Dan O’Connor and Alan Day of Four Year Strong

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This past month I was able to schedule a Zoom call with Dan O’Connor and Alan Day of Four Year Strong to talk about everything that went into the writing and recording process of their new album called Analysis Paralysis. In this interview, I asked the two guitarists/vocalists about how they crafted these songs, what they did differently in their creative process for this album, as well as what they’re looking forward to on their recently announced headlining tour. Analysis Paralysis is out today on all music streaming services, and there are still some vinyl options available here.

Thank you so much for your time today! So you’re about to release your sixth studio album called Analysis Paralysis, which is an awesome title by the way…Can you tell me where that title came from, and at what point during the studio sessions did you create this title?

We didn’t create the title until we had no idea what to call the album. And it kind of came around naturally, because like it’s a phrase that we use a lot. And in the conversation of coming up with an album title, I think neither me or Dan said on a call with our management, art director, and stuff we were like at this point it could be freaking anything. And I’m having analysis paralysis about it. And I think it was the art director, Ben Lieber who’s like, that’s what you should call the album! We were like hmm…because we were talking about we were kind of joking for a second about calling it Brain Pain: Part Two, because we felt like COVID really did a weird thing to that album, because we weren’t able to tour on it, and we didn’t feel like we got to experience it in its fullest capacity when it first came out. So that was kind of the joke of well let’s just do it again Brain Pain: Part Two and having an adjacent kind of rhyming two words…well that’s what we’re gonna have to do from now on. Yeah, that’ll be our new movie quote thing. We’re just gonna have two-word album titles that rhyme. Those are the ones that do the best.

Kind of like how Weezer does their self-titled albums and those ones always tend to do better for them! So maybe your guys’ gimmick would just be two-word named album covers. So you talked a little bit about Brain Pain. I wrote the review for it at Chorus.fm and it was, like you said, a weird time. A lot of people were going into COVID quarantines, and stuff like that, and the part about that I wrote about in the review is mostly about mental health awareness. Did you guys consciously have that in mind when you were writing the sessions for Brain Pain or did that kind of come from interpretations of the art?

I think it kind of came naturally. Not necessarily through interpretation, but it was more just once we kind of had the body of the work done, and we started looking at everything together. We’re like, oh we can see the idea of kind of where that evolved from. I don’t think it was necessarily something that we set out to do, or something that we planned along the way. It just kind of naturally came out, because for the most part, we don’t really conceptualize our songs, at least like as a group. We don’t usually say a concept. We don’t really do stuff like that, but Alan and I write the songs together, and we are similar ages, and a lot of times going through similar things together. And for the most part, whether or not we’re older, the same age or whatever than the people listening to the record, I mean with the human experience, everybody goes through a lot of these things. And I feel like Analysis Paralysis has even more of that I think baked into it. A lot of self-reflection, a lot of where do I fit into the world that I’ve created around myself. I think it is a relatively common theme on the record, and also just something that we write about a lot. That’s just because we’re writing the songs together. A lot of times the songs are kind of about the band, and about being songwriters, and about that struggle that we go through; how do we keep reinventing ourselves? How do we keep pushing ourselves creatively to another boundary? And a lot of times that ends up being what the song is about because it’s at the forefront of our mind while we’re writing the songs.

Makes sense to me. Can you talk a little bit about the new single, called “Uncooked.” I love the music video for it, by the way, that was done at Coney Island. Was that the actual location too?

Yeah, Coney Island Hot Dogs in Worcester! Right down down the street from The Palladium, which means we do our shows all the time.

Can you talk about what went into the music video for that, the jokes that were on camera and off camera, too?

Well the idea for the video kind of just came about because the director, who’s been working with Ben Lieber, we didn’t know what to do about any of the videos really. And he suggested thinking about cool locations instead of an idea happening, and then finding where to shoot this idea, he kind of suggested the opposite. We had places that we thought would be cool to do a video and kind of had an aesthetic that we were looking for, like certain colors and things like that, and Coney Island just has this amazing look to it. The colors in the space, and the authenticity of that place and the years that it’s been around is just so cool to be in. Even when you’re just eating there. And then we were just like, we don’t want to take it too seriously, since that’s kind of how we are with most of our videos. We just kind of wanted to be us playing music, and I don’t know, the hot dog thing, we just had fun with it at the moment. Really, a lot of the hot dog stuff was just kind of like well we’re at a place where that makes hot dogs, so we kind of like while we were making the video just kind of be like why don’t we do this, why don’t we do that. It was a very organic kind of a vibe there. We did have a relatively loose idea of what the music video was going to do, and what it was going to be, but yeah we came out with a lot of cool ideas on the spot. The “hot dog cam” flying into his mouth, that kind of happened in the moment.

