If you were consuming media in the early ‘00s, you probably know at least one song by the NYC-based trio Ivy. Their album Long Distance, released in the year 2000, caught the attention of music supervisors everywhere. As a result, several of its songs — particularly “Edge of the Ocean” and “Worry About You” — became embedded in the cultural zeitgeist through memorable film and television placements. “Edge of the Ocean” made it onto the official soundtrack of the cult-favorite WB show Roswell, and it featured prominently in Veronica Mars and Grey’s Anatomy, among others. This places Ivy squarely within the earliest wave of bands to lean into the idea of commercial licensing as a key source of revenue for musicians — indie artists especially.
Even at the time, it felt like Long Distance was destined to be Ivy’s zenith. The group — vocalist Dominique Durand and producers/multi-instrumentalists Andy Chase and Adam Schlesinger — plunged headlong into a new sound that was both effortlessly cool and emotionally unflinching. Battered trip-hop beats rumbled over liquid synths and film-noir guitars, as Durand’s breathy voice recounted tales of heartache and redemption, dissolution and hope. Ivy’s prior work was no slouch (particularly the stellar power-pop of 1997’s Apartment Life) but no one could have foreseen the sonic transformation they underwent on Long Distance.
As it turns out, Ivy couldn’t have foreseen it either. The band was partially through recording the album when the building housing their NYC studio nearly burned to the ground. By some miracle their work survived, but soon thereafter the band was dropped by their label Sony 550 Music. Ivy soldiered on, completing Long Distance at home using a cobbled-together library of samples and synth textures. It transpires that the album’s most distinctive qualities came about through these circumstances: An insular and intimate vibe, off-kilter sonics, and a slightly burned-out sound.
Despite the resounding artistic and commercial success of Long Distance, Ivy was perhaps always bound to be the little band that could. Concurrent to the recording and release of Apartment Life, band member Adam Schlesinger found himself entwined with two other projects that would alter the course of his life and career: The eponymous debut album by Fountains of Wayne, his duo with Chris Collingwood; and his contributions to the soundtrack for Tom Hanks’ cult-classic movie-musical That Thing You Do!. Most notably, Schlesinger wrote the film’s absolute earworm of a title track and earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his efforts.
Both projects solidly outflanked and outsold Ivy — especially after Fountains of Wayne released their inescapable 2003 hit, “Stacy’s Mom.” But Schlesinger remained devoted to Durand and Chase, even as he became a superstar collaborator and co-writer for everyone from Stephen Colbert to the Tony Awards. Ivy released three more albums after Long Distance — Guestroom in 2002, In The Clear in 2005, and All Hours in 2011 — all before Schlesinger’s late career turn as the Executive Music Producer for the critically acclaimed musical sitcom Crazy Ex-Girlfriend… and his shockingly premature death from COVID-related complications in 2020.
More: KCRW’s Eric J. Lawrence speaks on musicians we lost to COVID-19 (Press Play, 2020)
Following several years of (justifiable) silence, in 2023 Ivy’s surviving members reissued Apartment Life on vinyl alongside a companion LP of demos (via Bar/None Records). To celebrate the brand-new addition of Long Distance to the reissue program, Durand and Chase joined KCRW’s Myke Dodge Weiskopf for a deep dive on Long Distance — from the influence of Pet Shop Boys, to the creation of “that moment” on “Edge of the Ocean.”
Long Distance will be issued for the first time ever on vinyl on Friday, Nov. 1 as part of a 25th(ish) anniversary edition. It features newly remastered audio by Scott Hull, both a demo and Duotone remix of “Edge of the Ocean,” and the previously unreleased song “All I Ever Wanted.”
Want a refresh on Ivy’s signature sound before digging into our meaty chat? We’ve got you. Ivy visited KCRW many times during the basement years, including a stop in 2001 in support of Long Distance.
Listen: Ivy: KCRW Live From The Basement (MBE, 2001)
And be sure to dig into the online debut of their first-ever West Coast performance on KCRW in 1995.
