This interview at Salon is a good one. The journalist Annie Zaleski is clearly a fan and has asked some of the questions I think a lot of us would. For instance, I feel that one of the most contentious re-recordings on Whatever, My Love is I Don't Know What To Do With My Hands, a song I associate with Minor Alps and which I don't think works as well without Matthew. Zaleski may not agree with that but is curious to hear why Juliana reworked it. Juliana:
The way Matthew [Caws] and I recorded was, we wrote these songs and then we went to the studio not having really clear, detailed visions of how the songs would turn out. We kind of let the recordings take shape in the studio. As a result of that, the Minor Alps version of “I Don’t Know What to Do with My Hands” turned out a certain way. And then after some time passed, and I went back to listen to it, I was unsatisfied. I liked what Matthew and I did, but I feel like it’s not quite right. I needed to record it again to see if it would do anything else for me; I thought it needed another chance.
When I went in with Todd and Dean, we had a different approach. We went in as a band to try to just jam it out, and it has a more groovy, strummed feel. And I guess that’s how I started to envision the song after Minor Alps recorded it. And with Todd and Dean, I was able to get that new version down. It was really just a personal goal to get a version that I felt more satisfied with.
