Interview: The Greatest Endangered Thing

There’s beauty in new beginnings. In nurturing new life to grow from the ashes of what came before. While we may wish that all our endeavours work out first time, all that really matters is that they work out in the end. All the road blocks and wrong turns we encounter on the way to get there, while frustrating at the time, make for a good story in the end. All the best stories have plenty of twists and turns after all. There are few storytellers more deserving of turning their new beginning into a happy ending than our favourite Transatlantic duo Samuel James Taylor and Rebecca Van Cleave. Sheffield based Americana outfit The Greatest Endangered Thing (f.k.a. Ophelia) – having taken the time to slow down and reflect on both the way forward and the road behind – feel as though they’ve hit their stride once again with the tender, bittersweet folk of their new EP Phosphenes Vol.1. We were lucky enough to have the pair play our tenth anniversary show, and luckier still to chat to them all about the new music they’ve been creating.

Thanks for your time! You’ve just released your new EP Phosphenes Vol.1, are you proud of how it turned out?
Rebecca Van Cleave: Thanks for chatting with us James! It was so much fun to celebrate 10 years of Belwood with you last month. Creating the first half of Phosphenes has been such a journey for us, but it ended up guiding us home in a way. It became exactly what it needed to be. So yes, very proud of this one.

Samuel James Taylor: We love how it turned out. We set out wanting to try to tell the story in the simplest way possible. We wanted it to be stripped back, raw, something that felt honest. We spent a lot of time listening to the 60’s and 70’s recordings we were both brought up on, which we both felt had so much life in them, figuring out what made them feel so special. They contain subtleties and an honesty that seems to have been lost in a lot of modern recordings. We wanted to present the imperfections that make us all who we are as much as a polished sound of a recording made in a studio.

This is the first piece of an album in two halves, and you’ve been releasing it track by track for the past couple of months. What was the rationale behind the unconventional release schedule?
SJT: I guess one advantage of the way modern releases now work is that there are no rules. Some of the biggest artists in the world release full albums without any warning and some artists don’t even release albums anymore, just singles or EPs. We have always felt like an album band, we want to release physical copies of the music, it’s what makes sense to us, but to try to tell this story after such a long time away we wanted to reintroduce the band song by song, sound by sound using the platforms that we currently have to do this.

The EP itself feels like a tale of two halves in some ways – half wistful and half hopeful. With the former there’s a bittersweet nostalgia to a lot of moments, memories that linger like a layer of dust. Where there any specific memories that inspired these tracks, or more of a general feeling?
RVC: That’s lovely to hear. I think that’s exactly the feeling that we were creating it with. It’s strange because a lot of these tracks were written separately years ago, but when we started deciding what should be on the first half of the album, they all fell together and created a bit of a narrative. We did a lot of looking back and looking forward with this one. It’s a funny little time isn’t it, your 30’s? I think you put it perfectly “half wistful, half hopeful.” We wanted to capture that feeling of youth, of rose coloured glasses and sparkle and possibility, and also that feeling of disillusionment, of pulling back the curtain on a life you thought you wanted and realising maybe you were better off not knowing what was behind it. There was a line that we put out with some of the teasers, “This is a story that starts at the end, and the beginning, and the in-between.” I think that sums it up pretty well. It’s all a journey.

The EP looks forward as much as it does back. There’s a silver lining of brighter tomorrows tying it together. Was that hopeful spark part of what inspired the record or something you found along the way?
RVC: A little of both, I’d say. That spark was definitely there, but in creating this particular record and on the journey to releasing it, I think we really found ourselves again. Often when things happen that weren’t “part of the plan” you lock them away in a little box and they become part of the story, but you’re afraid to revisit them. We finally opened up the box on this one and realised how much good was there and how important it is to just be in the moment and live. Things rarely go to plan, you might as well just appreciate the ride. There’s a beauty in the letting go, it allows for the magic to come in again.

SJT: It was exactly that. I think there’s overall a sense of positivity, it has shades of darkness but within all of it there’s a light shining through, holding on to who you are, and remembering who you have always been, of not letting dreams slip away whilst also realising we are often already living our dreams and the only thing holding us back from realising them is ourselves.

I admire how the record embraces the quieter moments, leaving space for the melodies to breathe. At times it feels so serene and peaceful. Was that reflected in the studio, or did the recording process all feel a bit more hectic at the time?
SJT: Thank you. We originally built the recordings up and then stripped them right back again. We realised we needed space, simple percussive rhythms. It was about making every part complimentary – if it didn’t add something then it was taken away. We wanted to escape the noise, to stop filling every moment just because we could. Everything that remained has been considered carefully and therefore feels special. The space in-between is exactly that, space to let the songs breathe and become what they are.

RVC: We recorded the guitar and both vocals live together and built the songs from there. But I think having that as the original touchstone, this thing that was quite raw and untouched and imperfect, this thing that you couldn’t really “edit”, it was what it was, was a great place to build from. It kept things simple and real. We recorded at Tesla Studios in Sheffield where we made our first EP and our record for Ophelia, so it was a really comfortable environment for us to experiment and record in. We’ve collaborated with David Glover for years now on various projects and we’re all friends so it always feels very cozy being there. It’s a nice place to create from.

The violin work has been a real highlight for me, how did that side of the sound develop?
SJT: The violin is an important part of the sound for the band. We initially introduced it via Eamon McLoughlin on the Ophelia records and Jay Austin remotely recorded for us during the pandemic for our first EP “And You, And Me.” For this record we were lucky enough to have Jon Boden come into the studio for a day. He created such beautiful moments, pulling out melodies that really took the songs to a new place. He’s an incredible musician. We are so grateful to have him on it. We’re very lucky to be surrounded by talented string players.

There’s often a lot of meaning in a name – what’s the story behind the title, Phosphenes?
RVC: It’s funny how you often stumble upon the thing you’re searching for when you stop looking for it. We had the working titles of Volume One and Volume Two as we were creating this, but we wanted something that tied it all together. The word Phosphenes and the meaning behind it arrived at about two in the morning one night, shortly after falling asleep, after three weeks of writers block on various projects. It all just tumbled out as I frantically (and blindly) tried to capture it in the notes section of my phone without my contact lenses in.

The actual definition of Phosphenes is “The colours, lights, and stars one sees when they rub or press on their closed eyes.”

I was thinking about it in terms of memory. The way when you close your eyes, memories often come back in short glimpses, disjointed pieces, non-linear fragments. The way they can be triggered by colours or scent or sounds. Were they all real, did you imagine some of them? These tiny little snapshots of a life, of a time, of a moment. They’re all part of a bigger story, but when you close your eyes, all you have are the remnants, the bits that stuck. And those become the new story, the one that stayed.

What’s next for you, and when can folks look forward to hearing Volume 2?
RVC: It feels so good to be creating again. I think we’ve finally found the key to balance with it all and with that comes a sense of longevity. There’s been a lot of stop and start over the years, for various reasons, but this time it feels like the train can keep moving without running out of steam. We’re in it for the long haul.

SJT: We’re off to Greece in a few weeks for some travels and a bit of a creative retreat. We’ll be finishing up Volume 2 while we’re there and hopefully beginning on the next album. We’re hoping to release Volume 2 by the end of this year / early next year, with some other small releases in between. We promise we won’t keep you waiting that long this time. Lots to come!