Welcome to In Conversation, a special interview column on the site where we sit down with artists and dive deep into everything music. This week, Harry spoke with Rory Rodriguez to discuss Dayseeker‘s upcoming album, Dark Sun, the emotional resonance of his writing, and the ins-and-outs of touring.
Harry: Firstly, I just want to say congratulations on the upcoming album. It’s certainly an amazing record, and one you should be extremely proud of. How does it feel now it’s almost here?
Rory: Very weird. You spend so much time working on something in private, and by the time it gets out to people you’re like, ‘man, I hope everybody likes this.’ We spent probably the better part of like a year, off and on, working on the album, so it’s cool that you do it that way – because we used to do it where we’d go to a studio for three or four weeks straight, just like hammer out an album. We’re lucky that our producer is in LA, so we could go a couple times a week, and I feel that like, as the months went on, it was easy to go, ‘oh, maybe this song doesn’t fit anymore,’ or, ‘we need to change it.’ The title track, “Dark Sun”, is kind of like this Paris vibe, but then it’s EDM in the chorus, like Charlie Puth kinda. Then it’s funny because that song, we initially tried to write it as a “Dreamstate” or a “Neon Grave”. Like it had a riff and a breakdown. We kept writing and writing and we were like, ‘I think these heavy parts are making the song worse.’ I guess I’m grateful that we had time to sit with it. We changed a lot of the songs as time went on, but it’s cool, man. It’s crazy that it will be out in a couple weeks, but I’m excited for everybody to hear it.
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Harry: Yeah, I absolutely love the energy and the beat in “Dark Sun”. It’s interesting that you kind of say that it was riff-focused originally, because to me that song feels super dancey. It’s a proper headbopper.
Rory: Well, that’s the thing. I think we’ve always tried to target really good pop structuring, and it opened with this riff that was in this Wage War sort of vein, and it had this like kind of Beartooth-y breakdown on the bridge. We ended up solidifying a lot of the verses and the choruses, and then we had these heavy parts in it and I was like, ‘I feel like it’s making the song dumber.’ Then we took out all the heavy stuff and we were like, ‘yeah, it’s a cool song on its own.’ I think we’re always trying to pay homage to our roots, but then I don’t think that’s where we shine as a band is writing breakdowns and riffs, so yeah, had to change that one a bit.
Harry: I do feel like a lot of times in heavy music, riffs and 00s and breakdowns come across as a crutch a lot of the time, which can kind of feel inauthentic, but you guys definitely avoid that. It’s interesting, because I haven’t been listening to so much heavy music lately, and I went back to “Neon Grave” to prepare for this, and I was actually kinda surprised at how heavy it is. The breakdown in that song is surprisingly really thick, and I feel like it’s really easy to get desensitized to heavy music when it’s most of what you consume, so it doesn’t hit the same, but when you take a step back you do kind of appreciate that in the wider music world this is still comparatively really heavy.
Rory: It’s a cool one live, for sure. We were pretty intentional, though. I think “Neon Grave” and “Dreamstate” are the only ones that actually have heavy parts in them, but we made sure to write them more as rock riffs; they’re not like chuggy breakdowns or djent or anything, but I’m happy you like it, man. I appreciate it.
Harry: I was actually quite surprised at how soft the album is across the course of it. I think the only distorted lead I heard outside of the singles was on “Afterglow”. Not quite distorted, I guess, but the majority of the album is super clean.
Rory: Yeah, it has moments where it peaks and it’s way more of an alternative rock album than it is a post-hardcore… I don’t know, it’s just how it ended up. I did end up listening to it after we finished it and I was like, ‘damn, maybe we should’ve had like one more upbeat rock song.’ But it is what it is at this point. I still think it’s a good album but I’m like, yeah, you put these songs together and it’s done and you’re like, ‘I think it was just meant to be this way.’ So we just put it out the way we thought it would be.
Harry: Your music has always come across as really authentic to me, and the progression has always felt really natural to me rather than you know, ‘selling out’, so when you say that you don’t want to put it in there for the sake of it… that does make a lot of sense. Were you ever worried that the core community would react negatively to the sound change?
