AN INTERVIEW: POOL HOLOGRAPH

Hi, everyone! I recently did an interview with the members of the Chicago-based garage rock band Pool Holograph! While the group originally began as Wyatt Grant's own project some ten years ago, it has now evolved to four members: Grant handles lead vocals, with Zach Stuckmann (bass guitar), and brothers Paul (lead guitar) and Jake Stolz (percussion) making up the rest of the components. These guys were another band I discovered through my local station's On Rotation mix, and I actually played the song "Life By The Power Plant" from their most recent record, Love Touched Time and Time Began To Sweat. The album received positive reviews from outlets such as Pitchfork, and we talk more about the writing process behind this record (and more!) within this interview!

bazzreviews: Which albums or artists inspired you guys to start a music career in the first place?

Wyatt Grant: Initially, when I started writing music, I was wrapped up in Broken Social Scene’s deep catalog of music, and other prolific, art-centric artists like Deerhunter, Ariel Pink. In other words, artists that kind of genre-bended and had a somewhat polarizing approach to pop and garage rock. When I got exposed to artists that created deep narratives in their work, it got me excited as a young person to build my own body of work. I think it also had a lot to do with exploring identity, memory, and finding ways to pass the time when you’re a bored teenager. 

Zach Stuckmann: I’m not sure there’s a starting point that I can define, but artists like mewithoutYou, John Frusciante, and Saul Williams all had an impressionable way of world-making and creating a narrative that, at the time I came across them, was something I didn’t understand that music could do so well. Seeing Wyatt’s process of songwriting during college was a big inspiration that aligned with that curiosity, too.

Paul Stolz: Jake and I have been playing music together for almost 20 years now, which is crazy to think about. I think when we first started playing, Grunge was the biggest influence. I remember getting the Nirvana Box Set on CD the same year I got my first bass guitar. We come from a pretty musical family, so there was always music playing in the house. Some of my first memories are of dancing to R.E.M’s Automatic for the People on tape.

br: I know the project originally started as Wyatt’s own, but how did you guys all first meet?

Z.S.: Wyatt and I met in college during some of the formative years of Pool Holograph when it was solo. We were introduced to Jake and Paul some years later. Jake lived across the street from one of our many Chicago apartments and had a drum kit in his sun room, so we started exploring some ideas there.

P.S.: Jake brought me into the fold shortly after I got back from Peace Corps in 2014. I was a huge fan before I joined and remember meeting Wyatt and Zach for the first time in the Green Room at the Beat Kitchen before their show. I was starstruck 

br: What’s the significance behind the band’s name? 

W.G.: “Pool Holograph” came from some text I put on a painting referencing the day I was baptized in a megachurch back in Memphis, where the pool was backlit and I was staring at the ceiling and could see a “holographic”-esque design being projected by the pool of water. “Holograph” technically describes a body of text, too. “Pool Holograph” could also be the shimmer on top of a body of experience, ideas, flaws, etc. Kind of a momentary, ever-changing phenomena?

br: How have you guys been staying active musically during the pandemic?

Z.S.: We’ve had to communicate and function in a pretty unfamiliar way these days, and it’s just gone on so long at this point that it’s gone from disheartening to numbing. Luckily, sharing Pool Holograph demos and ideas online has always been a part of our dynamic, and we like to share current albums that excite us, too. However, because of the pandemic, we haven’t had a chance to explore new work in person. A lot of what we’ve been focused on is gearing up for post-pandemic shows and events, and of course just staying positive and determined. I’m excited to be able to safely practice together again soon and to see what this shift in time has to lend to our next group of songs.

br: Wyatt, I’m really curious to know about the art you make!

W.G.: Yeah! It’s been something pretty central for me since I can remember, and at the moment I’ve been able to string enough projects together to make a living. I just directed my first music video earlier this year for Twin Peaks’ “Unfamiliar Sun”. Outside of that, I design a lot of posters, and shirts, and make a lot of paintings whenever I can. 

Jake and Paul, tell me a little bit about the bands you’re involved in outside of PH?

J.S.: We comprise the rhythm section in Varsity, and just released an album called Fine Forever in the spring. We also play in Discus, which is mostly songs that spring from Paul and my songwriting efforts. And most recently, we’ve started a collaborative project with friends in the CTZ called Central Heat Exchange.

P.S: Yeah, I think we’ll have some releases coming out from that project next year!

Jake, what can you say about your website and pseudo-label called Sunroom?

J.S.: I run Sunroom with my partner, Clare Byrne, and it’s sort of a collaborative vessel for art and music, not only for us, but it gives us an excuse to work with artists we love. It creates situations where we can publish our boldest, strangest, sometimes amorphous ideas. Clare is really gifted with design employing the risograph printer, so a lot of it is just finding fun, new ways to use that tool.

br: It seems like the live show is a big part of the band’s image, would you guys say you prefer playing live rather than working in the studio?

