Love is a miracle… so don’t f*ck this up
Proclaims Loud Forest on their new single Miracle, which details codependency in relationships and the uncertainty of where the future leads. If you’re into CHVRCHES, you’ll be into Loud Forest.
The band is comprised of husband-and-wife duo Bernard and Rachel Chadwick, and they have landed multiple Spotify and Apple playlists, as well as performing to sold out audiences across Los Angeles.
“Our story is so crazy, so it’s like, hey this is a miracle, let’s not fuck it up, forget about it and run away, let’s remember how special it is.”
Bernard confides on his relationship with Rachel
Theirs is an enviable creative relationship built around making more of themselves and the world through collaboration. The band started while Bernard was earning his MFA at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. The band’s incorporation of pop sensibilities, ethereal vocals, insightful lyrics and rock undertones give them a sound that is unique and fun.
Their summer single Heartbreak Away, released in July 2019, was featured on Apple Music’s Breaking Alternative and Alt Pop playlists. They are currently working to release their third full length album, coming soon in early 2020.
Loud Forest can be found on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and listen to Miracle on Spotify below:
How are you both coping/managing your time during this period of social distancing?
Well, we have two kids, 5 and 8, so homeschool is no joke. We sort of take turns, but Rachel is an elementary school teacher, she is a total pro, so she does the hard school stuff and I do skateboarding and music class, haha. We have a studio space where we can get some solitude and be creative, we take turns going there.
We are still working on finishing our album so there is lots of work to do like recording final vocals and stuff like that. We do video chats with our producer to do that. There’s also just lots of time when we are at home as a family so we try to join in live streaming workouts in the living room, cooking, lighting candles, watching movies. We did a yoga class last night in candle light, then at the end the instructor led a dancing segment, so we just danced around in the dark, it was great.
What is it like collaborating creatively with your partner? I’m curious to learn what that process is like.
We have had to learn a lot about each other, the better we know each other and have empathy, the better we do in our musical collaboration. We’ve really gotten into the enneagram as a way to better understand our personalities, it’s helped us move through some obstacles that have tripped us up in the past. We work really well together for most of the things that are required of us to be in a band together.
Performing on stage is really natural, organizing photoshoots and production of content, managing social media, etc. etc. all this stuff is easy for us to do together, recording is where we clash! We care so much about the songs, the writing, the lyrics, the vibe, the sound, the feeling, and we fight about that stuff so much. Songs are so tender and personal sometimes, it’s so vulnerable to write a song and share it with someone. I’d have to say, it’s pretty easy to write a song, finish it and then just share it with people when it’s finished. But to let someone in at an early stage, when a song is still being formed, that is so hard. We have had to learn to be really open to change, to be totally trusting, fearless, and to also be self aware enough to know what is worth fighting for and to do that with grace.
Rachel has an incredible ear, her musical instincts are really refined, I respect that a lot, but when something is not sounding right, we struggle to find a way to communicate through that and find solutions without just abandoning the idea. Vulnerability, damn that’s hard, but when we get through it, the result is always so much more interesting than anything we could do on our own, so it’s always worth it.
Can you give us a little insight into your third studio album?
Yeah, we are so excited about it. We are working with a new producer and he is really bringing out the best in us. We are just having a lot of fun in the studio, the songs feel a little bit more personal than anything we’ve done in the past. The whole album kind of tells the story of us meeting when we were 17 and 19 in the jungles of Costa Rica, and follows our love story through to today with all the hopes and dreams of young love and challenges of being married.
Since the songs sort of stand on their own it’s given us a freedom to explore and just go wherever they are leading. We’ve done like two or three different versions of each song, trying to find an approach that is the most direct and has the right feeling. There’s definitely a vibe to the album, there’s driving anthemic songs and also space for more tender introspective moments. It’s a conversation about love, young crazy wild love, but also love that is changing, lonely and uncertain, there’s a pendulum that swings between these two themes, it has a sound to it that we are discovering, we really can’t wait to share it.
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