Do you have an approximate number of hot dogs that were used, or harmed, so to speak for this video?

I think it was 300.

That’s impressive!

And the Coney Island staff, they cooked all those hot dogs and had them all set up for us. They were awesome. Also, we did the video for “Daddy of Mine” too. We did that at my parents house, which is the house that the band started in. It’s where we would go every day for practice after school and where we really kind of figured out what the band was going to be, and wrote a lot of songs that became Rise or Die songs, and my parents were selling the house so that’s why it was empty. And it was literally kind of the last moment that we could be in there so we were just like, well we might as well kind of use this as an opportunity to shoot a cool video! My parents’ house kind of matched the aesthetic that we were looking for as well and to bring some of the history of the band into the future, and to say goodbye to that part of the band’s history. The first movie is like today’s the year to see or to experience and kind of saying goodbye to those different chapters of our lives, and Coney Island’s aesthetic kind of fell into that because it’s been around for a hundred years and it has a lot of the history baked into it. So I think just that kind of ended up being a lot of what we were going for with the imagery and with the coloring and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, it makes sense. And the concept is very relatable for people who either had to move or for businesses that went under during COVID and stuff like that. So I think people will really relate to the new material quite a bit. So, hats off to you guys for that. I understand that you all work with Will Putney for this, for these sessions and your press release mentions that you had no songs written when you came in. Is that correct?

Yeah, that’s true. We had some rough ideas. There’s a couple of the songs, like riff ideas and things like that, but I’m pretty sure we had no finished songs. The three songs that are out right now did not exist before day one in the studio.

That’s pretty impressive to put that together!

What happened was we had the date to go into the studio to record, but then like, I think a week before we went in and we called Will, we’re like, listen, we don’t have any songs. But, if we don’t go into the studio, we’re just going to have to make the same phone call again in the next three months. So then we decided to come back and still didn’t get a chance to write anything. So instead of going into record, Alan and I went down there and just kind of locked ourselves in one of his extra bedrooms in his house, for like three weeks. Just me and Alan sat in that room and wrote the record. And it was the first time we’d kind of ever done that, a lock-in with writing the whole record. And then we went home, digested the songs a bit, and then we ended up going to the studio, and going back and recording later. After we got to sit on it for a second, we went back and finished a few things up. Wrote a couple more. It was a very stressful way to write the record, but honestly, I think that there’s a lot of fun things that happened on the record that are kind of a result of that writing thing because we didn’t have a lot of time to overthink things. So a lot of the ideas that came out, when the songs ended up being a lot of the first ideas, and obviously they changed along the way, and we had a lot of ideas. I think the weird thing about this one is we had, we knew we had “X” amount of time and once we started finding things that were like, Ooh, that that’s, that’s it. That’s what’s working. That’s exciting. And that kind of just propelled the trajectory of each song after it. Whether it was just, like, Ooh, we liked that sound. So that made this other thing sound kind of like that, or we liked that sound. Well now let’s try the opposite now. And it’s just like once we got to a point where we realized what we liked it, it gave like a spectrum, cause we showed up day one to start writing and me and Dan were picking up the guitar saying like, I don’t even know how to make music on this fucking thing! <Laughter> Alan and I go through this process, it kind of seems like every time. Now we’re recently where every time we come, we come together to write a record, we kind of go through this process of like a lot of talking and a lot of like, what is this going to be? Cause if we’re going to write a record, it’s usually musically, we’re talking more than like lyrically. Cause like we were saying before, we don’t really conceptualize the albums lyrically, but musically we talk a lot about what do we want it to be? We want Four Year Strong to be writing fresh things. We don’t want our fans to get too comfortable with every record. You know what I’m saying? We want to be surprising, challenging ourselves, listeners, and just having fun with it. Because it’s not that fun to just keep doing the same thing over and over. We’ve been a band, and as much as some people might think that they want the same thing over and over, if we release the same record a bunch of times, people would just think it’s worse than the other ones…

Or get an opposite to a comfort zone on the listener’s point of point of view too. You know, you’re expecting one thing, and then you deliver a different sound, or it could be a continuation of something like you mentioned before, like a Brain Pain: Part Two. There’s different ways of looking at it for sure…But another one of my questions was about the song, “Aftermath/Afterthoughts”. It has a metal meets industrial type of vibe to it. What was the riffing process for that when you were writing it?

