In late 2014, Cullen Omori was unsure where his music career was headed—he just knew he wouldn’t be going any further with his longtime band, Smith Westerns. He and bandmate Max Kakacek (who’s since formed the group Whitney) weren’t seeing eye to eye about songwriting, and Omori felt Smith Westerns had hit a roadblock creatively. “There was no real reason to make the band work anymore,” he says.
That’s when I started working on music. But I didn’t know if it was going to be for Smith Westerns or for my own personal use. I was writing songs in the same way I’d write Smith Westerns songs: I would write a chorus progression and the lyrics and a singing melody, and then I would usually hand it off to Max. But since we weren’t working like that at the moment, I ended up filling in the blanks of what Max would normally do. As the year went on and I started writing more and more songs and finishing them myself, it became more apparent that I could do this myself and have the most amount of control over what I was going to put out in the world.
It also was that thing where, for the rest of my life, is what defines me going to be Smith Westerns? Is that going to be the cool thing for the rest of my life, and I’m always going to be trying to live up to that? Am I always going to be, like, “Oh man, back when I was 22 it was fucking sick!” Or am I going to take that and then do something that I feel like is a stepping stone to something better? Instead of having the Smith Westerns experience be some cool trophy of my life, I decided I’d rather use it to do something more representative of myself as a whole.
Also, with these new songs I wanted the vocals to be way out in front—more like pop music. In Smith Westerns it was always Max’s guitar and my vocals weaving in and out together. I always really wanted to focus on choruses that were catchier and making everything very earwormy. The lyrics were also more topical to my life this time. This album is just more relevant and not as guarded. There’s nothing jokey about my music. At the end of the day, as a musician you’re going to be defined by what you make, so I want to feel 100 percent behind it.
