Studio Photos by Max Wanger—Interview by Paul Vnuk Jr.
In our May 2022 issue, I interviewed vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, as well as drummer Dan Molad, of the indie-pop band Lucius, who had just recorded their album, Second Nature, with noted producer Dave Cobb and artist/producer Brandi Carlile.
I caught up with the three of them again in our August 2024 issue, marking the 10th anniversary and re-recording of the band’s first album, Wildewoman. Today, I am sitting down with them again, this time joined by the band’s guitarist, Peter Lalish.
You might wonder why I’m interviewing the same band three times in just over three years. The simple answer is that Lucius is one of my favorite bands. That said, when it comes to crafting music in today’s modern recording landscape, I think there is great value in the insights that can be gleaned from any artist, engineer or producer as they evolve over multiple albums in a decade-long recording career.
After working with a host of famous producers in famous studios—from Bearsville, to Electric Lady to RCA Studio A—for the band’s latest release, appropriately titled Lucius, the band has chosen to get back to basics. Dan Molad produced the album in his own personal studio, Sounds Like a Fire, as well as at Altimira Sound in Alhambra, CA.
Lucius album cover. By Jack Davison
This album is a return to just being yourselves. When or why did you decide to self-produce the new album?
Jess: It is really important to us that every record is on the pulse of where we’re at in that moment in our lives. When we revisited Wildewoman to celebrate its 10-year anniversary and got back together in the studio with Danny at the helm, it felt very natural.
We missed that part of Lucius—where each of us was dependent on one another musically and creatively. That really inspired us to get back in the studio, just the four of us, without outside influences.
Danny, how was it from your perspective after working with outside producers on the last few albums?
Dan: I’ve been really fortunate—both with this band and my previous band with Pete, Elizabeth and the Catapult—to work with producers I admire.
I always selfishly wanted to be in the producer’s chair. But at the same time, we got to work with people like Mike Mogis, Tony Berg, Sean Everett and Dave Cobb. It was just like a masterclass, getting the opportunity to learn so much from these incredibly talented people.
But at this point, we’ve been a band for over ten years, and we have developed as players. Everyone is a producer in their own right. A mantra for this record was to avoid thinking about references and to just trust our instincts. I believe part of what made our first album Wildewoman so special was the push and pull of each of our different musical personalities.
It feels to me like the most honest record we’ve ever made because we all gave each other a lot of room to just be ourselves. Jess, Holly, Pete and I all like and listen to very different music, and it’s unavoidable not to make references. But if a reference doesn’t make sense or isn’t what the other person wants to hear, it can get you in trouble. You have to say, “Trust me,” but as much as possible, I think we just tried to follow the instincts we all had.
After being a band and recording for 14 years, how do you keep things musically fresh?
Jess: We don’t spend a lot of time putting labels on things or trying to convince each other to do or not do something. The studio has always been our creative playground, and either something works or it doesn’t.
Luckily, Danny is so fast and familiar with each of us as musicians that his strength lies in capturing what we are exploring right then and there, without pausing it in any way.
Holly: We did this record in a similar way to how we did Wildewoman. So it was like coming back to a super familiar space, except with all these years of experience, musical knowledge, and everyone just being more comfortable in themselves as musicians.
That combination of learning and coming back to ourselves after such a long period of time allowed us to be curious and excited about what was going to happen in the same way as when we started.
Peter: We all do so much work outside the band to stay creative, but when we all come back together, there’s this unified home. Lucius has a sound, but it’s still four individuals.
Let’s drill down into the songwriting process— specifically for this album.
Dan: This harkens back to your question about how we stay fresh or current, but a lot of times it starts with what we are listening to at the time—thinking, “I’d love to make a song that kind of sounds like this, I really like the chord progression, or the groove, or the vocal treatment.”
In the past, I was fearful of being referential in that way, thinking I would end up writing the song I was listening to. But as we’ve been doing this more and more, even when you aggressively chase a reference, just by the nature of being who we are—individually or as a group—means it still ends up being far removed from the thing we were listening to in the first place.
