Interview: Postal Blue
Monday, April 28th, 2008Wait, they’re from where?
Postal Blue is proof that, in the age of the internet, it’s optional whether you sound like your home base’s music scene. Aside from the sole Portuguese track on their latest EP, Road to Happiness, if you close your eyes when listening to Postal Blue, you’ll swear that their chimey guitar pop is from some sleepy overcast town in the UK, not from the tropics of Brazil. Fans of The Smiths and Echo and The Bunnymen would be wise to check them out. Heck, it’s only a mouse click away! You can go right to Postal Blue’s Last.fm page and listen to almost everything they’ve officially released.Today I’m talking with Adriano Ribeiro, lead singer, songwriter, and one of the guitarists in Postal Blue. Adriano’s blog, Confessions of a Nearly Starving Artist, is a fine read about being a recording artist and making music. It’s one of my daily web visits.
Jeff: Tell me a little about how Postal Blue got started, where you’ve been, and what you’re up to now.
Adriano: I’d been in a band for many years with André [Costa] (our drummer) and former Postal Blue guitarist Alessandro. We decided to start a new band, and André brought in Ismael [Braz] to play bass.
We teamed up around late 1997 or early 1998, and immediately started working on the songs that would later be our first ep (Postal Blue) on Drive-In Records. A couple of those early songs made the way into our latest EP. Those are I Took The Love You Were Hiding and I’m Glad You Know.
After the first EP, we signed with Shelflife Records for another EP and an album, which were Weather Sensitive and International Breeze respectively. Even though Alessandro was in the band when we wrote the songs for the album, he left just before we started recording it, so Francinalto [Lacerda] filled his spot from then on. The album was followed by our last EP, released by Humblebee Recordings, called Road to Happiness.
We’re currently on a break, gathering inspiration and recharging batteries for a new album, which is supposed to be our “White Album.” Lots of songs and plenty of experiments in pop. We also have a single coming out on Cloudberry Records pretty soon.
I see that you’re releasing songs on your Confessions of a Nearly Starving Artist blog as Postal Blue, but you’re usually playing all the instruments. What’s the story? Is the band still together?
The band is not officially kaput, and we might as well get together to rehearse and record next week, provided we can get the stars properly aligned.
Having said that, I am putting up songs on my blog under the name Postal Blue because they’re mostly demo recordings of songs we are going to re-record and rearrange at some point in the future. But I am writing and recording them on my own. It’s mainly a way to force myself to produce something regularly, and to gain input from listeners while I’m still writing the songs.
Where did the name Postal Blue come from?
It’s my favorite color. 
How is Road to Happiness different from your previous releases?
It’s a more straightforward record with proper pop songs, as opposed to our album where we did a lot of experimenting with moods and song structures. Production-wise, it’s just us playing the songs as we do during band practice too, with barely any overdubs and not much in the way of synths and samples. The only exception is the last song (I’m Glad You Know), which called for a different approach.That track has a very different sound compared to what came before it. It’s much more pastoral, and you’re using string and piano sounds. Is this the start of a new direction for Postal Blue, an experiment, or…?
It’s more of a look back into our past, when we did a lot of that kind of thing. I do like to do tracks like that a lot and it’s definitely not the last time you’ll hear me torture a piano.
What was the process for writing songs on Road to Happiness?
The songs that were written specifically for that EP were The World Doesn’t Need You, It Won’t Last, and Vou Deixar Pra Depois. You can tell that by the fact that they share very similar structures.
The process was the usual: I’d come up with a vocal melody and chord progression, and we’d go from there. Words were added last, some during recording, like in Vou Deixar Pra Depois, which only I knew was going to be in Portuguese.
Regarding lyrics — do you leave your lyrics vague enough to be open to interpretation, are you telling specific stories that you want to get across, are you throwing ideas together and seeing what sticks..?
A bit of each. It varies a lot. I go from writing stories (I Know Where Your Dreams Go) to just using free association to see what comes up (Vou Deixar Pra Depois)
Some lyrics are very heartfelt, like in The World Doesn’t Need You, Asleep, and Weather Sensitive, while others, which I won’t name, are just vague lines that sound complimentary to the instrumentation. I get a little Liz Fraser-y sometimes.Where do you record?
We record everything in my apartment. You can hear my place’s ambience on a lot of our records, and it doesn’t sound pretty, I’m afraid. I do all the mixing too, though I’m not very good at it yet.
How do you manage to record drums and guitars in an apartment? Do you get complaints from the neighbors?
Oh, I forgot to mention that drums are tracked at a friend’s studio, but the equipment used is all ours. I pack my computer and mics to the studio, and we do drums there.
Guitars are tracked at home. I never got any complaints. I record at a pretty low volume by most standards, even distorted guitars.
You capture some very nice clean electric guitar sounds. How do you do it?
I never use dynamic mics. I always reach for a condenser to mic guitar amps. Either a large diaphragm condenser, when I want the track to carry the song or a small diaphragm condenser for most other tracks. It varies, though. I try a couple of mics for each track in each song to see what works best for that specific guitar sound and tone range.
The intro to The World Doesn’t Need You was recorded through an MXL 603 small diaphragm condenser, while the guitar at the ending of I’m Glad You Know was done with a Studio Projects C3 large diaphragm condenser.
It also helps to get the exact sound you want, so you don’t have to mess with it in the mix, adding eq and compression after the fact. The only exception is reverb.
What’s next for Postal Blue?
Besides the upcoming single on Cloudberry Records, we’re planning to self-release an album pretty soon. We already have plenty of songs, we just need to record them properly.
If money and reality were no object, what would you love to do, musically-speaking?
If money were no object, I’d love to record with an orchestra, and tour all over the world (not necessarily with an orchestra, mind you).
If reality were no object, I’d love to collaborate with the likes of Brian Wilson and Tom Jobim, if anything at least to learn how they worked and pick their brain. And maybe go back to 15 years ago armed with all the knowledge I have now.
10 Things that inspire Adriano Ribeiro