In the most fulfilling sense of the meaning, Trey Shilts and Leo Dolan found each other. And since then, fronting the LA-based co-collaborative project Finnish Postcard, Dolan and Shilts have created a space that is entirely of their own. Having been part of several other bands and established solo projects through the years, as well as taking inspiration from the extensive LA underground, surrounding themselves with a calvary of creatives, Finnish Postcard has become a force of understanding towards where they are at in life, both creatively and personally.

As of today, Finnish Postcard is sharing with us their highly anticipated debut album titled Body, released via I’m Into Life Records. These songs don’t represent moments that just pass by, but were released already having been lived in. The album as a whole, connected through textured layers, developed grooves, delicate melodies and colorful spouts of experimentation, each track wholeheartedly animates the tiny yet tricky grievances of growing up, where feelings of comfort, love, anxiety and loss become so familiar with each listen, as if they are our own stories we are listening to.

We recently got to catch up with Finnish Postcard to discuss the new record, how the project began, redefining what makes an American band and the Finnish Postcard video game. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Shea Roney: We’re approaching the eve of your debut LP! How are you guys feeling about it all?

TS: I’m really glad that it’s coming out so soon after we finished it. That’s one of the perks of working with a tape label like I’m Into Life. You see people putting out records two years after they finish them, and they’re kind of like, ‘I don’t really care about this anymore’. So I’m really excited for it to come out.

LD: That’s something I like about not being embroiled in the industry, even though that is something I would want at the end of the day, I like to have less mediation between when we make the music and when we put it out, and it felt important to to put it out so soon. I feel like we’re both kind of still in the weird no man’s land, where the album’s announced, but it’s not out, and there’s so much work left. This just took up such a giant chunk of my brain for so long, and I feel like I’m at a place now where the release is less painful and less stressful and more just a fun thing. 

SR: I can imagine that there’s gotta be so much momentum that you feel going from the recording process to releasing it. Were releases something you were often nervous about before?

TS: I think there was just a learning curve, and figuring out how we wanted to do it our way.

LD: We’ve both put out a lot of music across a lot of different types of bands before we started Finnish Postcard, and releases would always just kind of expose you. It’s like the music that you make can be perfect in your head until it’s out.

TS: There’s just so many weird things about how music works right now, and how the industry has developed recently, where I kind of feel like we’re inventing it for ourselves, you know, how we would want to put something out. We wanted to honor the songs and not just have it be a post on the story. We wanted it to be special.

LD: Because it feels special to us.

TS: And I think we’ve figured out how to do that for us. The rollout of this album to me so far really feels very particular to us, and very right for the album.

LD: This band doesn’t feel like the other bands I was in before, or even my solo project. It does feel more special, and I just like what we do more, too. So it’s just a balance between accepting that you have to have a certain level of detachment because it’s art, and once it’s out, people are going to be forming their own relationships with it. And it’s not something you could control, but also, how do I put this thing out in a way that feels like I gave it enough respect in my life?

SR: The ethos of this record, and really this band in general, gives a nod to the fact that you two found each other. As this project was beginning, what did you two see in each other when you met and how have you progressed that into the music that you now make together?

LD: I saw a lot in Trey, especially in his general approach to music. We met in a really awesome way where he was playing a set of solo instrumental loop based music at an art gallery, and I was there and watched him for a long time. I approached him afterwards, and basically my ulterior motive was to get him to make music with me [laughs].

TS: Leo asked me to talk about a record I had just put out with my solo project on his radio show on KXLU. I went over to his house and we did a pretape of that, and then we just kind of chilled and jammed. Literally within 2 months of meeting we moved in together.

LD: I think what I saw in Trey was that he had his sights set a lot bigger, and he was just willing to really put in a lot of work. Which is how I felt, too.

TS: There’s kind of a difference between people that want to be in a band because it’s fun to be in a band, and then people who have just different intentions. You have to be down to do a lot of the really unfun stuff, like booking shows and practicing and making sure that the songs are really right, giving everything enough time and attention. I just found myself in bands where it just didn’t feel right, and I think Leo and I have a really similar musical kinship and a similar vision, and are both really just willing to see this through. 

LD: There’s a difference between people who want to be in a band, and people who have to be in a band. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be in a band. If you want to be in a band, you should. But that’s not how it felt. That’s never how it felt for me.

SR: With this musical kinship that you two have garnered, in what ways did you challenge or push each other when it came to your songwriting? 

LD: We both exposed each other to a lot of new music. I was locked into writing in a certain type of way that I felt was reaching the end.

