MUSIC INTERVIEW: MARGOT & THE NUCLEAR SO & SO'S
Richard Edwards Delves into Creative Processes, Covers & Darkness
(Mariel Recording Company) Indie-rockers Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos exploded onto the scene five years ago with their debut album, The Dust of Retreat, and haven't looked back. With not one but two sophomore albums under their collective belt, the eight-piece band with the eight-piece name finished up a week-long jaunt across the east coast and midwest in April. Frontman Richard Edwards takes a break from his scheduled reading and songwriting to speak with us.
Rosa Jurjevics: I read somewhere that you recorded The Dust of Retreat in a bathroom or something like that. What's the story there?
Richard Edwards: I think we recorded one song in a bathroom, and I think we ended up re-recording it when the record got re-released. We snuck into a studio after-hours, for the most part, so we would go in at 7:00 or 8:00 p.m., when they were gone, and then we would leave at 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. before they got in.
RJ: Did they know you were in there?
RE: I think, by the end of it, some people suspected there was something going on in there, but they definitely did not know explicitly. We did it over the course of four or six months because we could only do it three or four days a week. Everybody had jobs at that point. I think I might have been in college. By the end of it, I think we were getting less careful about cleaning up after ourselves -- the computer files and stuff -- and they were probably being more diligent in trying to figure out what was going on, so I suspect there was some knowledge.
RJ: Where was this?
RE: It was in southern Indiana.
RJ: I know you were in some bands in college, but what got you, in particular, started down this path?
RE: Well, toward the end of my college experience, I met a group of people who had become kind of my post high-school friends, and they were all a little bit older. Not all of them were musicians, but [they were] people I was meeting. I would go play open mics and stuff when I was 20 and 19, and I would have to wait outside to play, and I'd play for like 20 minutes and then go back outside. I attracted some interest from people who would [see me] sit outside in three feet of snow to play for 20 minutes, and so I became friends with a lot of people I would hang out with outside. Andy Fry, the guitar player for our band, came through those people. I made a few friends, and they would sneak me into bars and I would go over to their place -- they had an apartment... So I met Andy through that, and he heard my songs and was into them, and so I started [playing with him] because it was really exciting to play with someone who was older. It seemed really cool and everyone kind of came through different people. Andy's brother came...I had known Tyler for years. He had recorded all the stuff I had done when I was younger. I'd known Emily from my high school age. Everyone started bringing in people they knew to do certain things, and then everyone ended up sticking together.
RJ: Do you do most of the songwriting yourself?
RE: I write the songs and then it's kind of random, in terms of who brings the orchestration ideas and stuff like that.
RJ: A lot of your songs are kind of dark. Where does that come from?
RE:I don't know. I don't think they're as dark as some people think they are. See, now, I don't know. There's a lot of good stuff in the world, but I don't know. I think an MGMT song, where they sing about marrying strippers and stuff, is more depressing than anything I've ever written. I think there's a lot of rough stuff going on, and I don't want to over-emphasize and be melodramatic, but it seems a little bit dishonest to not portray any of that, even phonically, in the music. I get pretty scared about stuff that's going on. I guess some people have an ability to not be scared by that, but I'm not one of them.
RJ: One of my favorite songs is "Quiet As A Mouse." What inspired that one, and the evil cats in the video?
RE: I don't really remember what inspired that song because it was probably the oldest song on that record, in terms of the age I was when I wrote it. I was probably reading some apocalyptic book or something. But the cats and stuff like that...we tend to get really quick ideas for what the images will be for the album because Chris's girlfriend painted everything so far. So we have to have ideas to give her, and for that one, I think that was one of my goofy ideas. It was going to be mice and cats battling and stuff like that for that video.
RJ: Did you guys do the animation too?
RE: No. There was a guy -- I think he was in Canada, maybe -- who did the actual animation for it. Stacy did hundreds of paintings and turned it over to him like it was a story, and he animated it for us and then we got it back and we'd make little changes to it.
RJ: Do you think you're going to release any plush toys? Merchandising?
