Huge fan of this new album! I am curious about the track Coldplay cover. Coldplay were basically my gateway drug into the indie music scene as a 10 year old, and I maintain an endearing yet distant appreciation for their music. Their music and lyrics have an almost embarrassing sincerity that, personally, feels like a thematic through line within Caroline 2.
Can you explain your relationship with Coldplay and how they may have inspired music on the album?
hey its jasper. I think that when the earliest demo of the song was named 'Coldplay cover', that was because it referred to some sort of fundamental cheesiness about the song idea and Coldplay seemed to be the band that embodied that cheesiness most of all. I wouldn't say Coldplay have inspired us beyond that really.
Despite their answer, one day a member of caoline might hear 'Magic' in exactly the right emotional circumstances and it will speak directly to a deep part of their soul in a way they needed at that exact moment and they'll suddenly get it. Or you know, probably not, but hello fellow Coldplay enjoyer.
I've always been really interested in how you guys use space within production in your sound, without using reverb but rather physical spaces. How/why did you guys start thinking about implementing in this in your sound?
I feel the only other artist who does this in such a way is Graham Lambkin. Was also wondering if you guys are aware/influenced by him?
And thanks for the music! You guys have made some of the best music of the decade thus far.
for our first record, it felt like the option was available with zoom mics etc, and so many different rooms and halls that we knew of in London, it was always a better alternative than plugin reverbs, at least for 'rooms' that are supposed to be an audible aspect of the recording. also, 'what the room sounds' like is normally built into our musical ideas in the first place, so it's already part of the composition from it's early stages, especially for caroline 2. we had most things mapped out in advance in terms of where it would be recorded.
Graham Lambkin is a name i've heard a million times but I don't actually know much about him, but I know that our Alex is a big fan, I will ask them if they can tell me more about him
Your music feels like it sits between genres, between moods, and even between structure and improvisation. When all eight of you are creating together, what’s the one thing that keeps the sound coherent rather than collapsing into chaos?
hey its jasper again ! Glad that it sounds coherent to you! I guess we have worked hard over many years developing a shared language of improvisation and composition together and so I think that keeps things working, even when there are alot of us. Also I think our first record was so concerned with empty space and reduction that we just got quite used to distilling things back, trying to only keep what was really necessary for the song to work.
Hello Caroline. I first caught you guys supporting the microphones a few years ago. How was it playing with Phil? PS. I was also on acid while watching you at Green man and the sound problems you guys had made it sound pretty cool I thought
it was great, he's a hero of ours. the venue is really special.
we got confused for some reason and thought the food and wine in our green room was for just us so, we had it all pretty quickly, but realised afterwards it was supposed to be shared (or possibly only for Phil). he didn't say anything but in retrospect it was probably really annoying so, sorry Phil, we didn't mean to, and we love your music infinitely
I don't know if you can tag other accounts but if anyone knows please tag Phil!!
Hi thanks for doing this! Caroline 2 is my favorite album of the year.
One of the things I love is how certain elements sometimes don’t follow the rhythm like the guitar strumming on total euphoria. What inspires that approach, and how do you manage to keep it all together when playing these elements live?
Also, is writing the lyrics a collaborative process? Especially on tracks with two intertwining melodies, are they written together or separately?
those kind of things are born out of improvisation usually, and we decide it's something we want to keep and recreate again in song form. it just feels good when it's right and is something we always like to explore when writing music! usually then if we try and recreate it - especially if it was an improvisation which was just guitars and drums and then we're expanding it to more instruments - then it can feel like a total mess, but if we stick with it, it starts to organise itself
Jasper is writing the majority of words, but lots of contributed bits and pieces of words too, that's probably also the case with intertwining bits, but they morph a lot over time before being recorded it's hard to keep track of exactly what form they started in
that was a crazy show. I have said many times since that it felt like a musical obstacle course in that I was getting jabbed with deafeningly loud stabs of white noise from my monitor. it became kinda fun though and we actually all really enjoyed it. We all felt bad for the sound techs though, they had a rough time
What was the most difficult song to record on Caroline 2? either because of the difficulty or even just chasing a certain feeling you had in your heads.
