HONEY VHS | INTERVIEW + TRACK REVIEW
- 19 hours ago
- 9 min read
Some records chase perfection. With Pulp is interested in what perfection removes.
Brooklyn-based band Honey VHS built their latest EP around the moments modern production is often designed to erase: the movement between musicians, the unpredictability of a live performance, the rough edge of a vocal and the small imperfections that prove real people were in the room. Recorded largely through live full-band takes, With Pulp embraces texture over polish and connection over precision. The result feels warm, lived-in and unmistakably human.
That same philosophy extends beyond the recording process. Across songs shaped by love, anxiety, rejection, friendship and self-reflection, Honey VHS find meaning in the quieter details of everyday life: an elevated train moving through Brooklyn, a familiar doorway, conversations with old friends and drives soundtracked by the golden hour. Their music carries nostalgia without becoming trapped inside it, using old emotions as a way to better understand the people they are becoming.
Behind the EP are musicians who understand that honesty does not always arrive through grand revelations. Sometimes it exists in an imperfect take, a guitar texture worth fighting for or the unspoken dialogue between people playing together in the same room.
We caught up with Honey VHS to discuss With Pulp, Brooklyn’s influence on their sound, recording without polishing away the humanity, the strange comfort of nostalgia and why the rough edges are often the parts that cut deepest.
TRACK REVIEW -
It’s rare that I get to experience the visuals alongside a song, but the music video feels like an invitation into the world of Honey VHS. From the opening acoustic guitar, the track carries a dreamlike warmth, slowly wrapping around you like a familiar blanket of love, comfort and acceptance.
Rather than simply describing a place, the song allows us to understand the landscape Honey VHS inhabit: the neighbourhoods, relationships and small moments that have become part of their story. There’s a calmness to the performance that never feels empty or uneventful. It draws you further into their world, allowing the story to unfold naturally without forcing an emotion or rushing toward a grand conclusion.
By the end, I felt less like I had watched a music video and more like I had briefly stepped inside someone else’s memories. It’s intimate, comforting and beautifully human, which feels perfectly aligned with everything With Pulp represents.
Also, bonus points for the cat in the music video. Some critical details cannot be ignored.
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“With Pulp” is such a strangely specific title. It immediately feels imperfect, textured and real. What did that phrase capture about the songs that a cleaner title couldn’t?
That was the initial plan, and kind of our whole ethos when it comes to performing and recording; to have things sound imperfect and real, but also be textured and tasty. It feels like so much these days is edited to oblivion, to the point where it starts feeling artificial and vacant. We decided to build this EP around live performances to preserve the “pulp” in our music. That natural, unpredictable, imperfect part that we can be so quick to filter out. Some people don’t want that stuff in their mouth, it doesn’t always go down as easy. But we like it, and chose to embrace it. Naturally it’s not a live album so some studio trickery was employed to refine the sound a bit. We wanted it to still feel accessible to a wide audience but that core mentality informed most of the decisions we made. That being said, our next release is probably going to be a smoothy; full pulp!
Your music feels like it belongs in old apartments, late-night conversations and city streets after everyone else has gone home. How much does Brooklyn itself act as an uncredited member of the band?
Very much so! Firstly, we recorded in BK, so it’s omnipresent in the EP. There is a free feeling you get in BK that you don’t get anywhere else, and that naturally permeates into the music. Living in Brooklyn has formed some of my (Cam) most cherished habits. I love going to shows without knowing the performers and discovering new music in that way, or walking around my neighborhood with friends, letting the wind pull us in whatever direction. Living here makes finding new pockets of people and communities feel so accessible and in turn there is the freedom to constantly reinvent and embrace change. Of course there’s chaos that comes with that and it’s a very transient city, but leaning into that can be fun too. Also our song “November” is literally a love song to Ridgewood and Bushwick, where we spend all our time. The lyrics aren’t abstract, they were written to give these snapshots of very specific places in our neighborhood. “Morning hum with the trains above” is the M train going through Bushwick and Ridgewood, and “her blue-painted doorway” is the entry to Luca’s apartment.
The EP explores love, anxiety and self-reflection, but it never feels overly polished emotionally. Was it important to leave some rough edges in both the recordings and the songwriting?
Absolutely. That is where the humanity is. We’re big proponents of not editing things to the point of perfection. We actually have a new song about approaching writing music that way. Just keeping things simple and honest. We’re both big fans of old blues music and none of those lyrics are particularly complex but man do they cut deep. Of course there are different ways to do it. There is a story that Bob Dylan once mentioned to Leonard Cohen that he really liked his song “Hallelujah,” and asked him how long it took to write it. Cohen told him, 5 years. Cohen then asked Dylan how long it took him to write “I and I,” and Dylan told him, fifteen minutes. Both amazing writers, but two very different approaches, neither better than the other. As far as recording goes, we think so much of what a band is can get lost in the whole studio recording process and from producers polishing whatever they’re working on to the point where it shines so bright you don’t want to look at it anymore. We based each recording around a live single take, with the whole group playing together live. With that approach, it isn’t about hitting everything in the most perfect way; it’s more about telling a story together, capturing those minute reactions to each other, the dialogue between people in the room, and carrying the emotion of the song in a continuous and honest way.
Recording largely through live full-take performances feels almost rebellious in an era where perfection is only a click away. What do mistakes and imperfections preserve that endless editing often erases?
