"The People Who Are Meant to Find Us Will”: Grivo on their new album Impose, answering reader questions for the first time, and providing a track-by-track breakdown.

It doesn't seem like Grivo are particularly bothered about being found. They rarely give interviews. There is little mythology surrounding the band beyond their records, and they have never appeared keen to fuel the machinery of the music scene with constant updates or to meet its demands for visibility. 'The people who are meant to find us will,' as Timothy Heck simply puts it. 

Photo Credit: Mike Villars

And listeners have found them. 

Grivo is an tight-knit trio formed by Timothy Heck (guitar, keyboards, vocals and lyrics), his brother Matthew Heck (drums) and bassist Ricardo Tejeda.  If you've listened to their music, you will know that there is a certain human warmth beneath it. Their records are made with real amps, real drums and as little intervention as possible. There is no quantizing, no attempt to make the performances perfect. Songs could lose their metronome halfway through. A part might change because somebody heard something in the room and followed it. 

For all the confidence in the music, Timothy didn't always feel confident about putting his voice inside it. While recording their debut Elude, he was so anxious about singing in front of others that he recorded the initial vocals drunk in a closet. The band eventually  rewrote the vocals a few months later, once he was feeling more comfortable. It's almost a funny anecdote, but it reveals something fundamental about Grivo: beneath all that weight and control, there is a vulnerability in the sharing of something personal with the world.

That vulnerability comes through in our conversation. For a band that has kept a certain distance from the usual noise surrounding a release, Timothy opens up about the things that sit behind the records: the music that shaped him long before Grivo existed, the jazz records he still returns to and the personal experiences that found their way into Impose. He also takes us inside the new record song by song, from the ghost town in West Texas that inspired 'May' to the deeply personal 'Heaven Howls', while answering readers' questions for the first time. The result is perhaps the closest look yet at the people behind a band that has never seemed particularly interested in explaining itself. 

We try to do as much “out of the box” as possible: real amps, real drums, no quantizing, as little BS as possible. No hate on bands that prefer doing it another way, that just isn’t our agenda.

What was the very first piece of music or album that completely blew your mind as a kid, and when did you realize that making music was something you wanted to dedicate your life to?

There were a few that really made an impact, but if pushed, I’d have to say Relationship of Command by At the Drive-In, but very close behind would be De-Loused in the Comatorium by The Mars Volta and Kid A by Radiohead. It was sometime around 16 or 17 years old. Dedication to making my own music needed little coercing, but accepting that anyone might be interested in what I was making took more convincing.

Growing up, you listened to everything from post-punk and jazz to hardcore and heavy metal. How did you eventually land on shoegaze as the primary canvas for your songwriting?

My brother and I tried starting a band of our own dozens of times, but resigned to play in other people’s funk, Motown, and pop bands when I was in high school. Moving on to hardcore and punk bands because that’s what was going on in the Midwest at that time and seemed a good place to put my young aggression.

I gave up on playing music for a bit and moved to North Dakota, where I started writing songs exclusively for my own enjoyment, like I did when I was young; that became Grivo.

Although I wasn’t aware of shoegaze when I was younger, the material I was writing in high school had a lot of similarities to shoegaze and experimental guitar music. Grivo was a sort of homecoming for me.

You and Matthew started out in Michigan experimenting with jazz constructions before diving into Midwestern punk and hardcore, and later moving to Austin where Ricardo introduced doom metal to the mix. Looking back at that trajectory, how did those seemingly contrasting musical worlds come together to form Grivo’s identity?

Ricardo definitely made us slow down. We didn’t discuss much at the beginning. For the first half a year or so, there wasn’t really any talking or discussing of any kind in our practice room. We tried to stay out of the way and let the music breathe.

You moved from Michigan to Austin. Do you feel like living in Austin has affected the band's energy, or would Grivo sound like Grivo no matter where you lived?

I suppose anywhere affects your art, but I don’t think it did, and none of us reside there any longer.

I noticed there's a lot of jazz phrasing and chord progression in your compositions—particularly the use of guide tones and interval stacking in the interplay between guitar and bass, which almost brings to mind what Page Hamilton and Henry Bogdan did in Helmet. How actively do you draw on your early jazz studies when writing heavy riffs, and what are a few jazz records you think shoegaze fans should listen to?

Jazz certainly opened my ears to sounds and note choices that at first sounded foreign and unfamiliar.