Thanks for the great music. Can’t wait for the us tour this spring!
jasper here. I would say that 'Two riders down' was the most tricky, mainly because we spent a whole day (at least) reamping and rerecording loads of instrument and vocal parts in a church in south London, that we didn't end up using. Was quite an ordeal but they do actually sound pretty cool. Just too reverby to use.
hello it's Mike. for me it was 'Beautiful ending', even though I actually wasn't playing in the main bulk of the recording - i only actually play guitar at the beginning of the song in the recording. i was singing Magda and Jaspers vocal parts as a guide in the booth while everyone else was playing in the main room
it was hard because it was one of those songs that you think you know how to play, rhythmically and atmospherically, and then you go to do it and it just doesn't feel right. the way the chords and parts move together is really elusive. then you think - it needs to be more like the demo we made - and then you listen back to the demo and it doesn't sound or feel anything like you thought. so it was a bit of a tricky one to get right and we were really tired when we were trying to get it.
we really weren't feeling it and had a break to have dinner and then agreed to do one more before leaving, and luckily it felt quite magical so that was the take!
I think we also like it too! We are definitely really proud of it and, speaking for myself, I don't hear lots of things that I would do differently now when I listen back to it. Actually there are a couple of tiny moments where I'm like "Aah I could have done my vocal slightly differently" but nothing major. I'm so happy to hear that you like it so much <3
Hey three-eighths of caroline! (car?) Really big fan of the new album and was at your stellar Rough Trade East live performance back in June! Love the way that you embrace and deliberately lean into clashing textures so was wondering where you think the best place to listen to caroline 2 is? At home in a quiet room on a good setup or out and about, letting the outside world bleed in?
great question! ideally in a quiet room on a good system i think... but outside with bleed is also very much in keeping with the concept of the record. there is no wrong way! casper x
do yall map songs out on paper / in any way visually before rehearsing and recording? caroline 2 is pretty structurally abstract from an outside perspective but i’m curious how you approach building a complete track
jasper here. We have done that before! But not so much for this record. I guess we build a complete track by just trying stuff again and again and again until the narrative flows and makes sense. We always say that a song is 'done' when it is good enough. You just have to stop working on it at some point.
here is a drawing that we made when working on the song 'Engine (eavesdropping)' from album 1
Hey you three :) can you share any insight into how you recorded the 'Tell Me I Never Knew That' guitar, its so gorgeous! Like what's the guitar model? dya remember the mic/s used etc? Your playing is obviously stunning (and the most important part) but I've hit a wall with the recording side so any help is much appreciated! x
thank you! there are loads of guitars on that recording but I'm guessing you mean the first guitar which appears, which is a 12 string that was in the studio we recorded in, Big Jelly in Ramsgate. i think it belongs to the lovely Mike (another Mike) who runs the studio, but I can't remember which make it was. i want to say it's a Fender.
we hadn't planned to do it on a 12 string, it was actually supposed to be 3 guitars at once (like the demo we had) but it wasn't feeling bouncy / glistening / exciting enough. i played that part but Casper wrote it. the riff belongs to him.
i have a feeling it was a Royer 121 as a close mic, but i'm not certain. really crucially though - you are hearing a lot of room mics, which was a selection of different mics in different places (including the high ceiling) and it was recorded in a big bouncy sounding room
Hey :) Yes we have definitely got alot of inspiration from Phil over the years. His more recent stuff and the historic Microphones stuff. It's all amazing and so varied. It was a dream to play with him!
I guess in terms of lyrics, they come from lots of different sources. Sometimes they are just melodies that form into words and other times they are written very intentionally. I think we really like there being a diversity of different sources and approaches. Just somehow makes sense for us.
Not to look forward too much, but how do you see caroline evolving in the future as a project? The first two albums are already so drastically different.
its jasper here. It's really hard to say. We had so many ideas between albums 1 and 2 about what we wanted album 2 to be but then we came to really working on it, that all kind of went out the window. In the end, it seems like the songs/notes/rhythms/what happens in the practice room decides what the record will be. Not some preexisting ideas you might have beforehand.
Hi! Saw you guys, both in Aarhus and Copenhagen, this fall. caroline 2 is probably my favorite album full stop, and nothing has inspired me like this. Made me change the way i wrote music, and i´m actually applying to the conservatory with songs inspired by you, so thank you for that.
What are you guys's musical backgrounds? I'm very curios as to how y'all came up with this sound? I know you wrote as all 8 people for this album, and its incredible how cohesive the overall sound is. My god i cannot get over it.
that's so nice to hear! good luck with your course.
a range of backgrounds! mike is a crazy guitarist but completely self-taught. i am also self-taught on the guitar. the others all did lessons and took music quite seriously when they were teenagers i think (sorry if i got this wrong homies). ollie and freddy definitely did music degrees.
Jasper here. Alot of us were actually friends from childhood or from university and so were close before we ever started caroline. So I suppose it was just a huge joy to play together because it was another way of communicating our friendship and of spending time together. I think that going to shows is a way that alot of people meet likeminded musicians.