TS: I think we helped each other meet in the middle in a place that we were happier with than where we started. It was less of a process of challenging really, and more of a process of turning each other on to shit, and being like, ‘we should make stuff that sounds like that,’ and discovering a new space in music to inhabit than what we did before.

SR: Did you guys kind of subconsciously know you’d be happier in this middle than where you were previously at or was it something that you had to figure out and work towards?

TS: I don’t feel like there was really any resistance from me. I was just like, ‘thank God. With this guy, we can get somewhere interesting’.

LD: When we met, I was at the end of a couple different energy cycles in my life where I felt like I had kind of exhausted all the ground I’d covered with my solo music.

TS: It was a weird time for me, too. I had this long term girlfriend that I had lived with for years, and we had decided we’re going to break up, and I was going to move out. Then there was a month where I was needing to find a different job and a place, and in that month of transition is when we met. That relationship was time to build something new. It also just so happened to coincide with meeting all these bands and friends that are making music in LA. I feel like it’s the right time for this album to come out, when our colleague’s bands are making really cool shit that I love. I feel like we kind of fit into that picture in some way.

SR: One thing that I was intrigued by on this album was that you made an effort to not filter anything out. Can you explain to me what that process looked like, what it meant to you and how did that push the way you approached this album, both musically and personally? 

TS: To me what that means is that there were no moments where we thought that we should take something out because it’s not cool or that we probably shouldn’t go there. The album, as it exists, is exactly what we meant to say and how it was supposed to come out, and I want whoever listens to it to know that, because there might be moments on it where you’re like, ‘were they going for this, but fell short?’ No, just trust us that this is exactly what we were going for.

SR: Was that easy for you guys, to just allow stuff to happen? Or was there a lot of hesitation that you had to combat in that process?

LD: It’s not that it’s not easy, but I think it takes a while. Sometimes you have to sit with a decision for months. There were a lot of different approaches, like a lot of discarded pieces of music that went into this. When we were working on this album, it was not a super good period of my life. I was dealing with an injury, I was unemployed, and in a general malaise. So it didn’t feel like I had an incredible story behind this album, but more I was starting to grapple with parts of adulthood I hadn’t yet, and I feel like the album reflects that. It’s not like a dangerous album that came out of a period of living on the edge. The things that were reflected in this album, for me, felt very real and multidimensional, like the aspects of being an adult that are not always glamorous to talk about. 

TS: Yeah, there’s no filter between what was going on and what is on the record. It was really earnest and honest.

SR: Embracing the unfiltered stuff, did that in a way push you to understand your own grievances with adulthood? Like, if I can accept this on the record, then I can be able to accept this in my personal life or something?

TS: I mean the answer is yes for me. I really think about my brain a lot, and what my story is and where I’m at. It’s an always turning thing and then it doesn’t get me anywhere. Then I write a song about something and then I can move on, then I’m released from whatever the thing was that I needed to get out of. Writing this music, and talking about lyrics with each other, I mean, it helped me a lot to geolocate where I am emotionally on my journey.

LD: It’s funny, because you listen to music that I was making, you know, 8 years ago, and in a lot of ways, it sounded more autobiographical because I was writing about a lot of real world things that happened — therefore you might think it was more honest, like I’m talking about things in this very matter of fact, tactile way. I look back and I see ways that I was hiding even in there, even though it was storytelling, which is not a bad thing, music is storytelling. But I feel like with Finnish Postcard stuff, it’s a way more impressionistic approach. The lyrics, if you see them written out actually make a lot less sense, but it’s been a process of trying to hide less and make myself into something that I’m not less.

SR: How do you think that helps put yourself out there more by embracing this style?

LD: You gotta let the light into the dark parts of you. If you admit you got a problem with something, that’s the first step to getting better.

TS: There’s an element of this band that is us creating this little bubble of safety together. Not even safety only, but taste —this is cool, this is lame, this sphere that we invented. And inside of that we are so free. Sometimes the truer thing, the truer lyric is the one that makes way less sense and is incomprehensible. But you hear it, and it makes the kind of sense that only songs really can. 

LD: Writing music is not like writing poetry or prose. It’s a totally different thing that can’t be compared. There’s a lot of ways in which emotion and meaning is conveyed through music that are completely unique. I think you can’t really look at someone’s lyrics printed out and get the full picture. Once I started to realize that myself, I feel like that’s when I started writing Finnish Postcard songs.

SR: Also, considering the experience of playing off of each other and incorporating everything that goes into a song can really open that door too I can imagine.

LD: It’s cool to have the license to write half a song and then see what Trey has to say about it. I can totally not finish this song and just let it be for a sec.

