Q&A: Postcard Boy Reveals New World With New Single “On The Hillside” and Announces New Album
FOR ANYONE WHO LIKES A MASTERFUL COMBO OF CINEMATIC TREATS AND SONIC MAGIC — anything Garrett Seamans (Postcard Boy and carwash) touches turns gold.
Prior to “Polka Dot,” it’s been over two years since the last Postcard Boy single. During that time, Seamans has kept himself busy with his other project, carwash, one that is equally (if not more) innovative with sonic explorations and experiments. But if carwash is the shoegaze-inspired, immersive and indulging, in-the-moment project, Postcard Boy is nostalgic, melancholic, and sentimentally mellow.
The return of Postcard Boy with “Polka Dot” and his latest single, “On The Hillside,” present a louder moment for those mellow feelings. On “Polka Dot,” Seamans does the impossible, combining the two of his projects and amplifying the inner thoughts and tenderness of Postcard Boy with a rhythm-driven track. The carwash’s signature blend of optimistic and rhythmic soundscaping carries over to “On The Hillside,” while keeping the more electronic, echoey elements of classic Postcard Boy songs.
Undoubtedly, “On The Hillside” is the brightest Postcard Boy song thus far. Perhaps less melancholic but as sentimental as ever, it’s less of a love song, yet reminds you of love and loving someone.
As usual, Seamans works his magic and captures the beauty of the song perfectly with its music video. Filmed on the sunniest day and the most serene grassy hills, Seamans gets to live out his dream of a boundless postman, with his bouncy house and wind dress.
Upon the release of the second single off his upcoming album, Luna caught up with Postcard Boy on his behind-the-scenes process and what’s been happening in the years of Postcard Boy and carwash. Read the interview below.
LUNA: What's one song you're currently obsessed with?
SEAMANS: Honestly, I'll just go with [this] one because it’s the first one that came to mind — there's this song called “Antenna Trash” by this artist named Lali Puna. There's not that much information on her, but it's really cool — it's a drum machine kind of drums with synths and stuff. Over a lot of her music, she's almost talking more than she is singing. I've been obsessed with her for a couple months now.
LUNA: I want to ask about the stamp collection. When I was compiling questions, I had a question down the road that asks, “What is your favorite stamp design?” But then I found out for each of your singles, if you pre-save it you get a special stamp out of it. What was the thought process that went into that?
SEAMANS: With the whole project, I'm just trying to do all the postal stuff to the largest ability that I can. I thought it was a cool way to give the fans a little something extra that’s also fun for me to make. I found out a couple months ago that my mom actually had a stamp collection from when she was a kid that she didn't tell me about at all. That was news to me that made it seem to make even more sense, and it gave me the template of how I wanted to have a description for the stamps because she showed me her old albums. My mom moved from the Philippines when she was two or three, so she has all these old Philippine stamps and old letters that are from family that were saved in this archive thing. I was just like, I think I want to do that somewhat with mine. I scanned all her albums so I could have all of them, but I want to maybe compile some of my favorite stamps from those into a cover, possibly.
LUNA: That’s cool! Did you at one point have letters as well? I was going through your Instagram — I think it was a show recap photo and in the caption it says, “letter from the link in my bio.” So did you at one point also have letters for fans?
SEAMANS: Yeah, I do. Because I'm not as active or don't love being too active on social media, a couple of years ago I was doing [it] once a month but now it’s whenever it happens. I would compile photos from however long it had been since I last sent out a letter and then I would write these letters of where I'm at or what I'm up to. Instead of posting photo dumps every few days or a few weeks to socials, I would do these letters for the fans that wanted to sign up. I've been doing that now for a little over two years, but I've really enjoyed doing that because now it’s almost for me to process every couple months and be like, “Hey, what do I actually feel like?” I journal every day, but it's cool to try to put it in a concise version. They are called “junk mail club.”
LUNA: That’s amazing! I want to talk a little bit about “Polka Dot” because it seems to be a carwash and Postcard Boy collab. I tried to figure out what is the difference between the two projects — I realized the more indie rock part is more carwash, and the indie R&B part is a lot more Postcard Boy. Sometimes I can tell by your vocal execution, as well. Why did you decide to have this single being a collab between your two projects?
SEAMANS: The difference between them I think will be more clear after the whole Postcard Boy project is out in the world. You deducted the sonic qualities that might differentiate them, and I think the Postcard Boy project is a lot more electronic-focused and influenced by different artists than the carwash project is. Postcard Boy's stuff is more… I would hope to be like Japanese House, Caroline Polachek kind of experimental pop. And then the carwash stuff was my take at the time on rock music — that was my first trial at that.
I think it's just funny to have them together. I mean, “Polka Dot” is a unique song in particular that was a middle ground — there are elements definitely from both sides, and I think it could have been purely a Postcard Boy song or purely a carwash song, and people wouldn't have really bat an eye to it. A lot of people seem to care a lot more about there being two projects than I do, to a certain extent. The reason behind doing a duo song I guess was just because it would be fun, and I wanted to reintroduce Postcard Boy after such a long time [and] also to incorporate the new carwash fans. It was also just a coming together of the two, some people might not even be aware of the other one. I just thought it'd be a nice, almost “welcome back” song.
LUNA: I was really excited about it because my roommate was actually the person who showed me Postcard Boy. Immediately after he showed me he was like, “He has a different project called carwash and I like it even more.” But I wanted more Postcard Boy, and I thought I was not gonna get any more Postcard Boy music, so this is really exciting for me.