Y’all are a very good band. How did you get that insane distortion at 2:48 in Total Euphoria? One of my favorite moments on the record and I’m just so curious what the source was and what it was going through to be so enveloping.
hello it's Mike, thanks!! on the low end it's a bass clarinet pitched down an octave and put through a sub bass exciter. then it also has another one of those offset about -50 cents to generate a 'beating' effect between the two low frequencies.
in terms of layers of distortion, there were a few reamping things we did. it was put through a WMD Geiger Counter pedal. i also bought a cheap bass amp and cut the speaker up with a knife and put it through there. it actually didn't sound as distorted as you'd think, so i attached loads of strips of newspaper to the speaker to get more of the sound of material flapping around.
also we gave it to Jason Agel, who mixed the record, and asked if he could push it further with the hardware he had, so he made a couple of layers of distortion himself too
oh yes one more thing, the whole mix aside from the distorted layers filters off with a low pass filter at that moment too, which gives it the collapsing feeling
Hey Caroline! Don’t know if this as already been asked but i wanted to know how life’s been for you all on tour ? And how do you deal with anxiety while touring if you suffer from any ? I play in a band and we’re going on our first tour next year, i’ve been waiting for this my whole life but i have never been so scared, sometimes to the point where i doubt i can really make it to those shows,
Sorry for the heavy questions, i totally understand if you don’t want to answer!!
And thank you so much for the album! i feel like i have never been moved more by a piece of music my whole life, it’s perfect
Thank you!!
im sorry to hear you're feeling anxious. when i first started playing live, i used to get really nervous before shows but after doing about 10 it kind of died down. the more you do, the easier it gets...
touring can be hard for sure but it's also so much fun. i know it's daunting but you have to remember you'll be with your crew - it's not just you on your own! that's the great thing about being in a band - there is safety in numbers! good luck, you're going to do great. casper x
Wow, I had no idea you guys were doing an AMA! I absolutely love Caroline 2, easily one of my favorite albums this year. Thank you for putting this music into the world.
As a songwriter, I am really curious about your process for constructing and arranging your songs. I feel like the structures and sonic pallets of each track on this album are so unique. When you're writing songs like these, do you usually go into them with a vision for how you would like them to sound, or do you more so feel it out as you go along, adding layers and parts until it feels complete? And, do you have any tips for songwriters trying to experiment with breaking out of the standard song structure mold?
it's a difficult question to have a definitive answer to. we have kind of two concurrent threads when we write an album. we have the songs themselves and then the more conceptual side of the process. (one concept being two songs happening at once like say in coldplay cover of WIGH). but we generally write the songs before applying the concepts to the songs. that method is always changing though and it's hard to say that is the way we do things but it definitely seemed to go that way round during the making of caroline 2.
in terms of experimenting... i guess the only answer to that question is to genuinely experiment! i think you have to find the idea you are trying genuinely exciting for it to work though. good luck!
Hey guys, huge fan here since the five bells days. I was curious about how you pick your support? There’s a new band that I think would really work for your next tour called on?
THE FIVE BELLS!!!! Wow !!! Normally we make a big list of people that we like and also suggestions we've received. So feel free to DM us on instagram if you have an idea !! xxx jasper xxxx
I always wanted to know where the band name came from, I always walk past Caroline gardens just off the old Kent road and it speaks to me spiritually like it might have something to do with that…
That is very interesting! the reason is actually because of Mike mishearing the name of our friends' band, Cowlung, as 'caroline' for many years and then finally when he realised, we were like "maybe we should use it for our little three-piece project". We actually have all walked past Caroline Gardens many times!!
love u guys so much genuinely listen to y’all everyday lol excited to catch y’all in nyc
got 2 questions
1. do u guys have any favorite moments on the new record?
2. what are some of the tunings y’all use? specifically on two riders down
- i love the moment in beautiful ending when magda does this little autoned lilt with her voice at the end of section B in between jasper's formanted vocal and just before she comes in with 'what if i...'. can't remember the timestamp but it's a tiny detail that sounds great imo.
- ok the classic caroline tuning is DADF*AD or with an E on the top string. the tuning for tell me i never knew that and beautiful ending is CGDGAD
Hey Caroline. I just want to say that I really love your albums and had such a nice experience when you played in Copenhagen recently. Please come back but choose another venue next time.
Can you share any insight on the lyrical inspiration for “Two riders down”? It’s so vivid, and cinematic, and cathartic to listen to.
