Tristen, Sinatra and Vanessa Carlton
Even with all the rapid growth Nashville has experienced, it really still is a small town, especially for musicians. Singer-songwriter Vanessa Carlton knows the phenomenon firsthand. A New Yorker at the time, Carlton was enamored with the agile lyricism and timeless sound of Charlatans at the Garden Gate, the 2011 LP from longtime Music City favorite Tristen. A few years later, Carlton and her husband, Deer Tick bandleader John McCauley, settled in East Nashville. By a twist of fate, the couple chose a spot that proved to be advantageous.
“When we moved to this house, guess who lived right behind me, across the creek?” Carlton says, speaking with the Scene at her home. “Tristen.”
“I used to walk through someone’s yard and come down here,” says Tristen with a laugh from a seat nearby.
The pair became good friends, and toured extensively together behind Carlton’s 2015 album Liberman. They reunited to collaborate on Carlton’s new album Love Is an Art, out Friday on Canadian indie label Dine Alone. Carlton had never co-written before, but felt that her friendship with Tristen and their shared outlook on the world would make their partnership a fruitful one.
“We quickly found out that we speak a very similar emotional language,” Carlton says. “We can sit and philosophize on human behavior and what motivates people, what destroys people, what makes people grow. … When we go out to a bar and sit and start chatting, that’s really when we get there. That’s a really good place to start a new song.”
“We have a real friendship, where we enjoy one another,” adds Tristen. “I think we both have the same sense of humor where we think: The more vulnerable and ridiculous the thing is you say about yourself, the funnier.”
The pair began working on Love Is an Art in 2018, meeting up to write three days a week in three-hour blocks. They scheduled their sessions to coincide with nap time for Carlton’s young daughter.
“You were so quick,” Tristen recalls, looking over at Carlton. “I was used to having a co-write and being there the whole day. But now that I have a kid, I write during nap time, too.”
The two settled into a rhythm of writing, recording demos and revising. Tristen found the exchange unique and refreshing.
“I’d never done this back-and-forth with a partner,” Carlton says. “It was so cool, because when you work with great artists, they become kind of mirrors. So you are really forced to expose more of yourself and bring a lot more to the table than you maybe would have asked of yourself if you were working by yourself.”
While they worked together, the two shared a sense of vulnerability. A prime example of the benefits of that: album closer “Miner’s Canary.” Driven by swelling strings and Carlton’s rolling piano arpeggios, the track tells of life within the confines of an emotionally abusive relationship. The narrative draws heavily from a romance Carlton had earlier in her life.
“I didn’t even know the term ‘gaslighting’ until a couple of years ago,” Carlton says. “And I was like, ‘Shit! That happened to me!’ I was so young and was in this very dysfunctional, abusive relationship. I just thought it didn’t work out, and it was the wrong person, and I tried my best. But then I realized, ‘Oh, shit — that was really bad.’ I told Tristen the story, and had started [the song] on the piano.
“It was the first and last song I’ll ever write about that experience and that relationship,” Carlton continues. “I don’t think I would have been able to go all the way there to expose that place and expose that experience if I hadn’t been working with another woman like Tristen.”
Motherhood was another shared experience that contributed greatly to Love Is an Art. Both artists experienced miscarriages, and both shared how that loss has shaped their current relationships to motherhood. Carlton and McCauley’s daughter Sidney is 5 years old, while Tristen and husband Buddy Hughen welcomed their son Julian in 2019. The “love” in the album title includes romantic love, to be sure, but also transcends it. Carlton and Tristen also channeled their approaches to modeling love for their children while writing the album.
“After having a child, I’ve realized that all they do is watch you, and watch how you behave,” Carlton says. “So the biggest impact you have is modeling behavior. How do I want her to watch me love? This is going to set her up for the rest of her life.”
“I feel like I’m way more efficient as a mother,” Tristen says. “I get the same amount done in a much shorter time, and any relationships — with people, and also the internet — anything that is not necessary is completely dissolved and doesn’t matter anymore.”
Another crucial figure in the creation of Love Is an Art is producer Dave Fridmann, known for his work with acts like MGMT and The Flaming Lips. This pairing is an obvious sonic departure for Carlton, whose previous work has tended more toward a piano-driven singer-songwriter aesthetic than the Technicolor psychedelia of works on Fridmann’s résumé. She was looking for someone who could push her sound in a different direction, though, so who better to ask?
“I sent unsolicited GarageBand demos to [Fridmann’s] email, and I guess he loved that, thank God,” says Carlton. “I thought this [project] may be intriguing to him as well, because I’m not his typical artist. … It was different for him, and such a great experience. He’s very Buddhistic in his approach in the studio, but at the same time he’s a wild thinker. So he has this professorial approach, but at the same time he’s going to do something that nobody else thought of.
“Tristen and Dave, to me, are in the same category,” Carlton continues, “where they’re really going to force you to look deep down into spots in yourself, in terms of your process as well, that you’ve maybe never looked at before.”
