We Take You Through Such a Range of Emotions: A Conversation With Dream, Ivory

Photo Credit: Liam Walsh

Joe

If you love heavenly dream pop with a hint of shoegaze, then Dream, Ivory is the band for you. The duo, consisting of brothers Christian and Louie Baello, are best known for their hazy, bittersweet, lo-fi bedroom pop tune “Welcome And Goodbye.” Their newest album, When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You, is their first record since 2022’s About A Boy. When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You combines the best parts of shoegaze, dream pop, alt-rock, pop-punk, and bedroom pop. With the new record, Dream, Ivory creates songs with immersive soundscapes, gorgeous atmospheres, earnest songwriting, catchy choruses, and wonderful vocals.

Dream, Ivory chats with OFM about When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You.

The Creative Process and Selecting the Title

“So many things happened in-between the process of making the album that we would make a chunk of songs and then kind of take a break for personal reasons for a few months and then maybe make two more and take another break,” Christian says about When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You. “I think they were all made pretty sporadically and randomly within the last almost two years. So, I think it evokes a wider range of emotions than we were previously able to convey with the last record, which was made in half the time span.”

“Another huge difference for this record was, Chris and I were living together at the time, whereas the process before About A Boy, I would have to drive to LA,” adds Louie. “I feel like that just allowed for whenever we had spontaneous ideas, we were able to act on that faster, which, in my personal opinion, made the sound more accurate in terms of how I envisioned it.”

When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You is quite a handful. Listeners are bound to come up with their own interpretations of the album title. Both Louie and Christian share what the title means to them. “I am a person that’s very hopeful in situations where, like, I still think shit isn’t going to go right,” comments Louie. “That’s kind of the vibe when I thought of the title. And ‘I have so much to tell you,’ that’s such an important part because, damn. You really are not only wanting to see this person, but you want them caught up on everything because it was such a long distance.”

“Louie pretty much came to me with the title, and the feeling that I got was the exact same and a little different, too,” echoes Christian. “What could this mean? A relationship? Or is it about two friends? Then we realized how ambiguous it was, too. It could be applied to so many things. But the fact that it says When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You implies there’s been such a great distance between whoever the two people are. I think the last thing we’ll say about the title is that, although it does signify a great distance, and they know they’re coming back, and they have so much to tell the other person, there was a distance in the first place. There are songs about toxic relationships where the distance had to have happened. There are also songs where there’s distance that’s unprecedented that we didn’t wish for.”

“There’s even songs where the distance is within yourself,” remarks Louie.

Getting Specific with Their Vision

Dream, Ivory are very DIY when it comes to their music and artwork. Together, Christian and Louie make all of Dream, Ivory’s artwork, visuals, and videos. “I think what we enjoy about it is obviously how specific we can get with our vision,” comments Christian. “The vision Louie and I have visually for our artistry in terms of graphics is a bit weird and maybe a little fried, but it also has some clarity and swag to it. I just think the way we do it is exactly how we want it to come out—Not to say we’re opposed to working with other people. We have found with this album cycle, a lot of people have helped us. We found a few videographers that we really love that we worked with and a few visual artists that we love that we worked with.”

“We can express our own creative freedom to the max potential, and Chris always has the craziest vision,” adds Louie.

Juxtaposing a Joyful Sound with Dark Lyrics

Despite having a brightly warm and joyfully upbeat sound, The 1975-esque, alt-rock, dream-pop “Lost Angeles” features some pretty dark lyrical content. This juxtaposition between the sound and lyrical content works wonderfully. “We just do that a lot and like doing that,” shares Christian. “The 1975 does that as well. They write music where it’s kind of upbeat and sonically makes you feel a certain way, not necessarily a sad way. Sometimes, it’s just an emotional chord progression, like I’d say ‘Lost Angeles’ is, but in an upbeat way. It makes you feel good. I like the idea of having a juxtaposition of the lyrics. ‘Give Yourself A Try’ is a good example where it sounds so upbeat, but he’s talking about some real-ass shit. ‘Lost Angeles’ I was going through a phase of figuring out my sobriety. We had this instrumental, and I thought it would be a good one that is just as upbeat but also emotional for me to get my point across.”

Lovers Destined to Reconnect

With a dreamily transcendent sound, fascinating production, irresistibly catchy choruses, and breathtakingly stunning vocals, “Solar Eclipse” is one of the standout tracks. The song tells the story of two lovers destined to reconnect. “We wrote it on the day of the solar eclipse,” shares Louie. “That just put us in the vibe of like, ‘Dude, it’s simple. There’s a narrative here, and it’s something that’s been overdone so many times, but we can do it right, and we can do it justice.’”

“We wanted it to be not just about the sun and the moon,” reflects Christian. “Lyrically, it sounds just as powerful in the wordplay we use. Some of the words we use, they’re invigorating, and they feel larger than life. They feel bigger than what’s happening even though it’s just a romance between two people that we don’t even know. But it’s written as something that’s as big and great as a solar eclipse.”

