Justin Kibbel
Seasaw sitting in front of a heating stove.
Seasaw is Meg Golz, left, and Eve Wilczewski.
Five years after they released their last album, Madison-based indie duo Seasaw return with their fifth album, Projecting, with a release show at The Majestic on April 21. After a long recording process, the duo is excited to finally share new music.
“It makes it so much more special now that it’s finally coming out,” says Seasaw’s Eve Wilczewski.
Projecting finds Seasaw embracing their evolution as a band. “Projecting is where we are and what we want to be,” Wilczewski says. “Just a moment in time.” While each of the eleven tracks serves as a contained story, nostalgia is a theme throughout.
Wilczewski and Meg Golz became friends while working at the same Italian restaurant in Freeport, Illinois, where they bonded over their shared love of folk duo CocoRosie. Eventually, they started playing acoustic covers of CocoRosie songs at local coffee shops, performing under the name BoboMosie. Although Golz had played in a band before, it took some convincing to get Wilczewski to perform live.
“I never ever, ever, ever imagined myself doing any of this,” Wilczewski says. “Not in my wildest dreams.”
It wasn’t until Golz moved to Madison in 2011 that Seasaw began to take shape. While studying at Madison Media Institute, she enlisted Wilczewski’s help performing a song for a student project. “That was our first taste of recording songs. It kind of encouraged us to write more songs,” Golz says. As the duo continued to record original songs together, their debut album, Seasaw, was released in digital-only format that year. The Look in Your Eyes Tells Me This is A Bad Idea, released digitally and on CD, followed in 2014.
As Seasaw evolved, so has the friendship between its members and their openness about sharing their creative ideas. It’s a chemistry that’s given them the confidence to become the band they want to be.
Seasaw takes a collaborative approach to their songwriting process on Projecting. They worked on initial song ideas together before separating to work independently, then reconvened with new ideas to complete the song. On “Like I Love You,” Golz sings about her admiration for Wilczewski (“I wish I loved me like I love you”). The duo fleshed out the rest of the song together. “We kind of need that dynamic of ‘I’m doing too much’ and Meg pulling back to what’s actually necessary,” Wilczewski says. “That’s what gets us to the point where they sound like Seasaw songs.”
On their new single “Dial Me Up,” an upbeat pop song, they explore the relationship between modern technology and a more retro ‘90s sound.
“We like those dichotomies,” Wilczewski says, noting that even the band’s name, Seasaw, evokes two sides, a back-and-forth. “We’re two very different people who balance each other out. We’re always attracted to that duality of the push and pull.”
Once they’d finished initial recording, they sent demos to producer and former Madisonian Beau Sorenson (Death Cab For Cutie, Thao & The Get Down Stay Down), who became an integral part of the album. “He had a way of taking the tones we recorded and elevating them to a new level,” Golz says.
Stylistically, Projecting leans into the pop and rock influence more than their previous albums. “Pinky Promise” was originally conceived as an acoustic folk song before they eventually decided it worked better as a slower, synth-heavy dream-pop track. “We wanted to write songs that were fun to play live and fun to listen to,” Golz says.
At the upcoming album release show, they’ll be playing on a bill with Madison’s VomBom and The Earthlings and Milwaukee’s Social Cig, and with a full band during their own performance. The camaraderie they’ve found among local artists is part of what continues to draw Seasaw to the Madison music scene.
“It speaks to the kindness of the bands in this city,” Golz says. “They want to support each other and lift each other up.”
