Culture Cabinet

Dream, Ivory’s sophomore album, When You Come Back I Have So Much to Tell You, due out July 18, is a poignant reflection on growth, addiction, love, and the slippery passage of time. But for Christian and Louie Baello, the Southern California brothers behind the project, the story of this album started long before the music was written.

“I would say the first thing that Christian and I ever collaborated on was a YouTube channel where we would make sort of like short films, or unboxings of whatever technology I got at the time,” Louie recalls in an interview with Culture Cabinet. “That sort of just progressed into us doing song covers. I feel like that YouTube channel was the first time we kind of were like, ‘Yo, let’s work together on a project and kind of just see how it goes.’”

Christian adds, “Whenever we created stuff like that, whether it was YouTube videos or whatnot, I was always the one who wanted to be the technical one: learn how to edit and stuff, while Louie was kind of the person either in front of the camera or doing whatnot. It was kind of natural for us to think, ‘Okay, I want to definitely be producing a lot of it, while Louie sings.’”

This natural dynamic evolved into Dream, Ivory, whose self-produced debut About a Boy explored mental illness and a sort of inner darkness with grace. By the time When You Come Back… came into view, the pair were already mentally onto the next thing. “Whenever we drop an album, we’re always conceptualizing the next album already,” Louie says. “We dropped our last album About a Boy, and then we were already on to the next mentally.”

But the songs themselves didn’t arrive quickly. “Most of the songs on the album were made pretty sporadically throughout the span of almost two years,” Louie explains. “At the very, very beginning of this album, we weren’t even in the same house. I wasn’t living in LA at the time, so I’d have to drive to Chris. But once we moved together, it started kind of going way more faster.”

Even when there was no set release plan, they kept the creative momentum going. “Chris is always like, ‘Yo, just start cooking anything.’ We don’t even have to be on a specific plan. Let’s just see what happens,” Louie says. “And I feel like that’s more organic that way, because then we’re not trying to nail a specific sound.”

Still, there are occasional moments of intentional influence. “Sometimes it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s definitely lean towards this or that for specific songs,’ but then it always kind of ends up half that, half us,” Christian says. “Naturally, it’s always just whatever we’re listening to, whatever we’re attuned by.”

The album’s title came early, and with it, a shift in tone. “We realized it was going to sort of be the center point, when we agreed that that was going to be the title of the album before we were kind of making any music for it,” Louie explains when asked about the moment the brothers realized the title would be the album’s focal anchor.“It’s so heavy sounding. We knew it was gonna align with that sort of idea.”

Where About a Boy was “really upfront and kind of moody lyrically,” this album reflects what the duo calls “a more mature music-making standpoint.” “We’re intentional about the way we’re recording our bass lines and our writing lyrically,” Louie explains. “It all just kind of came together naturally.”

Writing about mature subjects like addiction and emotional distance meant staying open and vulnerable. “Listeners can take that and apply their specific circumstance that they’re relating to, and that’s the song to them,” Louie says. “It almost feels more natural to be vulnerable in a song than being vulnerable to a friend.”

Christian agrees: “It takes a lot to even learn how to speak and sing to the mic in a comfortable way. I’ll write a journal diary to myself and feel like I’m being too vulnerable to myself. But when we create the song, it’s kind of easy to let our feelings loose.”

The pair credit the music itself for guiding that openness. “When the instrumental evokes that emotion already, just with the guitars and instruments, when we’re really proud of it, and we feel a feeling from it, it’s kind of easy to let go,” Christian explains. “People write in a journal. We make music about it.”

Being so hands-on is part of what defines Dream, Ivory. “We’re just so particular,” Christian says. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not down to expand on creativity. I learned the video editing programs, I learned the music shit, we have direct control over the vision to make it the output, exactly what we want to see.”

But, despite already having ideas for the next album (and a deluxe album of When You Come Back…), and a headlining tour, at the heart of it all is a desire to keep growing and to keep showing up. “I hope listeners hear the music and actually hear an evolution. The quality of the production, the recording, the singing,” Christian says. “We put a lot of effort into writing our lyrics with more depth.”

Louie adds, “Hopefully they can hear that we spent our time on it, because we did. We had our biggest song, ‘Welcome and Goodbye,’ but I hope they take away that we’re still here. We never left. We’re not just a band that put out a song and faded away.”

“We’re never going to be inactive,” he adds. “We’re going to keep dropping music. We’re still here.”

When You Come Back I Have So Much to Tell You is out this Friday, July 18.

Listen to Dream, Ivory here.

Watch the brand new music video for “Sometimes” below.