San Fermin, the NYC band led by Ellis Ludwig-Leone, released their fifth album, Arms, today via Better Company Records. The album is more stripped-down than previous records, which suits the more direct lyrical style of the songs.
“Writing music has always been about bringing people along with me,” says Ludwig-Leone. “I don’t sing my own songs because it’s never felt right – I find it much more satisfying to write for my closest friends, find the spaces in the Venn diagram where our lives overlap and build from there. When my personal life fell apart a couple years ago, that community became even more important to me. The process of writing Arms was like drafting an antidote to loneliness. It was clarifying to realize that even under difficult personal circumstances, this has always been why I do what I do: bring people in to create a shared experience that is only possible through music.” You can listen to Arms below.
For more on Arms, we asked Ellis to tell us about some of the musical influences behind it, which include Alanis Morissette, Paul Simon, and Fatoumata Diawara. Read his thoughts on those and more below.
SAN FERMIN – FIVE INFLUENCES BEHIND ‘ARMS’
Paul Simon – “Hearts and Bones”
When I was writing Arms, I was thinking a lot about what makes a song timeless – something you could play on any instrument in any era and it would still hold up. So I went back to the music that was playing in my house when I was a kid, the songs that stuck with me over the years. My dad used to play “Hearts and Bones” in his painting studio all the time. It’s such a beautiful and devastating breakup song. You really feel the sweep of time and space, the wind blowing through the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It’s the kind of song you could only write after going through something really painful, and yet it’s all written by a third person narrator who is detached, even impassive, until his voice finally breaks on that heartbreaking turn, “you take two bodies and you twirl them into one / their hearts and their bones and they won’t come undone.” Paul always knows how to set you up, and then when to stick the knife in.
Alanis Morissette – Jagged Little Pill
Another album that was on in my parents’ studio all the time. Obviously “You Oughta Know” is the perfect breakup song. I went to the 30 year anniversary tour and it was unbelievable how acidic the anger and sarcasm still feels, so many years down the road. In “Hearts and Bones,” time is this great healer that smoothes everything over, but “You Oughta Know” feels like it was written in five minutes, a perfect little crystal of spite. It also has the all-timer line that encompasses that insane post-breakup recalibration: “Does she know how you told me you’d hold me until you died / But you’re still alive.” It makes you laugh while it makes you cry.
Paul Moody – By Your Side
I listened to this album nonstop last year, and it became the soundtrack for some of my most topsy-turvy months. Paul has a knack for inhabiting multiple personalities, writing from different perspectives, and over the course of a record they all come together to create this jarring but truthful portrait, like a Cubist painting. That’s how I felt at the time– a mashup of different versions of myself, with no sense of perspective. It was soothing to let Paul lead me through the disorienting spaces, with humor and deep empathy. A breakup is a fracture, but it can shine light in a lot of directions.
Paul is also a master of finding jokes in dark places, which I deeply admire. I still laugh when I hear that line in “Pop Star,” a song about wanting to sell out for streaming royalties: “I would join with you soulless bastards if only you would let me in.”
Wolf Alice – Blue Weekend
One of those rare gems with no skips. Their musical choices are always so smart, adventurous but intuitive. “Lipstick on the Glass” in particular sticks out– the verses are sung way up in her range, long and emotional, whereas the chorus has a whole different character, her voice dropping nearly an octave and the beat kicking in, a reversal of songwriting convention. “The Last Man On Earth” does that rare thing of combining spite with empathy; even though the lyrics are dismissive (“when your friends are talking, you hardly hear a word”), there’s a real feeling of hurt and anger, and maybe love underneath. I was aiming for that kind of conflict with some of the songs on Arms: like, I hate you right now, but obviously I love you too, because here I am writing this song.
Fatoumata Diawara – London Ko
I was lucky enough to work on this album, contributing a couple of choral arrangements. Musically it’s really different from the songs I write, and the lyrics are mostly in Bambara, which I don’t speak. But talking with Fatoumata about her writing process was deeply influential. I remember we were speaking about “Sete,” which is about the truly awful subject of female genital mutilation. But she wanted the song to feel happy, with a sense of hope. Her reasoning was something along the lines of: music should be joyful, it should move you and make you want to dance. Once you are in the music, then you can hear the lyrics, and understand the issues the song is bringing up. It was such a clear and honest way to address that trapdoor that music has into our psyche. Invite people in, be generous and joyful, but make sure your work is also speaking to something important, because having someone’s attention is a precious thing.
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San Fermin will be on tour starting at Boise’s Treefort Music Fest, and most dates are with Runnner. They’ll play NYC’s Racket on April 5 with Mutual Benefit. Here’s their full schedule:
3/15: Utrecht, NDL – Birds of Paradise Festival
3/21-22: Boise, ID – Treefort Music Fest
3/23: Salt Lake City, UT – The State Room
3/24: Denver, CO – Globe Hall
3/26: St. Paul, MN – Turf Club #
3/27: Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall #
3/28: Madison, WI – High Noon Saloon #
3/30: Nashville, TN – The Blue Room #
3/31: Columbus, OH – The Basement #
4/2: Washington, DC – Atlantis #
4/3: Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts #
4/4: Boston, MA – The Sinclair #
4/5: New York, NY – Racket *
4/30: San Diego, CA – Casbah #
5/1: Los Angeles, CA – Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever #
5/3: Pioneertown, CA – Pappy + Harriet’s #
5/4: San Francisco, CA – Independent #
5/7: Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge #
5/9: Vancouver, BC – Biltmore Cabaret #
5/10: Seattle, WA – Madame Lou’s #
6/11: Austin, TX – Parish
6/12: Dallas, TX – Deep Ellum Art Co.
6/14: Santa Fe, NM – TBD
# w/ Runnner
* w/ Mutual Benefit
