Now: "Originally I Thought Maybe We Would Do Four Singles but It Turned Into an LP. After Some of the Longer Jammier Instrumental Passages on 'Blue Space' I Thought, Well Let's Make a Pop Record"

Now's succinct pop art and bubblegum glamour has become nearly synonymous with both the Bay Area's underground beat and K and Perennial Records' rich roster. While their first release was back in 2016, the trio of pop rebels — Will Smith (guitar, vocals), Hannah Forrester (bass), and Oli Lipton (drums) — didn't actually start playing together until 2023's full-length album And Blue Space Is Burning Noon, which really turned some heads with its cutting wit and rippling jingle-jangles. Across their new album, Now Does The Trick (out May 16th on K and Perennial Records) the group's wide-eyed earnestness and abundance of charm is front and center, especially on the lead cut "In Pathécolor."

Photos by Grace Decker

First tell me what you've been up to as of late? Anything good you've been digging into (music, books, movies) you'd like to share? 

Will Smith: Mostly I've been hanging out, down the street. Same old thing I did last week. Going to the flea market, lotsa shows, seeing movies. Spending time with friends and our cat. Just went to Oregon to visit my grandpa. I've just finished Another Country by James Baldwin. Music-wise, I want to spread the gospel of ROY WOOD, been having a major moment. Also the posthumous Judee Sill album has been on repeat. Movies… if you have a chance to see I Know Where I'm Going from '45, it had me Dreaming. Just loved it.  

Oli Lipton: I've mainly been recording a bunch — solo stuff and some stuff with friends and trying to get more into recording/producing for some friend's bands. We also have all been filming music video stuff which has been fun and also adding songs from the new record to our live set. I'm always, or at least recently, just mostly listening to the same stuff I always do — Nikki Sudden (or anything related), T. Rex, The Jam and then to be honest I spend a lot of time listening back to the most recent song or two I've made at any given time. 

Hannah Forrester: Applying to grad school, procrastinating applying to grad school, making ink portraits of rock stars, listening to Eric Dolphy and Yusef Lateef and Elvis Presley and Laura Nyro, getting older, watching Goodbye Girl and Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat and Columbo, reading a book of essays by Stephen Jay Gould called Ever Since Darwin about evolutionary biology, trying to curb my bubbly water habit (it's now a daily affair and my finances are suffering), failing to curb my bubbly water habit (it's now a daily affair and my finances are suffering), separating the wheat from the chaff.

Where did you all grow up and what was the local scene like? What sort of records or books/magazines would we find if we would travel back in time in your teenage room?

WS: Oliver and I grew up in a little town in Sonoma County and started playing together in the band that would become Now when I was fifteen or so. When we started my friend Anya had the only other band and they were a huge inspiration to try to play. The scene was in Santa Rosa a half hour down the 101. I was so young I think I was pretty peripheral, but we would go to house shows and the Arlene Francis Center and The Last Record Store. At thirteen, I became a huge fan of Girls (Christopher Owens and JR White), just obsessed. I listened to a lot of '50s music in high school, The Everly Brothers were and are number one. I was dead into Bowie and Iggy and Eno by my early teens, and really loved British Invasion and mod stuff and all these '60s bands, Dylan, The Beach Boys, The Velvets. Britpop stuff and Sonic Youth and Nirvana on CD. But I was also reading all the big rock mags, was very into major indie acts as a teen, all that indie sleaze etc. A little later I got deeply into the '80s, The Smiths, Felt, Pastels, Creation and Sarah and Factory.

OL: Yeah, I think for me, we didn't have too much of a scene or maybe our scene consisted of mostly just ourselves. I do think that seeing that there was a music community that did exist close by had a positive impact but I also think in some ways it also had a positive impact that when we were young it felt like stuff we were into was kind of our own.

As for records and stuff, probably mostly classics like The Stones, Velvets, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Beatles and then also jazz stuff that my dad got me into. I got obsessed with Spiritualized at a point and then Spacemen 3 a bit later. Probably also some of those bigger indie acts from the time. 

HF: What Newton, Massachusetts lacked in cultural richness, it made up for in idle teenagers bursting with creativity, so the artistic environment was weirdly dynamic for a sleepy suburb. And meanwhile we benefited greatly from the proximity of the DIY pillar Boston Hassle, a newspaper, show booker/producer, and general community lightning rod for citywide arts engagement active mostly in Jamaica Plain, Allston, and Roxbury.

In fifth grade, I became hypnotized by Dylan, The Beatles, Jimi, and Cream. (My fourth grade MAD Magazine subscription was, as I frequently reminded my peers, shipped monthly to "Hannah Hendrix.") And yes, shortly before I found the Highway 61 CD in my parents' stack, I had an entire bedroom wall devoted to pictures of Christina Aguilera. This quickly, maybe literally overnight, gave way to Rolling Stone magazine cutouts of Robert Plant and Grace Slick. Suffice it to say that I've always been an obsessive listener. Whether it was Backstreet Boys or Bo Diddley, what I don't like I don't take extra breaths to disparage and what I do like I love.

