St. Lucia

For Jean-Philip Grobler and Patti Beranek of St. Lucia, the answer was clear: anything that didn't bring joy wasn’t worth releasing. After shelving an entire project, the duo found their way back to the spark that first lit their sound—rediscovering play, instinct, and the long view.

The members of St. Lucia are now in a strong creative flow, making music on their own terms and accepting their epic sound if that's what comes naturally. A new double album is on the way, Fata Morgana, and Dawn is the first entry in this exciting new collection—to be followed by Dawn later this year.

In this conversation, Jean-Philip and Patti reflect on the gut-punch of starting over and the patience it takes to finish a song 15 years after it’s written.

Analogue: I wanted to start with something I read about the album. St. Lucia's music is equated with this word "epic" and yet your first instinct was to go for more of a lo-fi sound here. But then, as the process evolved, you found yourselves reaching for more than ever. Can you take me into that journey? Was there a point where you thought, "Here we go again?"

Jean-Philip Grobler: You nailed it. Here we go again.

Patti Beranek: [laughs] Exactly.

Jean-Philip: The muse is a funny thing—it just comes and you have to follow it. I always try to listen to my instincts, my gut, my inspiration. There’s this quote from John Lennon that’s always stuck with me. He said there was some Beatles song where he heard a monk’s choir in his head, and someone talked him out of trying it. And he always wondered what that would’ve sounded like.

I think I’ve been cursed by that idea—I want to try everything. And not everything stays in the final product, but we’ve gotten better at being more selective. Even though, yeah, things still end up being pretty layered.

A lot of the inspiration for this particular album came from the '60s and '70s. All those records were tracked to tape, with a limited number of tracks to work with. That constraint gave the music a certain character. I was listening to a lot of Electric Light Orchestra, The Beatles, David Bowie, Talking Heads—especially that early new wave stuff from the late ’70s. And some disco, too.

I love that image of a classic '70s band in a room—the guy on the Wurlitzer with a whole keyboard setup, drums, bass, the whole vibe. So I kind of started from that place. And as soon as I was working in that world, I knew strings were going to be important. Those records are so rich because of the strings.

But it also felt like… too much. I remember thinking, How am I going to afford strings on this record? It felt insane.

By the end of 2020, the album was about 80% done. But something didn’t feel right. Something was in the way.

Patti: So we left it.

Jean-Philip: Yeah, we stepped away from it. Then we moved to Germany—partly because of the pandemic—and right away, that shift in environment kind of reset everything. We started working on what would become Utopia, and that album just poured out. It felt joyful and inspired and, in a way, like classic St. Lucia. And maybe the world needed that more than the record we’d been making.

Patti: And I needed that, too.

Jean-Philip: Who knows? It’s all in our heads. But yeah, once Utopia was finished—and even while we were working on it—we were still touching these other tracks now and then. After we finished touring for Utopia, we really dove back in. And eventually, it became possible to add strings. We met the right people, the right collaborators, and it all just fell into place.

That’s really what completed the album. A lot of the songs were already pretty much there. “Rolling Man” doesn’t even have strings—it’s basically the same as it was in 2020. “Going to Space” is almost the same, too, aside from the added strings. So that orchestral layer was what really brought it all together.

Analogue What was going on with that shelved album? What was the moment you knew you needed to start over?

Patti: I remember the day. It was a really hard day.

Jean-Philip: We were in LA. We’d done pre-production with someone we love and respect a lot. But the record just didn’t feel right. The production was pristine, but it didn’t have that thing. And we both felt it. We were listening to it in the car and we were like…

Patti: “I don’t want to listen to this.”

Jean-Philip: Right. And that was the moment. I turned to Patti and said, “This isn’t working, is it?” And she said, “No.” And we both knew. It was heartbreaking, but it was also clarifying.

Analogue: That’s such a hard call to make. What gave you the confidence to pull the plug?

Patti: It was more painful to think about releasing something we didn’t believe in.

Jean-Philip: Exactly. The idea of people hearing that version of the album felt worse than starting over. It was like, “If we release this, it’s forever.” And we knew it wasn’t right.

Patti: I think we’re both really intuitive. And we trust that.

