For “November“, Honey VHS pulled the band off the song. The Brooklyn duo had tried a layered studio version, the way they’d tracked most of their debut EP “With Pulp” at Lucas Saur’s place, but it drifted from what the song was.
So they took it home to Luca Moneti Schliemann’s apartment in Ridgewood and recorded it at the foot of his bed, where they’d written it in the first place. That’s the version on the record.
“With Pulp” came out March 28. Eight songs, written by vocalist Cameron Roberts and guitarist Schliemann, who’d been co-writing in Luca’s apartment for about a year, passing voice notes back and forth and slowly turning the room into an analog studio.
The two of them come from different corners (blues, classic rock, folk, country, alternative) and the EP carries traces of all of it without committing fully to any.
Most of the record was tracked at Saur’s studio. Saur produced, engineered, mixed, and played keys, bass, cello, and guitar across the EP.
He also brought in Pele Greenberg on percussion and Alex Harwood on electric and slide guitar. Amy Dragon mastered. Roberts and Schliemann handled the videos and album art themselves.
The studio setup tracked percussion, guitar, bass, and vocals together in single full takes. “I wanted the center of each song to be a live full take, especially for vocals,” Roberts says.
From there, the arrangements grew. “Jet Lag” and “Never Left the Ground” both started as two-person sketches before Saur, Greenberg, and Harwood pushed them into bigger shapes with cello, slide guitar, percussion, and keys layered on top.
Roberts calls the underlying decision “captured vs. constructed”, and it shaped most of the studio calls. Some songs accepted the layers. “November” didn’t. They tried it both ways, the stripped version held, and they let it stand.
The “November” video stays in the same physical world as the recording. Roberts and Schliemann shot it themselves in Ridgewood, with no stylization. A specific stoop, the M train, the light outside Luca’s apartment. Roberts says the video probably says more about how they see the project than anything more polished they’ve put out.
The voice-notes habit runs through everything. “I’m very inspired by the voice notes that songwriters make immediately after they’ve written something,” Roberts says. “For me, it’s almost always my best take of a song and I’m just trying to recreate that emotion moving forward.” That instinct fed the decision to record live to tape, which fed the analog studio at Luca’s, which fed the name Honey VHS.
The next batch of songs is being tracked at that home studio, to tape, leaning more folk-driven and Blaze Foley-adjacent. It will also bring in the voices of Joe Bailey and Schliemann alongside Roberts. Bailey, who plays bass, guitar, and harmonies in the live band, is now writing with them.
Honey VHS play their biggest show yet on June 6 at the Windjammer for Footlight Presents, with World Atlas and Nice Shirt opening. Roberts on vocals, Schliemann on guitar, Bailey on bass, James Steinberg on drums. Doors at 8:30, NOTAFLOF, $15+ suggested, 21+.
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