W.G.: Surprisingly, recording and performing live have become more linked to one another over time. I think a lot of spontaneity and color from our live show has begun to leak into our recording process, and vice versa. While playing live is very ephemeral and experiential, there are also devices that come from our recording process like the use of samples, experimentation with tones, etc. So, to answer your question, both playing live and recording feels like extensions of the same core art project that is our band, and one doesn’t really precede the other, if that makes sense.

Z.S.: I second that. We’ve received super kind feedback about our live shows and we’re excited and humbled that our shows resonate with people and help to define Pool Holograph. The shows and the studio performances have begun to feel like the same moments in time, experienced in parallel dimensions to me; both are important to reaching a similar goal, but for different reasons.

J.S.: Outside of the initial tone-finding phase, I find it quite difficult to record drums. I actually prefer playing live. I miss it more than ever these days.

br: Can you describe the writing process on the new record, Love Touched Time and Began To Sweat? How did that differ from past releases?

W.G.: Love Touched Time came from a pretty large collection of demos. At first, there wasn’t a decided direction for the album. We just knew we wanted to make it as vast as possible, and use that leeway to experiment and explore new sounds. Working from a lot of demos is not new for us, but the way we approached recording was decidedly raw. We wanted to intentionally feel out of our element to let some new things bleed through. 

br: What’s more important to you guys, lyricism or production value and instrumentation? 

W.G.: We treat lyricism and instrumentation as being from the same place most of the time. A lot of songs that have unintelligible lyrics have changed my life, so I feel like instrumentation carries a vast majority of the “message” for me. 

P.S.: As we’re working on a new song, we’ll have a pretty long conversation about the lyrical themes that Wyatt creates for it, and try to match the message with our instrumentation. It's a really interesting challenge to convey a complex message with non-verbal sounds and textures. 

br: What have been some of your favorite songs to have made over the years? Are there any special reasons why?

Z.S.: I’m very fond of “Rabbit’s Moon” from the Town Quarry EP. It’s encoded with so many keys and hints to proceeding Pool Holograph content. Because a lot of it was improvised through the writing process, it felt like a trial. It was cleansing, and very ritualistic to play through. It happened during what I consider a very special and trying time in the band’s history. The process of writing this song helped to define a method of writing that we loved and used often going forward. We didn’t play it much live, and when it was recorded, it was hard to remember writing it in the first place.

Z.S.: I’m with Zach on this one. The whole Town Quarry EP was such a blast to write and record. We were all living together at that point, figuring out this new path forward as a four-piece and writing together. I remember writing “Yellow Dots” after a particularly crazy house show and trying to draw that energy into the song. We recorded that one live, and there’s so much raw energy in the song that it still gives me chills when I listen to it.

J.S.: My personal favorite is probably “Clock Tower” from Mortals. Wyatt and I recorded drums for it in the basement of the Stolz childhood home one night, with a very limited setup and free mentality. If you listen closely, you can actually hear our family dog, Daisy, bump into the mic halfway through. That is what resulted in a big volume increase. Listening to this song transports me back to that exact moment, and reminds me more generally of the early days of Pool Holograph. It was a blast recording with my best friends in this zone, and I look back on those days fondly.

br: If you could rewrite or delete one or more songs from your discography, what would you choose and why?

W.G.: It’s weird to say that we have a “discography,” you know? It can pose some issues creatively in that you identify too much with what you’ve done, instead of committing yourself to the medium for better or worse. I often fantasize what it’d be like to have an equivalent of Nico’s The Marble Index or Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music to throw myself and others off of the trail, and “Stage Fright” is probably the closest we ever got to doing that. We did a 9-minute long improvisation at the end, but we trimmed it for our 7” release. I’d like to go back and maybe do a 20-minute version or something. 

br: Knowing everything you do about music, what is one thing you’d tell your past selves?

W.G.: “Turn up your vocals! It’s going to sound bad for a while, but it will be for the best.”

Z.S.: “Hey bud, wear some earplugs.”

J.S.: “You don’t have to use your entire arm to hit a drum.”

P.S.: “Police tape guitar straps are not cool. Neither are Les Paul ones.”

What other music goals do you have for the future?

W.G.: I really enjoyed collaborating with V.V. Lightbody on a track on the new album, and it’d be really cool to bring other folks into our recordings in the future.

J.S.: I’d love to collaborate with more folks as well, and hope to get out on the road again when it’s safe to do so!

P.S.: Likewise. When we can, touring as much as possible is the #1 goal for me!

I'd like to thank the guys of the band for taking the time to answer these questions, and I am wishing them the best of luck going forward. I would totally recommend checking out their music, and I will link that down below so you guys can do so. In the meantime, thanks for checking this interview out, and I hope you guys are back here to check out the next piece of content I post!