Rory: I think you’re always a little bit worried. We were really worried about Sleeptalk before it came out, and that got pretty good feedback overall. That one, it’s probably a little bit more of an upbeat record than the new one is. I think it was just a nice reassurance, that we felt like we could try different things and feel like hopefully people weren’t going to hate it. I mean, the thing too is that we didn’t want to write Sleeptalk part two, basically, so we wanted to try something a little bit different. There was some songs that didn’t make it on the record that were maybe more upbeat but… I don’t know what it was, but I feel like it’s so much harder to write original-sounding or cool, new, innovative, upbeat rock music. Like there was times where I was just like, ‘it feels it’s forced,’ or like, ‘we’re trying too hard.’ So I feel like this all kind of came together in a way where it was like, ‘this feels more like what we listen to outside of the genre.’ There’s still upbeat songs on the album but there’s for sure ballads, slower stuff. I’m hoping they like it; we’ll see in a few weeks.
Harry: Was there any specific change in your music taste or artists that inspired you in writing this new style?
Rory: I can’t say big changes. I feel like I’ve been really buried in the pop world for years and years, and a lot of R&B and soul., like cool vocal runs and things like that. And then I feel like we just, again, tried to hone even harder onto the pop structuring side of things with the music, just making it easy to digest. It’s funny – it’s really formulaic; there are things you can do to make it more interesting as the song goes along so it’s not the same thing over and over. I don’t know, a lot of Kehlani, and I think too we lean more into the synthwave sort of sounds with a lot of the synthesizer choices, ‘cause I was just talking about this: It’s funny – I don’t think that’s like a super ground-breaking thing that we’re doing. Anybody can write a rock song and then just use 80’s synthesizers, but it’s funny because I don’t feel like there’s a lot of bands that are doing that. It feels like they’re still trying to be creepy, eerie metalcore, or if they’re a rock band they’re just a rock band. It’s funny because a lot of people are always like, ‘oh, the synth choices are so cool,’ and I’m like, ‘yeah, it’s not that hard.’ I don’t know, instead of using a piano you just layer it with a bunch of different things and then you get an 80’s vibe out of it, and then it feels like we’re pocketed into this 80’s rock kind of genre. I’d be surprised if more bands did not start doing what we’re doing with the 80’s things – at least until it gets played out, which it might be.
Harry: I think so much of what you have is the atmosphere that you’re able create – it’s so dreamlike; and it doesn’t feel like the synths create the atmosphere so much as they sit in the atmosphere. Obviously that started with Sleeptalk, which is also when Dan [Braunstein] became your producer. How much is he responsible for the synthwork?
Rory: Oh, it’s crazy. He’s like night and day for what… how our music would turn out is very different with him. What’s funny with Dan is that when we were on Warped Tour – it was before Sleeptalk came out but we were kind of working on music for Sleeptalk – we met up with this producer named Matt Squire, and Matt Squire did like Panic! At The Disco’s first record, The Used, and then he went to LA to work with… I think he Demi Lovato, all these pop artists, and then he came back into the rock world. So he met up with us when we were in Baltimore, in Maryland, on Warped Tour, and he was actually pitching really hard, he wanted to Sleeptalk, but we were kind of hesitant because – he was a really nice guy – but we hadn’t worked with him before and we had Crooked Soul in the chamber, so we were like, ‘can we come do one with you and see how it goes?’ and he was like, ‘no, if you come to me I want you to do the whole record,’ so we ended up doing Crooked Soul with Dan as a trial run and it was an awesome experience.
