Features

Adam Goldberg’s LANDy

Hebrew Hammer Drops Full-Length Debut: Eros and Omissions

You may know actor/filmmaker Adam Goldberg from his roles in major motion pictures liked the popular high school stoner flick Dazed and Confused, the gory WWII epic Saving Private Ryan and Jewish comedy The Hebrew Hammer. Or maybe you know him from his appearances on television shows like Friends, Entourage and more recently, The Unusuals. What you may not know is that Goldberg has dabbled in the music scene for nearly 20 years. In 2002, what was once a hobby became a more serious gig as he began a long process of recording tunes that would end up on his debut full-length under the name LANDy. The album, Eros and Omissions, due June 23, is over an hour of experimental indie-rock written and produced by Goldberg that he has been in the making for years. Recorded at a number of different studios with a number of different artists including Flaming Lips multi-instrumentalist Stephen Drozd and The Black Pine, the album is finally complete, and save for a mental breakdown or two, Goldberg has emerged unharmed and was happy to share some insight on the project.

Some of the songs on Eros and Omissions veer from straight indie-rock to more experimental sounding arrangements. Was this something you had in mind, or did it develop when you were writing/recording?

There was never a conscious decision to change directives or styles, though I suppose each song is of it’s time and place. I did start playing piano and writing with piano with more frequency and I think this ends up accounting for the sound shift. In general the songs I’m able to write on piano and those I’m able to write on keyboards are pretty different, by default more than anything else.

Eros and Omissions is more of a collection of songs—some that you’ve been working on for years—rather than a traditional album. Was it hard to stay focused on how you wanted the final product to turn out due to the sporadic evolution of the record?

What began as a collection of recordings for the shear sake of recording at a certain point became more focused: around the time I worked with Steven Drozd [of the Flaming Lips] in Oklahoma in a “proper” studio setting. Since there was no deadline and my goals were unclear I just continued to record a song each time I wrote one.

Were there any songs that you had thought were complete a while ago that you came back to and refined before making the final cut?

Lots of the songs were works in progress, including the Oklahoma sessions which I was very happy with the recordings of. But there were lots of different mixes, home overdubs I made, and as recently as last year would replace a vocal here or there. But for the most part, the songs were only revisited in the sense that they needed to be “properly” mixed and mastered. One of my favorites didn’t make the cut because it was just too lo-fi to fit the song, and Aaron [Espinoza] and I ran out of time (and money).