You Say I Romanticize was assembled over eighteen months, with Mondal and Schnug remaining committed to the DIY approach that has long defined Sweeping Promises. They refused to hand the record over to outside producers or studios, in favour of their at-home set-up that shaped every stage of the process, embracing the spontaneity and control that comes with making music on their own terms. This ethos also extended into their single “Cocoon”, with the band soldering hundreds of their own instrument cables. “Hand over the wires / Hand me those pliers / Hand me that string,” Mondal sings on the track, with their handmade cables strewn erratically around her in the music video like a spider in its web.
“We love the idea of the amateur,” Schnug says. “The number one most important quality of music that I look for is that the listener can imagine themselves being able to do it. It has to be close enough to the ground that you can see how human limbs did that.” Despite their reputations as a fiercely immediate live band, neither musician would describe the record as raw. “Our music is really constructed,” Schnug says.
Rather than chasing technical perfection, Sweeping Promises are interested in preserving the experience of people working together in a room. Over the past several records, Schnug has developed an increasingly idiosyncratic recording philosophy that rejects many of the conventions of modern rock production altogether, and is known for having recorded past albums with a single mic, right off the floor. “I’m not a big believer in computer beautification,” he says, “scooting notes or overly smoothing things. We just kind of let it rip.”
While the band still keeps the recording process minimal, You Say I Romanticize is one of their most thoughtfully meticulous records yet. Layers of guitars and ghostly vocal doubles create an atmosphere that feels dynamic. It’s for those tired of pristine fidelity and who would rather feel like they are in the studio with the band, hearing the recording unfold in the environment that surrounds them.
“I despise stereo and its concept in rock music. I’m interested in a magical room that is just one position and mono. I’m interested in recording resonances rather than direct sound. I think that’s political,” Schnug laughs. “Recording in a space with a two-to-three-second reverb time, also where no one has any interiority. Even headphones can cause someone to be too in their own head and can self-implode.” It’s a technique that works, as their house in the suburbs of Lawrence has become something of a hidden waypoint for touring musicians, with Schnug producing dozens of records for artists including Spread Joy, Optic Sink, and whoever else passes through town.
While many studios isolate musicians from one another during the recording process, Sweeping Promises lean into what engineers typically try to eliminate: bleed. Instruments spill into the vocal mics and the room’s echoes and vibrations become an integral part of the album. “Resonance in hidden chambers would be the tagline for this album,” Modal says. “We’re not sound purists, but I don’t want immaculate overdubbing; it speaks to my fractured sense of self, and I don’t need to replicate my voice in the exact same way on every take. I can’t even have both headphones on while I’m singing. I want to be in this room, react to it, and translate it into the mic.”
I begin to study the room the band is calling in from. Books line the wall behind Mondal and Schnug, an appropriate backdrop for a record shaped heavily by literature. While Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein inevitably looms over discussions of the album, it was another of her novels that directly inspired it. “I gravitated more towards The Last Man,” Mondal says. “It was equally prophetic.” Published in 1826 after the deaths of Shelley’s husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and several close friends, The Last Man imagines a world devastated by plague.
