Helicopter Leaves offers a track-by-track breakdown of new album Sabrina Nickels
Today, Helicopter Leaves—the solo project of Beach Bunny’s Anthony Vaccaro—release their sophomore album Sabrina Nickels via Noyes Records. The album is named after a childhood family friend who died of cancer, and who Vaccaro said “changed my life by taking me to shows as a child.” The title is a tribute to that late friend, and fittingly, the album is earnest, bittersweet, but hopeful amid dreamy, albeit crunchy guitar rock anthems that nod to the likes of Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement, each of whom Vaccaro cites as major influences on his music.
To celebrate the release of the album, Vaccaro offered track-by-track commentary on all eleven tracks on the new album. Among the many topics he touches upon are the album’s titular inspiration, which bands left the biggest impression on him, why you shouldn’t put up walls, and Frank Lloyd Wright. He had a lot to say, making the process of diving into this infectious and affecting album even richer.
Read Vaccaro’s track-by-track commentary and give Helicopter Leaves‘ Sabrina Nickels a listen.
“It Never Really Did”
Most times in my life when “inspiration” hits me, it is like a ton of bricks falling all over me. What I mean by that is I do not do anything half-assed—sounds like a gift, it is more a curse for my personal life. Yes, obsession is a magical thing to have when it comes to making art, but to ride the line of that said obsession taking full control of my life is maybe something I need to work on. For instance, when I was going through old demos to attempt to brainstorm how I would go about making a new Helicopter LP, “It Never Really Did” would constantly jump out as the spark that lit the whole tree on fire. Like almost any song I write they come from absolutely nowhere. For many years I struggled with over-complicating arguments and melodies in my music. The idea of really sharing only a few chords that borrow from part to part was an astonishing feat on my end. This being the album opener is fully an intended choice. Sadly in this day and age no one has time, or should I say attention, for music. Starting out without a riff, without a moment to realize what is even happening the track begins. I really love the idea of making songs about journeys in some capacity. Most of the lines in all of my music are from conversations I write in my phone, notebook, receipt, anything. Like this one about destructive relationships never working even though we sometimes like to lie to ourselves about what is really going on. The bridges in my songs are how the Beatles would do them. An almost hard turn off the highway in the music, or a moment to catch the listener off guard to then reel them back to the chorus. The motif of “stop lying” being sung over and over again is me putting my inside thoughts outside. Talking to myself is something I do all day long, I am a ruminator and a proud one at that! “It Never Really Did” for me is one of my favorite songs from Sabrina Nickels and I know most people might not listen past this song so I thought I would give my art a fighting chance and make it the album opener.
“Feeling Nothing Is Worse”
When going about tracklisting the second song can almost be more important than the first. Once you’re in the door, how do you get people to not leave? When it came to writing this song I had the chorus melody first and I knew how I wanted to end it. Sometimes words come first, sometimes music, sometimes the music informs the words and vice versa. “Feeling Nothing Is Worse” is a song about managing passion. I am someone who really does everything on 11, and that comes with some side effects. This song really is a proud moment for me in my creative journey and is one of my most vulnerable ones yet. Going into how people can make you feel so exiled and empty. Or how you can only cope with existence by pulling away. This is a song of growth and me trying to air out all my bad coping skills, and find a life more full even if that means having to deal with hardships head on. The more you push under the rug, and bury deep down and bigger the explosion is. The overarching theme of silence being the most deafening of all. I miss my friends who left us too soon, love each other, we are all equal.
“Sorry From Now On”
It can be hard to always feel like you’re the problem all the time. I struggle with self blame a lot, and try to not point the finger outwards. It is like the AA saying, “Are you an asshole or are all your neighbors the asshole?” Everyone goes about that question differently. “Sorry From Now On” is a song that is kind of hard for me to listen to. I want to say sorry to everyone I have ever hurt even if they do not want to say sorry to me or hear me apologize. People always cling on to the words you do not remember saying I have found. This huge mystery of what-ifs, and could have been, really is a huge waste of time. What’s done is done, and nothing can change the past. From these moments forward you can be your best person, and reset how you go about living. Life is cycles like parts of a song, seasons changing, the moon waxing and waning. We all make mistakes and are not perfect. Having art and expression has saved my life more times than I will ever be able to realize. To be able to share said art, and have even one person relate is what it is all about.
