Photo Credit: Joe Carabeo

Every writer, whether it’s a poet or a songbird, has a notebook full of ideas that date back to various points in their lives, and every writer tells themselves – I’m going to get back to that and finish it one day. I have a Google Drive full of those, and Andrew Grossman of The North Country had, well, listeners can hear the culmination of a decade on the DC band’s 2024 release, ‘The Future’s All We Need.’ Out on April 26th on House of Joy, Grossman said, “I had the sound and feeling in my head the whole time, and it just took 10 years to figure out how to do it.” We talked about not only that, but also how a Netflix reality show inspired an outlook on mental health, and more like earworms and rooftop moments. All of that and more awaits below!

Kendra: Right out the gate, the likes of Glide Magazine listens to you all and says, hey if you like…Talking Heads and David Bowie, this band’s for you. Were those artists that helped guide The North Country to where y’all are today?

Andrew Grossman: Big time. Talking Heads and David Bowie were both big influences on me. Especially Bowie; he had a fearlessness in his music, right up until the very end with ‘Blackstar.’ He also leaned heavily on collaboration and surrounded himself with amazingly talented musicians. He’s a huge musical role model for me.

Kendra: Albums always represent a sort of chapter in an artist’s life, so when all is said and done – what do you think this chapter, ‘The Future’s All We Need,’ says about where you all are mentally and artistically at this point in your careers?

Andrew: ‘The Future’s All We Need’ is the album I’ve been trying to make for 10 years. I had the sound and feeling in my head the whole time, and it just took 10 years to figure out how to do it. The missing piece was the band. I think my role in the band is less as a songwriter and more as a facilitator and organizer of everyone in the band’s creativity, presenting an outline that allows everyone to contribute something that is uniquely them. I present the outline, they color it in.  I think this is the album where we did that the best we’ve ever done it.

Kendra: Praised for your ability to construct earworms, what would you say is the secret for creating a song that will not leave someone’s head once it settles in there?

Andrew: Melody for sure. A great beat is what helps people connect to the song in the moment. A great melody is what people take with them long after the song is done. When people sing or hum or whistle a song to themselves they’re singing, humming, or whistling the melody.

Also, I think lyrics that express something people are genuinely feeling. Great art says the thing we’re feeling better than we know how to say it ourselves. When we hear for the first time we go, “Oh my god Yes! That’s it! That’s how I feel!” It can be shocking, exhilarating, and cathartic.

Kendra: Like “Be Here Be Now,” a fine example of an earworm but it’s also the most serene song I’ve ever heard about a bit of a mental break. It’s also one of the most relatable songs I’ve heard with lines like “I want to be clear” and “…my mind’s a million miles away.” What do you think it continues to say about our society that a lot of music isn’t hiding behind flowery language anymore when it comes to mental health?

Andrew: Yeah, I think that’s true about the flowery language. It definitely seems like there’s more direct, more matter-of-fact language being used in lyrics today. Maybe that’s just a trend and in a few years the pendulum will swing the other way and there’ll be a lot of flowery language.

The social stigma around mental health is also diminishing. Mental health used to be a punchline, but now I think it’s taken a lot more seriously. For me personally, I think I’ve taken my own mental health more seriously in large part due to ‘Queer Eye.’ No joke!

Kendra: It’s no surprise that social media has impacted mental health, which is ironic because when it came time to do the video – you all strayed away from TikTok trends and kept it simple. Being that you stayed in-house for this with Jon and Andrew taking the helm together – were you always on the same page about that aspect of the video?

Andrew: We often go back and forth with who’s in the driver’s seat for the creative vision of a music video. Jon was largely in the driver’s seat for “Procrastinator”. I was more in the driver’s seat for “Be Here Be Now/”

I wanted to keep the video simple for “Be Here Be Now” and just have the concept be an aesthetic as opposed to a specific message. The aesthetic was the specific color palette, good lighting, and us just being us on camera.

Kendra: As far as shows, you played in DC at the end of March – but are there any plans for a tour, possibly this summer?

Andrew: East Coast album release tour this July! Dates coming soon.

Kendra: Time for a side note – With it being April, I’m asking everyone to think of a pair of tickets to any concert ever that they’d want to find in their Easter basket. Artists can be living or dead, past or present. Which concert or tour would you have loved to see?

Andrew: Well if we’re opening it up to alive or dead I’d have to say The Beatles rooftop performance would have been cool. That or the debut performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, where at the end someone had to turn him around to see the audience applauding because by that point he had gone so deaf he couldn’t hear it. That would have been cool to see.

Kendra: Lastly, with ‘The Future’s All We Need’ out on April 26th, what else can fans expect as 2024 rolls on?

Andrew: We’ve started sending demos around for the next record. Very much in the early stages, but I think we have some cool stuff in the works.