This Will All Make Perfect Sense Someday is the debut album by Holiday for Two, the duo consisting of singer-songwriter/guitarist Ryan Ross Hernandez, and actress Ophelia "Bettie" Cavallo. Hernandez has been quoted as saying that the album will be "a much less guitar-centric album than I've ever made before". The first single was believed to be "The Centerpiece of Life", after it was released on iTunes in early May 2011, but it does not appear on the album's final track listing, only seemingly serving as a promo single. The first single, "If You Work for a Living, Then Why Do You Kill Yourself Working?", will be made available for online stream on June 27, 2011 on the band's official site and released to all digital outlets on June 28, 2011. The album is believed to be self-released, since the act isn't signed to a label. Hernandez has hinted that the group might seek a distribution-only deal with a record label to get the album available to a wider audience with a physical release.



Influenced by the album, Another Green World, by Brian Eno, This Will All Make Perfect Sense Someday was recorded in four different studios, using Logic Pro software. The duo would record in each studio for no longer than two weeks, with Ryan Ross Hernandez noting, "Working with Bettie meant that we couldn't go into the woods for four months to make a record. She's married, she has a very closed-knit family. On this record we both wrote these songs in our downtime between studios separately and when we came together in studio we shared what we had and made edits to make them work for both of us. We would later start recording that brand new song on the first day of the next session, which is something I've never really had the opportunity to do in the past."

During its recording, Hernandez stated: "It's not a guitar-based record. We've been into vintage keyboards and playing with that palette. We're not adding guitars because people will be expecting them since the project has my name associated with it. I'm so proud of this album that at this point I don't care if people don't like it compared to my solo work." Vocalist, songwriter, and pianist Bettie Cavallo elaborated further, "We had a lot of points over the course of making this record where we literally had to stop what we were doing and take a break to figure out what we both wanted out of this record, out of this project. At times it sounded too out there from what we originally envisioned, and at others it sounded as though these could all be Ryan Ross Hernandez songs, just with a female vocalist added to them." Hernandez later stated: "I love playing guitar; but it's a really immediate, impulsive sort of instrument. I can play any style of music on guitar, but this isn't a project where I want to show-off that part of me as a musician. It's okay to think of me as the guy who is a singer/songwriter, and also a crushing guitar playing, that's fine. I'm not saying I'm not that guy anymore, I'm just not that guy in this project. It took us a little while to figure out how to do it differently; how to find something that would work."

Hernandez's production was influenced by The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths, Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, New Order and the David Bowie album, Low, Closer by Joy Division, with Hernandez noting, "They really lean on a particularly technological bent. I wanted to do that. I wanted less photograph, more impressionism." Hernandez elaborated, "[This Will All Make Perfect Sense Someday] was an exercise in using an entirely different tool set. The whole record ended up being this big experiment, which was really exciting. I still think there’s a lot more to explore in the way we made this record. And I think we'll probably continue on a similar trajectory and see where we end up on the next album." It also confirmed that there will be another Holiday for Two record. This Will All Make Perfect Sense Someday also marked the first time Hernandez mixed an entire album, in addition to producing it.



Co-lyricist Ryan Ross Hernandez notes that the album's lyrical content and themes differ from his solo recors of the past. He said that a point of commencing between the two was that Cavallo and Hernandez both lived in Los Angeles, Cavallo having been born and raised around the area. The lyrical themes mostly deal with location, love, and marriage. Hernandez states: "There's a level of self-loathing in Let a Man Be Lost [his latest solo album] that I'm a bit embarrassed about now. It's a really dark record. I didn't want to make that record again. I didn't want to write those songs again. Everything I write is reflective of my own life and the lives of those people around me. They reflect the conversations you have and the rumblings of life around you. It was really good to write songs with someone else who is around my age and can relate with experiences we've had in life, but is also settled down and married. We have enough in common to relate, but enough differences that give a two-sided perspective on the meaning of home, and love, and marriage." Hernandez later stated, however: "I would be remiss if I tried to continue writing in a solely melancholic voice. I'm not trying to figure out what I want out of life anymore. I have a clear vision as to what I want. The only thing left to do is actually do it and make it happen."

With This Will All Make Perfect Sense Someday, the experimental side of the duo was drawn out more through production than a set songwriting process. Bettie Cavallo stated: "The making of this album was a little more open-ended as far as submitting different ideas if there were openings or holes for ideas to be submitted, but I think a lot of the experimentation came from the production side more than it did from the writing side."

According to Hernandez, Bettie Cavallo's writing contributions were key during the album's writing and recording: "There are a few songs that Bettie wrote all the music for. We would alter sit down and cut and paste and write lyrics and arrangements for them. This is the first time that I've had multiple compositions that started with someone else's demos and not mine." Hernandez continued to praise Cavallo's contributions, stating: "I'm down with Bettie screwing around with what she wants to do. She's yet to lead us down the wrong path. I don't feel like we went all Kid A on everyone. But there are moments on this record where I thought to myself and said, 'Oh, man, fans of my solo career are going to wonder what's going on here.'"

Cavallo commented on writing contributions, stating: "If I'm starting something from the ground up, either I've got a melody or a particular chorus or verse in my head or I've got a feeling that I'm chasing. It'll be something impressionistic; it'll be like trying to take a feeling or something that's happening environmentally and trying to bottle that and turn it into a piece of music. Both the things that I started as instrumentals for this record were written largely out of a place of procrastination."



