motel void

MOTEL VOID: I love that plain vibe of your bio: “2 couples + a dude, and we love to just hang out.” How did the band come together, and what led you to start playing music as a group?

SOPHIE (MOODLIGHTING): Alex has always been in bands and involved in music and I’d always been pretty shy about singing in front of people, so it took us a while to get to the idea of starting a band together. It started with me singing very small background vocals on his solo project, and eventually we built up to him wanting to start a shoegaze band. We tried to get it off the ground at the beginning of 2020 with me singing parts he’d come up with already, but then the pandemic hit. During quarantine was when we seriously started writing songs together where I was contributing my own parts and bringing ideas to the table. The project is primarily the two of us, plus whatever friends we rope into joining us. We’ve moved around a bit so line up has shifted since we started.

ALEX (MOODLIGHTING): When the band started as a classic pandemic project between Sophie and I (the “core group” no offense), we got our friend Travis to contribute remotely recorded drums. Once stuff opened back up the songs seemed too fun to not play live so we recruited Kyle, Hawley, and Stephen from craigslist and facebook but we all clicked as a unit and rocked/rolled around Denver for a while. Alas most of us ended up moving but Sophie and I have been recording kind of feverishly at home again with help from our friend JQ.

MOTEL VOID: Being based in Denver, Colorado, how would you describe the current music scene there? Are there any local venues or artists that inspire or excite you right now?

ALEX (MOODLIGHTING): Sadly we recently relocated to LA and we miss the Denver scene every day. The best venues over there are the Hi Dive and the Skylark no question. As for Denver bands we love Mainland Break, Glueman and Supreme Joy (both of which Stephen is in), Cherished, Slow Caves, the list goes on. In LA we only listen to Weezer and all the venues are sooooo far away

SOPHIE (MOODLIGHTING): LA has definitely made me appreciate Denver more, because it has a cozier feeling. Being more of a mid size music scene, there’s a ton of great music happening, you can find other people who like the same genres, and you actually have a real shot at opening for bands you love that are touring through. Most people are also in it for the love of music and not being they’re trying to make it, which is definitely a stark difference in LA.

MOTEL VOID: You’ve just released the new double single Minimum / Chipmunk. Are these tracks part of an upcoming album or EP?

MOODLIGHTING: You better believe it we’ve got a dang 17 song behemoth bursting out in February

MOTEL VOID: Can you share some insight into the writing and recording process behind these songs? What inspired their creation?

MOODLIGHTING: Pretty much all of our songs are collaborations between us where we write as we record so the demo slowly turns into the final track. We like to kind of pass songs back and forth so the other person has to take over when one of us doesn’t know how to proceed. Everything also gets recorded and mixed by us at home, which creates a pretty nice relaxed atmosphere and a lot of room for experimentation and unlimited overdubs on everything.
Chipmunk was the first song we wrote for this album and it’s also one of several “dead animal” tracks on there. We went for a kind of hazy simplicity on this one. The fun fact is that after people started moving away we couldn’t really find time to record together so we ended up splicing in some parts from a live session a while ago (which was also the first time we played the song at a show).
Minimum is one of the last songs we wrote for the album and was our attempt at a sound-of-the-summer smash radio hit (spiritually at least). We were deep into an obsession with the Elephant 6 collective and really pushed the bright 60s pure pop vibe as far as we could. This song also features background vocals and synth parts from JQ.

MOTEL VOID: What are your plans for the rest of this year and heading into 2025?

MOODLIGHTING: We have another set of singles dropping in early December and a music video coming out in January, and finally the full album in February. We’ve also been toying with the idea of doing some one-off shows in either LA or Denver but the circumstances would have to be right. Mainly though we’ve been writing even more songs so LP3 may be rolling up sooner than one might think….