Everett Tea picked “long–tailed cat” as the lead single off their sophomore LP because it shows you the two extremes of where they ended up on the record.
The single came out April 17, the first of a string leading up to “smoke signals,” due July 10. It’s the second LP from the Camas, Washington emo band, and songwriter Hayden DeVore (also guitar, vocals, recording engineering on strings, and kazoo) lays out the choice in practical terms.
“‘long–tailed cat‘ felt like the perfect introduction to this whole era for us because it gives the audience 2 extremes of our sound,” he says. “Throughout the record, we made an effort to write songs that were faster and heavier than we have before, while also going the other way and exploring softer sounds within songs.”
The bigger change between this album and the first is who was in the room. Their debut “anywhere but here” was written largely by DeVore alone in his college dorm, with little outside input.
“Smoke signals” went the opposite direction. “We had far more cooks in the kitchen, so to speak,” DeVore says.
A couple of the tracks came out of band jams. Major creative decisions were worked out with producer Justin Abel, who also handled recording, mixing, mastering, and shows up in the credits playing glockenspiel and trumpet. The other shift is a new drummer, Marek Wood, who DeVore credits as central to landing the record: “he played a huge role in bringing our collective vision to life.” Bass and vibraslap throughout are handled by Christian Buchholz.
The lyrical thread, accepting change, wasn’t planned. It surfaced over time. “It definitely was something that crept in during the writing process,” DeVore says. “Initially, the lyrics were very frustrating but as the writing for the album progressed, they became far more accepting.”
The clearest distillation of where the band landed is “alt+3,” track ten.
Camas isn’t just a tag. With no local scene to plug into and few other musicians around growing up, DeVore and Buchholz mostly played in bands with each other. To do something about the gap, they started running an annual backyard show in town.
“Me and Chris didn’t have easy access to other musicians to work with, so nearly all of our experience in bands was with each other,” DeVore says.
The cover came from DeVore’s stepbrother, Jonah Hovde, who shared it with the band early in recording.
“We felt it perfectly fit the themes of the record lyrically, and as soon as we received it, we knew it had to be the cover,” DeVore says. It also fed back into how the songs themselves came together once tracking was underway.
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The thank-yous in the album credits read like a snapshot of the months around recording. Kate Burton, Jason DeVore, Connerleith Warwick, Ryan Caputo, Sienna Gehl, Mark Schneider, Chloe Morgan, and Ryan from Beacock Music.
Some sang group vocals in the studio. Some gave feedback on mixes and demos. Ryan from Beacock, the local music store, is the one who let them record a vibraslap sample in the practice room.
Track two, “empty parking lot,” features guest vocals from Kate Burton of beach side property, who get thanked as a band alongside All Hype, Silverlined, Nervous State, Side Note, and Change it.
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Releasing the album piece by piece before July isn’t going to change how the band reads it as a whole. “The goal of the singles is to paint a broad picture of the album as the whole for the listener,” DeVore says.
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“The hope is that the themes of this record are further brought into focus when the whole record comes out.” The first tour kicks off this May, where the unreleased tracks will get their first run in front of a crowd.
DeVore says everything thematic the band wanted on “smoke signals” got on it. A couple of unfinished songs sat outside the cut and stayed there.
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