But it’s funny because Matt Squire at the time was a much bigger name, and I remember our management – they supported us because we were like, ‘we’re not gonna go to Matt, we’re gonna go to Dan,’ and they were really supportive – telling us that there were multiple people in the industry who were like, ‘you guys fucked up. You should’ve went to Matt. I can’t believe you didn’t go to [him].’ He’s usually really expensive and he was willing to, I guess, lower his budget rate just to work with us and we said no. But it’s funny thinking about it, though, because I really don’t feel like Sleeptalk would’ve come out the same if we did it with Matt. Dan’s a great songwriter but his soundscapes and his synth choices are really unique. Even if we’re writing the melodies or the chord structurings, it’s the things he finds and can bring to life is really cool. It’s funny, because we kind of got the best of both worlds on the new album; we co-wrote “Without Me” with Matt Squire and Dan in the same room, and Matt was awesome to work with, so it was kind of cool. I think for the next record we’re probably gonna do more sessions together, because we wrote “Without Me” in a couple of hours, and it pretty much stayed very close to what it was once the song was done.
Harry: Yeah, I mean if you can get the best of both worlds, why not. The synths on this are immaculate, as they are with Hurtwave. Was there any songs on here that began as Hurtwave songs?
Rory: No, no. There’s a track called “Paper Heart” on the album that’s acoustic and ballad-y. Okay, I lied, actually. So “Paper Heart” was actually… I was kind of sad, in my feels, from a girl – that’s not what the song ended up being about – and I wrote the chords for the verse and stuff. The melody for the verse I ended up writing in probably fifteen or twenty minutes when I was at home just on my electric guitar. I think I was kind of like, ‘oh yeah, maybe a Hurtwave thing,’ but we had already put out the first EP for Hurtwave and I knew we weren’t really going to get to do new Hurtwave music for a while, and when I was writing it I was like, ‘this feels like a cool mellow, ballad kind of song,’ so we brought it to Dan and we were careful with some of the synth choices and the vibe to make sure it didn’t come off too much like a Hurtwave song, but yeah, I lied, that did kind of start as a Hurtwave song and then we reworked it with all these different choices and things. It ended up coming out more as a Dayseeker sort of song, but it’s a thin line between the two.
Harry: They’re more like pop synths than outright synthwave, but “Paper Heart” is my favourite song on the album by far.
Rory: Really? It’s crazy, man. Doing these interviews, I feel like everybody has a different favourite, so it’s cool because you’re the first person I’ve done an interview with that actually even mentioned that track. Because I feel like sometimes the ballads, the slow ones, people are kinda like, eh, they just wanna get to the upbeat stuff, you know.
Harry: See, going into it I did expect it to be like that. But it was the same with Sleeptalk. I loved the balance of melody and heaviness of the singles, and I did end up loving the heavier songs on the record like “The Color Black”, “Gates of Ivory”, but my favourite ended up being “Starving To Be Empty”. That song was probably one of my favourite songs of 2019, and it might still be your best song. It’s just a phenomenal song. But yeah, Paper Heart is so heart wrenching. What was the writing process like for that? Because you say you wrote the melody really quickly but the lyrics hit home and are so poignant.
Rory: What’s funny is that a lot of writing for the album, a lot of times it’s targeting the melody, what notes you’re actually going to sing, and then once we like something we change the lyrics a lot. A lot of the stuff I wrote in the first verse stayed, when I first wrote it in my room, ended up being what we used on the album. I think this was a song I really wanted to write about feeling overwhelmed with a lot of the weight I feel like I have on my shoulders with the band, my daughter, a lot of things in my life… there are a lot of really good things in my life, but I keep a front. I’m very composed, and even if there’s something really stressful happening I’m like, ‘it’s fine, we’ll figure it out,’ and it’s true; I do feel like I keep a good head on my shoulders through really difficult things but also I’m human, I’m not made of stone, I’m just like anybody else who can get overwhelmed. So “Paper Heart” in a way is the way that your heart can fold really easily in tough situations but about how I maybe don’t show what’s going on in the inside as outwardly… in songwriting I do, but in general day-to-day life with people it’s probably more kept up because I want to keep up a front that everything’s okay and everything’s fine on the inside. That’s where that one came from.
Harry: Yeah, there’s quite an interesting dichotomy with the album in that it’s lyrically quite dark but it’s also like really uplifting in many ways. Obviously you have your father’s passing but at the same time you also have Hazel coming into your life. The album quite succinctly compresses the beauty of life into like forty minutes.