Jess: The intention for this album was different. Instead of writing separately and then bringing that to the other band members, we just wanted to get together in the studio and explore musically first, before even having a title or a lyric.
Then the content and meaning of the lyrics took shape naturally by what was going on in each of our lives, which was strangely parallel for all of us––this whole domesticity and getting older thing.
Dan: This was the first record Jess, Holly, Pete and I got to actively start together from the ground up. I think we did that on a couple of songs on Wildewoman, but we did this for almost every song on the new record.
What was the process like when you all got together?
Jess: We would sit with Danny in the studio and just start blank—sometimes we would sing melodies or run vocals through a vocoder while Danny created a loop underneath us.
Dan: Someone would start with some kind of idea, I’d make a loop, then I’d open up a mic and be like, “Just riff, just go for it.”
If we got stuck, we’d be like, okay, we’re gonna each take turns just singing into the mic—the first thing that comes to your mind—and then we’re gonna transcribe what we think the other one is saying.
So just random words, phrases and syllables?
Dan: It would literally just be sounds, and someone would be like, “Oh, it sounded like you said ‘camera tab’” or whatever.
Jess: There is something about singing syllabically. It feels very freeing to sing without being confined by words. I mean, there were songs where we took a more traditional approach and came in with a lyric or partial melody, but there were several songs on the record where we started with an open palette.
Peter: Historically, in the past, what Jess and Holly gave us might be really clear songs, start to finish, like “Two of Us” or “Tempest.”
Then, what happened over the following records is that they would present Danny, Andy (former member Andrew Burri), and me with their version of a song. Then we would go and create our own version—a new arrangement, perhaps with a different melody, new chords or set in a different context.
Then, we’d have the girls’ version and the boys’ version, and we’d go into the studio to combine them into a third, penultimate version.
This time it was nice because we actually did all of that together on the spot.
This album seems a bit grittier, edgier and guitar-driven. Did Pete come up with all of the cool guitar riffs? Danny, I know you mess around on guitar and bass as well. Take “Gold Rush” for example.
Dan: “Gold Rush” was fun. That one really evolved. We just filmed a walkthrough/breakdown video you can watch online.
When I played the original demo, I played guitar—essentially just playing a riff, doing the bare minimum to get the idea across. It was very simple, and the song wasn’t really major—it was kind of this dominant, vague, no-third, fully implied-on-guitar sort of thing.
When we sent it to Pete, he played a very minor-sounding guitar riff, which completely threw us off. So there was definitely some back and forth. Then, we were in the studio with our engineer, Rob Shelton, and Rob played a bass line on a keyboard. We were like, “That’s a cool line, but what does that sound like on real bass?”
So then [touring bassist] Solomon Dorsey played it on real bass. Then Pete embellished that, and then he played the girl’s vocal melody on guitar. I realize this is a somewhat piecemeal way of describing the process, but that’s essentially how it came together.
It’s funny because, when you listen to it, it sounds like this pretty simple, bluesy, rock riff—but it took a long journey to get there.
Another mantra for the record was, “I don’t care who’s playing what part—the best idea wins.”
The bass has a very McCartney sound. Was that the violin bass Danny played in the “Mad Love” Salt Lick sessions video?
Peter: It’s a hollow-body Harmony bass, an H22, I think.
What about the vocal sample, is that a vocoder?
Dan: You mean the thing that’s like [Danny sings in falsetto] “Gold Rush?” It’s not a vocoder. It was Jess, she was like, “I want some kind of samply-feeling thing, like you’d hear on a Beck or a Beastie Boys record.”
I was like, “Okay, let’s just loop the verse chord progression and you just sing the first things that come to your mind.” So we looped it for about three minutes, and Jess was just singing random bits.
Out of 40 different things, that was the one that stuck. And it’s funny because there was no mention of the song title anywhere in the song until that little sample came in.
