Carpool Tunnel chats about latest album: Bloom

After sitting on the album through much of the pandemic, San Francisco band, Carpool Tunnel releases their first full album, Bloom. This eleven track album is a full-bodied Carpool Tunnel experience, swelling with their quintessential psychedelic-pop sound, mixed with notes of blues and classic rock. 

In an interview with guitarist, Brad Kearsley, he tells us about Bloom’s production, their recent signing to Pure Noise Records, and what’s next for the band. Here are highlights from the interview.

Which tracks on the album did you feel most passionate about during the writing process?

The first one that comes to mind is, Nostalgia. It’s a song that we’ve had for a long time. When we play it live, it begins with this big instrumental guitar solo type thing and it goes super high. The whole point of the song is that it goes up and down, it changes. The original had a solo in the beginning. When it came to recording the album, we were like, well it doesn’t make sense to start it like that, that’s a live thing. We changed it up a bit to just start with Ben’s vocals. We’re super happy with how it came out. We were also worried because there’s so many tempo changes. Between the verse and the chorus, the first verse and the second verse are different tempos, the chorus is a different tempo. So there’s a lot to change and we were worried about actually getting that done and actually recording that, and we did. It ended up being super great. I really like blues music and blues guitar, so I got to play a blues solo which was super fun.

If that was your favorite track while recording, has that changed? 

I think Tarot Cards came out way better than expected— not even than expected, but we were just so stoked with how it came out. That was one of our favorite songs too. It just came together. Going into the studio, it was super messy. The song wasn’t totally finished, the verses weren’t the same; we had this bridge. We did preproduction and basically the producer was like, well, you’ve got a different song as your bridge, try to make something more cohesive. So we went back and worked on that song, so turning it out and hearing how it came out at the end of that recording, it was incredible. I think that was probably the biggest pleasant surprise.

What was it like to come up with the concept for the “Dreaming Still” video? 

We knew that we wanted to do something really fun. As with all of our videos, we knew we wanted to show off San Francisco. There’s not too many bands out here so we wanted to show it off. We were coming up with a bunch of ways to do that. With “Flora,” we ran around the whole city, showing our favorite spots through the Sunset and stuff, so that was fun. With “Dreaming Still,” we knew that we really like the song and it was a joke, we were like, what if we spoofed the Full House intro. And then we were like, well that’d be perfect because we could do the side-by-side comparison on Tik Tok—we literally made the video for Tik Tok. We were like, that’s perfect, we have to do that. Then it came to breaking down every scene. I went and screen shot every scene that was in the intro and there were something like sixty-four of them. I had to get costumes ready, planned out through my vintage shop. I had to pick who’s going to be who. And Michael had to be like, okay, how am I going to shoot this? We had to find locations that were similar enough or were exactly the same place. It was a huge project and it really took up all of January. It was so cool and we had such a great time. Shooting the bridge is like a $10,000 permit, if you do it legally.

Carpool Tunnel, via Instagram @carpooltunnelband

That’s what I thought when I was watching it, I was like, I don’t think you’re allowed to fly drones around the bridge. 

Haha, I mean, I didn’t. I was driving.  It wasn’t me. But we got the footage. For legal reasons, it wasn’t us. We got it from stock footage. So we were like super sketched about that. We went at like 7am to make sure no one was there and it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Michael has this little small drone, so it wouldn’t be too loud or too big. We just managed to get it done. It was a really fun shoot. We’re super glad with how it turned out.

In general, what was it like producing this album during this time?

We luckily recorded it before the pandemic happened, so that didn’t ruin the experience of recording it. But putting it out was definitely super weird. We actually first got in contact with our record label, Pure Noise, with this record in February of 2021. We were talking about deal offers and deal memos, when COVID-19 hit and we were like, oh shit, are they still going to be interested with everything shutting down and losing money, blah blah blah. Luckily, they still were down. That process took a bit of time to adjust accordingly, and then finally signing and putting out the record, or choosing when to put out the record. At the time when we chose, I think it was around July or August of 2020, so November was too soon and we were worried about the election. So we thought, maybe February would be good by then. So we just locked it in blindly, but we didn’t want to sit on it for much longer. It was really interesting. We’re really used to putting out an EP and following it with something. Putting out an album, we were expecting to follow with a big tour. It was really weird to basically just press a button and it was out in the world. It felt like we just threw it into the void. You know, we did what we could. We’re just excited to go play shows and tour.

I understand that feeling. It feels very anticlimactic. 

For real, a year of just planning, just to be like, “Cool. Nothing has changed.”

On that note, how do you feel the reactions to the album have been?

It’s been wonderful. People are constantly posting their vinyls, tagging us. We got to do so many interviews and so many cool things with the album. We just want to play live, you know.

How did this album feel in comparison to past releases?

Well, this is our first official album. It’s the first music project in my whole career and life that I’ve been 100% proud of and would be confident in showing anyone and beinglike, this is what my band created. Versus being like, yeah, you know, it’s whatever. No, I’m like, fucking listen to this. I’m super proud of this. So, that has been a great feeling because I’ve played in like five or six bands and done a lot of stuff. I have it on a piece of wax that’s going to be in my life forever. It’s really cool.

Listening on Spotify, this album feels really high quality. Is that from being involved with Pure Noise?

We went to a studio for the first time. Pretty much everything before Bloom, I recorded in our house. I’m very proud of what we were able to get done for those, but at the same time, going to a professional studio and getting it mixed and mastered professionally, that’s something we’ve never done. It was definitely a higher level caliber, but That was before Pure Noise was involved. We had the album completely done before we had Pure Noise.

Carpool Tunnel’s Bloom, via Instagram @carpooltunnelband

What has it been like getting involved with Pure Noise?

It’s been super cool. I grew up listening to so many of the bands on their roster. At the same time, we’re not really in the same genre as a lot of those bands, but they’ve been influences for both Dani and I in our music. Signing to them was surreal as hell. Seeing our faces on their

website was super cool. They’ve been nothing but completely helpful. If we have any ideas, they’re there to make those ideas a reality. They’ve connected us with our team. It’s been a wonderful experience all around. I’m just very grateful for it.

Which song on Bloom are you most excited to play live?

I think Tarot Cards. We played it a few times before putting it out and the second verse has this break where we would always get the audience. It has this build up then just goes silent.

You were able to play this live before the pandemic?

Yeah. We would always fool the audience. They would get ready for the chorus and start jumping, and then it would just go completely silent. But now that people know the song, I have a feeling they’ll know it’s coming and so maybe we’ll see half of the crowd get fooled. I’m looking forward to playing that one live.

What’s next for you guys?

I think what people will see next will, hopefully, be a tour in the fall. If not, some shows. Maybe we’ll book some things. I don’t know. So that’s exciting. And then we’re working on our next album. We’re very excited about it. So hopefully we’ll be going to the studio sometime. That’ll be interesting and fun. So yeah, basically new music and tours.

Article by Natalie Gott.