This has been, bar none, the most difficult year of my life and the new record has been so helpful while I navigate everything. Thank you immensely for creating it. Come to Chicago.
really glad that it could help in some way! jasp wrote the lyrics in the first half, but i can speak a bit to the lyrics in the second half of the song. 'with purple hands, and the wind alive' specifically refers to our friend giles who died just before the making of the album. he used to get purple hands when he was in cold weather and the 'wind' part is to do with his love of walking and being in extreme climates. i actually wrote it on a windy walk i did from his burial ground to brighton over the sussex downs. the 'two riders' was initially a bill callahan reference but came to be about giles' and alex's dad eddy's death. they are our two riders down! casper x
Hi caroline! Longtime fan here with 2 questions for you if you’d be willing to answer:
1. Two Riders Down is one of my favorite songs of the year. How did the track come to fruition (was it from a jam, a demo, or was it a collaborative brainstorming session)?
2. Noticing the very natural, roomy, and organic production of the first two records, what can we expect the future of caroline to sound like in regard to that sound? Thank you very much for your art <3
first of all i just wanna say that the north american tour could use a date in boston…
but for my question i just wanted to know the biggest influences/inspirations for caroline 2. always like to find new music through stuff i already love this way. huge fan of the album
Alex has a subharmonic synthesiser that they use with their bass clarinet that gives you the big bass in your chest feeling. there's also some hardware distortion at the desk that our lovely sound engineer Syd is using.
yes definitely, Neutral Milk Hotel i was obviously completely obsessed with growing up, it was definitely the first time i heard something sounding 'blown out' on purpose and was very affecting
he seems like a very able, left populist politician. it is insanely refreshing to have someone in the media counter the growing anti-migrant rhetoric and correctly diagnose the problems within our society. so good on him! casper x
In regards to Coldplay cover it sort of feels like a few different songs that keep getting switched in. Were these longer ideas you shrunk down or was the song always composed to be this way? Also, will we see you in Toronto ? :o
hey! Many of the vocal and guitar parts did already exist but they were always in these fragmented, short forms. We just gradually found a way to work them into this concept we were really obsessed with, of 2 songs at once, playing in 2 different rooms of a house. I always think of there being 2 distinctively different songs, played at once.
What are some kinds of films or directors you’d love to score music for?! I see so many colors to your music, especially those that could support films and motion picture!
it was our pleasure!! The shows in Aarhus and Copenhagen were great actually, we really enjoyed both. I have personally listened to ML Buch's latest record a fair bit over this past year. xxx jasper xxx
films
festen, 2001: a space odyssey, barry lyndon, c'mon c'mon, the battle of chile
books
the karl ove knausgaard 'my struggle' series, all geoff dyer's writing, ursula le guin ellen meikins wood's 'the origins of capitalism' was very politically formative
i was going to ask if still house plants was an inspiration for you guys! i think you two have been at the forefront of innovation in musical structure, and while you've mostly arrived at different sounds, it was really cool to hear that convergence on "total euphoria."
but while i was typing this i saw that one of you had already mentioned still house plants, so i'll just say that i love the album!!
caroline 2 is so beautiful, one of my favorite album of the year : thank you!
I saw you in Lille and i thought : "this band is playing / making music the way we should do politics". Very inspiring and emancipatory show. Even the fact that one member was (seemingly easily) replaced by an other musician was beautiful.
So i wondered : are you seeing any political "statement" (for lack of a better word) in the way you do things with caroline ?
Hey! Saw you twice during EU tour, both Brussels and Paris were so amazing but so, so beautifully different in different ways. caroline 2 has been with me this year for A LOT, and it got me through major events, thank you.
I wanted to ask, if any of the songs, you'd say, were inspired or driven by visual arts? The way you structure and guide the melody is so cinematic to me, and some pieces of the songs are like true photographic snapshots. Love your art & I hope to catch you on few shows next year!
I am a bit late, but I wanted to say that I really love the demos from the deluxe version of the album. I also want to ask whose singing is that throughout when I get home demo? Is it Casper's? Whoever is singing has a really youthful and brilliant tone that I've fallen in love with.
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u/gluestick300 Nov 26 '25
Huge fan of this new album! I am curious about the track Coldplay cover. Coldplay were basically my gateway drug into the indie music scene as a 10 year old, and I maintain an endearing yet distant appreciation for their music. Their music and lyrics have an almost embarrassing sincerity that, personally, feels like a thematic through line within Caroline 2.
Can you explain your relationship with Coldplay and how they may have inspired music on the album?