Jess: There wasn’t even a song title yet at that point.
Peter: Going back to your observation that there are a lot more distorted guitars on this album—I think everybody is accepting in this band; it doesn’t always have to sound pretty. Jess and Holly have these wide-ranging angelic voices, and it’s nice to juxtapose that with more aggressive textures and distorted things.
I used to keep my guitar parts very concise. This time, everyone was like, “Let’s have more guitar stuff; let’s stretch out the songs to include more solos.” Obviously, my amps are really happy. [laughs]
Jess: Because Holly and my primary instrument is our voices, naturally, a lot of our records feature many background vocals and textural play with voices—things that sound like instruments but are actually vocals. For this record, we wanted to feature our vocals as the lead part more and have the instrumentation and the guys’ beautiful playing featured more.
This also makes it less challenging to reproduce live, which I feel like we struggled with on the tour for our last record. Making sure we could recreate the songs with just the five of us on stage was really important.
Pete: On the last tour, we were up to like six synths on stage.
This record was recorded at Danny’s home studio, Sounds Like a Fire, and again at Altamira Sound, where you previously recorded the new version of Wildewoman. What role did each studio play in the process of the new album?
Dan: Altamira was definitely the meat and the potatoes of the recording process. Of course, there was a lot of “demo morphs into final recording” moments. And then there were songs that started as demos that we went in and re-recorded at Altamira.
However, when I started mixing, there was still recording that continued to take place at my studio—we needed another guitar part or whatever. Some songs, like “Old Tape,” were recorded and mixed entirely at my studio.
Peter: Danny relocated to a different home studio halfway through recording this album. The old place was more like a mix room with a little drum/amp room in the back. Then he moved into what he has now, which is a nice-sized garage space. The drums for “Final Days” and “Stranger Danger” were done in that tiny kind of closet drum room.
The benefit of working at Altamira is that everyone there is a badass songwriter, arranger and producer. Their live room is beautiful. They have really great gear—like an API Legacy desk and a tape machine—so we were bouncing things back and forth to tape. Danny, how much of the record did you mix on the API board at the end?
Dan: Originally, I had this dream of wanting to mix the entire record on the console. But then, it became a situation where I would do the mix and send it off to everyone, who are all busy with their own lives.
So, you have the mix up on the console, and you’re waiting for people’s feedback. Then they send in their notes, and there is this continual back and forth, booking more time at the studio, which became really expensive.
So I thought, “You know what? I’m going to mix this stuff at home because it’s 2025, and people expect to be able to make minor adjustments to songs at the last minute.”
On an analog console, you can’t just turn down the vocal one dB. You have to pull everything back up on the console, dial the compressors back in, and make sure the console and gear are functioning the same way as they were before. I think “At the End of the Day” is a console mix, and one of the songs, which is an upcoming bonus track, is a console mix—ultimately, it was a romantic idea.
Are you still using a summing mixer at home?
Dan: Sadly, no. For the same reason—it’s just easier when people want to make adjustments to a mix to stay in the box. Plus, it’s nice that I can be somewhere with just my laptop and satellite and tweak something.
I did use mix bus compression on every song, which was the Pendulum Audio ES-8, and then for one or two songs, I used my Stam Audio Engineering StamChild SA-670, but it’s pretty temperamental.
This album seems a bit grittier, edgier and guitar-driven. Did Pete come up with all of the cool guitar riffs? Danny, I know you mess around on guitar and bass as well. Take “Gold Rush” for example.
Dan: “Gold Rush” was fun. That one really evolved. We just filmed a walkthrough/breakdown video you can watch online.
When I played the original demo, I played guitar—essentially just playing a riff, doing the bare minimum to get the idea across. It was very simple, and the song wasn’t really major—it was kind of this dominant, vague, no-third, fully implied-on-guitar sort of thing.
