Lira Mondal is making cookies. More specifically, malted sweet corn and blueberry swirl cookies. They’re fresh out of the oven when I arrive at the home she shares with her partner Caufield Schnug, the cozy, book-filled house where they make catchy post-punk under the name Sweeping Promises. “I’m married to my taste buds in a way that is problematic but also really enriching,” says Mondal, a former pastry chef.
It is just shy of release week for the Lawrence, Kansas duo’s second album, the exhilarating Good Living Is Coming for You, and it seems fitting that there are homemade sweets on deck to discuss a record overflowing with food metaphors. “You’re filling up your cabinets/With spices and salts to cover up the bitter taste,” Mondal tersely declares on “Connoisseur of Salt,” over Schnug’s signature guitar stabs. “Petit Four” pays homage to the singer’s pastry talents, using a phrase like “It’s an unmentionable serving” to invoke a sense of Phantom Thread-like menace. Schnug has his own term for Mondal’s lyrical style, a merging of passions: “food surrealism.”
Though Sweeping Promises’ 2020 debut was named Hunger for a Way Out, Mondal and Schnug have taken to calling Good Living “the ravenous one.” Their sonic leveling-up is clear—thanks, in part, to this very home, which they purchased for its acoustics. The back of the ranch-style house transitions from a traditional living space into a recording studio, with a cavernous environment—formerly a nude painting studio—that creates plenty of natural reverb. Once Sweeping Promises signed to Sub Pop in 2021, they used their advance to buy the place. They looked at 10 houses in two days and even considered unconventional sites across the country, ranging from a church in rural Ohio to a gas station, before stumbling upon the property in Lawrence, just minutes from the University of Kansas campus.
Their investment has already paid off: In addition to making Good Living here, Schnug has recorded 40 bands, including Optic Sink, Soup Activists, and Wet Dip, in this studio within the last year. The duo has reached a moment of stability, after moving around and evolving through musical projects for more than a decade. They met in Conway, Arkansas, in 2008, where they were both studying at Hendrix College. Mondal, a vocal performance major, also played in a punk band. “A tall, blond, lanky kid appeared in the door during rehearsal,” recalls Mondal, “and the first words he utters are, ‘Are you in a band? Can I be in your band?’”
