Eric Silverman Reimagines ‘Bitter Honey’ on New Album ‘Raw Honey
Eric Silverman has returned to ‘Bitter Honey,’ but not to make the same record twice.
Out today on Royal Oakie Records, ‘Raw Honey’ revisits the songs from his second album through alternate versions, different arrangements and a new running order. Silverman worked on the record with co-producer Damien Lewis, stripping back some of the elements that had made ‘Bitter Honey’ such a full, layered record in the first place.
Strings, horns, overdubs and stacked vocals were a big part of ‘Bitter Honey.’ Once the album was finished, Silverman found himself thinking about what was underneath all of that.
“When we were starting to record some of the larger overdubs of ‘Bitter Honey’ – the strings, the horns – we found ourselves listening to them over and over again, and realizing how much they shaped the songs, but also could really stand on their own,” he says.
That became the starting point for ‘Raw Honey.’
“Bitter Honey was always supposed to be this kind of larger album, really big sounding, really big feeling, really complete, and it felt really good to be able to dial things back on ‘Raw Honey’ and get to a little more of the core of the songs.”
Silverman mentions The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be… Naked’ as an inspiration, but ‘Raw Honey’ is not simply an unplugged or stripped version of the earlier record. Some songs changed considerably.
On ‘Bitter Honey,’ the percussion comes from Silverman’s own voice pushed through a slammed console, giving the track a much rougher, lo-fi character. ‘Trapped in Reverse’ was approached again with different instrumentation, taking it somewhere else altogether.
“A lot of that was subtraction – figuring out what to take away from the songs to let other things shine through or simplify what you experienced when listening to these songs, but still have them hit the right emotional notes,” Silverman says. “Some of it was an opportunity to do a new re-record and approach the songs completely differently.”
There is something appealing about hearing someone go back into a record so soon after finishing it, while the choices are presumably still fresh enough to question.
“It’s always fun to rework your songs and really learn something new or find something hidden inside them that you never really found before,” Silverman says.
He sees the two records as parts of the same thing.
“I think ‘Raw Honey’ is a perfect companion to ‘Bitter Honey,’ and together, they really communicate the themes and the energy of the whole album project.”
Headline credit: Pearl Matilde Eagle-Martin
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