Q&A with J.T. Cavey – Five little-known facts about Cure (2024)
The album’s original working title was Wish.
We usually have a parent list of possibilities, and I think the working title for the record was Wish for a while. I forget why we changed it to Cure at the last minute. I selfishly wanted it to be Wish because it is directly related to my most played video game, Destiny 2–we’re playing Season of the Wish right now. It would have been extremely ironic in my world, so that’s the nerdy answer.
The band’s go-to food delivery order.
We tracked the record in the valley of L.A., so we were eating pretty good Mexican food. If I’m doing a plate, I’m going with the triple-meat fajita: shrimp, chicken, and steak. I live in Maryland, and we’re like the Blue Crab state. So, doing the shrimp fajita is a must.
Principal songwriter Jesse Cash (guitar/clean vocals) originally had 30 tracks demoed for Cure.
[Jesse] went crazy last year. He had so much content to work from, which was great for us because he’s even saving some for future songs. There were some occasions when we were scraping by to get stuff out. Like, for Neon (2018), the whole recording process was a struggle because we were in a creative funk. And we were also in a very weird physical location to be creative–it was not comfortable.
Working with producer Daniel Braunstein (Spiritbox, Dayseeker) pushed the band out of their comfort zone.
Dan’s the man, so he cultivates this enjoyable environment to have fun and work on your craft. There are also moments where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this, but I want to do it.’ So I’m going to try my damnedest to get this down. And [Dan] won’t sacrifice his standard, either. He’s the first producer that we’ve worked with where he doesn’t give a shit about range. He’s not looking for you to do brutal lows or brutal highs–he wants tonality. He’s huge on phrasing and the nuance of your delivery that complements the track.
J.T.’s favourite track on Cure.
I always like the heavy songs. But I will say, I think it might have to be “Wave” only because I love the ERRA songs that provide variety. And, selfishly, I love songs where I can kind of put myself through boot camp to try to show off stuff that I don’t normally do a lot of, or that’s, like, slightly out of my skill set that I have to like work on. Tracks where I really have to perfect and hone in on what I’m doing.
My rule is the 80% Rule: you track up to what you think you can do 80% live on the spot. So, do stuff out of your skill set that might take ten seconds to record but actually takes you 30 minutes to get right. If it’s barely within your skill set, track it, and then work towards that to perfect it. So when you get to the stage, you’re now better.
“CURE” Tracklisting:
1. Cure
2. Rumor of Light
3. Idle Wild
4. Blue Reverie
5. Slow Sour Bleed
6. Wish
7. Glimpse
8. Past Life Persona
9. Crawl Backwards Out of Heaven
10. End to Excess
11. Pale Iris
12. Wave
