Exclusive Interview: Bob Moses Discusses The Silence in Between and Why It’s Their Most Vulnerable Work to Date

Bob Moses, the Vancouver-bred duo consisting of Tom Howie and Jimmy Vallance, came to life in the Brooklyn underground scene in 2012. Since then, they’ve earned worldwide acclaim for their transcendent blend of house music and emotionally-charged pop. They’ve had countless charting hits, a GRAMMY win, several JUNO nominations, and received praise from publications including Billboard.

This March, they release their most raw record to date titled The Silence in Between. The ten-track album was born through the uncertainty of the pandemic and finds the pair exploring new avenues of their craft.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Bob Moses about The Silence in Between.

PC: You just drop your third album. What can fans expect from The Silence in Between?
Jimmy: It was written during COVID. It’s all the things we’ve experienced from the moment that everything shut down to the world reopening. We had no idea when we were heading into this record in March 2020, when we built our studio in LA and were finally focusing on making an album, that any of this would transpire.

We did not want to hold back creatively because there was a lot of uncertainty and insecurity. We weren’t sure if our careers were going to be able to continue. Were we going to be able to do what we love? Would we be able to tour? All that fear and insecurity—and what ultimately would become hope—was poured into the lyrics on this record. What ended up being a very frightening thing turned into probably one of the most productive and positive two years we’ve had as a band.

PC: How would you say this body of work differentiates itself from your previous releases?
Tom: It’s our most honest and diverse work but also our most cohesive. We’ve always written music and lyrics that were personal and introspective. This is cathartic for us. But we’ve never written in a moment of crisis. The world as we knew it was tumbling down. Our preconceived notions of what was normal or what was good were being tested. We realized that music is our life raft. It’s really the thing that’s going to help us get through this period.

That’s also because we were focused in the studio without any touring whatsoever, which is the first time that’s happened since we became a band. There was this rekindling of a friendship. We were always close, but there was this real intimacy that was able to happen between the two of us as friends and writing partners because we spent so much time together because of the isolation.

We’ve never really written from that place before. It gave a realness, a rawness, and an immediacy to our introspection and our creative output that we’ve never had before because there was less to escape to, whether that be traveling, seeing other people, or doing other things. It was a very interesting environment to write within that pushed us to do our most honest and what we feel is our best work to date.

PC: Something that I really appreciate about the band is you’ve always written from the heart and been inspired by your own personal experiences. Has it always been easy to tap into that vulnerability?
Jimmy: It’s hard in the sense that the music and melody always come first. The lyrics are always the last thing we do because writing lyrics can be cathartic and therapeutic, but trying to fit words and tell a story in a limited amount of phrasing is also a very difficult task.

We almost let the music force us to write the lyrics to it. If something makes it all the way to the point that we get to writing lyrics, then we know that we probably have something pretty good on our hands. Then we get into the process of tapping into our souls to figure out what the subject matter of the song is.

Sometimes you have a clear story, but you’re having difficulty finding the right phrasing or the right words that articulate that story well. Other times, it comes so quickly and naturally. We’ve been doing this for a while now. A few artists have said this phrase, which is, “The good ones tend to write themselves.” You don’t really know what that means until you get there.

We’ve been very fortunate to have a few songs that have been quite successful. In those instances, we found that the writing process was pretty smooth sailing. The songs almost flow out of you. Everyone’s firing on all cylinders. It’s almost like watching dominoes fall. It just happens so quickly. You don’t know where it’s coming from.

You have to open yourself up to being vulnerable and being in a room together. Especially when Tom and I are together and sharing why we felt a certain way and why we picked these lyrics. We’re not shy around each other.

The less scared you are of being vulnerable, the more honest the work gets. We’re both very driven to make honest and deeply felt music that people can connect to. That part of it is not scary for us.

PC: If you had to select a song off The Silence in Between that best encompasses who you both are as an artist, which would it be and why?
Tom: That’s a great question. It’s a hard one. I don’t know if I can choose one song, but I’m going to choose one and talk about it. It doesn’t encapsulate me entirely as an artist, but it does a pretty good job. That song is going to be “Believe,” which is the last song on the album. “You make me believe it’s more than just a dream. That’s hanging out of reach. The silence in the tired, empty streets. The silence in between goes on and on.”

I’ve always been a seeker. I really, almost to a fault, think about things too much. I want to know what it all means. I want to understand things, and there’s a lot of loneliness in that sometimes. There’s sort of a feeling as though you’re never going to get an answer. It’s going to go on and on forever. That really is encompassed in that song.

But I’m also a lover. Relationships are the most important thing to me. I really like connecting deeply with people. It’s also that sentiment that “you make me believe.” I really have felt that in my life. In the dark moments, it’s my relationship with Jimmy. It’s my relationship with my wife, my other friends, and my family that pull me through and help me to understand things. Lyrically, that song really, really helps me. It says a lot about who I am.

The verses touch on being on a journey and longing to be with somebody again. As a musician and as a creative person, you’re always on a journey. You’re always taken away from things that you might love, but you’re doing it for a good purpose: to find something new and to bring it back to the people you love.

Jimmy: I’m going to have to go with “Love Brand New.” Sonically, when I think of Bob Moses and what our goal has been as a band since the inception of when we started, it’s been about writing great songs that mean something to us but that also have a universal appeal. Then it’s also about combining all our influences while creating a sound that’s unique to us, which is a very tall order when you write it on paper. But when you listen to it, it sounds natural.

“Love Brand New” does a really great job of combining everything that we love about chuggy, dark, brooding dance rhythms with our rock background, mixed in a big, powerful pop song masked in even cooler production. This song is what we were referring to ten years ago when we started and were like, “One day, we’ll write something like this.”

PC: You’re heading back on the road later this month. Is there a different level of appreciation heading back onto the road just given the fact that we haven’t been able to do that for so long?
Tom: We are both super excited to get back on the road. Not only because we haven’t done it in so long, but also because we have this little road family that we’ve built in terms of our crew and our band. We’re excited to get on a tour bus and travel. You get to do these road trips. There are so many aspects of the whole lifestyle of touring and performing music that we’re super excited to get back to.

We’re excited to play this new music. We’ve built some really cool transitions between songs with our band. We’ve got a new light show. It feels like we’re doing what we feel is the best version of Bob Moses we’ve ever done.

To keep up with Bob Moses, follow them on Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, and Apple Music. Pick up or stream The Silence in Between today.