A Chat with Fertility House (15.08.22)
Nostalgic but familiar in their indie-rock meets garage-pop style, US-based Fertility House has a unique sound. We speak with lead vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist Shaun Snyder about their album Dust, bad advice and future plans.
OSR: How did Fertility House come about?
Snyder: I had recently moved to Austin, TX. I was home and bored and didn’t really have many friends in the area yet, to be honest, so I just sat down and wrote/recorded three demos that day, ‘Andromeda’, ‘We’ll Be Ok’ and ‘Suburbs’. The demos were pretty bad, but it was a start. I put the demos on Craigslist, and eventually met Dan and Daniel. Nick ended up joining the band a little later.
OSR: What can you tell us about your album Dust?
Snyder: Dust is an exploration of relationships in three distinct parts. There’s the beginning where everyone is trying to put the best version of themselves forward, and it’s kinda insincere (see the song ‘Games’), then you eventually just dive right in (‘Geronimo’).
Act Two is when the relationship ends and you feel so alone. People come around to support you, but within a brief period, they all kinda go back to their lives and don’t really give a shit about your pain and loneliness anymore, or at least that’s how it can feel. So you spend the next bit of time struggling with loneliness, anger, letting go of plans that you’d made, disappointment in yourself, fantasising what-if scenarios, and it’s a whole mess of information to process.
We move into Act Three and ‘Dust’ is accepting the end of the relationship. It’s drowned and laying at the bottom of the ocean, deteriorating to dust. In the end, though, you realise things will be ok and you both move on.
OSR: Which is more challenging for you: melody or lyrics?
Snyder: I guess lyrics are harder. I can’t really write lyrics unless I’m having really strong emotions about something, and when I hit that moment, it just comes out really quickly and I’ll do a song in about 5 to 10 minutes. Those moments don’t hit very often, which is ultimately probably a good thing for mental health, I imagine. With melodies, I honestly just kinda start singing something out over some chords and keep tweaking it bit by bit until I have something I like.
OSR: Did you face challenges when creating Dust?
Snyder: Dust was recorded during peak Covid times, so that was a bit scary. We’d go to the studio and the four of us and the engineer just kinda lived together for 8 days.
OSR: What or who inspires you to make music?
Snyder: We listen to a lot of various music that influences our sound, and I can’t speak for the other guys, but I write music because it helps me process things and put ideas and feelings into something more concrete than just words in my head. I also really like the composition aspect of it. Layering and textures and things like that to keep things interesting and create dynamics.
OSR: What advice do you have for emerging artists?
Snyder: Mmm, I don’t really know. We aren’t really an emerging artist. We’re just a band from Austin that likes to dick around. If we ever become emerging artists though, I’ll try to get some advice for people.
OSR: What is the best thing about being in a band?
Snyder: The best thing about being in a band is just doing something with friends. You get pretty close to your bandmates in my experience, and you just get to create stuff and have fun with each other. My bandmates have also been very supportive of me and my personal life which I appreciate. I hope that I’m offering that support to them as well when they need it.
OSR: What about the worst thing?
Snyder: The worst thing is that creating art of any kind with others is sharing negative feedback with your collaborators. You care about what you’ve created and you want others to like it, but sometimes when you’re collaborating you have to be honest and say that something isn’t working for you, and that really sucks. It doesn’t feel good to have something so personal critiqued and it, for me, honestly feels far worse to have to critique something that someone else has made and shown you. At the end of the day though, that sometimes has to happen to be putting out quality material together.
OSR: What is the worst advice you have ever received?
Snyder: I don’t really know to be honest. I think I do a pretty good job of messing up things in my life on my own, so nothing is immediately coming to mind about how someone else led me to fucking it up.
Oh, I once asked my dad if I should buy a used car. He’s very good with cars and he said, “yes”. So I bought the car and like 6 months later it was having all sorts of issues. My dad then said something like, “well, I wouldn’t have bought the car in the first place if it was me looking to buy.” I said, “but you told me I should buy it,” and he was like, “ya, you should buy it because you don’t have very much money and your options are different than mine. I have better options, so I wouldn’t have bought it.” It was a pretty funny reply in my mind, but I wish he’d just not told me to buy the car originally.
OSR: What are the future plans for Fertility House?
Snyder: Future plans are to keep playing shows and to record some more music. Not sure when the recording will happen but that’s the current plan.
Many thanks to Shaun Snyder for speaking with us. For more from Fertility House check out their official website, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
