[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Emile Mosseri is well known as a film composer, but his latest release is a standalone solo album titled Heaven Hunters. Let's listen to a song from it, My Greedy Heart.

MUSIC - Emile Mosseri: My Greedy Heart.

My greedy heart

Drunk and confused

Can't walk a straight line

All ‘cause of you

All ‘cause of you

My greedy heart

Stretched out and used

Can’t walk a straight line

All ‘cause of you

All ‘cause of you

My bloody heart

Swollen and blue

Can't walk a straight line

All ‘cause of you

All ‘cause of you

Alison Stewart: Before Emile Mosseri scored future films like The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Kajillionaire and earning an Oscar nomination for his work on Minari, Mosseri was a songwriter and performer in the New York-based indie rock band, The Dig. His new album is his official debut as a solo artist, but it carries with it both backgrounds of an experienced songwriter and composer who works on a cinematic scale. Emile Mosseri joins me now for a listening party for his new album, Heaven Hunters. Hi Emile, welcome back.

Emile Mosseri: Hey, great to see you. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: When you dropped this album, you described it on Twitter as "a fully loaded baked potato of a moment."

[laughter]

Emile Mosseri: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Tell me about the loaded baked potatoes.

Emile Mosseri: Oh, sure. Yes, it has all the fixings, I guess, of excitement and joy and terror and all of it. It's basically a day that had been floating in my future for years and years as an idea like, oh, I always wanted to make something that was just mine. I'd spent years in a collaborative band with my band The Dig, and I'd spent the last four or five years stepping out of the music industry and collaborating with visual artists, with directors and that was a magical experience. All both of those experiences.

Then I've made collaborative records, but this is my first record that was just my songs, my voice, my words. With that comes higher highs and lower lows because it's uncompressed. It's a wider bandwidth of sorts because I don't know because if it connects with people, it feels amazing, and if certain expectations don't get met or if people don't like it then there's nobody to point to and blame. There's nobody to say, "Oh, I would've made this but the filmmaker wanted me to write this." In that way, there's a vulnerability to it that creates, I think that fully loaded baked potato.

Alison Stewart: What feels good about all that ownership?

Emile Mosseri: What feels good about it is being seen. I think any artist wants to be seen. There's mirror hungry in a way that anytime we put something out into the world, so when you're making something that is very personal there's less of a wall or compartment. It's less compartmentalized between yourself, what you're feeling, what you're going through, and the art if people connect to it and people feel it, then I feel more seen in a way than I do if I'm writing music for a film. There's a beauty in that too.

There's a collaborative spirit of making film music that's it's just a different animal. It's been a rich experience in my brain chemistry these last couple of months, just putting myself out there. It's been liberating and scary but ultimately very satisfying and filled with joy.

Alison Stewart: Has your work as a film composer influenced your work as a songwriter?

Emile Mosseri: I think so, yes. I think so. In a lot of ways, sonically arrangement-wise, in terms of breaking out of this first chorus song form that personally I was locked into for a long time which I love as well. I love songs that have that structure but in that sense, and then also in another less technical sense, just the emotional sense of I was scoring films for these artists that were making very, very vulnerable works. Like Minari, you mentioned in Kajillionaire or The Last Black Man in San Francisco in particular, those films, the filmmakers were really laying it all out there in a really vulnerable, really fearless way.

I wanted to do my version of that. You absorb that when you see people do that, it's inspiring. I think that idea found its way into this record, just the existence of the record, in general, is inspired by that.

Alison Stewart: My guess is Emile Mosseri, the name of his solo debut album is Heaven Hunters, and that is the first track, lyricless. We can talk about why on the other side. Let's take a listen.

Emile Mosseri: Sure yes.

MUSIC - Emile Mosseri: Heaven Hunters

Alison Stewart: It's the title track Heaven Hunters. Why did it make sense for you to open the album this way?

Emile Mosseri: I think it was just to set a mood, set the feel and the tone of the record. There's another track on the record called Two Heaven Hunters that is the same melody and it's like a one-minute song that's just my vocal and guitar that's more exposed. I think that mirrors it, it comes in deeper into the record. I wanted to establish that melody and then deliver the lyric later on, tucked into the record. I think that was a decision that I made with my dear friend and brilliant artist Bobby Krlic, who produced the record.

I met him when the record was in an earlier stage and the songs were recorded in a way that wasn't as expansive and wasn't as cinematic. I think he pushed me to have the moments that were more expansive be bigger and the moments that were more vulnerable and be more focused. He just widened it sonically and spiritually in a way and I think that decision to lead with that song was part of that approach.

Alison Stewart: Sounds like he gave you not permission but encourage you to be a little elastic.

Emile Mosseri: Totally. Absolutely. Yes, basically just pushed me to be more vulnerable with my vocal and to get bigger when the moments called for it in terms of lush orchestration and the more cinematic. He just made the record more dynamic and more than that he made me fall in love with the music again because I've been working on this record for years. When you work on something that closely you can't see it, you can't hear it either. You get riddled with self-doubt, you get hot, you get tired, there's a fatigue.

Then he flipped it on its head and bulldozed it and rebuilt it in a way that made me find love for the songs again which I'm really grateful for.

Alison Stewart: We heard Heaven Hunters, let's listen to its companion, Two Heaven Hunters. This is Emile Mosseri.

MUSIC: Emile Mosseri - Two Heaven Hunters

Alison Stewart: I'm here listening to this with really good headphones, as opposed to [chuckles] my little speaker, it almost sounds like a Theremin. What is that trill in the background?