Listen: Ivy: KCRW Live From The Basement (MBE, 1995)
The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Myke Dodge Weiskopf: Every artist dreams about making a record that transcends the circumstances of its creation. Long Distance had some pretty fraught circumstances around its making, but as a listening experience it exists in its own universe beyond all of that. I’d like for our conversation to touch on both sides of that equation. Talk to me, in each of your own ways, about the headspace you were in as this record was coming together.
Dominique Durand: [Ivy’s previous album] Apartment Life was mostly recorded live, or at least half of it. Andy and Adam were starting to become really interested in working in the studio [with] different drum loops and samples and things like that. And when we were ready to make this record, they both were very inspired by the idea of: “No more engineers or other producers. We’re going to do it ourselves, and we're going to write in the studio. We're not even going to come up with songs before[hand] at home.”
We were very lucky, because we had a recording studio in New York. So it was easy for us to go and camp for three months and come up with songs and basically create the whole thing. I'm not saying it wasn't about songwriting, but it was really mostly about working with different sounds [and] experimenting in the studio … and for Andy and Adam, coming out for the first time feeling like real music producers.
Andy Chase: Let's not forget that this was 1998 [or] 1999. This predates home recording studios. This predates Apple laptops that came with GarageBand. To be able to write in the privacy of your own home was unheard of. You really had to be lucky enough to have a recording studio, or to be on a label that was giving you money to go into a proper studio. We had our own studio. We were on a label. We also had a lot of recording gear, and we were also very ahead of the curve, because we were up-and-coming producer-engineers. So we had every tool available.
At times it was Adam's apartment, at times it was our apartment, and at times it was our professional studio. But, like Dominique said, we would write from scratch, with samplers in front of us and all the tools that were only available in recording studios. And we were so excited to go into the studio with no ideas and know that we were going to dick around and come up with stuff. And what excited us, and got us continuing down the path of fleshing out a song, was the vibe. We wanted something to feel good and sound good. That's how we made Long Distance. We wanted it to have a vibe. We spent a lot of time scrolling through keyboard sounds, samples, and loops — and had the time of our lives doing it.
Durand: We were always scared about writing pop songs, or more traditional songs. But I remember telling Adam and Andy I was really into the idea of just creating an atmosphere, as long as there was an incredible mood, and you felt dreamy and you felt like you could escape. Maybe I was in a period where I was sick of my life, but I just wanted music to make me feel like I could escape. And I wanted to create that for other people to feel that way too. It created a dream landscape and that's what I really cared about.
I think there's something perfect about Ivy’s album titles going from Apartment Life to Long Distance. It telegraphed the sense that the vantage point between those two albums really changed. Ivy’s music had widescreen pop elements before, but it became cinematic in a really profound way on Long Distance. And you just explained why, but I'm wondering which songs came as the biggest surprises out of that process for you. “Edge of the Ocean” is the one you’ve talked about the most, but that song came separately, right? Adam brought that song to you, so it wasn't done in the same way.
Durand: No, but in a way, it started the identity of what would be Long Distance. We were somewhere in upstate New York in a studio. And I think we were doing a song for a movie. It was around the time we were promoting Apartment Life. And Adam brought me into his car and said, “I just wrote this song, I wanted to know what you thought. I think it's a bit cheesy, but just let me know.” So we go into his car — I still remember so vividly — and he played it. And I know it's gonna sound really cheesy, but I started crying. It was a very different song back then, you know, it was a demo version. He was singing on it, there were no lyrics, there was no “sha-la-la,” none of that. And I remember looking at him, I had tears in my eyes, and I said, “Adam, it's incredible. I love it. I feel like I'm in Italy somewhere, it feels so good.” And he's like, “Yeah, I don't know what to do with it. I don't think it's for Ivy.” And I was like, “If you don't give it to me, and to Ivy, I will never talk to you again.” So I fell in love with the vibe of that song, and then we brought it to Andy. And Andy, remember, you were not so into it…
Chase: Hell yes. It was all programming and cheesy synthesizers. Plus, Adam was singing the idea for one of the melodies with his squeaky, ugly voice, and it just … the whole thing. Look, I am traditionally the left-of-center in Ivy. And Adam is the right-of-center. He has the songwriting prowess and the skills that are unmatched by anybody, including myself. And thank God we have Dominique, because the kind of crappy output that Ivy would have done without Dominique picking and choosing … So when Dominique comes to me with a strong feeling, like she did with “Edge of the Ocean,” I took it seriously. But for me, it had to really be reinvented to be cool. And I think Dominique knew that too.