Dark Sun as a whole deals with some very heavy subjects, and I think it’s probably your most personal album in terms of feeling like it comes directly from you rather than you telling the stories of others. Did you initially set out to tell the story with this album, or did you kind of life write the songs as catharsis and then were like, ‘oh, maybe I do actually want to share these with everybody’?
Rory: A lot of times Dayseeker is deeply personal. It’s funny that you mention that, because sometimes on our past albums I would do perspective writing; on “Starving To Be Empty”, I didn’t suffer through an eating disorder but I had a friend who did. I’m only just realising now that I wrote pretty much every song from my own experience, so thanks for that realisation because I didn’t really realise that ’til now. But yeah, with “Neon Grave” I was kinda like, ‘okay, I’ll write that about my dad’s passing and then we can move on to other stuff,’ and then there was just so much about him passing with the whole dream thing; there’s another song where I get pretty detailed on what it’s like watching someone you love die in hospice care. I wasn’t able to squeeze all my emotions into one song, so we ended up writing like five songs on the album about my dad’s passing, and then everything else just came from there. There was obviously a lot of personal stuff going on in my own life. That’s a struggle sometimes, too: you’ll get all these songs together and you might have great melodies and you’re like, ‘I don’t know what to write this song about, ’cause my life’s going okay,’ but I had a lot of things going on outside of my father’s passing with my daughter Hazel being born.
And then there’s a song like “Homesick” on the record which is kind of about my dad’s passing but it’s more in general about being in a dark period of your life but having peoples and places and experiences that make you feel like it’s okay to feel happy again even when you’re going through that. In the days following my dad’s passing I was wallowing in my own misery because it felt good but also like, ‘if there’s a time where I don’t have to feel forced to smile or be happy, this is probably it and people have to be understanding.’ I spent time with somebody four or five days after my dad passed and we had dinner and drinks and we talked about him dying. It was very sad but then I graduated on to being more light-hearted and funny and brighter and more uplifting, so I was really thankful that it didn’t feel like that dark period was going to last for eternity. It felt like it was okay to feel happy again without feeling guilty about it. It all just came out, I guess. If I write a song and I feel like it’s good I don’t keep it for myself, I definitely put it out into the world.
Harry: Yeah, that’s fantastic. You have Spencer Stewart featuring on “Quicksand”. How did that come about, and what do you feel like he brought to the song?
Rory: That was just a very lucky set of circumstances for us. We had “Quicksand”, and we knew with the way it was structured and set up that it would be a good song for a feature on the second verse, pre-chorus kind of vibe. We initially actually wanted a female feature, so we were trying to reach out to this girl named Sasha Sloan, but she was on tour, and we had a deadline to turn the album in. I think we had two weeks to figure out a guest vocal scenario. Their camp was just like, ‘yeah, she won’t be home for like a month, so it’s not going to work out.’ Our label was even saying that they knew someone at Halsey’s camp, but we were always like, ‘yeah, sure you do.’ I’m sure they do, but the odds of getting Halsey… that’s just not gonna happen.
Harry: Well, I suppose she did work with Bring Me The Horizon.
Rory: Yeah, but they’re Bring Me The Horizon.
Harry: Just pitch it to them as, ‘that’s rock music, this is technically rock music. You know…’
Rory: It would’ve been cool. We kept trying so many different people that we had in mind, but there was always something coming up, and we were actually really close to not having a feature for the record, and my buddy Johnny [Franck] – he plays in Bilmuri – we were talking months ago and he had told me he had featured Spencer from The Band Camino on his album, and then as a last Hail Mary I was like, ‘do you have his contact info to see if he’d be interested?’ I reached out to him and his management and he was super nice about it. By that point, too, we had three or four days to get a feature done and I was like, ‘hey, we all love your band. If you can get this done in the next three or four days it would mean the world.’ Yeah, he did it and it came out great. I actually think it’s better in a male register than it would have been in a female register, so I was happy we got him. He has a really cool, smooth tone to his voice.