“Moreoff More Off Than On”
This being the lead single on the album was a conscious choice. I wanted to present Sabrina Nickels as a new era for the project. To show how this is going to be a mature, hi-fi, more intentional release. Starting a song on a riff is not quite new for me but it being a Mini Moog is something I have never done. Making the album with my friend Sean O’Keefe showed me new horizons of production. I had never really gotten into keyboards before working with Sean. Sometimes to make a part better you should layer it with an instrument that is not a guitar. That pill was a hard one for me to swallow!! I die by the sword of Indie Rock, and in my head keyboards are a no go. But like anything in life, things change. “Moreoff More Off Than On” is one of my favorite songs off the album. The chanted ending is a direct reference to the ferryman in Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. The ferryman taught me the lesson to listen and not talk so much. You learn more by observation than you realize.
“Falling Water (Before You)”
I am not going to lie here about this song. I could not replicate the sound of the riff from my demo into the final studio version. Sometimes that is how music works, moments being captured can not be re-captured no matter how thought out, precise or engineered. Just not a real way to replicate that lighting in a bottle moment. So instead of being torn up and bothered by that I used it as an element to the overall message of the song. The chorus being, “you give them names so you can find them in the dark your friends are waiting..waiting for you”. When you can not see your imagination runs wild. When the lights go out in my home, or in a restroom, or giving my partner a kiss in the middle of the night. These moments are so unnatural to the human brain, but always grant new perspectives. So this riff being ‘different’ does not mean it is wrong, but the chance for a new perspective and emotion I would have not found prior. Fallingwater is a home Frank Lloyd Wright designed almost a hundred years ago. As a Chicagoan, people obsess over him (not me). The home is mainly built of a newly standardized material at the time which was plywood. This song is a play on how at that time it was quite cutting edge, and unique to create a structure that included plywood but by today’s standards it is quite normal and ununique. That what now is “in” one day will be as common as plastic cups in people’s cupboards.
“I Should Have Been Listening”
Most music that changed my life broke the mold. The Velvet Underground, Hüsker Dü, Kaoru Abe, Dinosaur Jr., Pavement, etc. Ending the A side of the LP with an acoustic intro song is something I planned. It sort of rounds out the first half of the album and shows you that I am not fully treading new ground, but more refining the ground I have walked on. This song does not need a team of scholars to decipher. Being raised in a family full of loud-mouthed people I have picked up that horrendous trait. If you made it this far you can see why the writing goes on forever. “I Should Have Been Listening” or “I Shoulda Been Listening” is maybe the oldest written song on this album. I had the demo for this one made many years ago, and a friend of mine was always fond of it so I thought I would have a go at re-recording it for the LP. The bridge of this song follows suit with a very classic songwriting idea of it coming out of left field. I have always had fun with doing the unexpected not in a gotcha way but more just to take the listener out to reintroduce the chorus again to make it more impactful.
“NUMBER GIRL”
An ode to one of my favorite bands, Number Girl. When you’re a kid almost everything is new and exciting. Then you are a teenager and think everything sucks since that is what makes you ‘cool’. Then you’re an adult and nothing really is a new experience or should I say new experiences are harder to come by. Hearing the Ramones as a child changed my brain chemistry. Hearing them as a 20 something year old might not have. Some bands you need to be an adult to get, and Number Girl was that band for me. I have been obsessed with their album School Girl Distortional Addict for a few years now. This song is not my most lyrically dense. It is somewhat ‘riff’ heavy, and that is something I venture into sometimes but I find redundant in my art. The final few lines are my attempt to summarize Harry Crews’ novel A Feast of Snakes. Sometimes art leaves you with such an impact that you have to share it to the world. I love making love letters to bands, and people that move me. This album being called Sabrina Nickels is the name of a friend who passed away from cancer that changed my life forever.
