Q&A: Atta Boy Gracefully Explores Aging in New Album ‘Crab Park’

Q&AMusic

Oct 31

☆ By Britt Astrid Alphson ☆

DISTORTED GUITAR, LYRICS THAT ARE WRENCHING IN THEIR — plaintiveness and in their pleading, a vocalist whose twangy whispers bring to mind Faye Webster vis-à-vis Joanna Newsom. This is the very core of indie-pop quartet Atta Boy’s third studio album, Crab Park. The group, composed of singer Eden Brolin, guitarist Freddie Reish, keyboardist Dashel Thompson, and drummer Lewis Pullman, met all the way back in middle school, dropped an album (2012’s indie darling Out of Sorts) as college kids, and withdrew from the music world until 2020.

With gauzy instrumentation and a sense of serenity, Atta Boy’s latest project probes at a slew of experiences that define aging. From the quiet loneliness that shows itself in the wake of a relationship (“I took off my own clothes of last night”) to larger ideas about the dissatisfactions of corporate life (“You find consolation in cartoons / ’cause you’re in meetings all afternoon”), Atta Boy retains a self-awareness that is staggering. They look at their past selves kindly and greet them with questions at the door.

“Spring Seventeen,” a glistening folk track with the hands-in-the-soil songwriting of Laurel Canyon times, perhaps boils down the dysphoria of growing up best: “1 a.m. once was so early.” Atta Boy delivers blows in such a pleasant way, you’re almost glad to hear them.

Read below to find out more about Atta Boy’s writing process, thoughts on the changing nature of the music landscape, and more.

LUNA: So nice to meet you guys! How did you guys all meet and first form as a group?

REISH: Well, we all went to middle school together. The three of us met in sixth grade and then Lewis came along in seventh grade. Then in between our junior and senior year of high school Dashel and I had started writing some music and playing together. And then as it got closer to the beginning of our senior year of high school, we asked Eden if she would want to write songs with us. Our first songwriting session was at a park, and we didn't really know how to write music, so we ended up looking around and there were a whole bunch of crows. And then we wrote a song called “Crows,” and that was our first song.

LUNA: I was reading that you guys took a bit of a hiatus. What inspired you to start making or releasing music together again?

REISH: We all went off to college in very different parts of the country: Eden moved to New York, Dashiell was in the Bay Area, Lewis was in North Carolina, and I was back here in LA. So we kind of just had that time separated from each other. But after years of trying to get us all back together and seeing that our fanbase was growing on Spotify, Lewis sent us a text in the fall of 2019 being like, “All right gang, we've got money in the bank. We've got songs unsung, strings to strum, and a summer that's begging and pleading for us to do something with it. We should make an EP.” We finally got back together in January of 2020. And we were just messing around in the living room with new songs. It kind of felt like … no time had passed.

LUNA: When you released your debut album, Out of Sorts, it was 2012 and you were college students. Do you feel like the landscape for musicians has changed since then? Or that there is a palpable difference in what it means or to create music now versus when you were first starting out?

REISH: Back in 2012 was pretty early on in the age of Spotify. It was kind of this awesome burgeoning of all of these artists having amazing access to getting their music out there. But at the same time it was extremely overwhelming. So we didn't do any PR, we literally just put [our debut album] on Spotify. And there was some fun to that, and a lot less pressure.

BROLIN: We didn't release a record and tour it and then go do another record and then tour it. We've just been doing things flying by the seat of our pants and seeing what feels good. And so it's kind of funny to see how everybody stopped touring when the pandemic hit. Collaborating from a distance was something that we were really used to. Even though it was a very gnarly and dark time, and still can tend to be, we were able to hone a skill that we had already been grilling over all those years. And we were able to continue making music and making it work.

LUNA: For this latest album, do you feel like, sonically, a lot of the groundwork was already laid with your first two albums? Or do you feel as if you ventured off in a new direction?

THOMPSON: I think something we've talked about a lot over the years is “What is our sound?” so to speak. It can be sort of pretentious to talk about in those terms. But I think we always have made the kind of music that we would want to listen to, if that makes sense. As our tastes have evolved, I think our sound has changed a little bit as well. So while obviously the tracks on the first album, the second album, and third album are pretty different, I think there is still a sonic throughline.

LUNA: What does your writing process look like? Is it collaborative?

REISH: What’s cool is each song has a very different story. There are some songs where someone will just come in with chords done, song structure, ready to go. Eden predominantly comes in with rock-solid songs. Dashel came in with a song on this album called “It Goes Away” that is awesome. And I'm not saying that because I got to a guitar solo on it — it's genuinely a great song. Some songs involve sending voice memos back and forth. Eden did this thing where she asked us all questions about where we're at in life, what we're afraid of, what we're looking forward to, and took notes and all that. That led to the song “Boys.”

BROLIN: Freddie's right on the money with that… Every song has a little bit of a different approach. But it always tends to be that one of us brings something in, and then we build. We build around that [original idea] sonically and lyrically. Somebody will come in with this part and it gets kind of Frankenstein-built based on the things that people have been working on over several months to several years.

LUNA: What do you want listeners to take away or to feel after listening to Crab Park?

REISH: We did this activity with Eden that [addressed that] while we're all getting older and we're all certain about more things, there's always more uncertainty too. And we've all talked a lot about personal growth. So as far as the songs go, I don't even know exactly what they mean, but I know what I take away from them. I just hope that the listeners can find something positive for themselves in the songs, whether it’s saying, “This song makes me feel like someone else has been through something that I've been through.” We’ve gotten messages [from listeners] just being like, “Thank you for writing this song — it's exactly like what I needed right now in my life.”

BROLIN: I was just going to make a massive generalization about, like, songwriters and bands having the same intention as far as what they hope listeners get out of their music. But I think for me, I hope somebody can feel sort of seen, even though that's a very overused term — if somebody can feel seen or feel validated somehow. There's something about music that helps one not feel so alone or feel so unique, for lack of a better term. I think just the hope would be that one person can feel that with one of the songs even.

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We couldn’t be more stoked to have Suriel Hess as our new headliner for our upcoming LA show 🤩 🫶 Not gonna lie, us & Notorious Noise kinda went OFF with this line up & you’re not gonna wanna miss it - ticket link in bio 🎫