Phoenix band Snailmate serve up their new 'Stress Sandwich' album

When we last spoke to Snailmate back in April, the duo of Kalen Lander (keyboards/vocals) and Bentley Monet (drums/vocals) were about to embark on a whirlwind tour of the U.S. and Japan. So, how’d life on the road go, and are they ready to settle down for a bit?

"I could just go tour Europe for, like, three months right now," Monet says.

Adds Lander, "Even the year that we did six months in the States, I wasn't over touring. It’s the most countries we've done in a year, but it was on the lighter side of probably how much touring we did over an entire year."

Because, as a whole, the duo have come to see Snailmate as a true-blue touring band. So much so that they sort of let it get in the way of their long-awaited new album, "Stress Sandwich."

"It did take a long time," says Monet of the record. "It took longer than we wanted. We started recording right before the pandemic happened, and we were recording at a studio that obviously wasn't open to the pandemic. So we had to wait, and we wrote a little more to the album. And then we were recording by the hour, and there's only two of us. So then we're editing it and mastering it, and all of that stuff on top of being on tour."

Adds Lander, "But it's a double-edged sword because the lead-up to touring is practicing the set that we're doing, making sure we're well-oiled, so it's not necessarily the most creative time."

But not even the call of the open road could fully stop the album, and after years of waiting and working, it's finally set to debut on September 29 (with a record release show that night at The Trunk Space). To an extent, the album is very much a product of the band's unique situation: They've come back to it several times as they've had the time and energy between their many tours.

"I think four or five of the songs we've probably written and rewrote like three to four times each," Monet says. "There's certain times where we're like, 'This is the song,' and then we rewrote it completely. 'OK, now this is the song.'"
Because of that dynamic, the LP serves as a kind of living artifact of Snailmate's development, both personally and professionally, over the last few years.

"We're glad that it would have been way different if we would have forced it out in 2021," Lander says. He adds that the album in part covers a "relationship that kind of happened and it just dissolved within the three years that it took to write this thing."

But that rewriting process wasn't just about using all the time they'd afforded themselves. It's also because the band keep their much-lauded touring identity front and center as much as creatively possible.

"We've released stuff in the past that we've been listening to now and we don't want to have to repeat that experience," Lander says. "We really like to stress-test [songs] because, as much as we enjoy putting out music and making music videos and having artwork for all the things, at the end of the day, we always want to be a touring band and a band that plays live and values the experience of a live show over almost anything else. So it's important for us to make sure that those things serve that purpose and aren't just recordings and little timestamps. We expect to play these songs for years to come live."

Adds Monet, "We played a lot of the new songs on that album at these [more recent] shows, and we learned what works and what doesn't work. So we can rewrite and crisp it up before we went into the studio with it, knowing what we wrote and that our first idea of it wasn't exactly correct. Kalen plays two keyboards, and I'm doing vocals while I'm drumming, so it's really important that we make sure we're able to pull that off."

If it sounds like a particularly hectic process, that's mostly the point. With a title like "Stress Sandwich," Snailmate wanted to capture some of the overarching ideas and sentiments that have highlighted life since circa 2020.

"We knew early on that it was going to be 'Stress Sandwich,'" Lander says. "We knew that that was going to be the vibe. And our previous EP was called 'Existential Anxiety.' We didn't realize how much fucking stress we were going to be feeling. It was interpersonal [issues] between the two of us or with relationships or money with other people. We had no idea of the journey and the changes that we were going to be going through."

Lander goes on to explain that the very idea of a "stress overload" may have been a kind of blessing in disguise — it gave the band an opportunity to perhaps turn the page.
"It's a good thing that the album took as long as it did because there was a lot more stress that we had to work through," he says. "This is kind of the final say of that stress and the feelings that we've been feeling the last year. But we didn't know what we were going to be going through all of this."

That doesn't mean, though, that this is somehow a "positive" record — that wouldn't be Snailmate's style.

"There's definitely not a point on the album where we're like, 'Don't worry, it's going to get better,'" Monet says. "The next [song] that's coming out is called 'My Weird Gross Body.' The chorus is, 'I wake up, I see myself, I get sad, and I go to bed.' Taking those lyrics, you might think, 'Oh, that's very sad.' But the song repeats multiple times, and it's funny. It's repetitive to a point because that's just how life is. We're in this grind for the rest of our lives."