I used to put on jazz albums every night when I went to bed during high school hoping it would get into my blood, so maybe that worked in some capacity. I would never insult a jazz musician by calling myself one, but I have found it an immensely inspiring art form. I’m just “looking for the pretty notes” as Charlie Parker said. Not sure if shoegaze fans would dig them or not, but here is a little list of stuff that I’ve listened to lately: Money Jungle by Duke Ellington, Mingus Ah Um and The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Mingus, Detroit by Yusef Lateef, Thrust by Herbie Hancock, Return to Forever and Light As A Feather by Chick Corea / Return to Forever, Afro-Harping by Dorothy Ashby, Spectrum by Billy Cobham, and Emergency! by The Tony Williams Lifetime.

All three of your albums share a very warm, deep, analog sound. Do you deliberately try to build on that signature tone for every record, or does it just happen naturally when the three of you get in a room together?

We’ve been very fortunate to work with great people on all three records. Robby, Danny, Max, and Carey all deserve a great deal of credit. As for the three of us, we listen very intently to each other when writing, so a good deal of the sonic ambiguity is baked out before recording begins. We try to do as much “out of the box” as possible: real amps, real drums, no quantizing, as little BS as possible. No hate on bands that prefer doing it another way, that just isn’t our agenda. We recorded Omit to tape, but we try to have that same level of commitment or finality to the sounds even if they are going into a computer.

Let's talk about how the new album, Impose, actually came together. Could you walk us through your writing and recording process for this record, and how your approach in the studio differed from when you made Omit or Elude?

There are songs on Impose that we’ve had written since before Elude and a couple that were completed just a week before recording. As with most of our work, I tend to make demos alone, then have Ricardo and Matt expand on their parts. For recording, we wanted it to be as live as possible with very little overdubbing. We started the practice of recording all together on Omit, though I was sequestered in my own room whilst Matt and Ricardo were in another. This time around, we were more or less in the same space with sightlines and all. That ended up being crucial for communication and cues because we would often turn off the metronome partway through a piece or simply not have one at all.

Impose, feels like your most ambitious and confident work to date. At what point in the writing process did you realize these songs needed that extra room to stretch out and breathe?

We tried to serve the songs as best we could. It wasn’t a conscious decision to make all but one song seven to eight and a half minutes long, but I’m glad it happened that way. I do like the idea of creating our own little universe, and that takes a bit of patience to understand.

Overall, we felt very fortunate to be playing with each other again after a brief hiatus and were less afraid to experiment or even overindulge as it all felt very fresh.

Matt and I would even intentionally throw disruptors, as I call them, into the process. One example of this would be, before each song, choosing an unfamiliar piece of gear from the studio lot (effects pedal, cymbal, etc.) and working it into that song. It was a nice way to keep us on our toes and stay present.

Lyrically and conceptually, what specific books, environments, or ideas were feeding your minds while you were putting together this record?

I spent a good deal of time traveling and tried to sit in nature more often. We are all pretty avid readers, so the scope is quite wide and none too specific. I tended more towards a stream of consciousness approach with lyrics. Mostly sitting with my guitar or headphones and writing down whatever I happen to mumble. I try to keep it honest and unpolished. The most important thing that occurred in my life was getting engaged and navigating life through that lens. That provided me with the central theme of the album, which is having to commit to a life I wanted instead of simply avoiding one I didn’t.

It’s been a few years between Omit and Impose, and you’ve always been a band that takes its time crafting records. Today's music industry constantly pushes artists to drop rapid-fire singles and social media content just to stay relevant. Does that pressure ever cross your minds, or do you completely tune out the content cycle when working?

We’ve been on our own trip for a while now, so it’s pretty easy to tune things out. Managing as much as we can internally is by design. Having control over our material, aesthetic, and how those two are presented to an audience is paramount to us.

Attention is currency, but we don’t sweat it. The people who are meant to find us will.

There's a great backstory about the band name coming from a Kids in the Hall character who takes himself way too seriously—a subtle joke about dark music tropes. Since your music is so heavy and serious on the surface, how much humour and lightheartedness actually exists behind the scenes when the three of you are hanging out?

It’s certainly self-deprecating and is a good reminder to keep my head out of my own ass. The three of us are pretty dry and not super goofy around each other, but it isn’t all doom and gloom either.

When you aren't writing, touring, or rehearsing, what occupies your daily lives? Do you have hobbies or careers that completely disconnect you from music?

All of us have dogs that we adore. We all live in rural areas now, so spending time outdoors has become a very welcome change of pace to the chaos of a city. I’m newly married, so I spend a good deal of time exploring life with my wife.

Could you provide a track-by-track breakdown of Impose?

• May: I wrote this in west Texas after visiting the ghost town of Shafter. A maybe-not-so-subtle reproach for some cultural excesses and norms I had been around for the better part of a decade. It’s the first, but certainly not the last, Grivo song to feature a cowbell.