RE: [Laughs] We probably should. We've never thought about that. I know Stacy does prints and paintings that we've sold at shows and stuff before, but that's probably a really good idea. We've been accused of being infantile, so that would be a great way to cash in on that accusation.
RJ: Who accused you of being infantile?
RE: I don't know. Some blogger.
RJ: What is your writing process, from paper to recording?
RE: It usually starts with a melody, and we play it and I try to sing, like, nonsense over it, just to see if we have a melody that's exciting because...I have a really hard time writing pages of lyrics and stuff like that. I can't work on anything unless there's a melody there. As [we] continue to work on the melody, we start to change out stupid lyrics for ones that are slightly less stupid, and then it usually comes together like that. Then there are little adjustments that happen.
RJ: What are some of the stupider lyrics that you've eliminated in the past?
RE: Usually stuff like, "Ooh, baby/drive me crazy/my mind is hazy/I'm feeling lazy..." Stuff like that -- stuff that rhymes. Not writing any cool, stupid lyrics about eggs with wings or anything. It's just stupid, stopgap lyrics. Early Beatles lyrics.
RJ: Early Beatles lyrics?
RE: Yeah. I guess I don't think they're stupid when they do it, but they sound a little stupid when I do it.
RJ: What kinds of stuff do you cover, if you cover anything?
RE: I don't think we've ever covered songs, really. We did a show, and the show was really bad, so I think we just did Weezer songs for the whole show.
RJ: I'd be interested to hear what a Margot and the Nuclear So and So's cover would sound like. I'd be interested to hear what it would be like to hear someone cover one of your songs too.
RE: We had kids cover songs on MySpace once, and there were a couple of really good ones -- really interesting. A lot of it was just kids with their acoustic guitars, but there were a couple of people who did interesting things with the songs that I hadn't thought of. If someone did a cover of our song, it would be cool if it was just a rock...four guitars, three drum kits or something. There's a band in Indy -- a great rock band called America Owns The Moon -- and they tinkered around with "Children's Crusade On Acid," and it got really heavy and cool. It's more fun for us to hear it that way because we hear enough John Bryan Disney movie orchestration on our own stuff.
RJ: I was curious also about the two albums that you released. I can't seem to get ahold of Animal! but I got Not Animal a little while ago. What was the story behind releasing the two of them?
RE: Well, [the label] just didn't like the thing we turned in and, as it turns out, a lot of other people don't like it either, so it went back and forth for months about whether anything was going to be released -- whether they were going to shelve everything or we could leak it ourselves illegally. And it went into a compromise which, at the time, I thought was a decent compromise and, in retrospect, was an awful decision on everyone's part. We probably should have passed it up and just leaked it, but...
RJ: What about it was particularly awful, decision-wise?
RE: It just was confusing to people, which I didn't anticipate. I think there was an assumption on some people's part that it was a gimmick, which it was, because I probably would have made money off it. It was just confusing and it set people up with ammunition that you don't want to set people up with -- like, this is label-approved, this is band-approved, and if you don't like the band that much, it's really easy to give them shit about, "Oh, the label one's better; you should listen to a major label" and all this nonsense. It just became confusing and stupid. I don't think either of the albums was able to be heard for what it was. It was also probably the complete wrong move for us to make [for] our major label debut.
RJ: When did you sign with Epic?
RE: Summer of 2007, I think.
RJ: How did that work? Did you approach them? Did they approach you?
RE: They approached us. We knew they were fans. We knew people over there for a long time. They didn't swoop in and [say], "Here's this new rock band that we think can sell." The guy that ran V2 when we were on V2 went over there, and after V2 collapsed and we got out of that label...we really liked him, had a lot of trust in him...
RJ: Anything coming out after this? What's in the works?
RE: We're working on a new record. There are some people from a blog making a film about us. We're working on that. It's really exciting. We're working on that and on the beginnings of a new record, so hopefully we're trying to get something else done as quickly as possible.
For Fans Of: Iron & Wine, Belle & Sebastian, Deathcab For Cutie
Standout Tracks: "Quiet as a Mouse", "Skeleton Key" "Birds"
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