When we sent it to Pete, he played a very minor-sounding guitar riff, which completely threw us off. So there was definitely some back and forth. Then, we were in the studio with our engineer, Rob Shelton, and Rob played a bass line on a keyboard. We were like, “That’s a cool line, but what does that sound like on real bass?”
So then [touring bassist] Solomon Dorsey played it on real bass. Then Pete embellished that, and then he played the girl’s vocal melody on guitar. I realize this is a somewhat piecemeal way of describing the process, but that’s essentially how it came together.
It’s funny because, when you listen to it, it sounds like this pretty simple, bluesy, rock riff—but it took a long journey to get there.
Another mantra for the record was, “I don’t care who’s playing what part—the best idea wins.”
The bass has a very McCartney sound. Was that the violin bass Danny played in the “Mad Love” Salt Lick sessions video?
Peter: It’s a hollow-body Harmony bass, an H22, I think.
What about the vocal sample, is that a vocoder?
Dan: You mean the thing that’s like [Danny sings in falsetto] “Gold Rush?” It’s not a vocoder. It was Jess, she was like, “I want some kind of samply-feeling thing, like you’d hear on a Beck or a Beastie Boys record.”
I was like, “Okay, let’s just loop the verse chord progression and you just sing the first things that come to your mind.” So we looped it for about three minutes, and Jess was just singing random bits.
Out of 40 different things, that was the one that stuck. And it’s funny because there was no mention of the song title anywhere in the song until that little sample came in.
Jess: There wasn’t even a song title yet at that point.
Peter: Going back to your observation that there are a lot more distorted guitars on this album—I think everybody is accepting in this band; it doesn’t always have to sound pretty. Jess and Holly have these wide-ranging angelic voices, and it’s nice to juxtapose that with more aggressive textures and distorted things.
I used to keep my guitar parts very concise. This time, everyone was like, “Let’s have more guitar stuff; let’s stretch out the songs to include more solos.” Obviously, my amps are really happy. [laughs]
Jess: Because Holly and my primary instrument is our voices, naturally, a lot of our records feature many background vocals and textural play with voices—things that sound like instruments but are actually vocals. For this record, we wanted to feature our vocals as the lead part more and have the instrumentation and the guys’ beautiful playing featured more.
This also makes it less challenging to reproduce live, which I feel like we struggled with on the tour for our last record. Making sure we could recreate the songs with just the five of us on stage was really important.
Pete: On the last tour, we were up to like six synths on stage.
This record was recorded at Danny’s home studio, Sounds Like a Fire, and again at Altamira Sound, where you previously recorded the new version of Wildewoman. What role did each studio play in the process of the new album?
Dan: Altamira was definitely the meat and the potatoes of the recording process. Of course, there was a lot of “demo morphs into final recording” moments. And then there were songs that started as demos that we went in and re-recorded at Altamira.
However, when I started mixing, there was still recording that continued to take place at my studio—we needed another guitar part or whatever. Some songs, like “Old Tape,” were recorded and mixed entirely at my studio.
Peter: Danny relocated to a different home studio halfway through recording this album. The old place was more like a mix room with a little drum/amp room in the back. Then he moved into what he has now, which is a nice-sized garage space. The drums for “Final Days” and “Stranger Danger” were done in that tiny kind of closet drum room.
The benefit of working at Altamira is that everyone there is a badass songwriter, arranger and producer. Their live room is beautiful. They have really great gear—like an API Legacy desk and a tape machine—so we were bouncing things back and forth to tape. Danny, how much of the record did you mix on the API board at the end?
Dan: Originally, I had this dream of wanting to mix the entire record on the console. But then, it became a situation where I would do the mix and send it off to everyone, who are all busy with their own lives.
So, you have the mix up on the console, and you’re waiting for people’s feedback. Then they send in their notes, and there is this continual back and forth, booking more time at the studio, which became really expensive.
So I thought, “You know what? I’m going to mix this stuff at home because it’s 2025, and people expect to be able to make minor adjustments to songs at the last minute.”
