Interview with Bruiser and Bicycle

October 8, 2025

Nick Whittemore and Keegan Graziane of Bruiser and Bicycle were kind enough to answer a few of Peter's questions about their latest album, Deep Country. They chat about where their third record stands in the band’s discography, their collaboration with Jennifer Maher Coleman, and recommend some albums that’ll help you better understand the fabric of Deep Country.

Deep Country is out NOW and available to listen on all platforms. You can also read more of Peter's thoughts on the album over at pipjr3927.com.

photo by Ariel Kenny (L to R: Joe Taurone, Nick Whittemore, Keegan Graziane, Zahra “Z” Houacine)

Q: First of all, how are you?

I think we forgot to answer this separately! But overall, we are doing well!

Q: Your latest album, Deep Country, is soon to be upon us. How does it feel to be nearing the release of the album, and how was the overall recording experience?

Keegan: I’m excited to have some of these songs out into the world, and also clearing space for new material. The recording experience was a lot of fun; it was the first time we recorded live as a band, and the first time we recorded everything in one sitting. I love the immersion of that.

Nick: The overall recording experience was one of my favorite weeks of my life; I feel that I'm 100% in my element when working at a proper studio with Scoops. I'm glad we were able to create this all-in-one big week-long pass. It feels like a huge relief getting it out there so that we can focus on new music.

Q: "Waterfight" was the lead single to Deep Country. What kind of things did you take into account with regard to the lead singles and the general rollout to the album’s release?

Keegan: For me, it’s a song that feels representative of the whole record, its sounds, its emotion, and atmosphere. I personally also advocated for it being a lead single based on it being one of my favorite songs on the record, but usually, we’ll try to rotate between a song that I write or a song that Nick writes.

Nick: When making the record, I believe I recall mentioning to each other that we wanted every song to hold its own weight as individual tracks with their own single power. “Waterfight” felt like one of the most emotionally potent moments, and I think we reached a consensus that it would make a great centerpiece for the album as the lead single. I also basically knew when we recorded “Sinister Sleep Shuffle” that it would be a single as well.

Q: How did the collaboration with Jennifer Maher Coleman come about? I find the cover to have a very Swans-type feel! Was this in any way intentional?

Nick: The Swans feel was not intentional, however, I love their artwork as a band, especially The Great Annihilator and White Light from the Mouth of Infinity. I'm happy that that's a comparison someone could make. I believe I may have suggested Jennifer Coleman in the van at one point to everyone else after seeing her Instagram page through artwork she had done for an Apostrophebeats tape. We immediately thought of the classic four quadrant format. For me, I was probably in first or second grade as a little peanut when I discovered Demon Days by Gorillaz, because I saw the “Feel Good Inc” music video on TV. I think my mom got me the CD for Christmas or something; it was a very early musical awakening for me. I think because of that, I'm happy that the album cover ends up looking a little bit like the Demon Days cover.

Q: What were some of the challenges that you faced in the process of making Deep Country? And were there any notable differences in said process this time around compared to previous projects?

Keegan: Once we decided on what the record would sound like, it became easier to write in that space, but sometimes you need to figure your way around that by just writing and trying things out. I originally approached this record with my own type of song structure and style that was different from Nick’s, which originally was something where I thought, “hm, this is going to be much different than I imagined it.” And sometimes it can take a while to grapple with a difference in vision, but ultimately I think it’s exactly how it’s supposed to be in the end, and our various styles have their own moments to shine, making for a very expansive listening experience.

Nick: I wouldn't say I faced many challenges in making the record; it was very smooth overall. I think because our writing process is collaborative, the biggest challenge we faced were disagreements about certain arrangement choices. I had the idea of only using a set amount of instruments in the studio: acoustic guitar, bass, drums, a Korg Prologue, a mini Moog, some hand drums, and maybe a few things like toy pianos and organs that happened to be at the Gradwell studio. I largely got my way on that. However, I think there's a few select moments of MIDI plug-ins on the record—which I may have personally made a mild fuss about—but those are very subtle and rare on the record; we made a compromise on it. I'm probably the member who tends to be the most fussy over grand sweeping, top-down, "rules for the record," so-to-speak. I think Keegan is more often about feeling things out as they go during the creative process; he’s perhaps more of an experimenter in that sense. I tend to be more about matching the music up to a preconceived image in my head, which might lead me to impose restrictions on a larger scale. We deliberately ruled out electric guitar on this album, for instance.

Q: Could you give me three albums that would help listeners better understand the fabric of Deep Country?

Nick: Keegan showed me Bill Callahan's Woke on a Whaleheart, and I think Bill's music was an overall influence on this record. We loved the more intimate sound of some of his stuff; his voice sounds up close and personal. Also, the way his music functionally speaking is in the folk/singer songwriter tradition, but his arrangement choices are so surreal and cartoonish at times that it's hard to classify. I think we do something similar with our music here. The Beatles' Let It Be was something we were listening to in the van going to and from the studio each day while we were recording, and I think that resonates as well for two reasons; the first being the eclecticism of The Beatles in general, and secondly, this is the first album we've done where the instrumental bulk was done live. In a sense, both Let It Be and Deep Country are retreats from a more maximal sound back into the roots of being a band-band. I can't think of a third album that really is comparable to Deep Country at the moment.

Keegan: Shepard in a Sheepskin Vest by Bill Callahan, Norm by Andy Shauf, and I also can't think of a third at this moment. In Bill's music, a lot of his structure has a free form to it where the shape of the song seems to follow the lyrics, and that was something I wanted to explore, especially on the song "Deep Country," as well as for the other reasons Nick listed. Andy Shauf had been a big influence on me in the sense of being drawn to shorter songs with strong melodic hooks and progression. While not all of my songs have that same approach, it was something that intrigued me during this period. I also got really into Björk during this time, and while the music doesn't reflect that, I think the influence of vocals being more present than on previous records was something that pushed me in that territory.

Q: Where would you say Deep Country sits in the discography of Bruiser & Bicycle? What does it mean to the band?

Nick: Thus far, Deep Country is our song-song album. Our last record was more symphonic, and this one is anthological. Yes, it's a holistic idea in its instrumental makeup, but the album is more divisible into components with their own standalone characteristics as songs.

Q: What's next for Bruiser and Bicycle?

Keegan: We’re writing songs for the next record, and about to go on tour in November for the record!

Nick: We're working on another album. There's so much music to be made, and I only got approximately 50 more years to live; I want to get things crackin’.