Combining surf-rock and British new-wave indie is Jeff Draco’s latest EP, Attitude. A project culminating the last couple years of the singer/songwriter’s life, it details the ups and downs of relationships, friendships, and finding oneself. Attitude does not shy away from the realities of change in your twenties – it welcomes them. Produced by Grammy award winning Patrick Kehrier (Lizzo, Falling In Reverse, Waterparks), Draco’s insightful lyrics and melodies mesh seamlessly, giving this EP an overall cohesive feel.
Attitude comes after the release of the singles “Mirrors” and “Don’t Fly”, both upbeat tracks that kick the EP’s energy into high gear. The entirety of the project itself is intentionally narrative and follows Draco’s journey after a stolen laptop set back songwriting and production. Despite the mishap, having to rebuild these songs again made them better, more polished, and more than ready to be shared with the world.
Loving the art for your single – how did you get the 3D effect?
We rented out a photo studio in Northern Virginia, I forget the name of the type of wall it is. It’s curved on all sides. It was actually really trippy because we walked in and the lights were off. At first I was like ‘What the hell? This isn’t what was showing up online’. I walked like four feet farther and suddenly I could see it. I was like ‘Oh my god, there was a whole walk in curve room’.
My girlfriend, Brianna, has been doing all the photos for this project. It was a fish eye lens too, and just playing with things in Photoshop too, later. Matt actually edited the Attitude single art. It’s really funny, I have a screenshot from Matt where it’s probably like 30 different color variations we were trying to match one color we were going for, you know how it goes. Pretty much all the single art just came out of that shoot and just going with this blurred motion portrait style. That chair that is on the EP art, we found it on the side of the road in DC, very surprisingly because it’s vintage. Kardiel chair.
Sounds…out of my price range.
I had seen them before but I didn’t know the price tag, my friends started freaking out when the saw it because it was just sitting at a bus stop. And like, we figured out it was a real one and we were like ‘Why is this just sitting outside?’ That’s what you get for walking around the nice areas of DC!
Music nowadays, with rollouts of singles, EPs, everything has its own aesthetic or era, of what that next thing is going to be. Having your single art and album art come from the same shoot, it’s nice because you can dedicate art style to that music too.
Exactly, and that’s exactly what I was kind of pushing for more. Just to have a more well rounded, more cohesion across the board. A lot of my single art before, I’ve just done like color variations with slightly different visuals but this feels like a new era entirely. I wanted to signify that. I think it’s noticeable when you look at the jump from the past art to what we’re doing now.
How did the initial song for Mirrors come to you?
Mirrors was pretty intentional, where a lot of song ideas will be random, something will pop into my head. But this was very much like I had a thematic idea of what I wanted to write and I sat down and started messing with chord progressions and it came out of just sitting there and working on it and figure something out from scratch without any melody ideas. It was very intentional, very direct, sitting down like I am writing a song right now. A lot of the time when writing a song, the music comes first, not necessarily the lyrics or the melodies will come first and the chorus comes second. Whereas this was flipped. Lyrics came first pretty much, the idea came first. The upbeat summer-ness wasn’t even in play yet, it was more like ‘I know what I want to write about in this song’ and then just started writing words on paper and took it to the music next. A change of pace for me, which was nice.
It’s always so interesting, the process because it’s kind of like throwing pasta at the walls and seeing what sticks. But you sat down, and intentionally wrote about someone, about summer, about a feeling.
Once I found a perspective to go in with it, and this project in general, has felt more intentional all around. The entire project, I had a finished version of it in December, and then my laptop got stolen. I got the laptop back, but they wiped the hard drive. And I did not have it backed up. At the same time, the songs became something entirely different. I had to take a step back from them then revisit them. Listening back to where it was when I thought it was done to where it is now, is just world’s different. It feels much more like a unified project.
How did you find the motivation to revisit that project?
There’s such a feeling of defeat, right? Like an emptiness, where you feel violated. I lost my work. It took some time and some conscious “I need to do this,” I love these songs. I’m not going to abandon this project or just give up. There was a good amount of time where I just needed to not look at it, I needed to take time to just do other things and revisit it. Because right away, it felt like, one: I can’t believe this happened. I remember I tried to open my laptop, I had demo versions still that I had for six months. Luckily I still had those to build from, so it wasn’t entirely lost. I tried to sit down with it once or twice and it just felt too forced, I don’t want to do this. I hate that I don’t want to do it because this is what I love to do. That was an internal struggle.
I’m glad that you were able to overcome that. Not only is the physical property gone but the time that went into it, where people had to work on this collectively, it feels like that was gone too. I understand it feels like more than just a physical piece of equipment. I’m glad you were able to bounce back from that. I noticed that you were working with Patrick Kehrier!
He reached out to me on Instagram because he had found my song, “Letters”, on a Spotify playlist or something randomly. He came to us saying ‘I found this and I went through the rest of your discography and was liking everything’. The whole thing about losing the laptop is like, since I had to rerecord it and the timing of him hitting us up, if the project had been done, we probably wouldn’t have worked with him or something. It might never have happened. He is based in LA, we haven’t met face to face yet but hopefully will. From the production standpoint, it was a really seamless process. It really was changing the quality of the project and felt like a big step up and obviously very flattering for me to get hit up by someone of his caliber and the people he’s worked with.
