[EXCLUSIVE] Honestly Get Personal On Debut, ‘Inside Your Eyes, Without You Beside Me’

Any die-hard music fan will know that it takes a while for new bands to release their first album. After the debut single, listeners are usually gifted with a slew of singles and EPs for a couple of years before a full-length is released or even considered. Indie-pop duo, Honestly, however, have had their debut album ready to be unleashed for an entire year prior to releasing their first single.

Comprised of Eric Canto and Dalton Winters, Honestly’s debut – Inside Your Eyes, Without You Beside Me – is a time capsule of their summer in 2019. Inspired by the devastation of a rough breakup for Winters, the entire record delves into how it feels to have your heart obliterated into a million pieces. Like any good friend, Canto believed writing music would help Winters heal and take his mind off the situation, thus the conception of Inside Your Eyes, Without You Beside Me. Whether you’ve experienced a breakup like that yourself or not, be prepared to take that emotional journey throughout the album’s glorious 31 minutes. One thing is for sure: whoever this record is about should be calling Winters up right away.

Reminiscent of joan and the early days of The 1975, Honestly’s debut is chock full of emotional twists and turns bathed in lovely eighties-inspired synthpop that will have you feeling it all for days! What once was a therapy session is now a collection of songs that will be on repeat all summer.

Naturally, with any emotionally-charged record, we just had to get the scoop on the writing/recording process from the band themselves in this exclusive track-by-track commentary! Enjoy and don’t forget to pick up Inside Your Eyes, Without You Beside Me here for some fun album bundles! Proceeds will be donated to the Grassroots Law Project.

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“Heaven”

We’ve both always been suckers for dramatic intros/interlude tracks. The first body of music we ever released together (in our prior band) had a dramatic kind of intro track and we knew this album needed something to set the scene and open the story. The lyrics extrapolate the main inspiration behind the first half of the album, a quote that Dalton signed all of his letters to his girlfriend with, “heaven is a place inside your eyes, hell is where I wake up without you beside me.” Plus, we LOVE vocoders.

“7/13”

This is a fun one; probably the most energetic song on the album. We wrote this one later in the writing process and knew that we wanted it to be upbeat. We were really inspired by indie-pop bands such as The Ivy and Hotel Apache, and wanted to highlight the “band” aspect of our music. We really accentuated the live drum sounds and didn’t hold back on the compression. The song is about a crazy passionate first date and opens the storyline of a tumultuous relationship. This one is an absolute blast to play live.

“Inside Your Eyes”

This was the first song we wrote from scratch for this project after “Loved By You.” Inside Your Eyes was sonically the result of being in a room together for the first time in 5+ years to write music, and exaggerated the big ’80s gated drums and twinkling FM synths a lot because we were super into that sound and couldn’t get enough of it. The song is about falling in love with someone very early on in a relationship and feeling anxious that it’s too soon and that the feeling isn’t mutual. The big post-rock-esque outtro was an ode to our love of ambient rock music (Caspian, If These Trees Could Talk, This Will Destroy You) and we think it contrasts the otherwise very pop song pretty well.

“IWAYF”

“IWAYF” (I Want All of You Forever) actually was one of the last songs we finished. We knew we wanted to do a song in a more swing feel, referencing contemporary pop artists like LANY and joan. It took us a while to settle on a chorus for this song that really captured the essence of what we were saying but we’re really happy with the overall vibe of this one. It breaks up some of the big ’80s-esque sounds a bit, and strips down to a simple EP bell piano, guitar, drums and bass. This one is highlighting the epitome of being in love and wanting to spend your life with your significant other, and is actually written from her perspective; “She said, ‘I want to love…” The song was written around and inspired by a text conversation between Dalton and his girlfriend, where she told him, “I want all of you forever, I’ve never thought this far into the future with someone before.”

“Beside Myself”

This song was originally called “White Claw Mango.” That’s basically all we have to say about it.

“Hell”

Hell is kind of a funny one, from a songwriting perspective. We set out trying to write an upbeat indie-rock song, as we were listening to a ton of The Band CAMINO this week (our hyper focus on our favorite bands works in tandem), but wound up writing something that with just a little more distortion (and a breakdown) would have perfectly fit our prior band (post-hardcore). The song definitely highlights where we came from musically, and even has a big gang-vocally outtro. Lyrically, the album shifts here. “Beside Myself” is where the story starts going downhill, and takes a turn from, “we’re in love and the future is bright” to “everything is falling apart, I’m losing my best friend, and my heart is in pieces.” “Hell” was written about the end of the relationship. This one’s definitely the album’s “breakup song” and exudes heartbreak.

“Waking Up”

We knew we wanted to do an interlude leading up to the ballad track “Without You.”  and knew we wanted the centerpiece to be piano. Dalton’s Dad actually wrote and recorded the piano part, which was super cool.

“Without You”

This was the second song we wrote for the project. We were super wasted “pregaming” before going to a club near Dalton’s apartment and just slapped on a cheesy Xpand imitation of a Juno 60 and grabbed the biggest snare sample we could find and messed around for a few minutes. The song happened front to back in probably an hour, and we were unbelievably hyped on it. The big Gilmore style solo at the end was a no-brainer, with the long slow fade, the whole nine yards we literally thought we were like a modern Journey or something. This was the first song where we used a specific female vocal chop that is also heard in surrounding tracks. The sung sample is actually the person the song is about. Lyrically this one is one of the saddest songs. It’s a heartfelt reminiscing of how Dalton was struggling to deal with the end of the relationship. It still gives us chills to listen back to the candor of these lyrics.

“San Francisco”

“San Francisco” was the song that took this project from a bedroom hobby into a band. We wrote this song at the end of LP1’s writing session, and all the pieces fell together very quickly. Sonically, we were inspired by the extensive use of vocoder. The anthemic quality of the chorus made this song a favorite among our friends, and their excitement inspired us to pursue the band as a serious project. The song lends reference to an actual vacation, which was a sweetly nostalgic memory that Dalton frequently reminisced on during writing sessions. We knew early on we wanted to do a video for the single, and we were excited when some of our old friends offered to fly across the country with us for a very quick 24-hour shoot. We quickly realized that we had something special and as a result, decided to delay the release of the album to the summer of 2020. This song will forever be important to us as friends and artists.

“Warm Flowers”

This was the last song we wrote for the album. We knew it was going to be called “Warm Flowers” as a reference to an affectionate nickname used in Dalton’s relationship. The session was quite laborious. After our frustrating attempt to write an EDM-style drop we decided to take a break from writing. During that break, Eric had Dalton talk through every moment of his relationship. From this came many references of the final lyrics, such as the chorus line mentioning warm showers. This is a metaphor comparing Dalton’s love as a feeling of warm water rushing over you on a freezing cold morning. After a while, Dalton actually fell asleep during the session as Eric finished writing/arranging the song and tracked the vocals. The next morning, Eric sent Dalton the demo version, which while listening to on his way to the beach actually made him cry. We think the song wrapped up the album well, tying in the lyrics from track 1 in the song’s bridge, and ending the whole story with a truly final summarizing thought: “you’re still all that I think of.”

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