• Impose: This song went through so many different variations and versions it’s hard to recall how we got to the final one. Guitar-wise, I had become pretty obsessed with Neil Young for the better part of two years and decided that I had better get a tweed amp or two and make it sound like they were about to blow up. The pedal steel was in the demos but forgotten about until the last hour of tracking. This one was hard to get the feel right in the studio and at one point had to be scrapped and started all over.

• Middle Distance: I wrote this one for my wife. It’s one of many great bass moments by Ricardo, too. I used four amps with different pedal chains for this one. It was a headache to pilot, but I wanted that wall of sound without overdubbing and losing the live feel.

• Sunset Receipt: This song has been around in some form or another for years. It was recorded without a metronome in a couple of takes. A good drummer makes all the difference in moments like that. I was controlling the reverb swells with my foot so that I could grab the moments I wanted to accentuate. We had a bunch of delays set up so that we could manually manipulate the vocals and do some pitch effects and bends.

• Until Soon: I wrote this during COVID lockdown and shelved it for a while. I thought I had it completed, but a week before recording we started jamming and came up with the arpeggiated ending bit. The Mellotron part in the end was an improvisation after we were done live tracking. It was fun to have that additional counterpoint without having to learn the cello. Definitely not a song we could have pulled off years ago.

• Heaven Howls: Maybe the most vulnerable I’ve allowed myself to be on record. A track about addiction and what my life could have been.

  
  

READERS' QUESTIONS

I'd love to learn more about the artwork and overall visual identity for Impose. How did you settle on the visual direction for this record?

Ricardo is responsible for pretty much all of our aesthetics. He searches around and saves photos and things that resonate with him. The cover, I believe, is from an old textbook about architectural forestry. Jesse Feinman, whom we worked with on Omit, did the layout and further design work. He has a very good understanding of what we like and was an effortless collaborator.

Your sound stands out from typical shoegaze because it feels heavy yet surprisingly open—it creates a hollow, nostalgic room that lets the listener breathe. What drew you toward that spacious, minimalist direction, and what non-musical art forms or artists shape that atmosphere?

Being a three-piece is in and of itself a restrictive measure. When the three of us are together, we tend to hear it as if that is all that will ever be from a sonic perspective. We give each other space, like a conversation. No one wants to be the jerk that talks over everyone all the time.

I’m a dullard when it comes to most visual art, but I’ve always loved poetry and architecture.

Will we get an Elude 10-year anniversary tour, and what's the story behind that album?

Possibly! I’ll have to relearn some of the songs! I struggled a lot with insomnia and depression around that time, so it is something of a blur. I remember being so scared to sing in front of people that I recorded the first round of vocals drunk and in a closet. We eventually rerecorded them once I got myself a bit more together a couple months later. Poor Robby was very patient with me.

I read somewhere that you used the DigiTech XP300 while writing Omit. How did that specific pedal, or effects in general, impact your songwriting? Do you write songs around a specific effect you hear in your head first, or do you start with a clean guitar signal and add effects later?

For me, effects made me play less notes and slow down, allowing the effects to speak as well as the guitar. I write everything on my old dreadnought acoustic. Anything I’ve tried to write with specific effects in mind has ended up in the bin.

If you could only use a single effect pedal for guitar and a single effect pedal for bass—aside from a tuner—what would be the most essential?

Red Panda Context reverb for guitar, hands down. Historically we haven't used many pedals on bass, so it would probably be our old Sovtek Big Muff.

What is your go-to or favorite tuning to play in?

Drop-D, but I’ve also been playing in drop-C variations as well.

Do you think there is still room for genuinely new sounds within shoegaze, or are we mostly finding new combinations of sounds that already exist?

Nothing exists in a vacuum, and we all are the result, at least to some degree, of that which came before us. That being said, I feel that wanting to be perceived as great by comparison to something or someone already perceived as great can be stifling. Mishearing things or not understanding them “correctly” can lead to some amazing discoveries. So to answer the question, yes, but you must be brave, and being brave is hard in a culture that rewards convention.

What are your five most underrated shoegaze albums of all time?

Underrated is a bit of a loaded term, but I get the sentiment. One could argue every Swervedriver record is under-appreciated in comparison to their contemporaries.

Though not strictly shoegaze, I would say The Valium Machine by Outlander is underrated. Truly, a devastatingly beautiful work. Sinking is one of the best guitar songs I’ve heard in a long time.

Stargazer by Stella Luna was a big find for me years ago.

Hideout by Film School should definitely get more love.

Self-titled by Amusement Parks On Fire—like Ringo Deathstarr, they were doing it before it was cool again, and I respect that.