George Ward
Freelance journalist and online editor for CLUNK. Can be found out and about in Bristol, finding cheap records or having a pint on King Street.
With their debut album ‘Feats Of Engineering’ out today, we chatted with Al Nardo and Bailey Wollowitz, AKA fantasy of a broken heart
“This is the most words I’ve ever said just after waking up.” I felt bad when I called Al and Bailey, the duo behind fantasy of a broken heart, when I found out it was 8am where they lived. Yet, despite the fact that they’d just woken up, we had a wonderfully rambly conversation, sleepily drifting between topics and excitedly jumping into long conversations about their hobbies and interests, both musical and very unmusical.
Today, the duo have released their long awaited debut album ‘Feats Of Engineering’, a gorgeous and bubbly blend of sounds, moods and characters. Al and Bailey’s faces may be familiar; they’ve contributed to Sloppy Jane and Water From Your Eyes, playing with the bands live before taking on their own project fantasy of a broken heart.
“It’s a testament to our viewpoint having been on the road a lot as young people and arriving at the point where we found something we wanted to make,” Bailey explains, “We were already very fulfilled with each other just as musicians playing in other things. Realising that it was time to take this project seriously was very organic.”
Speaking to Al and Bailey felt incredibly natural, both from their lovely welcoming way of speaking as well as the clearly very deep love they feel for one another. The two explain they have known each other since they were 19 and have lived together in 4 separate apartments. The fact that they used to date one another several years ago doesn’t seem to have affected their friendship either, with Al nonchalantly saying “we’re off the stuff” with a smile.
The album feels like a warm hug to listen to, with each track effortlessly flowing into one another, despite the vast number of influences, musical and unmusical, cropping up and taking shape throughout the project. In one of several tangents Bailey took during our chat, they explain their love of anime: “Anime is a medium entirely based around brute force, ‘anything can happen’ feel to a show.” Similarly, on prog rock, Bailey notes its in-your-face nature is “almost a little bit corny but then you ask yourself why you think it is corny. It’s because I’m embarrassed because it’s really awesome.”
It is this love of creativity and freedom to do whatever they like which makes the album so much fun to listen to. It is theatrical and over-the-top and in-your-face but also delicate and sweet and honest. These tracks have gone through many stages of life before growing into what they are now. At one point, the duo were playing with 7 or 8 people, playing 50 or so songs with no set lyrics while obsessively putting every one of their sets on setlist.fm.
A few years later and we have ‘Feats Of Engineering’. After deciding to finally make their album, they headed to LA, linking with producer Nick Noneman. “The ones we had played with our band, every time we played them they’d be a little bit different. There were maybe 8 slightly different versions of each song that existed” Al explains.
They headed back to Brooklyn, linking this time with Hayden Ticehurst at Studio G. Every member involved in the recording is spoken about with incredible respect and care, with Al and Bailey sure not to leave out anyone that helped the album come to be. As the recording process was during COVID, this forced the band to slow things down, allowing ‘completed’ tracks to be added to in bits and bobs over the course of several months.
Their time at Studio G, with professional equipment and “the electric sitar that the guy from Unknown Mortal Orchestra has and all that sort of bullshit” seems to be just as important as the sessions in friends’ basements, with some of the cuts on the album coming straight from very early demos rather than professional recordings.
At points, Bailey will diverge onto a tangent, passionately explaining something seemingly irrelevant for 15 minutes, before tying off their thoughts in a satisfying bow that moments ago seemed impossible. After every tangent, Al would grin and wrap things up with one simple sentence. In a particularly funny moment, Bailey begins to talk about Drake, getting out “the reason Drake is so popular is…-” before the Zoom 40 minute timer cuts them off.
Towards the end of our chat, I asked whether they felt that ‘Feats Of Engineering’ was optimistic. “I think perhaps the album is about learning to be optimistic,” Bailey responds thoughtfully. “The music that makes me feel really emotionally connected is the music I can understand what the artist is going through but can fill in the gaps myself.” This need for music not be very obviously sad or happy is made very clear by the duo, but what really shines through is how happy they were during the process.
“We laughed so much when we were making the album, especially when we were finalising the lyrics. Especially some of the darker lines on the record, we were laughing really hard” Al explains. “I think there’s something optimistic about the fact we get to make music together and reveal ourselves through that as two people who can be very protective of our own narratives.”
Bailey notes how they were surprised that people found the single ‘Ur Heart Stops’ pessimistic, before realising the chorus was literally “your heart stops beating, your heart stops beating, your heart stops beating”. “For me it’s a mantra of confronting exactly why you don’t want that to happen” they explain.
And listening to the album with this in mind is just one way to do so. ‘Feats Of Engineering’ is a complex, fascinating and very listenable album that I wholeheartedly recommend you check out today. It is both sad and jubilant and there is, as Bailey will be pleased to hear, just enough space to fill in the gaps yourself. Most importantly, it is an incredibly impressive debut album made with a serious amount of love by two friends who got very lucky to “experience the entirety of their early twenties together.”
Listen to ‘Feats Of Engineering’ here:
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