Rory: It was also really important for us, we didn’t want to get a feature from someone, like, ‘oh, get Courtney [LePlante] from Spiritbox.’ I’m sure she would have done great, but we wanted to grab somebody who existed in a different genre than us. There’s nothing wrong with features and stuff, but it’s always the same artists collab-ing with each other over and over again. I think it’s cooler if you’re like, ‘oh wow, I would never have imagined you’d get somebody in the pop world on your album.’ He killed it, and we’re all big fans of The Band Camino, so we listen to them a ton. Yeah, it was actually quite seamless. If like I wasn’t so familiar with Dayseeker I might not have even picked out that it was a feature. It operates very much in that same soulful, smooth tone, and it fits perfectly. I’m curious, though, if you could get anyone on a Dayseeker song, who would it be?
Rory: Justin Bieber or Hayley Williams. Just people that are probably out of the realm of possibility. Those would be some cool ones, for sure. We’ll see how the next couple of years go for us.
Harry: I actually think Justin would’ve done a killer verse on this album.
Rory: He would’ve. I’ve gotta get in a little tighter with that guy, I guess.
Harry: It’s been an extremely busy year for you touring wise, with the Sleeptalk tour in April and May, the Australian tour with Thornhill, you’ve just had your headline tour, and obviously the Bad Omens tour coming up. How have those been?
Rory: Incredible. I think our headline tour was definitely an eye-opening experience, because we went out with a band a few years ago, and it was their headliner, and we were coming off of Warped Tour. I really liked them – they had a great album out and I thought they had a ton of popularity – and turnout wise it was brutal for five or six weeks. This was before Sleeptalk had come out, and our management was like, ‘you should probably headline at some point, just to say you’ve done it.’ I thought this band had a good following and they put out a great record and they’re still struggling to pull a hundred people at a show. It’s a shot to your ego to think you’re doing okay on support tours playing to three or four-hundred people a night, and then to go headline and then play to eighty people, it’s definitely a reality check. Letting Sleeptalk sit out… well, it was unintentional – we were gonna headline off Sleeptalk much sooner, and then the pandemic happened, but I’m also thankful that it did because we got lucky getting the support that we did for that tour in Thornhill, Holding Absence, and Caskets.
One or two of those bands would probably not have been on it if we had done it earlier, and I don’t think it would have done as well. Shows were also just starting to come back, so I also think that was a thing where people were more eager to get tickets. And we were really lucky, too, because all of the bands on our supporting tour were all from out of the country and it was all their first time in the States, so there were so many that came to catch them. It’s really wild to see that many people care about your band, singing the words back at you. It made us feel confident moving forward, like we have our own draw. Now it’s nice, too, because when you have a headline tour and it goes well, and you have good numbers in all these markets, you have bargaining power in asking for more money. Already, we have a few tour offers for next year. It feels like things are on the up for us, so it’s nice, man. In Australia, too, it was really cool. We did a one-off headliner and I think there was like four hundred people there, so it was just cool that people care. It only took a decade, but here we are.
Harry: Yeah, I feel like bands in this scene, certainly those on the more post-hardcore side, bands that have genuine emotion and people can resonate to goes a long way, and you guys hit the nail on the head with that one. You were alluding to future tours. You probably can’t confirm any details, but considering the ERRA tour was cancelled earlier in the year, do you have any plans to come back to the UK?
Rory: No, I would tell you if we did. That’s been one key thing with our management and our agent – we’ve already established ourselves in the U.S. but as a full band we haven’t been back to the U.K. since 2015, and our old drummer Mike and I, we went over to the U.K. to see Architects and we booked a one-off acoustic show in London. That was before Sleeptalk, and it was still over a hundred people in this tiny little pub. I really like the U.K. personally, and that’s a market we want to get more into. We want to hopefully start getting offers for Download Fest, and things like that. I was really sad when that ERRA tour got cancelled, and I’ve just been harping our agent. I’m like, ‘we need to go to the U.K. and Europe because it’s been criminally such a long time,’ so I’m trying. The cool thing is that you’re trying to wait for a really good support slot to go over there, but I think at this point we might headline ourselves and try to get a decent package together. Because we’ve talked about trying to play more shows with Holding Absence, because they’re really sweet guys and a great band to watch live every night. I’m hoping. There’s a U.S. tour next March, and then a couple festival things in the States, then we’re going back to Australia next July with a really good package, and then probably more at the end of the year. It’ll be pretty busy, I really do hope to get back to the U.K. soon, though.