Dominique, more than me or Adam, had a vision for that song. It still stands out as one of the strongest reactions she's ever had, positive or negative, to an Ivy song. But I was as receptive to it as I was with the semi-cheesy songs that sometimes Adam would come to us with. I mean, “Let's Stay Inside,” that was an Adam song, and when he played it, it could have gone either way. He had that on the acoustic guitar. He even played us the trumpet solo, and he did it almost like a chicken clucking, and it was very hard to take seriously. But that was another one that did ultimately have to pass muster based on how cool it became in its production approach. Both that song and “Edge of the Ocean” went through a huge metamorphosis. But, especially in the case of “Edge of the Ocean,” what Dominique heard was truly a great song in there. So it didn't take much convincing.
But to your question that prompted Dominique's response, this was when we were promoting our album Apartment Life. And Apartment Life was a couple years before we did Long Distance. So, as you can see, some idea was being galvanized in our minds about what the next album would look like, sound like, and feel like. “Edge of the Ocean” was one of those lightning rods for us.
Andy, you write in the Long Distance reissue liner notes that you often wrote with a specific musical reference in mind. You specifically mention New Order and Pet Shop Boys ... Once those bands came back into vogue in a more retro sort of fashion, a lot of newer bands copied the trappings of those artists. They did the pulsating sequencers, the drum machines, or whatever. But Ivy got to the heart of the music those bands made in a different way. It's a soul thing, I guess, more than anything. What was in those artists’ essential nature that helped you achieve what you were looking for on Long Distance?
Durand: Well, to have an idea of a song, we would say, “Okay, I want to write a song like this song from Pet Shop Boys or New Order or The Smiths,” or whatever. But at the end, it never sounded anything like that. It was just more of an idea that inspired us on this record.
Chase: I specifically remember you and I were freaking out about [Pet Shop Boys’] “My October Symphony.”
Durand: Oh yes, that’s right.
Chase: And we wanted a song, or songs, on our record to give us goosebumps the way “My October Symphony” did. Dominique and I would play that song over and over and over. I was actually worried about our daughter at the time, because I'm not exaggerating when I say we probably played that 50 times over a period of a couple months. Dominique, you had specific songs like that. I was more inspired by the vibe of a production. I remember, and you agreed, I really wanted Long Distance to have the production elements that were so exciting to me in, like, the Morcheeba record.
Durand: Yeah, more electronic. We were listening to a lot of Alpha.
Chase: A lot of it was British, and it was that kind of underground pop production that had subtle roots in hip-hop. But I specifically remember “My October Symphony” for us. And, in a weird way, that might have morphed into the strings and the whole production for “Undertow.”
“My October Symphony” is so Ivy in some ways, like Neil Tennant’s high vocals in the background. Also, I thought of Johnny Marr’s wah-wah guitar, which I also hear in “Edge of the Ocean.” There are a lot of little callbacks between “My October Symphony” and Long Distance.
Chase: There were two other songs I can think of that were created when we were starting to have serious talks about what was to be our new album. One came from Adam, one came from Dominique and myself. They were really, really moody, and really evocative of something that we wanted to carry through on all the songs. So they were also catalysts.
From Adam, he had this little repeating pattern on the acoustic guitar, and he didn't have any words, but he was singing the melody that he had for it, which was “bye bye baby, bye bye baby.” Then it became “Worry About You,” which is still one of my favorite songs that Ivy ever did. That was an Adam song. It just had this crazy, emotional, dark, brooding mood that I couldn't wait to dive into. And the other one — which I wasn't sure about at the time, but Dominique was so excited about it, and it ended up also being a real blueprint for us — was “One More Last Kiss.” [It] was something I had written on the guitar and piano. And I remember those two songs, thinking that if every song had that vibe, I'd be really happy for Long Distance.
I thought it was interesting, in the reissue liner notes, that you didn't address the studio fire. But those initial sessions were recorded at [Chase’s former recording studio] The Place. That’s where the album was started, yes?
