Video Premiere: The Making Of "In The Black" by The Lunar Laugh

Photo Credit: Lauren Makay Smith

The Big Takeover is proud to premiere the new mini-documentary “Another Holiday,” a candid look behind the scenes at the recording of the new album from Oklahoma City indie rockers The Lunar Laugh. The film showcases the making of what would prove to be the band’s final album In The Black from the inside out. The bandmembers filmed these private and creative moments using their phones, which gives the entire presentation a true fly-on-the-wall view of the recording process. With the album being made from 2021 to 2023, the documentary demonstrates an indie band working together to create something from the heart.

The Lunar Laugh had already come a long way since their self-released 2015 debut APOLLO, recorded in their original duo configuration of singer/songwriters Connor Anderson and Jared Lekites, when the sessions documented here commenced. At their start, as now, the band intertwined their modern pop and rock song structures with hooks heavily under the influence of power pop masterworks of the ’60s and ’70s. But since the 2017 addition of fellow singer/songwriter Campbell Young and over the course of two more critically acclaimed albums, the band has become a true collaboration of the kind not often heard on the pop scene. On the new record they take it a step further, harnessing the remarkable chemistry developed as a five-piece live band encompassing bassist Triston Lightner and drummer Levi Sherman, and fielding material that’s grown ever more sophisticated and mature without losing the buoyant melodic charge at its core. “Another Holiday” captures the final stage of that evolution, as the band emerged from the pandemic era determined to create its definitive statement before life and geography separated its core members.

“We spent nearly three years working on this album. That wasn’t our original intention, it just happened that way,” explains founder Jared Lekites. “I think our growth as a functioning band unit is audible. ‘In The Black’ is a ‘band’ album. That is, we all pitched in and the music came out all the better for it. You get to see that over the course of the documentary. Growth also comes with natural aging and, naturally, we are all older than we were when we first started making music together. There’s a sense of maturity in the songs that we probably couldn’t have pulled off in our early 20s. If we never make another album, which is the way things stand presently, I’m satisfied going out on a high with this one.”

“In The Black” sees release alongside the documentary, which shows the band and its producers laying down the foundations for the two singles which have preceded it (“Born Weird” and “Fake It Till We Make It”) as well as the album tracks fans will be hearing for the first time today. The friendship and collaborative spirit of the band is abundantly clear in the footage, and the sense that the collaboration provided hope for the band members during difficult times, from the pandemic itself to family losses and big decisions about the group’s future, comes through as clearly as it does on In The Black’s ten tracks. Ultimately the record offers a rare and essential message of hope, and “Another Holiday” offers a glimpse into how it took shape.

The album In The Black is OUT TODAY on CD and Streaming worldwide from Big Stir Records:

Official
The Album “In The Black” out now