motel void

MOTEL VOID: In January, you’re releasing your fourth LP, Crazy Arms. Can you tell us about the writing and recording process for this album?

LOMES OLEANDER (PIGEON PIT): Songwriting feels like throwing up, like I’m taking in the world and my life and everything and I’m drunk as hell and sick with it all and it feels bad and good at the same time, puking out what I swallowed. It’s just something I do, and eventually we had enough to record an album. It’s like my journal, I’m writing about grief, attachment, freedom, the human spirit, living in a fucked up world. We recorded it in my friend Vivienne’s basement into a 4 track and onto a ½” reel, so you can’t dub a bunch of tracks onto each other. It’s pretty much all live takes, with a little wiggle room. We dubbed in piano on a couple songs by dragging this little piano in our van from my house over to the east side and trying to cram it into this basement studio. It didn’t make it through the door so we ran all these mics out of the studio in this bare basement and I’m just alone in this basement with headphones on and the engineer and the rest of the band in the studio. I love recording onto tape because there’s all these restrictions that you have to work around that ends up producing this kind of fucked up thing that you love. There’s laughter we can’t dub out in places, or spots moments the physical tape degrades or warbles, and it’s all everyone playing together, so not everyones gonna play it perfect every time. It feels like a living thing you’re making.

MOTEL VOID: You’re based in Olympia, Washington. I spent a few days there in 2018, mainly because I admired the 90s/00s music scene. How would you describe the current music scene in Olympia? Do you have any favorite local venues or artists?

LOMES OLEANDER (PIGEON PIT): I moved to Olympia in 2017 largely because of the music scene, because I had friends I made through the scene there. It really used to be insanely popping with house shows all the time, all these amazing bands that had so much overlap in members and just crazy weirdo shit going on. I think with the way housing has become so expensive, so many punk houses I used to go to all the time got evicted during the pandemic, house shows and diy venues have become rarer, and people have to spend more of their time working just to pay rent, and it really damages a DIY scene. That shit is so priceless and important to protect. I think it’s gotten harder everywhere though, and there’s still a lot of cool shit going on in Olympia, especially for how small of a city it is. Probably my favorite band to go see right now is Wavers. They have their first LP coming out soon, you should look out for that, and our bass player Josh plays guitar in that band. Some other local favorites, I’d say Ragana, Electric Chair, Cyberplasm, Fugitive Bubble, Physique are all amazing and we have friends in them. A lot of my favorite spots don’t exist anymore or stopped doing shows, but one of the coolest things about Olympia is how absolutely drenched in lore and history it is, all these gems in plain sight. If you know where to look.

MOTEL VOID: You’re doing well on streaming services, especially with your song “Nights Like These” from your first album, which has over 25 million streams. How has this success impacted the band and your career as a musician?

LOMES OLEANDER (PIGEON PIT): Well obviously it’s affected us in how much exposure the new stuff we put out is able to get from people just finding this song from 10 years ago that blew up and digging deeper and finding stuff that sounds pretty different. And as evil and shitty as Spotify is, in this rare instance we are able to use money from streams to help fund going on tour, paying for stuff ourselves and not forcing us to compromise our values to stay active. If I didn’t have that help from streaming the amount of energy I would be able to put into this would look a lot different, I’m sure.

MOTEL VOID: Your new single, “Keys to the City,” has a great country/folk vibe—it even reminds me a bit of Bright Eyes. What’s been your biggest inspiration lately?

LOMES OLEANDER (PIGEON PIT): It’s always hard to try to pick a few bands I’m influenced by, there’s just so many. Gram Parsons, Bruce Springsteen, Defiance Ohio, The Replacements, Weakerthans, Dear Nora, Lucinda Williams and just tons of other bands. In terms of what’s going on right now I’ve been loving Big Thief, Mama’s Broke, Waxahatchee, Bella White, Straw Man Army.

MOTEL VOID: Do you have plans to tour in 2025 to support your new album?

LOMES OLEANDER (PIGEON PIT): Yeah definitely! A lot is in the works right now. We’ll be announcing a Spring west coast tour soon and are working on finally making it over for a UK/Europe run sometime this next year. We do most of our booking ourselves so I get overwhelmed with stuff pretty fast. We’ll probably do a proper full US somewhere in there too.

Photo: August Moore