Chase: Officially, Long Distance was started at the location of The Place, but by then I had shut that business down and my partners had left New York. I reopened in the same space with the name Stratosphere Sound. [This was] with Adam officially as one of my partners and James Iha, the guitar player from Smashing Pumpkins, as our third partner. And one of the first clients was Ivy. Like you said, we got pretty far into the songs on Long Distance. We had been working so hard that we needed to take a little vacation. And Dominique and I also had our first child Justine, she was born in the summer of ‘99.
So, we took a holiday after doing a lot of the basic tracks at Stratosphere Sound. Our studio manager called and said, “You’ve got to come back to New York City.” The building [had] caught fire, and the fire marshal barred any tenants from coming back in. They [gave] us 60 days to prepare, because [we were] only going to have 24 hours to come in under the watch of the fire marshals, who are saying it's a disaster area and it's dangerous. And we have to take all our stuff out. So that happened in the middle of Long Distance … And actually, we never went back.
In New York City, especially West Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, real estate values were exploding. All the old businesses, old tenants like us — the crappy recording studios and the meat lockers and stuff — there was now real value to that. Me, Adam, and James Iha were all essentially business owners, right? We owned that studio. We rented that space. But there were these mysterious fires throughout all the buildings in that area. And if the fire was deemed catastrophic by the local fire marshal, that meant that the landlords could actually terminate their leases … and that's what they did. So, lo and behold, there were these fires sprinkled all through those blocks of New York. Fast-forward to 2003/2004: They had all been fixed, and they were all now residential apartments or super high-end office and retail. And the lease values were ten times what they had been for us. But we also had recording setups in our own homes, thankfully, so we ended up finishing Long Distance in our apartments.
The Place had been your OG studio since the beginning of your career, more or less. All of the early Ivy material was recorded there. So, in a sense, Ivy grew up in that studio. That must have had some sentimental value.
Durand: Hugely. And it's actually really sad today, because when I walk around the meat market and I see the building where our studio used to be, and how incredible … I mean, we had such an amazing time there. It's such a different vibe, different place. Back then, it was a very scary place, actually, but exciting.
That studio was a fourth member of the band, in a way, which must have made the loss so much more devastating. How much time did you allow yourselves to regroup after that? Did it affect your thoughts about the future of the record? How did that set you back, aside from just the time you lost in making it?
Chase: In retrospect, I can see that it had a very specific and positive effect on the production of the record. Because, as limited as that studio was in the Meatpacking District, it did have a live room. We could cut drum tracks, we could do guitars, amps... So losing that flexibility, and being relegated to our apartment studio, meant that the record was starting to be much more driven by loops, samples, and things that we could do on the computer — that informed the production value. By no choice of our own, we were forced to keep every idea relegated to sounds that were accessible on the computer and with our MIDI keyboard. So it became much more produced in that way.
Durand: The news of the fire was definitely very dramatic. We were absolutely astounded. And we thought that was the end of that record. Of course, after the drama, you come up with a solution. We’d just had a baby in July. In a way, it was great. Because now [I’m] working at home, I'm nursing, but I can easily just drop the baby to Andy, go into the living room, and do my vocal. I could do it alone. I didn't need an engineer because it was on a computer, and I could at least do that on Pro Tools. I never like when there's someone there coaching me, or someone recording me. I was totally self-sufficient in that way. I could relax and experiment with my voice and do certain things. And so there was a sense of freedom, at least for me as a singer. That was the only time I felt that on a record. And then, between takes, I would go and nurse my daughter and come back. It really worked out beautifully.
Chase: For example, we'd be working, and Adam might suggest: “You know, we should put a marimba on this.” And I'm like, “The marimba’s in storage now after the fire.” “Okay, well, maybe we can find a marimba sample.” And we'd scroll through our banks and stumble on something that didn't even sound like a marimba, but it was even cooler. Due to a lack of options and necessity, [those moments and] that soundscape shaped Long Distance. There's thousands of examples where we didn't have the tools that we’d been used to in the professional studio. So I remember we were calling all our friends who were really great at collecting loops and samples and things like that. And we built up our whole library at our apartment. I remember, even for “Edge of the Ocean,” all those drum beats came from loops and samples that we had to build up.
