The Kansas City-based rock band [SPACE] Jockey just released their debut album Modern Comforts on November 8. The 10-track album is something the band has previously described as “all killer, no filler; it’s also earnest, which feels punk rock nowadays.”
Prior to the album’s release, the band released tracks as singles including the title track, “Terminal Boredom,” “The Well,” “Treading Glass” and “Teach Me How To Sleep.”
The album itself was over a year in the making, allowing for the band to experiment and showcase who they are to the world. Creativity oozes from these tracks with a relenting determination.
[SPACE] Jockey consists of Chris Swartley, G.B. Coffey, Matt Tuttle, and Kevin Ingraham.
Modern Comforts personnel reads as follows:
“Chris Swartley: lead guitar, vocals on “Coda: Farewell”; Matt Tuttle: bass guitar; Kevin Ingraham: drums; G.B. Coffey: vocals, synth/samples, guitar.
All tracks produced & engineered by Bret Liber, except “Teach Me How To Sleep” engineered by Charlie Duda.
Recorded at Red Roof Productions.
Cover Artwork by Zach Yarrington”
Modern Comforts can be streamed digitally on your usual streaming platforms - and it is also available in a physical CD format via the band’s Bandcamp page. (Modern Comforts | [SPACE] Jockey)
[SPACE] Jockey will also be performing the album live in full on Fatally Live this Sunday. https://www.facebook.com/share/159MhUpGnp/?mibextid=9l3rBW
LP: Tell me about your album Modern Comforts. What was the songwriting/recording process like? How would you describe the album overall?
Coffey: Modern Comforts was written and recorded between July 2023 - September 2024. I don’t want to make it sound like it was effortless - it was anything but - however, it felt like the album gradually came together on its own over time. Of course, you have those blue sky sessions where you all talk about how the album could be this or that. Those are important conversations to have, but eventually the album tells you what it wants to be.
It seems like the best songs always rise to the top, or even write themselves. Again, I don’t want to downplay the amount of work we put into these songs. There were periods when nothing stuck to the wall. The songs we cut - I don’t even remember having conversations about cutting them. I’m sure there were. There had to have been. I’m often the one who turns down new songs when I think they’re not working, and it’s usually because I can’t find a way in vocally that excites me. Maybe that’s due to a lack of imagination on my part. I like to joke how we could’ve written two more albums with the songs we didn’t follow through on. And they would probably be good records! They just wouldn’t be good [SPACE] Jockey records. Don’t ask us what that means. We still don’t know what does and doesn’t qualify as a [SJ] song. We know it when we feel it.
All but one of the songs - “Teach Me How to Sleep” - were recorded with Bret Liber at Red Roof Productions; he’s a magician and talented musician in his own right. He has a very no-nonsense approach to recording. We’d practiced and demoed the wheels off the songs by the time we got to the studio, so there was almost no time spent experimenting or finessing there. We all had a very nuts-and-bolts, journeyman's approach to recording, and Bret was good at gently teasing the best performances out of us. Poor Bret, he was very patient with me and the exact kind of person you want coaching you in your ear. Sometimes “let’s try that again” is the best note someone can give you, really.
LP: Let’s break down the album track by track. Anything regarding challenges behind the scenes; what made you want to write each track; how you decided on the flow of each track?
Chris: “The Hanged Man Part I”: After we wrote our penultimate track, we decided it would be rad to have a recurring theme throughout the album of “the hanged man”. Thus, we took Matt’s sexy bass riff and built an intro around it. I tried to keep the guitar work minimal and experimental, which I think helps lull the listener into a false sense of…ahem…comfort before the album really kicks in. And, you know, the bass and vocal just really needed to shine on this one.
“Modern Comforts”: This song started as two separate song ideas on the guitar, and somewhere along the way one of us had the good sense to combine them. In a way, this juxtaposition became a staple of our sound, going from fast and heavy to slow and melodic. Big inspiration from early Smashing Pumpkins on this one.
“Terminal Boredom”: This song began with a specific intention to emulate one of my favorite guitar albums of all time - Box Car Racer’s self-titled (and only) LP. As such, it is very rooted in a post hardcore sound. I think every band member is at their best on this song, and the bridge is a highlight of the album for me.
“The Well”: Coffey had the lyrics and melody of this song in his head for a long time, and one day there was just this magical little outpouring of creativity where we somehow wrote the guitar part together through nothing but a look, a wink, and a few words. It just kind of wrote itself, in a way. We were struggling with the bridge for quite awhile, but once I showed the guys the heavy riff you hear there now, I think we all pretty much knew immediately that was it.
“Treading Glass”: This is the oldest [SPACE] Jockey song to make the album, and as such it’s probably the most raw and most straightforward. I love how nasty the verses are. As a massive blink-182 fan, I’m glad we managed to sneak in one song that has a proper guitar riff.
“Teach Me How To Sleep”: This was the first song we wrote fully together as a four piece, and in a lot of ways I think it’s our best song. It has elements of everything we love and everything that makes us who we are. It has a very dreamlike quality to it.
“Constance”: This was the only song written during a several month-long period of mental/creative fatigue we felt as a band to end up making the album. Listening to it now, I find that endlessly amusing because I think in a lot of ways we are at our creative best on this song. I love the lyrics, it’s super fun to play, and that outro goes hard.
“Paruresis”: This was the last song written for the album, and probably the heaviest song we’ve ever written. Coffey wrote the guitar for this one, but I’m more than happy to let everyone think I did. The bridge as it exists now is a bit of a deconstruction of its original version, and we had a lot of fun playing with how best to start and end the song.
“The Hanged Man Part II”: Coffey convinced me to experiment with different tunings, so I did a google search on shoegaze guitar tunings and an hour or so later found myself deep down a Reddit rabbit hole of ethereal tunings. I played with quite a few until I landed on the one in the song, but once I found it I wrote the entire guitar part in like ten minutes. It just poured out of me. I sent it to Coffey and he knew immediately we were onto something, so he took the various parts I had written and sequenced them in a way that suited the vocal ideas he had. I truly think this song is our masterpiece, and I hope it’s as enjoyable to listen to as it was to write.
“Coda: Farewell”: Originally this song was meant to be part of “the hanged man” series, but we ended up deciding it fit better as its own thing; a sort of epilogue - or Coda - to the album. It’s the only song I do vocals on, and we put it at the very end. You’re welcome. Lyrically, the song is about growing apart from someone you had once been so close with, and wondering what, if any, the point of it all was, or if you’ll ever see them again - in this life or another.
LP: What’s next for you as a band?
Kevin: Right now, we are still in the throes of releasing an album and focusing on that, lining up shows to showcase it, and just enjoying finishing something we are proud of. It’s the end of a chapter which is also a little bittersweet.
What’s next: some of us are definitely starting to feel the creative itch again. We will get back to writing new material. I’m sure it will have some familiarity, but we definitely want to explore some new areas and see where we can go as musicians. Onward and upward, as they say.
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