“Solar Eclipse” ends with the beautiful yet haunting, repeated refrain, ”Till we meet again.” “When you hear that line, the feeling you get is sort of the same feeling that we want you to feel when you read the album title, When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You,” comments Louie. “It’s super open-ended and super up for interpretation. It’s like, until we meet again, will you meet again? But it’s something you could be hopeful for. When we first wrote it, the first take instead of ‘Till we meet again’ was ‘Anywhere you are.’ We just decided that even though it does sound cool, ‘‘Till we meet again’ is more specific without being so straightforward.”

“It’s about two people; it can be like a forbidden relationship, some person and their man is off to the military, or maybe it’s a girl and her boyfriend is a touring musician, and they don’t see each other too often, and it’s like ‘Ah, it’s such a powerful love that whenever they do reunite sparks fly again,’” says Christian. “But you know they’re gonna leave again, and it sucks, but the repeated ‘‘Till we meet again’ there’s a sadness to it, but it’s like you know, at least, no matter how long, like 10 years from now, I know I’m gonna see you one more time, like the solar eclipse.”

Using Spoken Word and Envisioning Lyrics Based on a Feeling from an Instrumental

Christian’s girlfriend, Lilia Shibuya, helped write “Sometimes.” Near the end of the song, there is an interesting spoken word thing happening. “It initially started just as a body of writings that she had had in her notes, and then we transformed them into the song not by changing the lyrics but just by laying them out in a format that’s singable,” recalls Christian. “There were so many leftover writings that were just so amazing. We thought spontaneously it should be whispered at the end, as it builds up more than the song ever did before earlier, and it should be just like this open, spoken-word dialogue of the situation. To me, it just sounded a lot more painful, being spoken word. It’s my voice. I just pitched it up. So, it sounds weird. I think it just sounds a lot more engaging—It’s a cinematic moment in the song.”

Part of the instrumental for “Bleed” was created around two years ago but it got pushed aside. “I feel for that instrumental initially, we weren’t feeling anything because we just had so many other things worked up at the time,” comments Louie. After a while, Christian and Louie worked on it again. “I feel like because of what we were going through at the time, maybe it just resonated with us differently. It just came naturally. That’s just a song where there’s a balance between the gritty guitars, but you still have that nice synth; it can sound happy, but there’s so much angst to it at the same time. I feel like some instrumentals, you can hear them, and you can already tell where it’s going to go lyrically based on the feeling it gives you. So that was that with ‘Bleed.’”

Tapping into a Shoegaze Sound and Cool Production Techniques

If you are a fan of shoegaze, then you will fall in love with the dark and atmospheric “Bullet Train.” “The guitars are so heavy and airy already that it’s like, ‘OK. Let’s definitely sing quieter and mix the vocals so it’s like almost no low end,’” says Christian. “I love the wall of sound. I love songs that make you feel you’re in a dream. It’s all moving. The vocals don’t sit on top of the guitars much, nor the drums. We haven’t made too many of those—We hadn’t really tapped into the ‘Bullet Train’ type of sound much. We’ve made darker music, but it wasn’t really shoegaze—It’s a song that I want to do more of.”

“We didn’t even try for it to be a shoegaze song at first,” explains Louie. “We were like, ‘Let’s just try an eviler-sounding bass line.’ That just set it off. Chris just added these layers of guitars. Then we were like, ‘Wow! This is way heavier than we could have ever planned.’”

With “Orange” Dream, Ivory utilizes some interesting production techniques. For example, the intro sounds like something you might hear in a hip-hop song. “I think the production technique was pretty different than what a lot of indie bands do, which we tend to do,” says Christian. “You could say the same with ‘Plastic Song’ because we like to do things in a different way than usual when it comes to making the music—We like to do things that you can’t really expect from what a Dream, Ivory song is going to be.”

Seeing how people perceive the more experimental songs like “Plastic Song” and “Orange” is something that Dream, Ivory really enjoys. “That’s just the headspace we’re at, so they’re engaging how we were in the moment,” states Louie. “Also, it’s just more fun that way if we’re not sticking to a specific label of sound.”

Taking The Listener Through a Range of Emotions

Throughout When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You Dream, Ivory constantly switches vibes from song to song. “For this whole album, in terms of track listing, we wanted to start off slow, and then the next song hits you in a way different vibe, and then it goes slow again, and then it hits you,” comments Christian. “It just kind of fell into that order.”

“We did it in a way that if you listen to it from the first track to the last track, all in all, it’s such an experience,” says Louie. “We take you through such a range of emotions. I feel like the sequencing of the track list is super key to do that because you don’t want to put all your heavy songs here, and then the rest of it is just slow. I feel like ‘Tangerine Dream’ was also a good ender because it wasn’t our heaviest song, but it wasn’t our softest song either. There’s some emotional aspect to it, but it’s still such a driving song with nice guitars. The perfect song to end. There’s that chant at the end. It’s a good balance.”

Concluding Comments

When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You drops on July 18. “We’re gonna evolve obviously as time goes by,” comments Christian. “We’ll get better than this, but we were more intentional about the guitar parts, the bass, even the mixing, mastering, and the clarity of the vocals. Overall, I think we’re excited about those parts and the album as a whole and see what people think of it. I feel it’s gonna be pretty polarizing. Motherfuckers are gonna like the old shit, but I feel like it sounds really Dream, Ivory enough, even more so than the last album we dropped, About A Boy.”