From Indian Lakes Biography: Head Void May 15th, 2024
From Indian Lakes is excited to announce the new album Head Void, out May 15th. Head Void is the first new music from FIL in over half a decade, and if lead single “The Flow” is anything to go by, it was well worth the wait. The song is intoxicating in its immediacy, as if drawing one into an intense conversation midstream. A galloping drum groove pulls the listener along until a wave of synths and guitars crashes overhead and sweeps them fully away in an inescapable grasp. “It is about being stuck in a flow that’s unhealthy,” shares FIL mastermind Joe Vann, “one you need the help of your loved ones to pull you out of.” Head Void was recorded at Vann’s newly finished home studio in California’s central valley just outside Yosemite National Park, and was mastered by Will Yip.
While FIL has remained dormant for the better part of a decade, the driving force behind it has not. In the intervening years, Vann has kept busy by releasing music under the Joe Vann moniker, a way to separate the full band live show and multilayered recordings of FIL from the stripped back music and performances he has been focused on for the past several years. The move wasn’t so much planned as it was a happy accident. After the release of Dimly Lit LP and subsequent touring, Vann was planning on getting right to the next record, but the songs ended up going in a different direction. “They felt like they didn’t want to be overly complicated,” shares Vann, “and it just felt like a good time to try something else.”
So Vann decided he’d put FIL on ice for a bit, and release the new material under his own name. It ended up being a prudent decision for many reasons, the impending COVID lockdown being an unforeseen but pivotal one. “Once it was time to put out music and tour, so many bands were canceling shows, that it just made sense to ease back into touring as a solo act on stage with a solo opener,” says Vann, the Joe Vann material made that possible. “I feel lucky to have been able to shift to that kind of thing to make it through.” And Vann certainly embraced the shift, releasing three new albums in three years under the project's banner.
Eventually though, Vann felt the pull of FIL and decided it was time to jump back in. “I started to notice that full band touring was becoming a lot safer and everything was opening back up,” he says. “I got home and started writing new FIL, and the songs were turning out to be my favorite FIL songs yet, the timing of everything just kind of worked out perfectly.” Moving into his own home after bouncing around between family guest rooms for a few years, and more importantly back to where he spent his childhood, had an impact too. Vann found himself among friends he’d grown up going to punk and hardcore shows with, and channeled that energy towards a desire he was intuitively feeling about making a louder record than his recent releases under Joe Vann. Having his own space and home studio to be loud in certainly helped too.
“Once my studio was finished and I had gotten back into my drums and microphones and all of that stuff,” says Vann, “I finally had a live space to get loud for the first time in a few years. So I just hit record and got loud.” And while Vann indeed did get loud again, the previous years writing, recording and releasing music as Joe Vann came to benefit the new FIL songs as well. Without as many effects and sonic smokescreens, Vann had been pushed to sharpen his songwriting like never before.“The biggest thing I took to new FIL from my work on Joe Vann was doing way less,” he shares. “I felt like I was finally capable of writing the kind of riffs and melodies that could be left with less textures to blend them with.” Head Void is an apt illustration of how sometimes the best way to improve upon something you love is to step away from it for a while and try a different path. On the new album Vann recaptures the magic fans of FIL have come to love, and takes the music to new and unexpected heights.