“I’d gone to a Radiohead concert and I think they’re amazing in being able to constantly change and evolve and grow. I wanted to have a repertoire that would enable me to tour with Radiohead. I wanted a pallet that would be able to work with Radiohead,” explains Angela Correa. She’s describing the motivation behind her L.A.-based folk pop/dream pop outfit, Correatown, whose latest LP, Pleiades, drops today (10/16) on Highline Records. Correatown has been releasing music since 2006. However, Angela tells me that the band’s sound has recently taken a new turn from the traditional, organic folk storytelling she’s become famous for. However, this new sound is one that’s been long in the works.
“The process of this album has been a long road. I’ve been working on some of the songs since 2009. Sometimes it takes a really long time between the inception of a work and the actual release… I think that the production on this album is very different from that of past releases. I approached it with a lot more intentions, in terms of my pallet of sounds. The last album had a lot of sounds that were somewhat haphazard. I would be like ‘This sounds good. That sounds good.’ But for this album I wanted a more cohesive soundscape. I wanted there to be a lot of textures and I wanted it to be really spacious at the same time. I wanted the opposite of organic. I wanted unnatural, strange sounds, a lot of synths.”
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/correatown/sunset-echo[/soundcloud]
The name of the album is derived from the star cluster, Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, something that she always found inspiring growing up: “I’m from a small town in Northern California with lots of orchards and lots of open sky and I spent a lot of time looking up at the night sky. I always liked looking at the Seven Sisters.” The stars and those nights of staring up at the open sky seem to be the primary inspiration behind Angela’s latest sounds.
“It’s spacey and out in the ether. I wanted to evoke that feeling of being out in the Milky Way… I feel like a lot of the content, lyrically, was looking at myself and being introspective. It’s fundamentally personal, but I was trying to make the songs universal.”
Angela tells me that musically her highlight of 2012 has been “finding Highline and getting to meet the owner and founder, Heather Willensky. For a long time I’ve wanted to find the right fit.” The security of having a label seems to have taken a somewhat substantial burden off of Angel: “I’ve self-released many albums. But having a label has allowed me to spend a lot of time creating, writing, and recording… I’ve been working to get the album in the hands of many people and not just a few people in L.A.” However, the highlight of Angela’s year has not been directly linked to her music-making.
“My highlight of the year has been taking care of myself. I’ve been taking care of myself more this year. I’m so much more creative and productive and happy. I end up getting so much more accomplished.”
