The Pith Journal

After more than a decade apart, what called you back to The Swell Season?

GLEN: I suppose the answer to that is really friendship and getting to see Mar again.

What did time apart teach you about your partnership, creatively or personally?

MARKÉTA: It taught me about the kind of energy each of us carries in our own right, and why it works so well to combine them. It taught me that pursuing our own creative paths is essential for us both, but we will always be more together than we are apart.

Did coming back together feel like picking up where you left off or did it feel like meeting again for the first time?

MARKÉTA: For me it felt like both. Creatively speaking, I felt like we were picking up where we left off, using the same language, the same creative flow, throwing ideas between us, responding to one another musically, challenging each other lyrically, and encouraging each other to work on and finish the ideas that resonated with us.But on a personal level, it was perhaps somewhat different.

Is there a song of yours that changed meaning for you over time, like something you didn’t fully understand until years after writing it?

GLEN: I guess they all do, because we're constantly singing from the perspective we're standing in. And so they all change, all the time. And yet the words… well, the words actually sometimes change too. Sometimes you write a lyric and you’re just kind of never quite satisfied with it when you wrote it.

What felt different about making this new album compared to your earlier work together?

MARKÉTA: It felt like we came together as two equals this time. We also had our families around us, which I found very grounding and supportive. My husband, Mio, was working on the project with us as the engineer and producer, and we had our dear friends join us in the studio, so it really felt like a family gathering in the larger sense, bringing a profound comfort and ease to the process.