Did you actually lose any tracks in the fire? Were you able to save all the original material you'd already done?
Chase: We had about a month [when] we didn't have access to the studio. It was barricaded with tape. The studio manager, who had been there during the fire, was saying “I don't know if any of the stuff up there is usable.” The hard drives all had smoke damage, or reel-to-reel tapes had been sort of fried. So we lived for about four or five weeks thinking we’d lost everything we had done. But the truth is, everything was fine.
And did you end up reincorporating that material, or did you just start from scratch?
Chase: We kept it and continued building. We weren't that far into the record when the fire happened. We had what I would call rudimentary basic tracks, and maybe what [today] might constitute a demo: [A] bare-bones minimum idea for a song that at least had a vibe, so it sounded like it was worth finishing. All the lead vocals [and] everything vocal-wise for Long Distance was done in our apartment.
One thing that's always fascinated me — and this is part of the reason I wondered about the conditions under which Long Distance was made — is that you saturate this record in a really interesting way. There's distortion all throughout: kick drums, keyboards, everything is slightly in the red. It has a four-track sound to it. And I wonder how you imagined the soundspace of this record in that way. I get that it's influenced by trip-hop and other things that were happening. It has a great warmth about it, but it always pushes at the edges even though it's very lush and very deliberate. I’d like to hear about the philosophy behind mixing it that way.
Durand: For me, I was totally open to experimenting in the studio, coming up with new sounds and whatever, but I didn't want it to be too slick or too clean, because that I really don't like. I think Andy worked really hard trying to find that fine line between [being] produced, but also still containing the element of humanity in it.
Chase: Adam and I could be very happy — sometimes deluded — into thinking that it sounded great. So we were happy with the stock sounds that would come right out of the keyboard. This is 1999 [and] 2000. We didn't have the availability of plugins that could warm things up, distort, and saturate in a pleasant way. And it was really Dominique’s filter. She'd come in, and we're like: “What do you think of this beat?” She's like: “That's disgusting. It's so clean. This is not Ivy.” So we had to be inventive to dirty it up in a way that would pass muster with her. And of course, a couple days later, we'd listen back to the results that Dominique forced us to do, and we're like: “Oh yeah, she was right.”
But we did lots of things that we don't have to do today, because we have technology that can do it in two seconds. Adam and I would routinely run a lot of our drum loops through my cassette deck, then fly it back in real time into the computer. I also had an eight-track reel-to-reel in my studio, but many times that wasn't dirty enough. So there are a lot of sounds on Long Distance that had to go through a little cassette tape first.
It absolutely sounds that way, because the peaking and clipping that you get on actual tape is so different. Digital clipping is horrible, there's nothing good about it. But analog clipping does have that pushback, and it's a signature sound of that record in a big way. So thanks, Dominique!
Chase: That record was also mastered by Vlado Meller, who was considered the king of mastering engineers in the world. He was number one in the loudness wars. Vlado had just mastered a Metallica record … There were lawsuits against [it] because it was so loud. Q-Prime, Metallica's management company, was also Ivy's manager at the time, so we knew about this. They were trying to force [Metallica] to go back and remaster the record, because it was louder than anything else that had ever been mastered in the world. That started the loudness wars, and that was championed by Vlado Meller, who mastered Long Distance. We have since heard from other mastering engineers like Scott Hull — who remastered this record — and he could not believe how loud the original mastering was.
Interesting that Ivy had a stake in the loudness wars. I never would have put that together.
Chase: Isn’t that funny? Of all the bands!
There’s one iconic moment on this record which I'm sure other people have commented on. It's the breakdown in “Edge of the Ocean,” where that wave of sound comes up just before the final chorus. That lovely wash, almost like a My Bloody Valentine kind of thing, which happens for a second. And you get it just to that level where it's about to boil over, like the bubbles are at the top of the pot, and it's so delicious. I wonder if you could talk about coming up with that idea.