Jean-Philip: Yeah. And honestly, we just wanted to have fun again. We went back to the drawing board, to a place that felt more free and instinctive. That’s how Utopia started taking shape.

Analogue: When you were in that space where something wasn’t working—was it just a really hard time?

Jean-Philip: Yeah. It was. We'd had someone else mix the whole record. And, like, as much as we wanted to like it—we never worked in the same room with that person before. Great mixer, someone I really respect. But it just didn’t take the songs where we wanted them to go. It didn’t feel right.

So we kind of exhausted that road. And that’s just part of making albums. You plant all these seeds—your garden grows, you prune a bit here, a bit there. And when the tree is fruiting, it’s ready. But sometimes you hit a summer and the trees aren’t fruiting. So you pivot.

I really believed in this prize fruit that just hadn’t reached its full potential. So I was like, “Okay, what else have we planted that’s maybe been growing in the background?” Let’s go there for now.

Patti: And I think in that way, we both have that outlook—whether it’s music or life. If it doesn’t sit right, if it doesn’t feel right from the gut, we don’t go for it.

Jean-Philip: Yeah. I mean, we’ve been together for almost 23 years, and somehow—not by plan—we're both very loyal people. We stick with things. We’ve had more or less the same band since the beginning, the same team. We just have this long-term perspective.

In the beginning of the band—like with When the Night—that record took a long time to make. And then all of a sudden, you're on a major label, you’re playing Coachella, everything’s happening so fast. And there’s this weird psychic pressure, like, “That song’s great! Record it now! That’s the single!” It’s this hyper-speed mindset.

I didn’t thrive in that world. Over the last couple of records, we’ve returned to something that feels more holistic. If something excites us and we want to do it now, we can. But we can also let things sit and come back to them later. As long as we’re able to keep making music, we can take that time.

Analogue: Yeah. I loved when Patti said, “There are so many songs I can’t believe no one’s going to hear.” It made me wonder—what do you think when she says that?

Jean-Philip: I’m just like—“Which one?” Because there are so many. I mean, you can’t even really scratch the surface. We try to release as much as possible, but audiences have a threshold. There's only so much they can take, you know?

At the end of Utopia, we put out a song called “Two Moons” on the deluxe edition. That song was written in 2007.

And—I don’t know if you know this yet—but we’re basically releasing a double album. This is our version of “let’s release as much music as possible.” So we made one album, then pivoted to Utopia. After Utopia, we wrote even more songs. And now we’re putting out what’s essentially the second half of that double album at the end of this year.

Patti: But it’s a single album.

Jean-Philip: Yeah, it’s called Fata Morgana. There's Fata Morgana: Dawn and Fata Morgana: Dusk. One of the songs, “The Universe Explodes,” was written in 2008. It was part of the When the Night era, more or less.

Patti: So that was before…

Jean-Philip: Yeah, 2008. Written in our old apartment—the one with all the brothels. That apartment had, like, four brothels in it. But that’s how we work. Everything’s on a long timeline.

Sometimes when I work with younger artists, I’ll say, “You don’t need to rush this.” But they’re like, “We need it today! What does this mean?” And I’m like—“It just needs to be the best version of itself.” That’s all that matters. It’s way more of a shame to release something you’re not happy with.

Analogue: So with those songs that are 15 years old—has your relationship to them changed?

Jean-Philip: Yeah, of course. But to me, if you still like a song after that long, that means there’s something special there. I feel that way about everything we release. We don’t put something out unless I feel really good about it.

Patti: That’s the 90% I was talking about earlier.

Jean-Philip: Exactly. Your relationship to the song might evolve, but sometimes that time away is what makes it work.

For example, when we were making When the Night, there were so many tracks in the running. But an album is its own language—its own story. So even if you have this amazing, exciting song, if it feels like a side quest, maybe it just doesn’t fit the narrative. Then it becomes a short story you publish later.

Patti: We’re pretty album-driven in general. That’s just how we think. So even if a song is great, if it doesn’t serve the story of the album, it might not make it. Even now, when it’s easier to just drop singles, it sometimes still doesn’t feel right.

Jean-Philip: We did release the Early Demos album for the When the Night 10-year anniversary. But even that just scratches the surface of what’s in the vault.

VISIT: St. Lucia