Holiday for Two

Bettie Cavallo - vocals, piano, keyboards, guitalele, finger cymbals
Ryan Ross Hernandez - vocals, guitars, piano, mandolin, vibraphone, cymbals, horn arrangements, Roland 909, synthesizer, Korg M1, production

Additional musicians

Aaron Carlock - drums, percussion
Sean Peterson - bass guitar
Vincent Gill - pedal steel guitar
Los Angeles Philharmonic - strings
Lydia Taylor - string arrangements, conducting
Bob Reynolds - saxophone, flute
Christopher Baldwin - alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, saxophone
Bryan Hurley - trumpet
Silas Stewart – french horn, piccolo trumpet, trumpet, trumpet (muted)
Brad Wilson - flugelhorn
Charlie Wilson - organ
Ruth Ramsey - oboe, theremin


Recording personnel

Ryan Ross Hernandez - producer, recording, mixing
Chad Wright - engineering, mastering
Marshall Ferrante - recording assistant
Stephanie Perry - recording assistant
Mark Brooks - recording assistant
Katherine Richards - mixing assistant
Adam Terry - mixing assistant

Edited by user 01 July 2011 06:45:49(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Glamazon: David Bowie? I'm sold already! This looks to be an outstanding debut album; really looking forward to this, sweethearts.

Ryan Ross Hernandez: "I must admit that I'm more of a fan of Brian Eno's producing work than as a musician, and the production on Another Green World is just brilliant. I draw inspiration from Eno as a producer, on this record. He has done great work with David Bowie, U2, Paul Simon, Coldplay. The guy is a musical genius."



Bettie Cavallo: "Hopefully we don't disappoint! Ryan and I are big fans of David Bowie's pre-eighties work, so his style on albums like Low, really were something we wanted to experiment with."



Bettie Cavallo: "My eyes scare you? Hahaha. That's the first time I think I've ever heard that. My eyes don't glow in the dark despite popular belief. Thanks for the support, though.

Holiday for Two's If You Work for a Living, Why Do You Kill Yourself Working? Premieres

After much delay, Holiday for Two's first single, If You Work for a Living, Then Why Do You Kill Yourself Working?, has finally been released online. The single will be released next Tuesday, July 5th, on all digital outlets, along with it being sent to radio stations the same day.

Ryan Ross Hernandez might have a depersonalization disorder. Every time you hear his name, he comes back differently then when you last heard him. With Holiday for Two, he changes just about everything we know about him as a musician and turns it into something that's haunting, beautiful, and aching with the help of Bettie Cavallo. The deliberation and complexity of first single, If You Work for a Living, Then Why Do You Kill Yourself Working?, announces how ludicrously full of ideas Ryan Ross Hernandez is. He already has touched upon every modern genre be it with his solo career, his yesteryear with PANIC!, one-off collaborations, or producing under his belt, and he introduces Holiday for Two as another project that's bubbling over with creativity. Most notably, Hernandez manages to retain the same intimacy and immediacy of a singer-songwriter album while operating with Cavallo.

If You Work for a Living, Then Why Do You Kill Yourself Working?, is a brassy and anguished five and a half minute adventure that showcases Bettie's grandiose voice. This track is a prime example of why Hernandez had been emphasizing the full band aspect over the past few years. Ryan Ross Hernandez works as almost a conductor, directing the other musicians behind them, to create the perfect canvas for Cavallo's haunting words.

With Hernandez's vocals, they're a total departure from anything you've heard from the singer-songwriter before. While Bettie sings earthy and wounded and, something you would describe as "angelic." He sings his ethereal falsetto serene as he absorbs another of life's burdens and disappointments. He doesn't channel it just for second though, every time he opens his throat, he sings in a haunting falsetto, drenched in reverb, and double tracking each line. He maybe taking a page from the John Lennon's and Paul Simon's of the world, but if anything his vocals more resemble modern day indie-star Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. It contains a virtuosic vocal performance.

It increases its sonic palette and resulting in a long-winded build-up to a beautiful soundscape. It sounds tired, wistful, causing the vocals to sound a little more frayed and appealingly haggard than usual, and this is all augmented by smooth, slithering saxophones and muddled, endearingly imperfect drum rolls, and hand claps. These elements gather to form a richly satisfying whole, thanks to the assistance. It's wide enough to encompass a universe of warm sounds and billowy textures.

"I'll burn the world down for the truth." The line snags you for two reasons: it's one of the few comprehensible lyrics amid the whirlwind of poetic obfuscations; it's also nonsense. That expansiveness influences everything, from the way the song titles. The evocative nature of his diction is apparent even in a simple line like "now to implant myself as a hurtful memory." The Cavallo-Hernandez duo sounds centered and clear while taking stock and allowing memories to be mixed in with the details of the present. The conflicted vocals trigger a half-dozen feelings all at once before releasing the tension with a refrain that finds the fleeting moment where the world seems right.

Lyrics

Personnel

Primary musicians
Bettie Cavallo - vocals, vibraphone, handclapping
Ryan Ross Hernandez - vocals, acoustic guitar, baritone guitar, synthesizers, cymbals

Additional musicians
Aaron Carlock - snare drum, brushes, handclapping
Christopher Baldwin - soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone
Bob Reynolds - alto saxophone, clarinet
Silas Stewart - French horn, trumpet

(OOC: First lyrics I ever write, so feel free to give me some feedback on them.)

Edited by user 01 July 2011 07:19:17(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

OOC: Haha, thanks! It means a lot coming from you since all the lyrics you write are beyond amazing.