The Wichita band Vehicles will celebrate the release of its latest album, "Belief in Habits," at Barleycorn's on Saturday, June 18.
The band's Cody Cloud recently spoke with KMUW about the record and some of the changes he's undergone since the band's last album, "Echo."
This is not to take anything away from past Vehicles records, but I feel like this is the one that really needs to be heard by the widest audience possible. Do you have some sense of that within the band?
You hear stories about bands, old bands, that had to evolve naturally. We enjoy being with each other. We've had time [together]; some of the other members in the band and I have played together for over 20 years. We're getting better at knowing what we're good at. Or what we think we're good at at least.
Plus, when you're younger -- at least for us -- you want to belong to a music scene so badly. You just try things maybe you're not as good at and, at this point, we're older. We're just more relaxed, and I think more comfortable with each other.
There's a thing that happens with creativity in that I think tension can actually be good sometimes. Someone might say, "This is really good, but I think we can push it a little further." Has that been the case in your band where there's somebody who can step up and say, "Maybe we should spend a little more time on this or think about it from a different angle?"
Yeah, definitely. I think … that comes with being together for so long. I think in the past, people got really concerned about hurting each other's feelings or making somebody angry. I think we've gotten to a place where that kind of criticism, it's not taken as personal, right? It's just kind of like serving the art a little better. People speak up and say, "That's OK. It's a good solo or good section but it could be better." We're not as reactive as we used to be with each other. That's a nice place to be.
Tell me about the lyrics of this time out. I feel like there are usually connections from song to song with the lyrics whether it's about loneliness or children growing up and the kind of changes that one goes through with age.
I was laid off for the second time in my life at the end of 2018. I had to start a new career. I'm a therapist, so hearing a lot of other people's stories and processing that through my own lens … some of that makes it into the lyrics, maybe unconsciously. It's just perspectives that I never had to consider in previous jobs. I had to grow some parts of myself up that I didn't know I needed to and had to wrestle with some [different] ideas. And so, yeah, a lot of lyrics come out of that growth experience.