TS: There’s also this element of collaborating that’s honestly hard for people to understand that a band has two people, and they’re both the main person. Like, ‘it’s your band Trey, right?’ And I’m like, ‘no’. And people think it’s Leo’s band. It’s a deeply, deeply collaborative project. But it’s hard to, I think growing up under capitalism in the United States specifically, it’s really hard to not approach something collaborative with fear and to feel threatened or like you’re not getting enough of something. There was a lot of unlearning that we’ve fostered, creating an environment where I feel like I can be open and collaborative in a way that I just haven’t ever been in any other project.

SR: You’ve also described this album as an ode to the rock shows and pseudo venues you experienced growing up. What kind of memories or feelings did you hold on to from those shows that you wanted to implement into this album?

LD: When shows are good, especially in hard periods of my life, I would just get this incredible feeling of being like, ‘oh, my God! These people are like me.’ When I moved to LA, I was really lost and confused generally, and went to some shows and was like, ‘these are the people that I hang out with. And maybe the reason I feel so fucking weird right now is because I haven’t hung out with people like me in four months. I feel like that travels over to Finnish Postcard, too. I can be myself in this setting.

TS: We owe so much, and really exist in a way that is in reverence to the lineage of DIY music. I remember going to this venue in my hometown that was a brunch spot where some guy would throw shows there sometimes. I grew up in a really small town, so me and the three or four other alt-kids would be there, and I just remember thinking that this is a place where difference is celebrated and you can really be yourself, and the more yourself you are, the better. It was just so different from what you’re programmed with at school or work. 

SR: I just experienced that same conversation when a friend from Denmark was visiting Chicago. We went to see Squirrel Flower play in this haunted, abandoned theater space, and my friend was amazed at how much difference was celebrated in these spaces. She said she has only experienced that feeling in American communities. 

TS: That is really cool! That’s something that we kind of contend with, because we’re a deeply American band, and that’s been something that we’ve always really cherished. But obviously, that’s always been really complicated. The lineage of DIY music in the United States is something that I really look to with a lot of reverence, and we both come from a background in college radio, which I think is more of what we mean sometimes when we say American.

LD: I didn’t really know what DIY meant in music until I was like 24, but I’ve been having shows since I was like 14. Because I grew up in Oregon, and there is no semblance of any sort of music industry there, there’s no upward mobility to be a musician. So, we’ve had a lot of shows at all sorts of places, ranging from decrepit houses to jazz bars. I played in a laundromat once. It’s hard to even say that that’s what I wanted to do, because that’s just what you did and what was happening. There weren’t a lot of paths in front of me, so it’s very comforting to know that people all over are just doing shit because ain’t no one else gonna do it for you, so you gotta do it yourself. Also let the record show that we are huge Squirrel Flower fans. 

Finnish Postcard Video Game

SR: Speaking of doing it yourself, you guys released the first ever Finnish Postcard video game. What was the idea behind it and what was that process like? 

TS: I had these childhood experiences exploring polygonal forests and stuff. Something about that style just feels very emotional to me— the N64 one era graphics, that just feels really meaningful to me. And I’ve been seeing it reflected a lot in the extended universe of our peers, that low poly style of artwork, and I just wanted to participate in it in one way, like once, and just do it in a big way. 

LD: And Trey coded that whole game. You didn’t use a template, right?

TS: No, it took a long time [laughs]. I had to learn how to use Blender and GitHub. Talk about DIY, my code looks so crazy and sloppy. 

LD: We should release the code. 

TS: I already did, it is on open source. But I didn’t want to do it in some way that’s just 3D artwork for a song or something. I really wanted something super different. Also as a kid, there was a game that the Gorillaz put online where you would drive around in a jeep on an empty highway as the Gorillaz, and I just remember connecting with it so much. There’s an element to it also that’s almost nostalgic in a way, but there’s this quote in it, if you go deep enough, from Brian Eno about how we always love the thing about old technology that we hated it for when it wasn’t old. So the noise of cassette tapes, or the digital glitchiness of CDs. He has this quote that he’s like, ‘as soon as we can avoid it, we want to replicate it’. Our music is not nostalgic, and I don’t want anybody to get the idea that it is. I included that as a nod to the fact that I just really wanted to have this experience.

You can listen to Body out everywhere today as well as snag a copy on cassette or CD via I’m Into Life Records. There is also a small run of hand-bound books containing lyrics and writings on the album put together by Adam Weddle that will be for sale this Saturday at their album release show. Finnish Postcard will soon depart for a short tour going up California to the Pacific Northwest.

Written by Shea Roney | Featured Photo by Colin Treidler