Thursday, May 12, 2022 • 7min
Tennyson Writes Album After New Hearing Condition
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Tennyson talks about his new album, 'Rot,' written after he developed a hearing condition brought on by mold exposure that caused intense sensitivity to sound.
“It started suddenly. I was upstairs and someone was doing dishes and I noticed that it was extremely loud. I went outside to try and relax and the sound of the birds were piercing and the sound of the wind in the leaves of the trees felt like sandpaper,” Tennyson says. Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/sound/ https://www.kexp.org/sound/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Luke Pretty
Emily Fox
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Emily Fox
00:18
This is Sound & Vision from
KEXP
. I'm Emily Fox.Share
00:24
The artist Tennyson wrote his latest album after developing a hearing condition possibly brought on by mold exposure.
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00:38
And Luke Pretty of Tennyson joins me now to talk about it. Hello?
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Luke Pretty
00:41
Hey Emily.
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Emily Fox
00:42
So described this hearing condition and how it affected how you heard Music.
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Luke Pretty
00:48
It started suddenly probably in 30 seconds. I was upstairs and somebody was doing dishes and I noticed that it was extremely loud and yeah, I went outside to try and like relax and the sound of the birds were piercing and the sound of the wind and the trees, of the leaves or in the leaves of the trees was I felt like sandpaper...
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Emily Fox
01:14
Whoa!
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Luke Pretty
01:14
And I have always thought that the sound of wind through leaves was my favorite sound. And so I guess in that moment I was like, "I'm screwed", like this has to go away or I'm not gonna be happy ever again.
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Emily Fox
01:29
Whoa! And so basically just amplified every sound you could possibly hear like things that are relatively quiet, we're just so loud for you.
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Luke Pretty
01:36
Yeah. And what's funny is I took an antibiotic earlier that day that I had been like feeling like I shouldn't take anyway and I was online reading some of the side effects which I probably shouldn't have done and I think I might have just quickly seen that one of the side effects was like hypersensitive hearing and I wonder if it's just stuck in my brain and I had like a negative placebo effect or something.
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Emily Fox
02:21
I read that this whole hearing condition was brought on by mold exposure. Talk more about how this even like came to be and how long it lasted for.
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Luke Pretty
02:28
Yeah, so my bedroom where I work and sleep out of one spring ago, all the snow was melting and the entire floor underneath the floorboards filled up with water and it must have been there for a long time because by the time we noticed it, the whole floor once we ripped it up was like black and yellow and and kind of like spooky looking and I've been coughing for like three months before then.
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02:58
So yeah, I'm not sure if, I mean it's just speculation if that's the reason why my hearing broke a little bit or maybe I just psych myself out or something
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Emily Fox
03:09
Or maybe it was the antibiotic?
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Luke Pretty
03:11
Right, it was just a lot of different things all at once and again.
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Emily Fox
03:14
And again, how long did that last for?
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Luke Pretty
03:16
Well the sensitive hearing I think hasn't changed.
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Emily Fox
03:21
Wow!
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Luke Pretty
03:21
But I'm quite used to it now. It doesn't bother me day to day.
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03:25
I definitely do dishes more carefully. Yeah, I kind of feel like it might protect my hearing in the long run just because I'm avoiding loud sounds one loud sound is a tinfoil which I never realized like moving tinfoil I think is is a really loud sound that people don't realize.
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Emily Fox
03:42
So how do you think ultimately? I mean it sounds like this is kind of like the status quo now, like that you're living with this condition when you started making this album. I mean this hearing condition had already taken place. How do you think it impacted how you were making music?
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Luke Pretty
03:59
Definitely a lot of sounds that I'd usually use were two annoying like really loud hi hats or snare drums. So I think unintentionally the album is really mellow sounding, which I think is nice.
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04:16
I've always disliked really loud vocals where every like "S" and "P" sound is like ear splitting. So I spent a long time like manually turning down all the Ss, just things like that just so that I could work on it comfortably. But I hope that you can turn the album up really loud and it's not painful to listen to.
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Emily Fox
04:54
You're now on tour to I'm wondering like how are you going to navigate playing live with this hearing condition?
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Luke Pretty
05:02
I think I'm used to it now, we use in ears so they're like earplugs that play sound like in your monitors basically. Yeah, so you can control how loud everything is. So I just I just keep it like a nice comfortable volume and it really doesn't bother me too much anymore.
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Emily Fox
05:23
I understand the first time that you heard this album back. It made you cry. Tell me about that moment.
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Luke Pretty
05:31
As I was making the ideas. I would pitch them up Half an octave or an octave higher than I made them at and save them as MP3s like that. So they're all very chip monkey or some of them are pitched way down.
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05:43
I'm not sure why I do this. But yeah, there was a moment where I pitched them back to normal and kind of had a chance to listen to them normally for the first time in like a month or two. That was the moment when I realized like I actually made some really nice ideas to work with.
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Emily Fox
06:01
I've been speaking with Luke Pretty, he goes by the name Tennyson about his latest album, Rot. Luke, thank you so much for your time today.
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Luke Pretty
06:08
Thank you so much for having me.
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