The Most Distant Object began as a pandemic music project by influential Chicago veteran musicians Jason Harvey and Tom Fitzgerald. Harvey and Fitzgerald both started their musical careers down in Champaign-Urbana, IL, in the mid-90’s at the same time Hum, Braid, and American Football were all emerging from the same Central Illinois college town.
Jason Harvey is best known as one of the two bassists in OG Midwest math rock icons Dianogah, while Tom Fitzgerlad was the guitarist/vocalist in legendary slowcore and post-rock band C-Clamp. Both bands are hugely important for crafting the clean tone “Midwest emo” sound in the mid to late 90’s by crafting emotive indie rock that melded with math rock, post-rock, and slowcore. By the end of the 90’s, Dianogah and C-Clamp had already cemented their legacies, in a very crowded field, as two of the most original sounding bands in the Chicago music scene.
Volition, the new album by The Most Distant Object, was released on May 4 th . It is an expertly
made atmospheric and dreamy post-punk record that is injected with new wave and electronic
music and full of melodies and memorable moments. The addition of C-Clamp drummer Frantz
Etienne on this album is a real treat, and the feel of the drums against the guitars, bass, and
synths provides interesting grooves that harken back to the playful and flowing drums of C-
Clamp. The production is clean and crisp throughout, and the tracks “A Real Horse” and
“Demeter” are real stand outs with some really unique and interesting use of space to build
tension and release in the context of post-punk using minimalism.
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We at Fecking Bahamas are thrilled that Jason and Tom agreed to do an interview about the new album, and providing their insights into their writing and creative process.
FB: Can you give the backstory of how The Most Distant Object came together?
Jason: Tom and I have known each other since college. When we first moved to Chicago he had a band called C-Clamp and I was playing in Dianogah. Our bands shared a practice space for years. C-Clamp broke up kinda early, but Dianogah has been going on and off ever since. We had a really quiet period about 10 years ago. The three Dianogah guys still liked the idea of playing music, but weren’t feeling very inspired. Tom wasn’t playing with anyone at the time so the four of us started working on songs to just try something new. That became a band called Whelms. Whelms played a handful of shows and tracked an EP worth of music with Steve Albini and then the pandemic hit. Like everyone else we had a lot of time on our hands. Tom and I each started experimenting with home recording, which led us to sending song ideas back and forth. After a few years we had an album worth of songs that we were excited about. We gave it a name and released it as the first TMDO record.
FB: The sound of TMDO has a lot of interesting post-punk, electronic, and new wave sensibility to it, which is a departure from the post-rock and math rock categorization that Dianogah and C-Clamp are often given. Is the upbeat electronic post-punk style of TMDO something that was the original vision by design for the project or more of an organic progression of playing together and just where the music landed?
Tom: TMDO started when Jason convinced me to get Logic and started sending me parts – usually a bass line, a simple beat, and maybe some synth sounds. I had never written on a DAW before and I had almost never written songs that didn’t start with the guitar. I found that writing to songs Jason already started lead me to really simplifying and paring down the guitar. Usually, my part of the writing process involves editing down my initial guitar parts to something simpler. The simpler guitars then leave room for other sounds. It has been a lot of fun exploring all these other sounds and instruments that I hadn’t really experienced before. I think we sometimes land in places that are a bit nostalgic for the music we grew up with– the eighties music that was just always around – but I think we try to filter that nostalgia through our own musical sensibilities and keep the songs a little dark and a little weird and hopefully occasionally surprising.
FB: What is Mortgage Core?
Jason: Everything in music gets categorized into some subgenre that only people really into that scene can understand. Over the years our bands have been called post-rock, slow-core, emo, math rock, indie rock, etc… Us calling our own bands mortgage core is a joking acknowledgement that we are getting older. We are adults. We have kids. We have mortgages and all sorts of other uncool adult stuff going on that is not normally associated with being in a cool rock band. But we know tons of people at this same stage of life, still rocking. I see no reason to stop if you are still having fun.
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FB: Can you describe how the new album Volition came to be? What was the songwriting and recording process for the album?
Jason: After the first record came out we played some shows to promote it then pretty quickly went back to writing again. We are never in the same location when we are working on songwriting. It all happens remotely, which means we can each work whenever we are free and feeling inspired.
Most ideas start with me working up a bassline or synth part and adding some basic drums. Sometimes I will just have one part and sometimes it will be more of a full song structure, but in my mind I am always leaving room for Tom. The vast majority of what I come up with is trash and never sees the light of day, but the stuff I am excited about I send to Tom and he adds his own ideas. He edits a lot and turns my rough sketches into actual songs. Then we will send the songs back and forth to refine. Sometimes it takes a while to decide if that thing we made is worth keeping. The cool thing about this band is there isn’t a lot of ego about who wrote what part or who is playing what instrument. Whatever is the coolest idea wins.
For this record we also added a third member on drums. Frantz and I played together in a college band called Grover and Tom and Frantz were in C-Clamp together. Frantz is one of the best drummers I know and at some point we just asked if he’d like to work with us. We would send him song ideas, often with full drum parts and he would take them apart and rewrite and re-record them. His parts have a lot more dynamics and intricacies than anything from our first record. Sometimes his idea would totally transform the song. We probably wrote about 15 songs and then selected the best 9 for the album. The record was mixed with Mark Greenberg at Wilco‘s Loft while they were on tour.
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FB: There is a lot of nuanced sonic complexity happening throughout the album between the synthesizers interplay with guitar, bass, drums, and vocals where it sounds way more than the work of three people. How do you go about tackling all those elements live? Do you write the songs first and figure out how to adapt them live or is live performance capability baked into the finished recorded songs?
Tom: We purposefully write without much thought about actually performing the songs, which is creatively freeing but also makes translating to a band difficult. We have evolved and are still evolving in figuring out how to translate to a live band. Currently we have some backing tracks and our friends Dean and Jay are rotating between guitars, keys, samples, etc. I found playing guitar, keys, and singing was too hectic for me, so I am more than happy to share as much of that load as possible.
FB: With the new album out, are there any plans for touring or more live dates happening throughout the year?
Jason: We played a few shows in the Midwest this spring. We are hoping to do some more in the fall. But, this being Mortgage Core, there will be no massive tours.
FB: What have you been listening to lately?
Tom: Aldous Harding, Cate Lebon, Low. I’ve also been going back to Yo La Tengo, Galaxy 500…
Jason: I love the newest record by FACS out of Chicago. We know those guys and I’m just so psyched every time I get to see them play live.