tiny bit of work is still work, so even if you can’t quit your job today, tiny little steps toward the goal will get you there, so don’t let that get you down if you only can do a little bit today.
Smith: I think just believe in yourself and believe in your friends and step into your power. Making art is fulfilling enough. It’s its own reward and anything else that comes from that is just extra bonus, so just believe in yourself and just continue to keep making stuff. That’s all you can ask for as an artist is just the ability to create.