Sonically, the record feels pretty much perfect, and is beautifully recorded with deep but sparse arrangements. I reached out via email to Logan, and then talked on the phone to find out about his recording process and learned more about the making of the album. "I've used the same, very simple setup for years – Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 interface with an Audio-Technica AT4047/SV condenser mic for just about everything. All monitoring was done on Audio-Technica ATH-M50x headphones although I have a pair of Tannoy monitors, but I didn't actually use them for the record. [Korg] Volca beats for beat-making, [Korg] MicroKorg, Yamaha P-45 digital piano, and a Cordoba nylon string guitar. That's about it. Still No Mother was recorded and mixed entirely on [Apple] Garageband. I don't have any professional training or much technical know-how, so most of the mixing is just me tweaking stuff until I get it close to where I want it. I work full time in a bookstore, so the record was mostly done on weekends in the guest bedroom of the apartment I share with my partner. I'm a big fan of imperfect bedroom recordings that capture the textures of a space, and I've always had a somewhat 'less is more' philosophy. Some of it is probably just me being stubborn and unwilling to change, but I like to keep the process simple and work with familiar limitations. For this record in particular the following quote from Mark Hollis was like a mantra to me – I taped it to my desk: 'Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note. And don't play one note unless you've got a reason to play it.' That philosophy really informed my approach to recording Still No Mother."
I think the best music reaches you on a subconscious level, connecting with you in a way that's not always immediately obvious – when you hear something that makes a real connection, you know it's there even if you don't quite know why. Logan Farmer's Still No Mother is, as he describes it, "A folk record that addresses climate change anxiety," so it's fitting that the first night that I heard it there was a 3000 acre wildfire burning a few miles away from my studio, along with over one million acres that were currently on fire around the state of California. To my ears and mind Still No Mother is not really folk music, though maybe my definition of folk music is too narrow. If Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back could be called folk music, then so can Still No Mother. But where It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is loud and heavy with its message, Still No Mother is quiet and seeps into your consciousness slowly. In fact, this record is probably one third silence, or at least one third very, very quiet, with much more space between the notes than the notes themselves take up. Farmer's songwriting and vocal style feels to me like somewhere in-between Nick Cave and Bill Callahan, and when he moves into his higher register, which is not too often, it evokes Jeff Buckley and even Thom Yorke a bit.