Emile Mosseri: Oh, in the back, I think it's like a Mono/Poly. It's an old Korg Mono/Poly that synthesizer just whistling so just to create this slightly unsettling or dissonant vibe that's sort of a bed for the more folky melodic song. It's good. That's great that you're listening on great headphones. I wish everybody would listen on. You wish you can control that part of it.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Emile Mosseri: You have to let it go into the world and people will listen on laptop speakers, iPhone, whatever they-- their hope is that it can connect. It's nice when people hear it with that kind of fidelity, so I appreciate that.

Alison Stewart: Well, people know now. We're listening to the segment.

Emile Mosseri: Yes.

Alison Stewart: The name of the album is Heaven Hunters. Emile Mosseri is my guest. You're from our area. You grew up in Westchester? Yes.

Emile Mosseri: I did. Yes, I grew up an hour north of the city. I miss and love New York deeply. I live in LA now.

Alison Stewart: When did music first come into your life?

Emile Mosseri: I was about 10 years old. I started playing drums and playing bass, and I was obsessed with the Chili Peppers and the Beasties. I was just listening to you guys talk about that. It was fun to learn more about them and Nirvana and Beck and all that stuff, just a kid in the '90s. I was born in 1985. I fell in love with music. Then my first CD, I think it was Simply Red. Then, in and I had growing up on The Beatles and stuff like that, and then I fell in love with it. I think probably earlier, but I started making music when I was 10 or 11, and just playing in bands, really terrible bands.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Okay, what were their names? I love teen banding. [laughs]

Emile Mosseri: Oh, man, wow. We had a band called Jackie and The Band, but there was nobody named Jackie. We just thought it sounded cool. We had a band called The Bastards. With The Bastards, we were Rage Against the Machine cover band and then we turned into a Dave Matthews cover band. Like a year later, we just hard turned whatever.

Alison Stewart: That's a 180. [laughs]

Emile Mosseri: Just try to give the people what they want. You know what I mean?

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Emile Mosseri: Just shamelessly trying and, I guess, meet girls or just be cool or whatever it was.

Alison Stewart: Dudes, the Rage isn't working. Dave Mathews cover band. That'll do it.

Emile Mosseri: That's it.

Alison Stewart: Chicks dig it. [laughs]

Emile Mosseri: Didn't work either. I don’t think, sadly. [laughs] You got our number there for sure. I think it was just figuring it out. Being a kid and playing in a band is really explosive time in your young brain because it's just fun. You find that the joy of playing music onstage with your friends on stage. When I say onstage, I'm talking about like a corner of the cafeteria that we would play. Technically a stage, or spiritually it's a stage. Yes, you fall in love with that experience and the collaborative experience of it.

There's really nothing like it. I can't remember. I'm going to paraphrase. That was just like the last line in Keith Richards' book, he talks about that in a really poetic way. He talks about how he was just-- that you're just flying. It sounds corny the way I'm saying it, but anyway. I fell in love with it through that, through just learning songs and playing with my friends and playing in the cafeterias, and figuring out how to play and what we liked.

Alison Stewart: When did you first identify what your own individual taste was? That you weren't going to necessarily deal with covers. Something that you knew was your style, was your creative spark?

Emile Mosseri: It's such a great question. It's just tough to answer because there's times, looking back on my band's music for all those years, and my own music, certain stuff I can tell what was our style and what was my collaborator's style and what was my style. There's times where you can also smell what we were influenced by on it, and that goes back even further, like Rage Against the Machine, Dave Matthews. Those were cover bands, but you could tell we were connecting with something in that music.

You absorb whatever you're listening to, and then when you create something, it comes out in a way that ideally has some of you, and I think you have to turn off your brain in a way in order to achieve that. I don't know. I think, in a way, this record is the first time that I'm making an artistic statement that's just mine. Really, it feels the answer might be convenient, but it's the truth, is that this is the first time I feel like I have made something that's just my style. That's not in service of a film or collaboration, not finding its footing or home in a cocktail that it is a cocktail, which comes with more vulnerability and more--

That's what's scary about it because it's just you. It's hard to be a judge of your own work because sometimes with the artists I love, like with Bobby's work or with my collaborators' work from The Dig, they have both amazing projects now. When I listen to their projects, they sound so much like themselves more than they realize. If you don't listen to The Beatles all the time, their voices all sound the same. Once you're a deep fan, George and Paul, and John they have very different-sounding voices. It's the same with anything you like--

I'm not comparing myself to The Beatles. I'm just saying. Conceptually, it's like the more you're immersed in something, the harder it is to tell. I think we sound more like ourselves than we realize. That's the hope, that there's a thread between my own compositions and my record. Your style is also basically your limitations. What you can't do is what gives you your style, because if you could do everything, nobody would have any style because they would just do-- I think the trick is being colorful and adventurous, but still, your limitations would tie it together.

Alison Stewart: We have time for one more track, I'm going to make a dealer's choice, Oklahoma Baby or Where The Waters Warm. Which one do you want to hear? Which one do you want to tell us about?

Emile Mosseri: Let's do Oklahoma Baby because that one is--

Alison Stewart: Got a good story.

Emile Mosseri: Yes, that one has lyrics. I wrote that song from the perspective of my wife's father, who she hasn't spoken to in over a decade. A year ago or a couple years ago, we'd found this card that he'd given her that had a line on it that said, "There was never a time that I didn't love you." We found the card after it'd been a decade since they'd spoken. It was a complicated situation. I wrote that song about that line leading up to that line that was the genesis of it, but then it turned into this other paternal love song for her.

That one is close to my heart. That would be a good one to play between the two.

Alison Stewart: The name of the album is Heaven Hunters. It is from Emile Mosseri. Emile, thank you for being with us today.

Emile Mosseri: Thanks for having me. It's great to see you again and talk to you. What a treat.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on Oklahoma Baby.

MUSIC: Emile Mosseri - Oklahoma Baby

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