Little Big Stan recently sat down with guitarist/producer Caufield Schnug and bassist/vocalist Lira Mondal of Lawrence, Kansas based duo, Sweeping Promises, when the band came to town and played the KALX Co-Announceshow at Rickshaw Stop on September 18th. Tune in on Sunday, October 4th at 7pm to hear the interview.
New offering, You Say I Romanticize (Sub Pop), was recorded over an 18-month period, largely prepared and periodically interrupted by Schnug’s non-SP production work, You Say I Romanticize is a tribute to the chaos of creation and collaboration under shifting circumstances.
For years now, Schnug and Mondal have embedded themselves in their combination tour house and recording studio in Kansas, annually working on dozens of albums from other bands, hosting tour stops, planning shows, and the like. After an immersive process of tracking and whittling down YSIR demos and carving out an idiosyncratic chamber recording method for the album’s intentional wall-of-sound, the duo brought in touring drummer Spenser Gralla to play the songs like the band would on stage.
Sweeping Promises have long been progenitors of concept-forward art-punk music that is remarkably immediate and irresistible. For being largely about personalities boxed in by isolation, You Say I Romanticize is carried by an outright soaring energy.