SEAMANS: It’s exciting for me too! When the carwash stuff started picking up… I mean, it's still a much larger project than Postcard Boy, and I understand that a lot of people just like that kind of sonic aesthetic — I don't know if “trendy” is the right word, but there's a lot of people that are just liking rock music in that space right now, which is cool. But because I started Postcard Boy first, I felt like I hadn't had any closure with the Postcard Boy project. So to leave it where it was, it didn't feel like it was a fully formed thing of what it was. I hadn't really done what I wanted to do with Postcard Boy, in terms of that sound. I feel like I was just starting to understand it, and then carwash started to pick up. It definitely confused a lot of people when I was telling them that I'd been working on a Postcard Boy album for a year and a half when they're like, “Why aren't you doing the carwash stuff?” Because it makes sense that when something's going, to try to keep doing it. But there's definitely a lot of personal satisfaction that comes from doing the Postcard Boy stuff that I think if I didn't do the album I would have always felt like there are these loose ends.
LUNA: “On The Hillside,” for me, once again, is kind of in the middle. There's still a lot of synth and indie-rock soundscaping that reminds me of carwash. But then, I feel like once your voice comes in for the second verse again — I'm being pulled back to Postcard Boy, does that make any sense? Was that a thought process that went into the song at all?
SEAMANS: Honestly, no, there was not really a thought process because I always wanted “On The Hillside” just to be a Postcard Boy song. I guess it's my version of a dance track to a certain extent, but it's not really a dance track. For a while I was trying to fill the second verse with a feature but ended up not happening. I think the second verse is actually one of my favorite parts of the song now, so it all works out in the end. It made me explain what I was trying to say in the song more because there are more words to say.
I didn't think too hard about trying to make it sound one way or the other. I think it just happened. That song was kind of hard to do… Well, not hard, but it took a long time. But I'm super happy with how it came out. I'm happy that you feel like the second verse brought you back towards Postcard Boy.
LUNA: I definitely want to talk about the visual element to this song. I watched all your music videos, and I'm not going to ask you for every single music video and how you came up with the idea, but maybe just give me the rundown of how the video for “On The Hillside” came about? Sometimes it also feels like the music video lives on its own plane apart from the song, but then it makes the song better in a sense.
SEAMANS: For this video in particular — and for this album: the “Polka Dot” video and this “On The Hillside” video and the videos going forward — it's been different than all the past videos. I've done maybe 15 or so — all those past ones were made with pretty much the same crew: me and my three best friends from high school, Charlie, Carsten, and Lauren. We would crank out these ideas together then we would just try to figure out a way to do it DIY — that's how all those videos had been made. My friend Charlie… Now that we're older, she lives in another state. Same with my friend Carsten — he lives in New York. Our friend Lauren hasn't really been around for these videos, either. So it’s just been me trying to figure out and meet new people that can help out on these videos. It's been weirdly stressful because I've never really done something without the crutch of them, having their support right there through the whole thing.
For “On The Hillside” specifically, the first thing I always knew I wanted was to put the mailbox bounce house on a hillside, just because the name of the song, and the idea of there being a postman that lives in a mailbox on a hillside has always been a theme since I started thinking of ideas for the album. I once saw a photo of this Norwegian artist, there’s a photo of this project she did called “Wind Dress,” and it's kind of like what I tried to make with my thing that I wear in that video. It's got this huge tail, and so I based my whole design off of that photo. Then it was just trying to figure out how I could make this wearable envelope kite. I spent weeks sewing in my living room, and it was kind of hard to make because the thing is probably 22 feet long and my living room is not even that long. We had to clear up the furniture in the living room — it was just a crazy hassle to make it but it was so rewarding.
The same people that did “Polka Dot” did this video — it's nice to have people that you trust to stay around, especially if someone has a really positive vibe. But yeah, the video was kind of hectic — we had to keep pushing back to shoot because it was perpetually raining. In the forecast there were two days where it said partly sunny, [and] we had to drive five hours to get to this spot so we drove there the night before. It was pouring on the drive up, and then we woke up for the day to go on the shoot. [There were] no clouds, [it was] perfectly sunny, but we went to go film, the part we originally planned to film was fully flooded. So we were like, “Okay, we need to find a new spot.” And then we got to a new spot and pulled off the van right off the road of this state park. I just felt the van sink — this is, like, 8:30 a.m. and we haven't shot one shot. We were trying to dig it out and it was really stuck, tilted off the side of the road. There are a lot of horror stories with filming that video. Luckily, a park ranger ended up coming in. He was so nice — I put him in the credits.
LUNA: There are a few videos where I think I know where it is. And then there's one video on Hollywood Boulevard. That's my favorite Postcard Boy song. Before I watched all the music videos, the way that I envisioned “Company” would’ve never been on that strip — but that used to be one of my favorite places in LA. All my friends judged me for it, like, “Why would you like Hollywood Boulevard?” But I find a lot of peace among the chaos, and I think Postcard Boy as a project really captured that. The way that you portray LA is different from a lot of other musicians would and I really like it. Is that also intentional?
SEAMANS: I don't think it's intentional at all. To be honest, I think it's just the product of living here, I end up shooting in locations that are in LA. I never thought about my work portraying LA in any sort of way, but I guess it just naturally does. Because I've lived here for a few years and I just shot around. That's cool, though. I never really thought about how my work is capturing the city that I live in, because I'm actually going to end up moving to New York after this whole rollout is done. You know what, that's cool. I've never thought about my work like that because my earlier videos had been shot at where I grew up in San Diego. I liked that those videos reflect that. But I never felt too attached to LA as being part of my identity, so it is interesting that it comes from the videos, but it's cool. It's cool to hear a new perspective.
LUNA: I was gonna ask if there's a new EP coming, but it seems like you're working on a new album. It's definitely early. But can you tell me anything else beyond the two singles that have been out so far?
SEAMANS: The rest of the rollout will expand the world that these current videos have been in. The next video, I want to have the bouncy house live even more. I don't want to spoil…
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