KUAF's newest live session with OrOrOr, a post-punk band out of Little Rock, comes this Friday on KUAF's YouTube page and on the NPR Live Sessions website. Sophia Nourani spoke with the group at Fayetteville Public Television about their newest album, Adore Us, which came out last month.
When she asked about how the group got together, lead vocalist Everett Hagen says it all began when he met his songwriting partner and fellow band member Jack Lloyd.
Everett Hagen: Jack and I were great friends and neighbors, and we're in a music project that was ending, and so we spent a lot of our spare time getting together and writing new music. Back in 2014, we started playing shows a few years after that.
Jack Lloyd: We started as a three piece with Everett, Mike and I, and then we added Ryan and then we added Norman. It's kind of expanded and gotten bigger as we've gone along.
Sophia Nourani: I saw that you guys first started releasing music back in 2018.
Hagen: Yeah, we put out some singles that we had recorded ourselves at that time.
Nourani: Maybe start off by telling me a little bit about how that original sound started, because you said it was just the two of you. And then once the band grew, sound changed. So maybe tell me a little bit about that in your earlier works.
Jack Lloyd: I think it's kind of common these days, just working in a bedroom studio and trying to figure out something new to do, like Everett said. So it's a lot of writing and producing as we went, sort of production first, for lack of a better term. And then it's sort of figuring out how to play those songs once we recorded them and released them. And we've slowly — especially with the new record — moved into more of a band format. There's a lot more real drums on the record, a lot more layers. As the band grew, the sound grew, too.
Nourani: You guys have a very eclectic sound, a lot of different influences. Can you maybe tell me a little bit about how that kind of came together? You said you first started in 2014, but then your first EP didn't come out until later. So was there a bit of work that went into that?
Hagen: We really started writing music in a way that neither of us had before. So I think collaboration was more important than influence. The conversation was more about bringing people in, bringing other artists in from Little Rock to record when we record and to help bring things together. I think the sound kind of just happened by what we were writing, which we're fortunate that we like it.
Lloyd: We, all of us as a whole, like so much different music. I feel like we have a wide breadth of interests and taste in music, and I think that's why it's kind of hard to categorize.
Nourani: Can you tell me a little bit about your most recent album that came out this year?
Jack Lloyd: Sure. It's called Adore Us. We started recording it, I think, in 2021. We had written some of it sort of going into COVID, and that kind of slowed some things down. So it took a little while to nail it all down. We mixed it with Seth Manchester in Providence, Rhode Island. He works at a studio called Machines with Magnets. He's wonderful. He really brought the record to life. We recorded it ourselves, so the thought of mixing it felt really daunting after we were finished. We were lucky enough that Seth wanted to take us on. It really informed the mix and the overall feeling of the record.
Nourani: Were you guys performing live at all during the time that you were recording? Tell me how, if at all, live performance influenced the sound of your album.
Everett Hagen: I think this is a fun and odd thing for me. Growing up playing in loud punk bands and different things, it was always get people together in a room and play loud, find a part people like and build off of that. This in general has been just much different than that.
Lloyd: We played sporadically. We would play shows every now and then. I definitely think playing live informed — we were so used to writing it and producing it at the same time, very electronic heavy, the earliest stuff is. And so even though there's a lot of that on the record, we knew that organic live drums, saxophone, more organic instruments were what we wanted to bring into the fold. And that definitely shaped the entire record, for sure.
Nourani: Do you enjoy touring? Have you done a lot of shows outside of Arkansas?
Everett Hagen: Not enough yet. We are lucky enough that we have these great five people that we get to play together, but we can adapt when people can't make certain things. We went on a tour with Everyone Asked About You. In that case, it was just the three of us. So we've been down to Texas and played a weekend of shows. But as a big group, it's really been Little Rock and Fayetteville and Bentonville.
Nourani: Did you have any big takeaways from performing with Everyone Asked About You that influenced how you're playing now with Pallbearer?
Lloyd: It's so different. Us as a five piece was so different from what we did with Everyone Asked About You. It was like strictly an electronic set because Mike couldn't make it. So it's a very different feeling. It was really fun playing in front of all these people who had no idea what we were going to sound like. I think a lot of people were pleasantly surprised that we were just kind of different from everything else. We kind of just shapeshift into whatever is required of us. I feel like that's what we do in general.
Hagen: That's one of the tough things about not being easily categorized — we get asked to play shows with people of all different types and all different genres, which we love. Everyone Asked About You — they're riding this wave of people kind of rediscovering their music from 30 years ago. So it was playing to like 500 teenagers and people in their early twenties. And then Pallbearer is a much different crowd, much different. But they're all our people. I don't know that there is a sweet spot fit that we just naturally are going to play to whatever we would consider our audience, because I think that is whoever we connect with when we play.
Nourani: Do you guys ever see yourselves going on your own tour together, or trying to do some traveling shows?
Lloyd: Yeah, we're all, we all have day jobs, and it's families and kids. As you get older, it's tougher. But who knows? Hopefully.
Nourani: Did you enjoy playing in Fayetteville last night?
Everett Hagen: Very much. Always. We love Fayetteville. People here are very kind to us. We have some old friends scattered around, and we always just have fun with the folks that come and see us.
Nourani: Where can people find your music and find more information about where you guys are going to be playing next?
Jack Lloyd: So to find us — we're called Or, but when it's written, we want to be findable and searchable. Search "Or Or Or" and you'll find us on every digital streaming service, and also our Bandcamp, which is bandcamp.com/OrOrOr. You can find our CDs, album and cassettes for the new record, as well as some remaining copies of a 12-inch that we put out in 2021 — not very many left.
Nourani: I gotta ask — is that really the main reason why it's OrOrOr and not just Or?
Hagen: You can't really have two-letter band names on Bandcamp, which is commonly used. You can't only use two characters as your band name. Also, you can't search the word "or" and not come up with everything that isn't us. This is the way to narrow it down and find us really quickly. It's really just to make it discoverable, by any means.
Nourani: But why "or" specifically — does that have any significance?
Jack Lloyd: I think the intention, earlier — I could be wrong — was just ambiguity. Just something that you really couldn't pin down. And then maybe it was a little too ambiguous in the long run, so we had to expand on it a little bit.
That was Sophia Nourani speaking with the Little Rock-based band OrOrOr. The full interview was recorded as part of KUAF's live session series. You can find that and more on our website at kuaf.com/livesessions. To find OrOrOr online, search "Or Or Or."
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
