Riley's first song 'Waiting for Love' was written when he was 15. It is in many ways a deeply precocious song for someone that age to write, however, it is not impossible, nor does it feel like the work of an older artist. Kate Bush wrote the Kick Inside at 16 and since Riley is meant to be a generationally important indie artist, it made sense to me it the writing was great from pretty much the get-go.
The Story
Waiting for Love takes in a range of lo-fi singer-songwriters practising at the same time as Riley, in the late 80s and early 90s. These include Neutral Milk Hotel, Daniel Johnston and mostly importantly Elliott Smith. Elliott was the initial template for Riley - a model of indie realness and passionate DIY music-making.
Several key qualities bind the artists I mention. The first is the use of DIY or low-quality recording equipment, frequently the home TASCAM recorder. Indeed one of the discarded clues in the game regards the purchasing of this recorder by Riley (with a receipt to prove it). The use of these machines often balanced astonishing musical ambition with naivety. Daniel Johnston, unaware of how to copy tapes, would run home to record an entirely new iteration of his record when asked for one. With each 'bounce', cumulative tape hiss would build, leading to a distinctly 'lo-fi' sound, which has become more en-vogue in the digital age.
The second is a love of the Beatles, particularly John. Both Smith and Johnston drew deeply from the well of John Lennon's melodies. Indeed, Elliott would later cover Lennon's, Jealous Guy. The result is deeply catchy melodies, often with a nursery rhyme-like quality (Lennon once said his biggest musical inspiration was 'three blind mice'). Waiting for Love has some of the waltzing qualities of Bill Joel's 'Always a Woman to me, which I fancy was on his parent's record player and would have exerted a powerful influence on the six or seven-year-old Riley.
Production
To achieve the lo-fi quality, I did several things.
Firstly, I put some chorus on the piano. This has the effect of creating a watery sound, with a slight out-of-tune element similar to a honky-tonk. I figured that Riley would be recording on the family piano, with the Tascam's limited condenser mic and so pick up a lot of the room as well.
Secondly, I filled the recording with reverb, for the same reasons. TASCAM's were virtually incapable of close recording(which eliminates the sound of the room). I also wanted to capture some of the squelchy magic of the early Daniel Johnston records, where Daniel's voice emerges like a ghost from the fog.
Finally, I strapped a cassette emulator across the entire mix. This provided hiss, wobble and cut out a lot of the low end. The result was a track that, I felt, sounded authentically DIY.