For readers unfamiliar, tell us about the origins of Now. How did you all meet and how has the group evolved over the years?

WS: The first Now song was recorded in 2016, and we had been looking for someone to play bass in the group for years. Meanwhile we were always jamming and writing and recording in our practice spaces or apartments. When a mutual friend told me in 2021 he knew someone who wanted to play and put me in touch with Hannah, it was magic. I couldn't feel more lucky that it came together. 

OL: Will and I have been playing together since high school and for a long time it was just Will and me in our own little world, and we didn't know too many people around here on the scene. Partly because of that we just recorded a lot and developed playing together and made stuff kind of just for ourselves. It was truly a blessing to meet Hannah and once we started playing gigs, the live set became an integral part of the band and it was cool that people responded to it and we got to discover more of a community. 

HF: After the bars reopened post-lockdown a beloved community member in North Beach, where I still bartend, asked me if I play bass. "Yes, but I'm rusty." (My instrument had been held hostage for the past year in New Orleans, where I'd lived recently, and I'd occupied myself during peak pandemic by strumming a guitar instead). He passed me a postcard with Will's name and number (which I still have) and, yes, the rest is history. To call it a blessing doesn't cover it. 

I first discovered Now during the release of Saturday's Child back in '22. How do you feel looking back on your catalog? Do you still like or relate to your past releases? 

WS: I like all our records and I listen to them when I feel the spirit. Of course they are vivid time capsules, too. The instrumentals on Locked Gate are cool. Luxury Stains is really dense in a way I like and has a great cover and the keys and general impulsiveness on The Wrong Move hold a place in my heart. Saturday's Child is when this version of Now crystallized, we've played those songs live a lot and they rock.

OL: Yeah I think I’m proud of all of the records and think that they all offer something slightly different while also using a similar language.

And Blue Space Is Burning Noon was one of my favorite records of '23. What are some fond memories you have of putting that record together?

WS: Thanks!!! I have very fond memories of the hours spent in the basement where it was recorded, freaking out in ecstasy or frustration, jumping up and down dancing doing vocals to "Gogo Boots," getting stoned and making the closing title track, feeling like we barely snatched the mix we got of "Roses After H.D." from the flames of hell before our cassette machine broke.

OL: I really love that record and it holds a special place in that it was the first record we put out with Hannah in the band and first after we'd started playing shows regularly. Also the first that got pressed onto vinyl. It was also the last record that we recorded while Will and I were living together, which we were for the last ten years, so I think it's from a special time and there are lots of fond memories. 

That same year, you supported Cyril Jordan and his current incarnation of The Flamin' Groovies'. How did that go? 

WS: The Groovies show was a dream. I've wanted to play the Great American since I was thirteen, and obviously all three of us are huge Groovies fans. Cyril told us where to buy the best Chelsea boots… Their set was incredibly good. We and our friends danced all night. 

OL: Yeah that was really special. I'm a huge fan, as we all are so it was pretty memorable and they sounded great. I loved hearing them all practice singing The Stones' "It’s Not Easy" together in the green room. Cyril was every bit the legend I'd hoped for. 

HF: The whole experience, soup to nuts, still, as Will said, feels like a dream. Applying makeup while listening to Cyril regale the green room with tales of debauchery was totally surreal. One of my best friends' parents got married in Golden Gate Park in the mid-1960s and the very young Groovies were the wedding band, so I had the opportunity to show him photos he'd never seen of that party. Special indeed.

What can you tell me about your upcoming album, Now Does The Trick and what insight can you share about how, where, and when it was recorded? What were some of the highlights putting it together?

WS: This one was the first we recorded on a 1/4" reel to reel instead of cassette and it was done in a (love) shack out back of Oli's house. It took about ten months like the others have, Oli’s drums done in a couple days and then dubbing everything over one by one. The band mixed together which was a lot of fun. Finally nailing "Pointe Shoes" and hearing it for the first time was very satisfying, I didn't know if we were going to pull it off. I like the instrumental "Art Forger" and when "In Pathécolor" was finished that was a great feeling too. Like, "We’ve done it, a pop song!"

OL: I'm really excited about this one and I think it's my favorite yet. Some of the songs are from a while back at this point and had been worked on for a while before recording. "Pointe Shoes" was a really fun and gratifying one to work out, it took a lot of time to figure out if it'd really work and to try to make it sound a lot less complicated and absurd than it is so when we got it down it was exciting. Mixing the record all together was also really fun and definitely the most enjoyable mixing has been. 

How did you approach the songwriting on this album? Did improvisation have any role and was the approach different from any previous release? 

WS: Originally I thought maybe we would do four singles but it turned into an LP. After some of the longer jammier instrumental passages on Blue Space I thought, well let's make a pop record. But I think sonically it's not so different. A little more acoustic guitar warming things up. All the songs started with a guitar part and Oli's drums, sometimes a vocal is written over it, but the rest of the track is usually written as it’s recorded, take after take until it's right, so improvisation plays a role. Inneresting, that, the line between improvisation and the moment you write something. Do these rivers flow from the same spring? Mostly this is how Now records have been made so no big departure.

