Radiator King’s Adam Silvestri was featured on the The Straight Cut podcast where they talked about SST Records, creating your own rules, and his new album Unborn Ghosts.
At the core of Unborn Ghosts’ evolutionary sound is a breakthrough in Silvestri’s writing process as well as a new sonic approach that seamlessly fuses the disparate styles he once compartmentalized. Following the release of Radiator King’s last full-length, 2017’s A Hollow Triumph After All, Silvestri began experimenting with new sounds and new ways of writing. Instead of working from home, starting with chords and melodies to which he’d later write lyrics, he would spend hours reading, researching and freewriting at the Brooklyn Public Library branch near his place in Bedstuy.
“When you’re on tour, you collect so many recommendations from the people you meet—Moby Dick, Kierkegaard’s Fear & Trembling,” Silvestri says. “As a songwriter, you’re an investigator, and you’re trying to figure out any sort of clue that’s gonna lead you in some new direction. So I would read all these books and just free write—turn off my intellect, get logic out of the way, let my subconscious flow and just see where it went. And then the next day, I’d revisit what I’d written and start to collect lines that stood out. Eventually, I’d notice little threads developing, parts that fit together, and maybe by the end of the week I’d have a new song. I like to think the song is already out there somewhere, you just have to uncover it like an archaeologist. You’re digging and, all of a sudden, there it is. You have to have faith in that process. If you don’t, you’ll never have the patience to stumble on what you’re trying to say.”
Musically, new tracks like “Gamefighter,” “Raylene” and “Haunts Me Now” began to synthesize Radiator King’s varying sounds into a cohesive whole. “I used to have my heavy songs, my ballads and my folk songs,” Silvestri says. “‘Raylene’ was the first one where I started to depart from that and combine different structures and sounds within the same song. It really laid the foundation for the new record.”
Check out Adam Silvestri on The Straight Cut podcast.