+/-

To hear James Baluyut, guitarist and vocalist of the indie rock band +/- (Plus/Minus), try to account for the decade between full-length albums is to take in an organic account more than any planned hiatus or intentional break. Exploration takes time. Families come with demands. Throw in a global pandemic and—voila!—it's 2024.

Together with Patrick Ramos and Chris Deaner, Baluyut has long charted their own course while skirting the fringes of indie rock. Experimentation and imagination have defined the band's catalog, from 2002's Self-Titled Long-Playing Debut Album to 2014's Jumping the Tracks. The band's newest album follows suit yet as Baluyut admits, it's hard for a band with a lengthy history to get away from itself in the studio.

We recently sat down with Baluyut to hear more about the last decade for +/-, how their original plan to release new music fell apart, and how things have changed on Further Afield.

Analogue: Let's start with the 10 years since the last record. Can you take me back to when you were finishing up the cycle of promoting or whatever that involved for you? Did you know at the time—did it feel like 'we're done?'

James: Yeah, first of all, I'll start by saying that even our last record, we didn't tour a ton to support that. We were all basically in kid mode by then.

Analogue: Okay.

James: I think we went to Japan for a couple of weeks and played some shows locally. And that was, you know, we'll do a show every year or two in that period. Previously, the band was much more active and more of a year-round concern. By that point, I think we'd all had kids, and touring was becoming a little difficult.

So when we finished the last one, we weren't thinking anything different. What we always do is we get together every week. We write, we usually have a few drinks, talk about our lives, and we try to write some music, and record ourselves. So a lot of times it's like we'll overdub one guitar part on one song and it’s almost like poker night—like you and your buddies get together. There’s a goal, but it's not like we were like, 'We really got to finish something soon.'

So if you imagine poker night stretches for a few years, you might not get that much done, you know?

Analogue: So it just happens organically.

James: Yeah, I think that sort of accounts for the gap more than anything. It’s just that we work methodically and slowly, and we all have lives. One of us moved away from the city. So getting together used to be a couple of times a week, but now it's once a week. And yeah, it wasn’t really intentional.

We did put out an EP in 2019, and that was supposed to be the start of an EP every half year. But as it stood, the summer of 2019 turned into the winter of 2020, and all of a sudden, putting out an EP every half year didn’t seem possible. But we almost put one out right as the pandemic happened. Then once that idea fell by the wayside, we were just like, 'Okay, we'll use some of these songs on a full-length record.' Sure, sure.

We had this whole grandiose idea, like, 'What we need to do is just put out as much music as possible.' And it’s funny that the EP idea and putting out as much music as possible turned into a 10-year gap. You know, that was the intent. We had good intentions. It just didn’t work out that way though.

Analogue: When you lay out the timeline, are you surprised to see a full decade there?

James: Yeah. I mean, you wonder if people care. It's been so long that my actual musical tastes have changed. You know, that's a decade. If anyone in their early 20s liked us at the time we stopped, well, they’re in a whole different phase of their lives now. They might be into more mellow things by now, or they might just not have time for music. They might have kids, like we had at that point, you know, young kids. So yeah, it wasn’t the intent, but it just kind of happened.

If I really think about it, it all just went into overdrive, like probably 2021 till this year. Like, that's really when it happened. The rest of it was kind of like, excuse my language, dicking around. I think there’s like one song that is on the EP that is also on the record. It’s called "Driving Aimlessly," and that's probably the only thing that we thought was suitable for this record. The rest of it, we had some ideas, and I think it helped us get to where we got. But yeah, it certainly wasn’t intentional to take this much time off.

Analogue: I’m glad you brought that song up, and even the momentum of when things really started coming together. You've always been a band that pushed the edges. Did you find after that amount of time or having gone through the pandemic that you felt the same permission to push? Did you want to?

James: It’s funny, like when you’re in it, it doesn’t feel like anything's happening just week to week to week to week. You don’t track how much you’ve changed over a period of time. And for us, truth be told, we’re like super close friends. So, you know, we’ve probably had more barbecues in that time than written songs. That’s an exaggeration, but in that room, we are friends, and our friendship doesn’t really change, if that makes sense. So when we get together every week, I’m sure we are changing over time, but I don’t really appreciate it because it’s the same guys, same relationships.

I’m not saying it doesn’t evolve, but... this comes up a lot. We try to make every record different, and I’m sure a lot of people you talk to say that. 'Oh, every record, we try to do something new,' which I think is great. You should be trying to do something different.

But I think if everybody’s honest with themselves, they’ll recognize that, y'know, 'I’m me. I like guitars played a certain way. I like a certain kind of music.' It changes over time, but my sensibilities are pretty much 99% locked in at this point. I’m always gonna like Sonic Youth more than Metallica. That’s just me. You know what I mean?

So when you get three people, and their sensibilities are as they are, to the outside world, it probably sounds like the same. We’re doing the exact same thing. But to me, we’re trying. We’re pushing our boundaries all the time. And, you know, the intent of this band was always to push and sort of be the music of the future. Yet as I’ve gotten older, I sort of realized that as much as we try, we are ourselves.

I'm not saying that it’s not possible. There's Beck, Neil Young, Prince, and other artists who can really sound completely different on every record—Bowie, you know. But a band, try as we might, I do think it’s different. But from the outside, it probably sounds kind of the same. It’s the same sensibility. It’s the same voice. It’s the same style of guitar playing, I’m sure. I feel like I’m rambling now, but essentially, we are simultaneously trying really hard to sound different, while understanding that we probably are who we are.

Analogue: I know personally, if I’m trying to push myself in my own craft, there are only so many wells I know to go to before I’m like, 'Well, now, where do I go to for new ideas? Where do I go to for new inspiration?' It just makes me wonder where you were mining for some of those new musical ideas this time.

James: There are two songwriters in the band and I can’t totally speak for the other guy. But for me personally, the catalog is sort of marked by soft singing, a soft delivery. I wanted to push myself to not do that this time. So I think that’s probably the biggest difference, at least in my songs, is that I’m actually trying to sing instead of whisper. And I’m sure, you know, I think that’s the biggest thing for me.

I think I’m on record as saying that we like to make music that we want to hear. That’s not the most typical method for making pop music, but I think I’ve sort of relaxed in my old age and decided that it’s okay to sound good. It’s okay to sound musical. And I think that’s a big shift for me, but I don’t think it’ll come off as like, some sort of epiphany. I just think to me it’s a big shift, but to the outside world, I don’t think so.

I think the other part is that we’re all fans of weird music and experimental music. And that was also part of the band’s DNA. I think we definitely leaned harder into pop on this one. That’s always been part of the equation but I think we kind of set aside the weirder songs for this one. I think the weirder songs are still to come. I think the weirder songs that we’ve written are for the next thing.

Analogue: So you're already there.

James: Yeah, there are songs that we left off, not because we didn’t think they were good, but we just didn’t think they fit. And I’m excited about those songs. Like, I think, those are the things that I’m like, 'All right, I’m really stoked about the future,' because this one feels like a rock record, if that makes sense.

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