Phases – I’m In Love With My Life

Phases began, as big things often do, with a daydream. But unlike most pennies cast into wishing pools by starry-eyed kids, this particular vision came through loud and clear, specific and fully formed, to the minds of people who were looking for a sign. Call it serendipitous, written in the stars or what you will, but the four longtime friends, collaborators, and members of PHASES know: when the universe speaks, it’s in your best interest to listen. After over a decade of intertwined pasts making music, the Los Angeles-based quartet of friends Z Berg, Alex Greenwald, Jason Boesel, and Michael Runion were able to check off a major bucket-list box when they formed a band together in 2009. Releasing an album as JJAMZ in 2012, they returned to LA in 2013 after touring to an uncertain future. Creatively confused and encountering some interpersonal turbulence, the fate of JJAMZ seemed doomed. Feeling like it was a hopeless case, Berg announced that she was moving to Nashville to pursue a folk music career and change of scenery.

Phases - I'm In Love With My Life

“In my mind, we were not going to make another record and I just had to get out of LA,” says Berg. “I felt truly displaced for the first time in a city I’ve always been in love with. So I said to the universe, ‘If you want me to stay, give me a reason.’” The trio of gentlemen carried on in an attempt to reanimate what had felt like a creative dead end, and began writing material with both a fresh, lightened tone and a new, unassuming intention that they found reinvigorating, and perhaps subconsciously hoped the changes would convince their singer to stay. “We weren’t sure what it would yield,” says Runion of the free-flowing, highly creative sessions. “We thought, ‘Let’s just keep doing this until the dust settles.’” Adds Boesel: “‘Tread water, I hope there’s a ship that’s gonna grab us!’” The new upbeat sounds, heavily influenced by Greenwald’s recent experimental solo recordings made in his Laurel Canyon home on an outdated version of GarageBand, made their way to Berg, who was still looking for a sign. “I hadn’t been able to write for this band after the first record,” she says. “When they played me this new thing they were working on, it sounded like the opposite of my fucking folk music, and like something I wanted to do. It sounded like weird, future spaceship music, from a very old spaceship. I thought, ‘Alright, whatever happens, let’s at least work on this and make songs for fun, without thinking where they go or who they’re for.” (Who could have known that the ship Boesel was waiting for was from space?)

Phases – I’m In Love With My Life

Around this time, Boesel was sitting in his kitchen when he was struck by the aforementioned thunderbolt. The daydream was vivid and simple: The quartet, including Berg, would make six demo songs, play them for the esteemed A&R man and producer Mike Elizondo, he would sign the band to Warner Bros. Records, and together they would release a new album. “That was it,” says Boesel. “At the very least that would be a goal to make us finish the songs, since we were taking a while to bring it all together. And Elizondo came into my mind as the individual who should hear this music and advance it somehow; he was the only person I even considered.”
And so the reunited band set out to do just that. Greenwald was nominated to produce, navigating a wholly unique path through his computer’s long un-updated apps and plug-ins. They wrote and jammed in his home, taking full advantage of the three-story ceilings to make big and weird sounding constructions, trading instruments and using unfamiliar equipment like the OP-1 portable synthesizer. Visually compelling movies were soundlessly projected on the walls and much “MarioKart” was played. The fun had returned.
“We did a lot of hanging out,” says Greenwald. “The sessions were very conducive to putting something on the projector and talking about sounds. We got a big kick out of watching a lot of Tron and Total Recall.”

Phases – I’m In Love With My Life Lyrics:
I’m in love with my life, I’m in love with my life
Alright, Come and lose yourself a little while
Take a chance and let your body move
Feeling good and probably never stop
Alright, alright
I’m in love with my, I’m in love with my life
Alright, And you know it
Let me show it
I’m in love with my life
And you know it
I’m in love with my life
Alright, I’m in love with my life
Come and lose yourself a little while
Take a chance and let your body move
Feeling good and probably never stop
Alright, alright
I’m in love with my, I’m in love with my life
Alright, Alright
I’m in love with my life
Come and lose yourself a little while
Take a chance and let your body move
Feeling good and probably never stop
Alright, alright
I’m in love with my, I’m in love with my life
We don’t need a rhyme or a reason
It’s a lovely chemistry
We don’t need a rhyme or a reason
It’s a lovely chemistry
We don’t need a rhyme or a reason
It’s a lovely chemistry
We don’t need a rhyme or a reason
It’s a lovely chemistry
I’m in love with my life, Alright.