We’re pleased to bring you the debut of Adam Lareau‘s “It’s Too Late To Be Yesterday,” from his new album Vacation Transportation. Fans of classic power-pop will find much to enjoy here, and Lareau’s creative process — described below — is also fascinating. Brace yourselves for crashing waves and a barrage of sunglasses…

Here’s Lareau’s description of the creation of Vacation Transportation:

The idea behind the album is that odd-numbered songs are the “Vacation” destinations, and the even songs are the “Transportation.” All the samples for the Transportation songs come from the Vacation songs surrounding them, so the hope is that they sound like memories/anticipations of the Vacation songs.

I first had the idea in high school – I was going through an intense Beach Boys and XTC phase, and writing a bunch of 60s style pop songs. But I like having some global theme or concept to help unify things, so after writing a few of the songs (“Sun is Fun,” “It Makes Up My Mind,” and “It’s Too Late To Be Yesterday”) and noticing the common theme, I came up with Vacation Transportation. At first it was to be two separate discs or sides, but eventually I realized it made more sense for the Transportation songs to bridge the Vacation songs, so that they’d actually be transportation in a way. That’s when I decided they would be based off of samples from the Vacation songs. (Also, I love how easy it is to take a classically written pop song, chop it up and reassemble it, and still end up with a pop song. So much of pop music is based on the same simple chord progressions and traditional melodies being presented in some new context or arrangement.)

Fast forward 10 years to when I was living in Boston. I had just finished my first EP – Weather Machine Device – and decided to restart the Vacation Transportation idea. That’s when I wrote “Quantum Surfing”, “Mobile Question” and “Dislocated Heart”. I worked on the 6 Vacation songs slowly over the next 4 years, during which time I moved back to Brooklyn. Despite making music on computers since I was in 6th grade, I had never been that happy with my sound, and it was only over the past year that I finally started getting close to what I wanted. The turning point was actually New World Record-era ELO: techniques such as using minimal reverb, careful double-tracking of vocals, using the hi-end of the rhythm instruments instead of relying on hi-hats, etc. With the sound of the Vacation songs finally falling into place, I started working on the Transportation songs. (Since they were to use Vacation samples, I couldn’t really write them till I was 95% done with the Vacations!) The Transportation songs were all written this year, with “Where Was I” written just a few months ago. So for an album written over 15 years, I think it turned out relatively coherent!

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