Photo by Billy Landers courtesy of Prophet Media

The seven-piece retro pop group Couch is making moves. They recently released their debut album Big Talk and have embarked on a 40-city headline tour. Their upcoming hometown gig on November 22nd at Roadrunner will be the group’s largest headline show by far. With that milestone rapidly approaching, Allston Pudding caught up with Couch’s Zach Blankstein on the road in Minneapolis.

From its inception, Couch has survived and thrived on the cooperative effort of its seven contributors. The band was formed while each of its members was scattered across the country at different colleges, which necessitated an entirely long-distance approach for their early work, but they have since forged an identity together as a remarkably cohesive group. With two EPs under their belt and plenty of experience performing live on headlining and supporting tours, Couch locked in to release their first full-length album Big Talk, going as far as booking their tour before recording the LP. The album is a new step for the band, but it is also a natural continuation of the band’s ambitions to keep growing as a unit greater than the sum of its parts.

Too many cooks might spoil the broth, but Couch has proved to be an exception to that common sentiment. Speaking about the process of creating Big Talk, guitarist Zach Blankstein outlined an approach that highlighted the speed at which the band came together to translate early concepts to fully realized songs. “This was our most collaborative music-making process so far. We basically lived at a studio for 2 weeks. Leading up to that, we were workshopping songs in our rehearsal space in Boston in smaller groups, not all seven of us. Two or three people at a time, usually Tema [Siegel] plus a couple of the guys would bring in a song into rehearsal and we would workshop it. Everyone could weigh in and give notes–not just the people who were the primary writers–and we had the goal of having the songs developed enough to go into a studio but also not so developed that there wasn’t room to be creative in the space.” It was that rapid drafting process that allowed the group to enter the studio with open minds and a readiness to experiment on each new track.

Historically, Couch’s previous work was spearheaded by a smaller primary songwriting team within the septet, but Blankstein noted that things were different for Big Talk. “All seven people have producer credits on every song on this record, and many people have a writing credit across the album.” He elaborated that each new song idea was fully fleshed out according to the original vision of its creator, and only then would the others offer any significant changes. “It was really deeply collaborative. It’s hard to get seven voices involved in something and I think something that’s so cool is [that] we were open to the songs on this album feeling different from each other.” The result was a mishmash of genres and influences that reflected the individual contributions of each artist. “We let each song be the fullest version of what it was, which let each person’s influence really take over.” He cited specific examples from Big Talk: the pop EDM track “Middle Man” influenced by trumpet player Jeff Pinsker-Smith’s love of the genre, and “Window,” which Blankstein envisioned as his acoustic guitar idea at the intersection between Paul Simon and Nora Jones. Such a freewheeling approach could result in an incoherent jumble in less capable hands, but Couch set out on that path with confidence in their own ability to tie everything together. “We just wanted each song to fully exist as its own thing, and I think what makes it cohesive is Tema’s storytelling, her vocal performance, our arranging instincts even if the genre is changing, the way we’re approaching harmony, horn arrangement, rhythm section, the way things are interweaved. That’s the through-point musically, so it doesn’t matter that things sit in different genres across the album.”

Ultimately, the development of Big Talk was a testament to the supportive nature of the close-knit band. For all the open-mindedness to creative input and reinterpretation of original concepts, Blankstein remarked, “Almost every tune ended up in the general place that the original vision was, which I think speaks to the band’s supportiveness of each other’s ideas, the willingness to aid someone else’s idea versus trying to make it their own. I think it speaks to why we can–as a group of seven–work so nicely together.” The determining factor in how much each song changed throughout its development was above all else, how much Couch evolved in the meantime. Some tracks like “One Night,” “Window,” and “Lucky To Be Stuck With You” came together quickly, essentially in one session, but conversely, “Little Less Over You” was refined throughout the course of a year and updated to align with the progression in the bands’ production instincts. That track is an outlier, however; Couch prefer a shorter timeline for a fresh album that represents the most accurate version of themselves in the moment. “These songs are the newest musical adventures for us… and I feel like that recency just makes this whole experience and tour and album rollout so fun for us.”

With such an emphasis on progress and change, where does that leave the back catalog of Couch’s repertoire? “Our goal is to have all the music we put out be an accurate representation of who we are right now at the time of release or close to it. The songs we did previously were–at that time–and so it was a success even if those songs don’t reflect musically where we want to be now or tell stories about things that are no longer relevant in our lives.” That said, Couch has made some adjustments. “On this tour, we’re rearranging a lot of the old songs to make them new and exciting: big intros, big outros. We have a whole light show that’s syncing up with all the licks and hits and vocal moments.. so it feels like–both for ourselves and the people nice enough to come to a show–we’re delivering a completely new experience of the familiar.” That’s not all that Couch have in store for their Big Talk tour. Part of the fan experience of a Couch tour is the distribution of disposable film cameras for fans to use and create “Couch family photos,” but this time the band has gone to great lengths to have the photos developed and returned to fans on the same evening as the show. Even more importantly, this logistical feat has enabled Couch to sell signed prints for the benefit of Rosie’s Place, the Boston women’s shelter and community center. That’s all in the spirit of fostering community, which has been a longstanding goal of Couch’s. As a self-managed band, they’ve been able to drive toward that objective with their increasing success.

Self-managing and self-producing is another aspect of Couch that reveals their persistent motivation to improve and learn while maintaining a pragmatic approach to a frequently unforgiving industry. Blankstein commented, “We over time have been very excited to try to learn how things work on our own and do them to the best of our abilities, and then if we feel like our youth or lack of industry experience is holding us back on a certain thing, we bring in outside help on that specific thing. Sort of like ả la carte style label services.” They’ve deferred to outside assistance where necessary but have made a point of retaining their own independence whenever possible and particularly when it counts in the day-to-day operations and decision making. They haven’t let their success inflate their egos though, and the members of Couch have become even more grateful to the support networks that have allowed them their independence, taking extra time to shout out to the Boston-based artist development nonprofit Salt Lick Incubator, whose grant funding, street team, and strategic partnership they’ve benefited from. “Our true independence only works because of our interdependence,” Blankstein observes. “We are just deciding our path and leaning on community and fans who have supported us for several years now, and our families for letting us make noise in the basement growing up to get good enough at our instruments. It’s like every piece of it relied on someone else’s generosity and belief in us, and so even though we’re independent, we’re also an interdependent band, and I really like that.”

Couch have made it abundantly clear that they are not content to merely coast. Despite a name that deliberately evokes feelings of comfort and coziness, Couch have taken every opportunity to act on their ambitions and grow as musicians and as a band, all while cultivating a loyal community of fans and supporters. Now firmly into their Big Talk era with clarity of purpose, they’re ready for the big league.