Q&A: Tune-Yards duo on the 'puzzle' of turning records into live experiences

The eclectic pop duo Tune-Yards — comprised of the married couple Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner — have played the majority of their Pittsburgh shows at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale.

They’ll add another one to the tally with an Oct. 8 show there in support of a pair of releases: May’s “Better Dreaming” album and September’s “Tell the Future With Your Body” EP.

“It’s one of our favorite places to play, so why change things?” said Garbus, who packed her Steelers socks received as a gift back around 2018.

The headline tour kicked off Sept. 20, so the duo has had some experience taking what they’ve created in the studio and translating that into concerts.

“It’s a puzzle maybe. I’ll call it a puzzle because every time we’ve been out for different records, we’ve had different bands. We started as a duo long ago,” Garbus said. “I started solo way back when, but then when we were a band proper, the band was Nate and me. So now we’re back to that, but with a record that I think sounds like a bigger band.

“So we’re having to figure out how to, with two people, make that sound of a bigger band. Luckily we’ve gotten better over the years as musicians. Speaking for myself, (Nate was) always a great musician, but I’ve gotten better with the looping and with singing, I hope. I feel like we’re feeling a facility with all the tools that we’ve used for so long.”

In a Zoom call from Oakland, California, before their tour started, Garbus and Brenner spoke with TribLive about the new EP, the gap between records, an interesting collaboration and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.

What is it that you like the most about the live experience?

Brenner: Well, back to Mr. Smalls, I remember in 2012 looking out and a lot of people had glow sticks, and it was just a very unique spot. I think playing live feels like just a great way to share this energy of the music that we’ve created with everyone, and we’re excited because we need it right now. We need help from the fans, too. We put a lot of time into the music, and so we’re lucky to have any fans at all, so I think it’s just special to perform it for them.

Garbus: I feel like right now everything is so on the internet, so more and more I can’t believe that we wouldn’t (tour). What a gift if feels like. I feel like we took it for granted to tour for a long time. And that was because, from 2009, we toured our butts off and I think at a certain point, it’s a grind and you take it for granted that you’re in front of people every night. Since covid I will never take it for granted again. So I feel like now too that we’re having so much trouble as a country, having dialogues with each other that don’t turn into violence and having a musical conversation with dozens, hundreds of people in a room feels so sacred almost now.

The new EP came out (Sept. 16), so you said that you’re probably gonna work those into the set. Do you know what the first one would be? Or what you’re planning for, at least?

Garbus: We’ve been playing “Oh Child” probably since last summer. We tried it for the first time, and not even knowing if it would ever come out on its own, because it was tucked into the “Better Dreaming” record for a long time until it was just clear that it didn’t fit with the other songs. That one we played on this run that we did opening for Ani DiFranco. We tried it out a couple times, and it was really fun. So that one definitely. And then a few weeks ago we tried out “Sand into Stone,” so those two will probably be the first that make their way in.

What can you tell us about “Sand into Stone”? That was the song that stood out the most to me from listening to the EP. With the bass and everything, it just seemed like a fun song.

Garbus: That one came out, I don’t want to say easily because we work really hard on the songs, but we started recording it at the tail end of making the “Better Dreaming” record and yeah that bass line…

Brenner: I remember when we got the music video, and I was watching it and I was like, oh, this song was probably the most effortless song we’ve ever made, because I think oftentimes maybe we’ll spend too long editing. I think this one, maybe because we knew it was going on the EP, it felt like we just didn’t put that extra effort into it, and I think it ended up being a good thing. We didn’t overthink it, and I feel like it has that sort of raw energy that I think translates to the listeners.

How do you think this EP fits as a companion piece to the “Better Dreaming” album?

Garbus: That’s interesting. We’ve never been able to do this before. It’s a different music industry than I entered into in 2008, 2009. I think we had this luxury maybe of this cycle of, work really hard on a record for months and months and months, give it a big release and then be able to tour on that same record for, we used to do a year and a half of touring on the same record. Now I think that the industry attention span and the internet’s attention span is so brief that we really wanted to push ourselves to release music more frequently.

