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" &amp;quot;Bushwick Blues,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;California,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;French Quarter,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Idaho&amp;quot; \u2014 the discography of Delta Spirit is littered with locations, a smattering of spots that have proven to be tireless muses for the hard-hitting rock quartet over the course of the decade they&amp;#039;ve spent together. They&amp;#039;re known as Golden State guys, for the most part: Delta Spirit called the Best Coast home for the majority of their life as a band before they opted to shake things up in 2012 after dropping their self-titled and highest-charting record yet. They packed up their gear and did what so many bands have done before them \u2014 they moved to Brooklyn \u2014 and set about recording the follow-up to Delta Spirit, which had been an uplifting indie demonstration with optimistic pop leanings. What followed was darker, drearier, and danker, both literally and figuratively. The guys set up shop in Greenpoint and built a studio, only to have Hurricane Sandy demolish it in a matter of hours. They rehabilitated their new home and got back to work, but the change in scenery had a visceral impact on their songwriting. Into the Wide \u2014 out September 9 \u2014 brings about some of the hard, sinister truths explored on their earlier effort History from Below while channeling some of the invigoration Delta Spirit provided, and the urban landscape they sought out had a lot to do with that. Delta Spirit is heading West once again \u2014 vocalist/guitarist Matt Vasquez and company are moving to Austin, the city where he grew up and yet another musical capital for them to conquer \u2014 but their time spent in New York may have yielded some of the most stunning songs of their career to date. We&amp;#039;ve got &amp;quot;From Now On&amp;quot; for your listening pleasure below, along with Vasquez&amp;#039;s thoughts on Delta Spirit&amp;#039;s musical manifest destiny.      ESQUIRE.COM: The sun-drenched, Californian optimism of Delta Spirit seems to have totally disintegrated on Into the Wide. This record gets dark, man. Something clearly went on with you guys in between records. What changed?  MATT VASQUEZ: Welcome to New York! [laughs] We worked for two and a half years, living in an urban environment and learning how to be the new kids in town. It&amp;#039;s been really fun and inspiring. The songwriting grew out of that. We found this really great studio space in Greenpoint \u2014 there are no windows in it \u2014 but we slowly built a studio, and then Sandy ate it. We rebuilt it and kept writing. I think I had about 45 songs on my end. Kelly had about three, and Will and Brandon even co-wrote some stuff. It was great. I did a lot of initial work up front, but when it all came through, everybody just really hunkered down and got in it. ESQ: Yeah, this feels like a record where you need to have a drink or three before getting into the emotional meat of it. You&amp;#039;ve kind of been moving in that direction anyway. Even with History from Below, it seemed like you approached the music more as a band, not your band. What about the lyrical quality? What factored into the direction of these songs?  MV: Songs like &amp;quot;Push It&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;War Machine,&amp;quot; those are just about the dissatisfaction with the world in terms of our idealistic self from a few years ago versus the world around us now, you know? Look how terrible Arab Spring and the Iraq War turned out right now, school shootings, there are just so many topics on the record ... those were the brooding songs that everybody got emotionally attached to. I think it makes sense, considering how long the winter was while we worked through the album. ESQ: Some of your best work tackles the hard stuff. &amp;quot;Ballad of Vitaly&amp;quot; tells the story of a young father who loses everything in a plane crash and never recovers from it. &amp;quot;St. Francis&amp;quot; sounds like it should soundtrack a Western that follows a young man before he walks away from his life for a new adventure. These songs aren&amp;#039;t murder ballads, but they&amp;#039;ve got the literary quality of murder ballads, and it doesn&amp;#039;t sound like they were written in the past century, let alone the past decade. MV: I think that format&amp;#039;s really cool. That&amp;#039;s been something I&amp;#039;ve been striving for my whole life, which is to write those songs, but have them be in this century. I think the format of a murder ballad or a song like that, it tells a bigger story in three minutes than just some stupid pop song or some catchy chord and catchier bridge with some vague verses and lyrics. Those don&amp;#039;t really do it for me all the time. I think there&amp;#039;s definitely something to get out of a story song and a sentiment that&amp;#039;s really special. I like listening to those songs and I want that to exist now, not in the 1930s or 1960s. You know, songwriting, it&amp;#039;s funny. &amp;quot;From Now On&amp;quot; has that poppy thing. So does &amp;quot;Language of the Dead.&amp;quot; It really comes down to the band and what everyone is feeling together. ESQ: How does &amp;quot;From Now On&amp;quot; represent where Delta Spirit is at right now? I love how we&amp;#039;re premiering one of the lighter songs on the record, by the way, after talking about how heavy most of it is. MV: This song was born out of being stuck alone in our rehearsal space, which is nicknamed the Rat Cave. It&amp;#039;s one of those things where the energy of the song started in a demo and started a lot like My Bloody Valentine. We went up to Woodstock and spent a weekend jamming, and that&amp;#039;s how the lyrics and music came together. We were just up in Woodstock having a good time, and when we were doing the pre-production up there, it just felt like we were doing the first record again, where we were having so much fun in a cabin. It&amp;#039;s just one of those songs you write and you think back on eight, almost nine years of solid friendship, a decade-plus in some cases. ESQ: Hold on. &amp;quot;Rat Cave&amp;quot;? You just called your space a Rat Cave? MV: Yeah! They&amp;#039;re really smart, the rats in my building. Our studio is completely infested. Or it was. They kind of chilled out. I can&amp;#039;t even fathom how they fit underneath the floors. They&amp;#039;re like Norwegian wood rats or something. They can delve under the smallest cracks and they climb through the pipes and stuff. I like rats. I think they&amp;#039;re cool. It&amp;#039;s just kind of, you know, working in a place like that all the time, it gives me a fear of Ebola. ESQ: I don&amp;#039;t blame you! Especially in the wake of Sandy. Those rats could be crazy mutants.I guess that learning how to deal or tolerate them makes you a legitimate New Yorker now, though.  MV: Funny enough, I&amp;#039;m moving to Austin. It&amp;#039;s really going to annoy the juror subpoena that I&amp;#039;m moving. They&amp;#039;ve been trying to get me to do jury duty. [laughs] What brought on the move to New York ... we love Long Beach and LA, and in terms of demographics, it&amp;#039;s so broad. Not just in terms of race, but financial and sexual orientation, too. Being surrounded by that kind of community was incredible, and I miss it, here and there. I don&amp;#039;t miss the traffic. I love New York. I have a friend who&amp;#039;s in town, he&amp;#039;s originally from South Carolina, and he was saying that Brooklyn is kind of like living inside of the Internet, because you can get anything you want. It&amp;#039;s all here! And that&amp;#039;s really great. My only bummer is that there isn&amp;#039;t enough nature. I miss the nature shit. Upstate is really pretty and the parks are cool, but maybe I&amp;#039;m just not doing it right, or Yosemite and Joshua Tree have kind of done a lot for me. ESQ: Place is very much a factor and inspiration for you guys, more so than with many other bands. What is it with you and cities? MV: I think I grew up without a hometown, because I was born in California, grew up as a kid in Austin, and then moved back to California. I feel in touch with a lot of different parts of cities, and I&amp;#039;m able to love them and feel at home in them. They&amp;#039;re great topics. You can find all these things about them and really immerse yourself in a completely different culture. Cities are good lovers. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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