The Silver Lake Chorus Brings Harmony to Indie Rock

The Silver Lake Chorusis based in the hip L.A. neighborhood of the same name. According to the group’s music director, Mikey Wells, it’s “a group of about twenty people — part chorus, part indie band.” The idea was to perform covers of familiar indie rock songs. Then their friend, the songwriter and producer Ben Lee, had an idea: get indie rockers to write original songs for the chorus and put out a record. The chorus’self-titled debutis a collection of songs by indie heavyweights such as The Flaming Lips, Ben Gibbard, and Justin Vernon.

The album’s last track, “Easy to Die,” was written byAimee MannandPaul Bryan. It was inspired by a friend of Mann’s who died of a drug overdose. Wells and TSLC soprano Heather Ogilvy arranged the song for the chorus. “We had no insight into her songwriting process,” says Wells, “I think we found it to be a really cool challenge to be given the raw materials and say, ‘What are you gonna do?'”

The members of The Silver Lake Chorus

(Lehua Nolle)

“It just sounds so beautiful right off the bat — that piano sound,” says Mann of TSLC’s rendition. Turns out, the piano was a happy accident. “My good friend who I was working with on production had this janky piano in his studio,” Wells explains. “He wasn’t sure the last time it had been tuned, and we loved the sort of ragtag sound of it.”

But it wasn’t all as easy to figure out as the piano. “We tracked the whole chorus singing the whole melody and its harmony. We tracked individual people doing it. We tracked all boys. We tracked all girls — and what we ended up doing was starting with two voices, and then adding two more for the second verse, and so on and so on.” Wells builds the voices of the chorus into a round at the end. “It’s beautiful,” says Bryan. “That’s a new addition that I just love.”

Mann says she’s happy with the way the chorus adapted the song. “It’s got that atmosphere of ‘I’m taking the easy way out. I’m not doing the work like these people,'” says Mann. “The drug addict doesn’t bear any of the worry about what happens to him, it’s all good times. Until it’s over.”

(Originally aired July 23, 2015)

BonusTrack: The Silver Lake Chorus, “Easyto Die”

Bonus Track: The Silver Lake Chorus, “Nervous Soul”