And not every song is as necessarily "cerebral," either.

"The shortest song on the album, called 'Toll Road,' is basically us screaming for 70 seconds," said Monet. "That's a really cathartic thing."

To some extent, Snailmate aren't just addressing their own emotional woes and personal issues — they're reflecting something larger in the culture.

"You see it even in pop music days — everyone's depressed," Lander says. "And with the rise of something like emo rap, everyone's feeling it and everyone's writing about it now and it's super relatable. I think it's super important. But I want to write songs about my anxiety. So I do feel like it's putting a cap on at least that subject for the time being. It's always gonna be present in the things that we write about, like a lot of issues that we will always be working through. But I would like to explore some different topics."

And speaking of trends, the band's also further banking on a sudden uptick in nostalgia-tinged music videos. They want to shoot clips for basically every track on "Stress Sandwich" because of the power they believe that a great video has with fans across the board.

"It's almost supplemental, like reading materials," Lander says of music videos. "It helps hammer home the point that I'm trying to make. And the song, you know, if it's two minutes long with a ton of words, you're not always going to catch them the first time, but the music video really helps reiterate the themes that I'm going for."
Adds Monet, "It's just so cool to have a plan and have a vision, and then you film a bunch of stuff that doesn't really make sense. But once it's edited and everything, it's just this magical thing that was in your head and now it's on a screen."

It's also one of the ways the band stays engaged with their listeners. They don't mind churning out the content if it means they can keep recording and releasing songs and albums by their own schedule.

"We have these pieces of art that we have to make, and even though it serves a purpose and it feels kind of like an obligation, it's still fun to flex those muscles and stuff like that," Lander says. "The day-to-day stuff, even if it sometimes can kind of feel like rote content creation. We still truly enjoy reviewing hot sauce, and I enjoy editing those videos ... that's something that we're always going to enjoy."

He adds, "And I think it's all helped by staying engaged with fans. Whether it's the occasional single here and there, all of our videos, but also touring. I feel like we're able to not feel the pressure of needing to put out a song every so often or like on a schedule until we find other ways to engage. And I think that's one of our strengths — finding other creative ways to engage people."

As much as the pair may enjoy that stuff, Monet adds that they "won't complain when we can afford someone else to do certain things because it is a lot on top of having a full-time job." Which speaks to a larger question for Snailmate: As they continue to develop, especially as this endless touring machine of sorts, they have to decide the value of releasing records and where it fits in with other output and their long-term plans.

"We struggle with that question a lot: Should we put out a record?" Lander says. "Will we put out another record? Should we just do singles? And it's really hard to answer. There was a time when we said we'd put out 'Stress Sandwich,' and then there were times during the process where we said we would, but it doesn't feel obligatory."

Complicating the process is that having things to sell is mostly crucial when you're on the road for half the year or more.

"As a touring band, you need merch to sell or you're not going to survive because venues don't pay really anything," Monet says. "We've survived from our merch."
For now, though, Snailmate remain focused on getting the record out, which they compare to "sending our kid to camp." Those bigger questions and shifts will come in time, but for now they feel like "we can do whatever we want; the sky's the limit," Monet says. Part of that is taking the time to celebrate what they have accomplished, and to actually make good on the record's "concept" of putting a cap on this weird "era" of the band.

"I feel like we've really found our sound after the last three to four years," Monet says. "And I think it's a good stepping stone, but my thing is I always just want everything to be better and better because I like to compete with myself. I just want every song to just be like, 'Damn that's way better than the last one.'"

Adds Lander, "Yeah, I think this is like a new baseline for us. Now we know what our songs can and should be at the very least with this album. Now that this is out, it's going to [let us] experiment with some new approaches and styles of music. Like, they all have to at least meet the standard of this record that we're super proud of."

They'll have ample time to tour their bouncing baby with a slew of shows at home and beyond. The past few years have clearly been a journey, and while things are looking up, Snailmate are fully locked into pushing this whole thing as far as they can. Does that mean even more stress down the road? That's a safe bet. But they're ready to some decisions to at least streamline their never-ending journey.

"We're going to be hopefully living together again in the future," Lander says. "So our commute will be cut down significantly, which seems to be a good thing."