On an analog console, you can’t just turn down the vocal one dB. You have to pull everything back up on the console, dial the compressors back in, and make sure the console and gear are functioning the same way as they were before. I think “At the End of the Day” is a console mix, and one of the songs, which is an upcoming bonus track, is a console mix—ultimately, it was a romantic idea.
Are you still using a summing mixer at home?
Dan: Sadly, no. For the same reason—it’s just easier when people want to make adjustments to a mix to stay in the box. Plus, it’s nice that I can be somewhere with just my laptop and satellite and tweak something.
I did use mix bus compression on every song, which was the Pendulum Audio ES-8, and then for one or two songs, I used my Stam Audio Engineering StamChild SA-670, but it’s pretty temperamental.
Was there any new gear or new ‘toys’ that informed the album?
Peter: Actually, I’ve been annoying Rob from Altimira about this funny delay pedal called the Diving Bell by Retroactive Pedals that he was gifted by Buck Meek from Big Thief. It has an interesting infinite delay button that repeats in a really strange way. Rather than feeding back into itself through a feedback loop, it grabs one note and repeats it quickly and randomly. It’s a really cool color. I used at the end of “Stranger Danger” in the guitar solo.
Then I recently got a Novo semi-hollow body guitar with a whammy bar that actually stays in tune. It’s the most beautiful guitar I’ve ever owned and played. I did some amazing things with feedback and the whammy bar on this record. It reinspired the ‘noisy guitar player’ in me.
Dan: I have a few pieces that I feel like were some real key players to this record. There were two main vocal mics we used on the whole record, which were the Myburgh M1 and a Josephson C 725. They’re amazing. I like that they are not just remakes of old holy grail microphones but are doing their own new thing.
The other thing that was on, on a couple of songs, was this Onde Magnétique OM-1, a cassette player that has a CV input that controls the tape’s pitch. You can get like 20 cassettes, and each of these cassettes has a one note loop that plays for the entire length of the cassette. You can play it with a CV-equipped keyboard controller and control the speed of the tape, allowing you to play different pitches that have an effect almost like a glide on a synthesizer.
At the end of “Do It All For You,” that’s the OM-1 with a singing bowl cassette tape. And then on “Final Days,” the OM-1 is going throughout the recording like a phantom ghost sound.
Another new toy that I was really excited about was an early ‘90s Boss VT-1 Voice Transformer. If you have ever used the Soundtoys Little Alter Boy plugin, it is based on the Boss VT-1.
It’s got very low headroom and a particular sound in how it breaks up very digitally in a cool way. We used it on “Final Days.” Pete is singing along with the whole song through the VT-1 vocoder effect, and then I have that being side-chained by the kick drum.
I think Jess and Holly sang through it on a number of other tunes. I always try to look for things that I feel are fun vocal toys for ladies to mess around with.
I love the idea of using vocals to generate ideas. Oftentimes, the most instinctual, melodic things will come about from vocal experimentation. The second you put an instrument in someone’s hands, they’re immediately thinking, “Where do my fingers go?”
Holly and Jess, as vocalists, do you get excited or inspired by a new mic, or do you like playing through vocal effects when tracking?
Jess: We love having textures to play with. We usually use multiple mics at a time, often singing in the same room together with separate mics, plus room mics and effects mics.
We like anything that enables us to be more playful, whether it’s a vocoder, a looping device, or even this little 1980s Casio SK-5 sampling keyboard. We were just playing around with one, making a little loop that formed the hook of a song.
Of course, we have our Neumann KU 100 binaural dummy head microphone. We used one back when we were working with Sean Everett. We became so obsessed with it that we got our own.
Holly: Whether we’re playing with something that sounds super reverby or distorted, or using a mic that is very clean sounding, so you can really hear all the textures of your voice—it all informs your performance, both live and in the studio. That sense of freedom and experimentation was central to how we built many of the songs on this album.
Thanks, guys. I really appreciate talking to you again, and I’m enjoying the new album a lot!
Jess: Thank you so much, Paul.