So I think for me it clearly feels related, like a lot of the way that we recorded it. Eli Cruz, who mixed the “Better Dreaming” record, mixed this. So there were a lot of commonalities, but it also really felt like these were songs that weren’t somehow in the world of that record. I got excited about saying like, oh, but it’s really a separate thing. It’s not the discards. It’s not the unfinished detritus of the last record. (laughs) It really felt like these are strong songs. I saw someone online say, I actually prefer it to the full length record, and I was like, totally fair because they felt like really strong songs in and of themselves.

There was a four-year gap in between “sketchy.” and “Better Dreaming,” and then this one comes out a few months later. Are you just overflowing with creativity now? Is that what it feels like at all?

Garbus: Yes! (laughs)

Brenner: Yeah, and I will say, I know there was a four-year gap, but we did, in those four years, we scored a TV show (Amazon Prime’s “I’m A Virgo”) and had a child.

Garbus: All of those things have been good training in continuing, instead of the stop-start nature of that old way, that we are just working on music all the time in a way that I know I really struggled with. I would come back from tour and be like, I can’t think about music for a year or whatever. And I think now music and composition is really woven into our lives in a way that feels really healthy. So, yeah, we wrote tons of music for “I’m A Virgo,” for that TV show. And had a kid, and that was kind of just like, OK, let’s get back to the studio and generate some stuff today and do the same thing tomorrow.

Do you see any limitations as to what can constitute a Tune-Yards song? Is it only your imagination? Is that the limit?

Garbus: I think so. I know there are people who probably expect or – I shouldn’t say expect – maybe have an association with a Tune-Yards song. Maybe that it will be rhythmically compelling or that I’ll shriek some crazy vocals. But I feel like we’ve really challenged our listeners for years in a way that feels we’ve all benefited from. At this point I feel, like Nate said, really grateful that we have fans, but also grateful that we have these fans who are really open.

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With the current state of the world, what value do you see in creating music and art? Where do you see its place?

Garbus: I think it’s a big deal. Bigger than, I think I always kind of undersold art myself, even though it’s such a big part of my life, but I don’t think that I really understood that sometimes art is the only way that a human being can express what it is to be alive in the world. I’ve just been witnessing for myself, but also for other people, the clarity that art can bring to a feeling, to a state of being that no words can, no logic can. Maybe that’s also because we’re inundated with so-called news and information and a kind of spewing of content, which I think has to be differentiated from art, like this is content that people need to, and we do it too, we need to do this to stay in people’s feeds and to stay on top of people’s minds. It’s really different than going inside and generating these larger creative ideas and then kind of birthing them into the world.

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I wanted to ask about your collaboration with Battles (“Last Supper on Shasta”), since both of those guys have ties to Pittsburgh. How did that collaboration came together and what that experience was like?

Garbus: I don’t remember how it came together. Do you?

Brenner: I think they just reached out to see if you wanted to sing on one of the tracks, and then they sent the instrumental, and then we kind of worked on it a little bit together.

Garbus: It was great. I mean it’s crazy to be like, you want me to fit in a vocal into what? (laughs) So we worked on it…

Brenner: And then sent them the ideas, and then there was just kind of some back and forth in a good way.

Garbus: This part, not that part, but this part, do more of that, and yeah, nuts. And then I got to sing it live in San Francisco.

Brenner: After eating the spiciest Indian food…

Garbus: How do you remember that?

Brenner: You don’t remember?

Garbus: I do. I just remember as a singer because that was a crazy song and then for some reason I was like, it’s just one song. I’ll eat the craziest, spiciest food of my life right before I sing. Never again. (laughs)

I wanted to ask about that since both bands are experimental, I wanted to see how that meshed together, and it feels like it did.

Garbus: Cool. Yeah, I think we find each other, right? The weirdos find each other. (laughs)