“Show Me All Your Landscape Paintings”
To continue the motif of love letters to friends. My grandparents loved them, and many of my close people have landscape paintings in their homes. One friend in particular who made all the videos for my last album, Get Stuck In has a whole room in his home covered in them from floor to ceiling. Sometimes smells emit memories, and feelings from the past or present. For me when I came up with the progression to this tune it made me feel like I was in that room looking at the covered walls. The chorus is a line my father told me once and it stuck with me. In life we only know our parents (if we are lucky to have them in our lives… unlucky to some as well) as adults. To fathom that everyone’s mom or dad at a time was also a baby or a confused teenager like we were changes our perspective a bit. People no matter who sometimes do not let you “in.” I miss my friends all the time even if I see them often. It is just part of the human condition to long, and yearn for connection and love. Landscape paintings remind me of being young, my long gone grandpa reading the TV guide on a week night, and doing mushrooms for the first time as a teenager. Without the past we would not be where we are in the present.
“Dreaming About Everyone But You”
Pavement is a band that turned the railroad switch in my life. I see a life where I never got into indie rock, or noisy guitar. Pavement was a turning point. The song ‘Box Elder’ was the catalyst for that change in my life. The 7-inch Slay Tracks: 1933–1969 was a five song release that came out in 1989. “Box Elder” was the second song on that EP. It contains a lyric, “I’ve got a lot of good things coming my way / And I’m afraid to say that you’re not one of them.” “Dreaming About Everyone But You” is a play on that kind of feeling. When you are with someone and you realize just how bad it is not working out for you. I’ve been on both ends of that feeling many times in my life. The intro riff was something that I added after Sean and I went into to cut the album. In the demo it just starts with the lyrics, and I felt this song needed a breather and some time to marinate before my devastation of people takes over. Please do not take me for a bad guy, I am being accountable and honest. They say, sing about what you are too afraid to say out loud. This song is that saying incarnate. Feedback over the bridge was a necessity for me. Helicopter Leaves live is more upbeat, noisy, and a reinterpretation of the recorded material. I always thought bands live, and bands on record should differ. I remember having to record the feedback in a tiny vocal booth so that no noise would bleed from the coach house where I mainly tracked the album into the neighboring homes.
“What’s One More Place?”
I chose this to be the second single from the LP to show yet another change in direction for the release. “What’s One More Place?” might be the fastest song I have ever written for Helicopter Leaves. It sort of dips the toe into the shoegaze realm. Most of my teenage years were playing shoegaze music back when no one wanted to hear that. Today it has had a massive resurgence. I tried to make a more “heavy” tune with this song. Having it at the end of the record was intentional in the sense that I want the true listeners to make it here. Kind of how Sun Ra would start a record with freak-out jazz riffy noise to then get into more trad bebop based songs. You sort of get the bottom of someone fast by testing their patience. I have found all my friends in life through the arts, and creating. You are in these similar bubbles because the same albums changed your life, or your uncle also liked to drink too much. We love to relate and this song is about that. Every pre-chorus changes from you, I, and then finally we being the leading words. I have had the privilege to see a lot more things than most people I am around. “What’s One More Place?” is me reflecting on that chance, and privilege and trying to grow and share through experience. The chorus line, “I see clocks in my dreams/The weight of light is listening” came to me faster than any lyric I had ever written in my life. Call it chance, call it purpose, call it whatever you want.
“Self-Reliance”
The only song on the album that is in drop C which is two whole steps down from any other guitar on the record. The term “Self-Reliance” comes from my grandparents always saying that. It seemed to be this post WW2 slogan that Americans would point to in times of trouble. No one to depend on but oneself, very individualistic. I find that to hold truth for me in my life. When the shit hits the fan only you can count on yourself. I try to surround myself with people I can also count on. Like the chorus repeats, “I know he loves me, He just doesn’t like me” is something I have heard so many people say about their elders. Every generation needs to break past toxic habits, and this song ventures into that realm. I am my father’s son but I am not my father, I am accepting as he was but also I am more vulnerable than that whole latchkey kid generation was capable of being. Throughout this whole track-by-track commentary I had to be as vulnerable as possible. Putting up walls does you nothing but harm, but on the flip side wearing your heart on your sleeve will get you killed. “Self-Reliance” closes my album and I would not want it any other way.
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