Indie-pop trio from San Francisco

Amina Ahmed

I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Huerta, French Cassettes’ singer-songwriter, to discuss the San Francisco trio’s latest work. Their album, “Benzene,” was released this past summer: the perfect season for their record of classic indie-pop songs meant to be blasted out of car windows. The album is a testament to their creativity and skills in several music forms and genres. Songs like “White Noise,” “Normal Day,” and many others push the realms of music in one way or another—melodically, lyrically, or within its production.

Tell me about the lore of French Cassettes—how did you meet, and how did the band form?

Scott Huerta: Mackenzie and I met in high school when we were maybe 16. I’d been wanting to write music with a band, but Ripon, California, where we grew up, was a small town, so you’d be lucky to find enough people to make a band. For a while, it was me and my brother making songs and uploading them to MySpace. But a classmate of mine invited me to his house to “jam” one day, and I don’t really “jam” very well, so I almost said no, but I said why not and went. Turned out it was at Mackenzie’s house, and that’s when I learned he played guitar and liked The Strokes, so I invited myself to keep coming over to write music together and asked if he wanted to be in a band. At least I think I asked—might’ve forgotten to ask first.

Then after we moved to San Francisco in 2008 or 2009, we met Rob and Andrew through the music scene. They had their own music projects that we just loved. We’d often play shows with Rob’s groups and go to his jazz gigs, and I remember being very impressed with Andrew’s songwriting as his project, Andrew St. James, and after a while we started all playing as French Cassettes.

As for wanting to make music a career, it was mostly seeing music portrayed in movies and TV that did it for me when I was really young. Namely, Kirk Douglas performing “Whale of a Tale” on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, “Let’s Get Together” from The Parent Trap (1961), Robert Downey Jr. singing “Every Breath You Take” on Ally McBeal, and that episode of Family Matters where Carl Winslow and the Darnells sing “Do You Love Me?”.

How would you define your music style? Has it ever changed over the course of your career?

A: Oh man, yes, it has changed. I think when we started in high school, we were listening to a very healthy dose of Mars Volta and some of my favorite local bands were doing prog rock kinda stuff, and honestly, none of that was really what I listened to, but it was just interesting and fun to write and stood out to me I guess. There’s a photo that got printed in the paper during that time of me on the floor shredding a solo at a show, and it looks cool, but I remember seeing it and thinking “…we don’t have any songs where I’m supposed to play a solo?” so it was maybe a little too chaotic admittedly, and we dialed it back shortly after that. Tried doing more indie pop but with a horn section. That worked great, but eventually we stopped using horns, and now I’d say we’re indie rock/pop.

Describe your writing process—what inspires you to write? Is the process collaborative or individual?

A: For me I’m most inspired by small one- to two-second moments in songs rather than the whole tune. Obviously if I like the song, the whole thing is inspiring, but it’s the small moments that come and go before you know it and leave an impression or make your brain light up for a sec, those bits in the song that get you excited without warning that make me want to write a song. Those are the best. Almost all the songs I’ve written are because I heard something like that and tried to stretch that feeling across an entire song.

We used to live together in a house in San Francisco, and we would get together every week to write songs all in the same room together, start to finish—that was so great. Now it’s more like someone will make a demo for a song idea they have, and we’ll all listen and get together to work it out, which is also great. I’ve developed a bad habit of starting song ideas and not finishing them, so what I’ll do is set aside a whole night to just go hard-drive-hunting and rummage [to] find unfinished ideas to share with the guys, and they’re always really good at figuring out how to finish it.

Who are some musical artists that you look up to or heavily influence your music?

A: For me it’s The Magnetic Fields, E.L.O., CAKE, Pixies, David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney. For guitar work I really idolize Elliott Smith a lot. Truthfully, I don’t listen to music very often—I have to be in a very specific mood to put it on. But if I’m doing chores around the house, it’s almost guaranteed I’m putting on Jeff Tweedy or The National.

Tell me about the backstory and inspiration of “Benzene,” your latest album

A: Well, it was a little bit of that hard-drive-hunting and a little of having an odd spark of inspiration from being in a weird place mentally for me personally. Before we knew it, we had maybe 30 song ideas to work on. Some were just small fragments of ideas, and some you could kinda picture the whole thing. Mackenzie engineered the album, so we had a ton of fun just spending days and days in his studio seeing which ideas would make it on the album. It felt amazing seeing “Benzene” actually be made, because some of those songs were ideas that sat for years that I loved, but I thought would never be finished.

When your audience listens to this album, what do you hope they gain from it? How do you hope they feel?

A: I’m not picky. We’ve been told that the music helped someone through something, or was the soundtrack for this trip or that thing, and that’s already above and beyond what I’d hope for. Still blows me away—I’m obviously very honored when I hear that. I guess if our music makes anyone’s life any easier in any way, that’s pretty great. When I uploaded one of the first songs I ever wrote to MySpace in high school, I remember being at a party and it came on out of nowhere—it was pretty much a Bright Eyes rip-off and didn’t fit the mood whatsoever, but I heard someone across the room stop and say, “oh I love this song,” and that pretty much set me for life.

“Benzene” is often admired for its lyricism, more specifically its hidden references or quotes—what is a hidden meaning that your fans may not have gotten on the first listen?

A: Someone at a show recently brought up this line to me because they liked it, which made me happy; it’s one of my favorites too, because it’s about my grandma Carolynn. The line is from our song “Up2You” and it goes, “My mother’s mother talks in comic sans, I will never not love her, I wish there were more emails to read.” She used to email me when we lived in the same house, using the same desktop computer—always only in comic sans font, and always with an accurate subject line. The topics were just whatever she had on her mind, or she’d have numbered questions about my life she was curious about. I would literally be with her all day sometimes and then log on and get excited to see an email from her and immediately reply. So yeah, not so encrypted of a lyric, but that’s what I’m talking about when I say that.

How has the tour been and what can we expect in the future? Is more music already in the works?

A: Tour has been fantastic. I mean touring in the fall? Come on—you’re kidding me. And yes, we’ve already started work on new music that we’d like to get out early-ish next year. I’ve spent a lot of this tour secretly listening to the Dropbox folder with all the rough demos in the back of the Suburban. So, I’m clearly excited about it.