Chase: I remember. I can even see the waveform that I drew. We wanted the volume of this sample to overwhelm the song for a second in that crescendo back into the last chorus. So I drew it with the pencil in Pro Tools, and it sounded amazing. But because we were listening on crappy speakers at the time, we didn't hear [that] it was overloading the track. A couple weeks later, somebody brought that up when we made a rough mix of it. And they said, “Is it distorting on your system?” And we went back and listened like, “Oh shit.” So I lowered it, [but] then it didn't feel as impactful. So I remember Adam and I trying all different kinds of [things]. We went to the cassette deck and recorded that, and flew it back in … It never felt good unless it was literally doing the digital distortion. So we got it at what we thought was acceptable, but still overloading. And I remember when we got to mastering it, Vlado [turned] back and [told] us, “You know, guys, this is digital clipping happening here.” So he then tried to soften it. But, I'll tell you, that was over 20 years ago … Once in a while, depending on what you're listening on, you'll hear it distort.
Perfect. What are your own favorite moments on Long Distance?
Durand: I love the bass line of “Undertow.” To me, that's the brilliance of Adam. Adam could come up with very simple bass lines, but unbelievable, just perfect, you know. And he’d come up with that in a second and play in one [take]. He had such a good instinct and vibe. And I love the production of “Worry About You.” I love the whole landscape of that song. “Disappointed” was inspired by New Order. I love how New Order writes songs: Very simple words, very simple melodies, but very sing-songy, almost like a children's song, where you sing it and then it's stuck into your memory. I know at the end it doesn't sound like [New Order], but it was the inspiration for sure.
Chase: My favorite memory was more because of the whole moment around realizing that we wanted to do this song. Adam and I would often, when we were taking a break, [have] a palate cleanser. We would just listen to random music. And I remember putting on a Blow Monkeys song called “Digging Your Scene.” I think we were trying to outdo each other on what the best guilty-pleasure song was. So the winner had to be terrible, but also really undeniably catchy. I put on “Digging Your Scene,” and we just loved it. And then he kind of gave me this little mischievous look. He's like, “What if we covered that?” I was like, “Oh, good luck getting Dominique to approve that one.” He's like, “No, no no. Let me talk to her.” I said, “Oh, good. I want to watch this. You go talk to her about having her sing a Blow Monkeys song.” She would lump them in with Tears for Fears. She hated them. I love Tears for Fears, but I understood there’s too much production…
Durand: Too slick and New Romantic. I was not into that scene.
Chase: … You know, the histrionics and the way they sang. So Adam approached her about it, and she was like, “You want me to sing a Blow Monkeys song? No, never, never.” And he was the consummate politician, and he just campaigned for it. So she acquiesced. I think we very quickly put together the rudiments of the song just to see if it was in the right key for her voice. And as soon as she started singing it, we got so excited. That's one of my best memories, probably because it's not one of our songs.
Durand: It was super fun to sing that song, actually. I wasn't into it, but then while I was singing I was like, “Oh, this is a really guilty pleasure. It's amazing. It feels really good.”
Along those lines, I want to talk about the “throwing the card” veto system, and how that all came together. I really appreciate, first of all, your video tribute to Adam. I love it for so many reasons, but I especially love how Long Distance-focused it ended up being. There's so much about the making of this record in there. But there's that moment, Dominique, where you “throw the card” on the guitar solo for “Undertow.” And there's a lot in that video. You go off on Adam for revisiting and pulling apart songs that were already finished, and not being able to stop himself from reworking things. Was that a constant theme in the making of this record? Were you having to slap his hand away from things a lot in this process?
Durand: Yes, of course. I mean, you have three people in that band who are extremely opinionated, who have strong opinions all the time. And so we would constantly get into an argument. And, you know, we couldn't communicate very well, the three of us. But there [were], all the time, arguments about what to do in that section, or to give up that song or to take it … There were always problems. And we wasted a lot of time arguing. So Andy came up with that solution of the cards and it really helped us. I would recommend it for many bands to do that, because it really works.
Chase: [They were] imaginary cards. Each band member has three that they can use on the making of an album — and it's symbolic. When you throw your imaginary card down, the other members immediately have to shut up. That's it, the discussion is over. You could use it to kick a song off the album. You could also use it just to kick a guitar solo off the album. It's up to you. You only have three times you can use that. So you could throw your card down to put the guitar solo back on, and then they could throw their second card down to kick it back off.