OL: I think improvisation has a role in the first couple times of working a song out and seeing what sticks but from there I'd say, apart from flourishes, it becomes more about creating a very precise part. I think on a song like "Join Our Treasure Hunt" it is maybe more of a song fully born out of improvisation as it was written while Will and I were just playing together with no real idea of making a song and then really liking what we were doing and trying to do it again and solidify it. But yeah all in all I think it’s a similar approach to song writing though I think this record leans more to concise pop songs.

Today the label shared with us the lead cut "In Pathécolor." What inspired you to write this one?

WS: It's about the immortal Nancy Sinatra and this beach party B-movie she was in right before "Boots" was a smash called The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini. Yes it is absolute kids-doing-the-twist trash, had us giggling fiendishly, I think it's like two unfinished movies the studio mashed together and rushed out, just completely batshit. After my friend Bill and I watched it we found this poetic vet's comment on a YouTube video of maybe the trailer, I've looked and never found it since, about how powerful an experience he had watching this movie twice in a little theater when he was stationed in the army in Ft. Hood, TX in the 1960s. The lyrics are almost verbatim what he had written, "Oh Nancy, we were so young, and it was a different world…" etc. I was moved by and could deeply relate to how apt a metaphor this was for the power of frivolous trash glamour to take us away from our daily ails, and to me the song is an ode to this guy, to Nancy, to fantasy. The verse melody is a rip of the song Nancy sings in the movie. 

Diving into some other toons here, how did the opener "The Ballad of Joy Being" come about? 

WS: This is another movie song, but also a collage, and maybe a little more opaque. It’s inspired by this B-horror flick Messiah Of Evil from '73, the band Doctors of Madness, and also our cat Corata. So Joy Bang had a brief acting career in the late sixties and early seventies and plays the absolute perfect fried Californian in this movie Messiah which is actually really good, I could recommend it. I'm a sucker for these horror movies set in sleepy CA beach towns, just really feel them. This one has a mystery bonfire ritual cult taking over the town where the lead is looking for her missing artist father. I loved it so much I wanted to do a song about it but at the moment I wrote the chords my friend was looking for a toy and asked, "Kitty, where's your wire?" I thought, okay, great glam lyric & it belongs in this song. The half-time chorus idea came from Robert Wyatt's version of "I'm a Believer."

What can you tell me about "Join Our Treasure Hunt"?

WS: The title line of this one came from the poet Edwin Denby, whose sonnets are amazing. Found the book in a box on the street. The "join our club" idea comes from the St. Etienne song of that name and from the idea of 20th century pop fan clubs. It’s basically about looking for the magic, and saying, let’s look for it together. Musically, it’s the oldest on the record, and one that came from me and Oli just jamming and deciding to turn an improv thing into a song. 

How did "1 Way 2 Go" come to be? 

WS: I wrote this one after becoming obsessed with and watching hours of these compilations of Scopitone videos, which is a sort of French video jukebox from the sixties One of the great inventions, in my world. The videos are heaven. The lyrics are an exercise in pop frivolity and I was almost uptight about them because they’re so nothing, but in this case nothing is everything and is the point. Smokey and the Miracles' "Going to a Go Go" and the movie What A Way To Go played their part in the lyrics as well. The song was supposed to be a classic West Coast freakbeat rave up. 

Finally, what can you tell me about the closer "M. Mather"? 

WS: Margrethe Mather is an early 20th century photographer who worked closely with the much more famous Edward Weston for a number of crucial years when they developed their practices alongside each other. Her photos are gorgeous. Eventually, as I understand it, they had some kind of split and he burned all of his memoirs from the years they were close. Her story is shrouded in mystery and I haven't found much. She changed her name, turned tricks to make her way down to LA, and at a point gave up photography altogether and burned all her negatives. Fascinating, inspiring person and body of work. The lyrics were written after reading an elegant and evocative memoir/essay written by her friend and collaborator Billy Justema. The chords were written, along with the instrumental on the album, on a trip to Big Sur. 

What inspired the cover art? 

WS: Nothing too specific, always loved pop and op art, and collage. I collect bits of paper and things, and the pieces it's made from sort of gave birth to what it became. I thought it would work well for the paste-up psychedelic '60s pop thing in the songs, I think it fits. Now is a kind of collage. My friend Claire helped with the layout and it would never have looked anywhere as good without her. 

What are some future plans for Now? Any plans to tour the new album? 

WS: First we take Manhattan… THEN WE TAKE BERLIN!!! We are writing new songs, some local shows coming up and yes! Going to tour the Midwest with Smashing Times and Sharp Pins in June, working on Pacific Northwest shows with Shop Regulars in September, and hopefully a few gigs in LA and SoCal too. 

OL: Hopefully we finally get a Grammy.

HF: We're headed straight for Royal Albert Hall.

Any advice or last words you'd like to share with our readers?

WS: Love is the law. Thanks for the interview, Joe : )

Now Does The Trick is out May 16th on K Records and Perennial Death Records.