A lot of our favorite artists recorded that way. There are some old recordings that were taken by this guy called Alan Lomax in the 30s who was driving around the US trying to record and preserve as much folk music as he could from all different parts of the country. His goal was to document the diverse music traditions in different communities in the US. Half the recordings were done outside, on farms and in fields, with a single microphone and tape machine, in mono. The quality of the recordings themselves can be abysmal at times, and half those people had probably never been in front of a microphone before or since. They had one song and one take to show this man who they were musically. And those recordings are haunting. They have everything, every breath of human emotion and experience. Motown was like that too. Some parts of those songs were actually taken from the practice take, where the engineers were just trying to make sure everything was setup properly and the musicians were comfortable with the arrangement. But they were all so locked in and hit it so hard that half the time they just went with it, even if there was some clipping or background chatter. Those moments where you hear a person behind the microphone, not a pitch perfect, effect-saturated machine, where it sounds like someone singing to you in a room, those moments are the ones that give us goosebumps. Some might call that a rough edge but to us that rough edge is what cuts deep. We think it’s part of the reason people are so turned off by AI these days, it feels unnatural to have something be that processed. Recording this way, also gives the group space to tell a continuous story. That continuity in the push and pull of a performance is more captivating to us than a bunch of fragments stitched together.
The name Honey VHS feels nostalgic, but your songs don’t seem interested in living in the past. Do you see nostalgia as comfort, distortion, or something more complicated?
Nostalgia is a huge part of our relationship with music. For songs like If You Want Me and Never Left the Ground, they represent such old feelings, a fear that the people you love don’t love you back, or a fear of trying really hard and nothing coming from that effort. Nostalgia can mean simply reflecting on old emotions from a new perspective, and using that distance to find new meaning in those old feelings, then carrying that new understanding into the future. The past can also feel a little more interesting at times than the future these days. Maybe because it’s such a common sentiment to feel nervous about where we’re heading. And facing that fear isn’t always easy. But looking back, you can cherry pick the good parts, and influence how you remember things. So in that sense things become a little distorted because you’re looking through those rose tinted glasses. It can be a comfort in that way for sure… kind of like that cozy feeling you get from an old bar or living room that has some mileage. We like a sonic space that feels lived in.
“November” carries the feeling of a season changing, but also a person changing with it. Do you think growing up is more about becoming someone new, or learning how to live with who you’ve always been?
We’re all trying different ways to build up what we’ve got and not lean into the parts that don’t serve us. You definitely don’t get anywhere without facing yourself. You have to have enough self respect to own the things you say and do. If you can face yourself in the mirror and love that person, you can do anything from there. You can stay the same, build, change, help others etc.
Your songs often sit between warmth and uncertainty, like they’re searching for answers without pretending to have found them. Do you think honesty in songwriting comes more from questions than conclusions?
The most honest people will readily admit they have no idea what they’re doing and will look to enrich themselves rather than dish out truths. We’re all trying to figure it out and if there is anything we’re sure of it’s that anyone who thinks they’ve got it all figured out is kidding themselves. So what’s left other than to ask questions, to yourself, to others and to the world. A lot of comfort can be found in embracing what you don’t know. And that you’re not alone in not knowing.
A lot of coming-of-age music focuses on dramatic moments. Your music seems drawn to quieter realizations. What kinds of moments tend to stay with you long enough to become songs?
Here are a few recent moments that made their way into our music:
Riding the train with a group of people from every walk of life
cooking and eating with loved ones
calm moments with my brother
driving around blasting music at golden hour
calling my friend of 29 years and hearing all about their week
feeling compelled to help other people
listening deeply to jazz, specifically anything with the drummer Dave King
when I notice people lying, when I lie
when someone rejects me
when you break up with someone and don’t want them to move on but can’t be with them
when I want to love someone but can’t…
These are the kinds of moments that make me remember exactly where I was, how it sounded, what it smelled like, how it looked, and how I felt in my body for better or for worse.
The band pulls from folk, blues, classic rock and alternative influences, yet the result feels surprisingly cohesive. What emotional thread ties all those different musical languages together?
There are a lot of different personalities and musical sensibilities that went into these songs and finding a balance between everyone’s perspective wasn’t always that cohesive. There are moments that we all had to fight for. But there was always a mutual respect and interest in each others’ perspective. It was kind of a happy accident that we landed on something that embraced different genres and recording approaches. If anything ties it together, it was everyone rallying around the vocal performances and trying their best to uplift them in their own way. There is an undercurrent of hopefulness in all the songs that also helps tie them together.
If someone discovers Honey VHS years from now through “With Pulp” alone, what do you hope they understand about the people behind the record before the final song fades out?
Cam - I’ve struggled a lot with mental health since I was a kid and it’s a big reason why I write. You’ll hear the depression and anxiety in songs like If You Want Me, Never Left the Ground, and Jet Lag. In the face of some darkness, there are always small moments that make life feel more positive. The songs Blue Eyes Sunshine, November, Childhood are all representative of that. I hope whoever listens can relate to what we’re saying! There’s something very hopeful about sharing your struggles in this way.
Luca - I tried to put as much of myself as I could into this record. I hope they get a kick out of hearing the many different guitar textures that recall myriad different influences and musical interests. There was a lot of silliness behind the scenes during this recording as well and I hope there are moments that show that were not all that serious.
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