How did you make the time difference work?
We had two Zoom calls in the beginning from there it was emailing back and forth just on everything. It was nice because I could send edits later at night and he was still working on it because of the time difference. Everything was very well communicated. I would love to work with him again and I’m hoping for future projects.
With “Mirrors”, how does it compare to your previous singles in terms of styles and lyrical content?
I feel like “Mirrors” is very surf-rock influenced and kind of feels like I’m touching back to my initial releases whereas this is more upbeat and electric. Where songs like “Don’t Keep Me Waiting Around” where adjacent to this in the surf rock world. It is very different than Attitude. Attitude, to me, doesn’t feel like a summer song. In certain ways, because it is a very bright, upbeat melody in the chord progression but the lyrics are not. It’s one of those. That’s where it varies too, in the messaging of what Attitude is. “Mirrors” is upbeat, you’re surfing and finding the love of your life. “Letters” was a project that stood on its own, working with my friend Blake Ruby, and that was us going into the studio together, stripping the song back and rebuilding it with him which was cool. That song, I was also listening to a lot of The 1975’s latest album during that period. What is the name of that album?
Being Funny in A Foreign Language.
Yes! So very different, I was just tinkering more with very indie-pop stuff very much in line with that. I like how this was, it felt like a song I needed to put out, something I needed to push into the world. There’s a few songs on the EP that started in 2020, like “Don’t Fly”. That’s probably the oldest song on the EP. It’s still very different. And once I started writing the other songs for the EP, Attitude was the biggest shift. Like ‘Oh…I like this one!’ I’m going to create a little universe around this song and took the new songs in that light.
“Attitude” has that element in the project, it’s kind of the center of the EP universe. It feels like the best introduction of what you’re going to hear. “Mirrors” just feels a lot more fun and free in a way. Very just summertime. I’m happy with the release schedule too it feels like the right songs at the right time. There’s some psych elements in there for sure and some more synth-pop elements in there too. “Daisy” is more of a ballad.
You got to have one of those in there.
Yeah you gotta throw it in! Five minute long song, you gotta throw one in every once in a while.
I looked at the tracklist and saw one of the songs was “Past Lives” and I wanted to know if you’ve seen Past Lives?
I still haven’t seen Past Lives, I didn’t know anything about it! I remember I decided on the name “Past Lives” and then the movie came out soon thereafter and everybody was talking about it. They were like ‘Does this have anything to do with this [song]?’ and I was like ‘I didn’t even know about the movie.’ But I need to see the movie, for the lore anyway.
Past Lives deals with different versions of yourself but in terms of a relationship. Does that sound anything like your song or “Past Lives” individualistic and less about a relationship?
That’s funny because it sounds very in line with what the song is. Like honestly, good titling I guess, right on the money! It’s the first song on the EP too, because the whole EP has an arch where it feels like the first four songs are like a plot in a movie, where “Past Lives” is the start of something new and also kissing the past goodbye, and being like ‘Don’t come back’, moving onto something new. Attitude follows the story of introspection and analyzing relationships and friendships and seeing that one person can be causing a rut in your life that is impacting other things. The ideal is not always the reality, and you have to learn from that and move on from that. “Mirrors” is kind of like a middle point where things are exciting, shiny and easy. And “Daisy” is thinking back on something else, thinking back on past relationships, could it be the same now? And also looking at how that has impacted current relationships. “Don’t Fly” wraps up the whole story, taking all those lessons and ideas and thoughts and putting them in one bucket.
Album order and album sequencing is so important. And to know that your EP has this sort of movie-arch or plot, with different themes with each song but it all centers around a person and yourself, is really nice! Do you have any other projects that inspired you to create Attitudes?
I started re-listening to a lot of music I used to listen to. I was listening to a lot of UK new wave, specifically there’s a song called Appetite by Prefab Sprout. Definitely definitely definitely played a big role. English Beat, Haircut 100, The Cure also played a very large role. Also Beach Fossils became a big influence for this project. Royal Otis as well, for sure. I feel like for “Mirrors”, I was listening to a lot of Sunroom last summer. Do you know the Radio Department? I was put on to them by one of my coworkers last year and they have absolutely played a part in it. Really all over the place.
I love to know the current listenings of someone who is also songwriting and writing music, lyrics, and just what inspires. You take inspiration from everything, movies, books, other music, and daily life. Everything comes together.
The environment where you’re writing or recording, for several months. The environment that surrounds you makes a huge difference. Looking back on projects, I can kind of know where I was and who I was around, I can see the pros and cons in the projects. So yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Draco will be celebrating the release of his EP with a hometown show in Washington, DC on October 5, 2024. You can get your tickets here, and find the limited edition vinyl pressing of Attitude here.
Keep up with Jeff Draco: Instagram // Twitter // YouTube // Website
