Greta Van Fleet navigates changes in making new album
Greta Van Fleet navigates changes in creating its latest album
Quite a bit is different for Greta Van Fleet as the Grammy Award-winning quartet releases its new album, “The Battle at Garden’s Gate.”
That includes a change of scenery. “We’re Nashville cats now!” bassist/keyboardist Sam Kiszka declares via Zoom, with a smile as he and his older brother, Greta frontman Josh Kiszka, settle into a couch in their management’s Music City offices. It’s certainly a shift from the Grammy Award-winning quartet’s roots in Frankenmuth, Mich., but it’s a change they’ve fully embraced.
“We didn’t really lose our Michigan identity,” Sam, 22, promises, as Josh, 24, adds, “That’s still a piece of us. It’s where we come from.” And after three and a half years of heavy touring around the world, the singer notes that, “I haven’t lived anywhere, really.” But the band — also including guitarist Jake Kiszka, Josh’s twin, and drummer Danny Wagner — has found a comfortable and inspiring fit that goes beyond being in a music industry hub.
“So many different sort of art scenes are implemented here,” Josh says. “You have a lot of people moving here for the sake of creating art and getting into it, so that’s easy to be around.” Sam adds that, “East Nashville is one of the coolest places in the world now. There’s a lot of artists that go well beyond music. We’ve met filmmakers, visual artists and, obviously, a lot of musicians.
“So there’s a real kind of happening here right now that we enjoy being part of.”
Creativity has never been an issue since the Kiszkas were very young. Stoked by the classic rock their parents played at home and campfire jams with extended family and friends, Greta Van Fleet put the pedal down with “Highway Tune,” its platinum
2017 debut single, and hasn’t looked back. The group has scored five No. 1 Billboard Mainstream Rock chart hits, while “From the Fires” won the Grammy for Best Rock Album in 2019.
With Josh’s tsunami wail and Jake’s guitar heroics out front, the band has been celebrated for helping to restore a degree of prominence for rock in the popular music mainstream. Greta’s own goal, however, is advancing its craft and creative vision, which became a focus leading into “The Battle at Garden’s Gate,” which comes out Friday, April 16.
“Honesty is really important for us,” Josh explains, “and trying to be our own good, personified selves and indulge a little hedonistically in that artistic process. I think good things generally come out of that, and you find those new pieces of yourself as you’re exploring the world through art and you find those extra things that are awe-inspired.”
The band changed creative teams for “The Battle,” enlisting new producer Greg Kurstin, an eight-time Grammy winner (including Producer of the Year, twice) whose credits range from Foo Fighters to Paul
McCartney, Adele, Sia, Kelly Clarkson and many more. Greta Van Fleet set up with him in Los Angeles and enjoyed “a great deal of musicianship” that Kurstin brought to the party, according to Sam.
“He understands the chemistry of the band,” Sam says. “He really understood what each of us were doing, from vocals to drums, the entire mix. He’s kind of a lurker. He’ll sit around in the corner of the studio and watch us work and only poke his head out when he finds it appropriate, or when he’s needed.
“So when you’re trying to find that thing and you can’t quite hit it on the head, he’s kind of there to help you find it.”
Greta Van Fleet came in with songs for the project. “Heat Above” has been around for nearly five years, according to the Kiszkas, while they had played “The Weight of Dreams” in concerts before overhauling it during the recording sessions. But others were created in Los Angeles, including the hooky first single “My Way, Soon” — “Just another song written at the Sunset Marquee!” Sam says with a laugh — and late arrivals such as “Caravel” and “The Barbarians.”
“There’s a lot of songs that were considered that we’ve been working on a little bit but we haven’t even attempted to record ’cause we didn’t think they’d fit the world of this album,” Josh acknowledges, while Sam notes that, “They’ll pop their heads up as well, perhaps on other albums.”
Fans will hear an expanded aural palette on “The Battle” as well. The group hasn’t lost any of the frenetic blaze and earnest bombast from its earlier releases, but it added orchestrations for “Heat Above,” Stardust” and “Trip the Light Fantastic.” The finished version of “The Weight of Dreams” has the epic potency of vintage Pink Floyd. Josh considers it “kind of an extension, almost, of (2018’s) ‘Anthem of the Peaceful Army,’” and the overall feel is designed to be “cinematic” and Sensurround, a dynamic sonic assault that goes beyond mere tunesmithery.
“I had somebody ask me if this was escapism,” Sam says, “but from our interpretation it’s metaphorical. It’s building a world in which we can tell stories and create ... a more intelligent through line for people to be able to relate this to what’s happening in the real world.”
Josh, whose lyrics draw from both philosophy and fantasy, terms the approach “kind of world-building”
“It’s analogies about life in an organized society,” he says, “with characters and places, image-heavy and symbolism heavy throughout the entire album. We’re dealing with pretty heavy, complex times that I think some people might shy away from.”
The group, which has been off the road for more than a year now, would like nothing better than to play the dozen songs of “The Battle” on stage. For now, however, its focusing on videos, including the provocatively imagined “Age of Machine” and the elaborately costumed “Heat Above,” and finding other avenues — including a recently appearance on CBS’ “A Late Show with Stephen Colbert” — to share the music until that can happen in front of crowd again.
“A big part of Greta Van Fleet is that we are a live band,” Josh says. “That’s what we do, so it’s strange when we can’t. But we want to keep expanding the world of the ‘Garden’s Gate’ and be able to lend some cinema to the album and create a visual equivalent of (the album’s) sonic universe and communicate with people as best we can.
“That’s always been part of this band, I think more prevalent now.”