I don’t even remember. <Laughter> Well, the industrial element kind of came a little bit later. That was added in after the song was starting to become something. But we definitely set out, I think we were working on that song, that we wanted to write a heavier song. I think there is a big dynamic shift. We liked starting out really quiet and low energy, and having these big high, low moments. That was kind of like the first idea. And we set out to write what we call it, a journey song, where it doesn’t necessarily, there aren’t key parts that repeat it kind of starts in one place and then just gradually just goes…but yeah, I don’t really remember a ton of the process of writing that song specifically. I do remember writing the intro pattern. And just wanting it to keep going. So we were just like, we wanted to keep hearing it, but how do we keep it interesting without doing the same thing? So that’s why that rhythm is there the whole song. It never goes away. I think this was a fun challenge for us to take something that, on the surface, sounds like it would be a really boring thing and something that would be very much against what we normally do. Cause we usually are like, okay, it’s a new part. How do we completely change what we’re doing? And trying to make something that stays in that exact world, but still dynamically shifts and energy shifts and emotionally shifts from part to part, without straying too far from that, but still keeping that rhythmic core. That’s kind of where the song came from.

Do you think that that one’s going to translate pretty well live, or do you think that’s going to be one of the more difficult ones to replicate?

I think we haven’t gotten that far yet of how we’re going to do it, but I don’t think it will be an issue logistically, but I think if people like the song, I think it has potential to be a really fun song. That was very much at the forefront of our mind, writing the entire record was what do we want the crowd to do here? What makes this a fun part to watch live? We wanted everything to be an actionable moment, whether it’s you’re jumping, you’re yelling, you’re singing, you’re banging your head, you’re crowd surfing, you’re doing whatever, you know? We were very consciously thinking about, what is the point of this part live?

Yeah, and I think I read an interview with Jordan Pundik of New Found Glory where he talked a little bit about the record Catalyst, and about how he pictures certain moments on the songs, almost like you’re talking about here. So that’s pretty cool to kind of conceptualize a little bit about the live show itself. So do you guys pride yourselves on those types of marquee moments in your set or what’s your approach to that?

I think that that’s very much the backbone of Four Year Strong is our live show. We’ve always been a band that prides ourselves on our ability to play and put on a show and try to keep the energy up the entire time. And, I mean, that’s the thing we’ve cared about since day one. Even before Rise or Die Trying came out, like back to when we were in high school playing, we literally practiced every day because the goal was to be the best band at the VFW hall. That was the goal. We always just wanted to be really good at playing live, and our goal still is that. I don’t know if we’re living up to it but…

No, you are. I’ve seen you guys live. You guys definitely pull it off live!

Thank you!!

Another question I have for you guys is about at this stage in your career and what keeps you motivated as you progress from album to album? You talked a little bit about before about how you had some rough ideas going into this album cycle, but what do you envision for the future, and did you learn anything from that process?

To write songs earlier before you have to go to the studio is definitely a lesson that I’ve learned. I don’t know, I think that in a weird way we are kind of hitting our stride as far as songwriting goes. Obviously we’ve been a band for a long time, we’ve written a bunch of records and stuff, but I feel like for the first time, not this record specifically, but lately like Brain Pain and this record together, I feel like we’re figuring out exactly how to write records that we believe our fans will like, and that we also are getting everything that we want out of the songs. We are writing cool songs, but also are being able to creatively spread our wings and push the boundaries of what our band is supposed to be, and trying to broaden that as well. Because that’s the one thing about Alan and I, and the other guys in the band, is that we’re not very pigeonholed in the music that we listen to and the music that we enjoy. And we like to take inspiration and influence from the music that we listen to, and from a vast you know world of music, and being able to do stuff like that like that’s what kind of gets our creative juices flowing. That’s what gets us excited. Like, holy shit we’re in Four Year Strong and we’re writing a fucking industrial song! I mean that’s what gets us excited about making new music and finding ways to make those other things we love work within the context of what people know of us, and doing it different enough to be palatable…

Yeah, maybe with the album cover with that dog staring into your soul kind of thing… <Laughter> But I don’t think the music comes out of left field as much as people expected it to with some of the early singles I’ve listened to. And I’ve spun the record from front to back and it’s a great continuation of what you guys have been doing in the past, but also shows your guys’ talent moving forward, and being forward thinkers too.

Thanks so much!

The last question I have for you guys is what songs you’re most looking forward to playing live when the time comes for showcasing this record?

Well, we’ve been playing “Uncooked” and it’s really fun. That’s a super fun one. My favorite song that I’m really excited about, is a different song for us especially in the live setting and I’m really excited to figure out how to fit that in a live setting, it is called “Out of Touch.” That song rocks. I love that song so much. I’d like to play all of the new songs.

I don’t know if that will be the case, but maybe at some point during this touring cycle, you could play front to back and then maybe mix in some stuff here and there from the full catalog. I think that would be awesome. But again, thank you guys so much for your time, and enjoy the rest of your evening!

Thanks Adam. We appreciate it!

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