Harry: Yeah, we’d love to have you. Are there any songs on Dark Sun you’re most excited to play live?
Rory: We’re playing “Without Me” and “Neon Grave” on the upcoming tour. We’re also adding “Dreamstate”, which will be fun, and then we’re adding this song called “Crying While You’re Dancing”, which will be our next single that comes out in two weeks.
Harry: I was going to ask if you could hint at which the next single is, so there you go.
Rory: It’s out on the 28th, so it’ll be not this upcoming Friday but the one after that, ’cause it’ll be a week before the album drops just as an extra push. That’s a favourite of mine on the record. It wasn’t really a “Without Me” or a “Neon Grave” where I was like, ‘oh, this is structured as a single single,’ but there was just something about it. I’m a really big fan of this song. It’s funny, though, because I thought our label and our management were going to fight, because sometimes you’re like, ‘I think this should be a single,’ and they’re like, ‘no, no, no, it should be this song.’ That was an interesting one where I really thought this should be a single, and everybody thought it was a single for sure. It’s not slower, but it’s structured kind of interestingly. That’ll be the next one.
Harry: Yeah, I think this is one of those rare albums where you couldn’t have gone wrong with any of the songs as singles.
Rory: It was tough. There were too many singles to pick from, which isn’t a bad thing. I think “Homesick” will be pushed as a single a couple months after the album is out. We might just do a video for it, but our management and other people felt “Dark Sun” should’ve been a single. It got really hard to pick which ones to put out.
Harry: I think it helps being a band where I don’t see anyone particularly fighting for a Dayseeker song to be heavy or to be soft – people just enjoy the vibe and the emotion you convey – so you can kind of get away with anything.
Rory: At this point, yeah. Thankfully.
Harry: I know we’re running out of time, so I just wanna ask you one last question before you go: is there any more Hurtwave on the horizon?
Rory: Not really, no. I’ve been playing around with a few ideas. I spent like ten minutes in a Guitar Centre here and I was messing around on a piano. I wrote something in five or ten minutes and I was like, ‘I need to buy a piano.’ I have a guitar, and I’m comfortable on guitar, but there’s something about this one keyboard I played that had a nice reverb and ambience. I feel like it was more of a mood setter, and I want to get better at piano, so I ended up buying [it]. It’s not like a piano piano, it’s a home piano, but I’m gonna try and write on that a little bit more. We talked about probably putting something out like next year, if anything. We try to aim it for in the middle of dead periods for Dayseeker, so Sleeptalk got to sit out for a while, and then we put out stuff for Hurtwave, and then by the time Hurtwave was done we had a bit of time to start putting out new Dayseeker. Hopefully next year, man.
Harry: It’s just one of those things – to me you are one of those best vocalists in the scene, and with the way you’ve cut back on some of the uncleans on Dark Sun I don’t particularly think of Dayseeker and Hurtwave as that much of a separate entity anymore. Obviously they have different soundscapes and there’s more live instrumentation, but in terms of what I go to Dayseeker and Hurtwave for emotionally, they both hit the same and in the same kind of manner.
Rory: Yeah, they’re not crazy different. It’s the same producer. It’s mainly just me, Mike, and Dan putting the songs together in Hurtwave. Same synthesizer choices, and we’re all kind of trying to write pop structure in Hurtwave, too. I think Hurtwave was just songs that were too slow for Dayseeker, so we used those ones there.
Many thanks to Rory for sitting down and answering our questions about the new album, which you can pre-order here. For a full review of Dark Sun and everything Dayseeker, stick around with Boolin Tunes.