You're wasting a lot of cards that way.
Andy Chase: Yes, but those are the rules. Anything goes. So, the video that you're talking about, where I'm actually filming Adam and [Dominique] having an argument … Adam started getting insecure about a part of “Undertow” that sounded not exciting enough, so he put a guitar solo down over it. Dominique was fuming. She hated it. But you can also see in Adam's expression that he was trying to make her use the card. There's a strategy there, right? You can see the little mischievous look on his face. And he said: “Well, you can throw your card down.” I never know, to this day, whether Adam just tried to make her use up one of her cards so he'd have more power. He had three, and she only had two left. But she threw her card down and we had to erase the solo.
It was well used! To speak on Adam a bit more: Long Distance was such a leveling-up from what came before, not just for you as a band, but I think also for Adam as a producer — the way he was able to facilitate his own ideas. What's your perspective on how he grew or came into something new on this record?
Chase: I think this record represented, for Adam, an exploration of a sensitivity and mood that had never really awoken fully in him before that. I think he really embraced it. Some of the moodiest songs on this album originated from Adam. He ended up loving Long Distance as much as we did for many of the same reasons.
If you look at the body of Adam's work in his career, there's really nothing that touches on the stuff that he did on Long Distance with us. And he recognized that — he wasn't stupid. And I think he embraced everything that comes with those songs that came from him: the atmosphere, the soundscaping, the experimentation, the mood...
Durand: … The darkness in some of his songs…
Chase: Absolutely, the darkness … I mean, “I Think of You” was an Adam song. [Also] “Let’s Stay Inside,” “Worry About You,” … All songs that have lots of mood. We even used samples of wind when we didn't want to fill it in with instruments just to add some sort of ambience. If you look at our next album after that, In the Clear, there was still a lot of the mood carried over from our days making Long Distance that you didn't really see coming if you followed our career before that. The next releases after, especially In the Clear, had a lot of that mood that was important to Adam, the atmosphere.
Durand: I think Adam always had that in him, but maybe he was shy to express it, or maybe didn't have the right ways of being able to express it. But he could do that with Ivy. He had this freedom to be able to do that. And I think that's one of the reasons he loved Ivy and wanted to always continue to make records with Ivy — even though we were not a mainstream band. We were not hugely successful, but one thing he really loved about being in Ivy is that he could express this other side of himself creatively.
Chase: We embraced it, Dominique and I. We encouraged it in him and we were receptive to it. We were enthusiastic and encouraging. So he had a forum to present his ideas and his production sensibilities in Ivy that he didn't have anywhere else. We all realized that. It was true for all of us, but [especially] Adam as “the guy in Fountains of Wayne” … this was a real deviation from Fountains of Wayne. So, up until 2020 when he passed away, he really stayed true to Ivy. He always made room in his life for us, for our music.
What does this album represent to each of you now? We've talked about it within the context of Ivy, but also within the context of your lives. How does it sit with you? What do you look back on and think: “This is what this album is, what it means.”
Durand: I know it sounds cliché, but each record represents one of my [children]. Really, it's like that. And Long Distance is … I'm so attached to it. It was during a time of complete artistic freedom and creativity, and New York was such an amazing place to be living in back then. So it represents all of that. And with the reissue it's been really nice because I had to go back to it and listen to it. I'm attached to each of the songs on that record. Some of them back then, I didn't like so much. Now listening to it 20 years later I'm like: “Wow, it's good. I don't know why I didn't like it back then.” Now I'm more mature or something, but I see the beauty in it. It makes sense now where it didn't make sense back then.
Chase: I agree with everything Dominique said. And I feel like, since Long Distance, we've always been … I wouldn't say struggling, but we've been trying to capture a lot of what we nailed on Long Distance in our subsequent releases. And to varying degrees, [we] always feel disappointed that we didn't. We achieved other things, maybe better in some ways, but the consistent mood that was carried throughout Long Distance was something that I always wanted for our later albums in Ivy. Whether we hit it or not, that was always kind of a blueprint after Long Distance. And thank god that we had Long Distance as a blueprint!