From their upcoming and fifth album, It’ll Come Around, the new single from Tomato/Tomato lays out an ever so slight shift in tone for the duo. Yes, it is inexhaustibly cheerful, but as 2020 would have it, they’ve had to set aside the rambling ways of a band on the run, for a bit of nostalgic woolgathering and a gleeful pursuit of the inane on “Chasing Rainbows.”
According to the band, “Chasing Rainbows” was written while enjoying a sunny Saturday morning with their daughter Lucy and reflecting on some vivid childhood memories. There’s a correlating level of innocence and timelessness that has, perhaps expectedly, seeped into the song. The single’s cover art might have come from the late ’60s, and there are some obvious nods to the masterpieces of The Beatles and The Beach Boys, particularly with the inclusion of a string arrangement.
“John was really hearing strings on this all along and there are more tracks with them on the record,” says Lisa McLaggan of the husband and wife duo. “We originally intended to arrange the strings ourselves and record them here at our studio. But then we went into lockdown. Jon Estes (co-producer, engineer, multi-instrumentalist) got us in touch with Matt Combs who’s worked with Dan Auerbach, Little Big Town, Cage the Elephant, and a slew of others… and then we just chatted about what we were looking for and he just rocked it.”
Estes had produced Tomato/Tomato’s previous album, Canary in a Coal Mine (2019) at The Bomb Shelter in Nashville, Tennessee. The album quickly took became the one we fondly recall as being ‘the one with the horns’. It’ll Come Around seems a likely candidate for becoming ‘the ones with the strings.’
Curiously enough, the duo says that the strings, despite their commanding presence, isn’t even their favourite part.
“Our favourite part of the song is actually the end. The ‘bonus’ section! That guitar solo was played on a cheap, broken, 12 string that only had 10 strings. Jeremy Fetzer just picked it up and played that in one pass,” says Lisa.
“After playing ‘Chasing Rainbows’ for a year live as a pretty country vibe, we changed the groove, tempo, and key last minute. We sat face to face and recorded a new demo on John’s phone and sent it off.
“As the writing got solidified, it became apparent that this wasn’t really going to be a country album. Or a folk album. Although John writes from a folky headspace, we didn’t feel like making a folk album. We just let the music be what it wanted to be.”
Whether the album’s defining tone comes down to Matt Combs’ string arrangement or Jeremy Fetzer’s cheap 12-string is not nearly a settled matter. Tomato/Tomato have at least one more single release planned – one with a funky, Motown vibe. You’d never be able to accuse Tomato/Tomato of making the same album twice.