Most often, time feels quantifiable and tangible. It’s a clock ticking, counting up from birth and then
down towards death or oblivion, or whatever comes after. But even if we don’t completely understand
the science, we also know that time is relative. Minutes can feel like years, hours can pass in seconds,
years ago can feel like yesterday, yesterday can feel like years ago. And then there’s the future—every
second that we haven’t yet lived, but which doesn’t actually exist yet and technically never will. Despite
that, it will still run out. It’s these ideas that form the center of Conversations With My Future Self.
Musically and lyrically, its eight songs defy the standard concept of time, travelling between past and
future but existing wholly in the present. Which, to a certain extent, is also a good metaphor for the Brooklyn based band.
While The Sees—Jamie DiTringo (lead guitar/vocals), Alex Daly (bass), Tim O’Brien (drums) and Yoni
Wilkenfeld (synths/keys)—might only have formed in the fall of 2022, the four members bring with
them a shared history that goes back years. So as much as the eight songs that make up this full-length
are an introduction to a new project—and mark the first time that DiTringo has ever fronted a
band—it’s also steeped deeply in a shared, communal past between its members. With all that
experience comes a confident certainty that bristles through these tracks—it’s a record that sounds
accomplished rather than tentative, assertive rather than uncertain, despite the existential unknowns at
the heart of it.
“I’ve always been an active musician,” says DiTringo, “and I spent the Aughts writing songs and having a
lead singer in various bands. But being stuck in an apartment at the start of the pandemic, you took a big
breath because it just seemed like the world outside paused, and you were able to appreciate the
moment and the people you love, even if it was still a shitty time for most of us. I felt like I was a part of
it and observing it intimately, but also from far away, if that makes sense.”
It does, especially when you listen to these songs. Recorded by Graham Stone, with whom DiTringo has
toured and worked with in previous bands, Conversations With My Future Self begins
with the hypnotic pulse of its first single, “The Calling”. From the very start, it draws you deep into the
world of this record—one in which time both ceases to exist and moves at impossible rates. Indeed,
“The Calling” sounds like galaxies exploding, eternity condensing, past, present, and future coalescing
into one—a vision of the world from afar. But then it zooms in to a personal viewpoint with the dark
melodic chug of “Losing Time” and its mildly apocalyptic visions, and “Kiss And Tell” which captures the
exhilarating magic rush of attraction, of that feeling you’ve known someone since before you ever did.
Elsewhere, “End Of Scene” is an atmospheric exploration of a disturbing, Lynchian landscape that’s both
real and unreal. Divided into two distinct parts, it shimmers with the catharsis that inspired it.
That song then bleeds into the boisterous punk chug of “Voices”, a song initially inspired by the daily
applause and pot banging for essential workers in the very early days of the pandemic, but which is
transformed into something rather more ominous here. It leads into final track “At Some Point”, the
record’s melancholy, slow motion closer. Haunting and soothing in equal measure, it sees DiTringo
lament the inevitable ticking down of the clock. ‘Who wants to grow older and say goodbye to friends?’
he sings at one point, before later proclaiming ‘Our future is now/Don’t look to the past.’ And yet, while
honing in on the ineluctable oblivion the passing of time necessitates, it also reasserts the notion that,
perhaps, time is non-linear after all. It does so by using a simple but incredibly effective device—the
repetition of the guitar line that underpins “The Calling”.
“I like the idea of an Abbey Road ending,” says DiTringo, “which is why the last few songs all segue into
each other. But then when it reaches “At Some Point”, that’s when you’ve got to make a decision.
You’ve got to say goodbye, you’ve got to say hello. But does it end and start again? That phrase from
“At Some Point” is me asking ‘What is the afterlife?’ But it’s also an ode to my childhood, to having a Peter Pan
complex of just wanting to be happy and revel, but also knowing that at some point you’re going to have to say
goodbye. That’s something I still struggle with as an empath, and it sucks. But that’s also life—it’s incredible, but
we’re all going to end up at the same place.”
To that extent, Conversations With My Future Self feels like a dark night of the soul that takes place over
the course of a lifetime. It’s epic in scope and ambition and precise with its execution of that ambition.
It’s a record that both sums up the here and now, but also the there and then, traversing eons both
within and outside of this astral plane. Its story unfolds in real time as the abyss of the future—or is it
the past?—waits with bated breath.
“A lot of the record’s themes come from my love of Back To The Future,” DiTringo chuckles. “Being a
product of the ’80s and watching everything Michael J. Fox was in. Like, the moment right now has just
gone. It’s in our past. Going through life and having a conversation with your past or future self is a
fascinating idea. Especially because it feels like we lost years being in lockdown and with COVID. This is
really me trying to seize the moment and not let go, even though I know that’s impossible.”