MUSIC INTERVIEW: THE NAKED AND FAMOUS
'Passive Me, Aggressive You' Promises Big Future for a Band from a Small Country
It may be a little early to declare an official Song of the Summer, but in the early going, there has been a clear front-runner, and that song is "Young Blood” by New Zealand’s The Naked and Famous, driven as it is by irresistibly soaring vocals and a hook-laden chorus. Fresh from a triumphant series of US performances and a buzz-building run at this year’s SXSW Festival, Buzzine got the chance to sit for a few moments with the band’s Thom Powers and David Beadle at Silver Lake’s Origami Vinyl Store to talk beginnings, businesses, arm shaving, and Kiwi street gangs…
Stefan Goldby: So here we are, halfway around the globe, talking about your music before a sold out show in Los Angeles…so let’s start at the start – how did you become The Naked and Famous?
Thom Powers: It must have been 2006 or 2007 – something like that – when I met Alisa [Xayalith] at music college. The story goes: I saw the hot girl at music school and I tried to follow her onto the bus… We went on this trip or something… Anyway, she changed lines and went to the other bus, and I ended up sitting next to some idiot, who ends up being Aaron [Short] – the other guy in the band. So we started this conversation, and I knew him from high school. Anyway, he was a big Nine Inch Nails fan; so was I, so we fell in love and had a kiss and stuff. I met Alisa later on and she really wanted to start a band as well and was looking to do music for a career, and I was working on studio stuff and so was Aaron. Alisa and I started writing songs together, and then Aaron and I started recording them, and we released a couple of EPs in 2008 back home on an indie label. Then hooked up with David [Beadle] and Jesse [Wood], who we’d just known from around because New Zealand is pretty small, so you know everyone.
David Beadle: It was at the start of 2009, and that’s when we started working on Passive Me, Aggressive You.
TP: Then we must have spent all of 2009… rehearsing and figuring out the album, and then cracked into recording early 2010. The first track we did in the big studio on our own at the helm, so to speak, was “Young Blood.”
Stefan Goldby: The album sounds pretty different from those EPs. Was that simply a result of having an expanded line-up or a more conscious move?
TP: When we started, it was figuring out how to record, how to write, how to be a band, how to perform, as it was very much like baby steps. So it made more sense and it was more exciting for us to keep things lo-fi: creating a lo-fi drum sound or guitar noise and recording it was exciting enough to us. We didn’t really understand, or feel comfortable, or have any desire to make a big bold hi-fi sonic palate. But after we did those two EPs, we learned a lot. We spent a lot of time recording and hanging out with people, getting help mixing and stuff like that. So we felt pretty confident going into a big studio thinking we knew what we were doing. And as I was saying, the first track we did was “Young Blood.”
DB: When Jesse and I came on board, there was essentially a fifth member on stage, and one of our ethos, I guess, was that what you hear on a record is what you can produce live. So with a fifth member on stage, it meant that whatever was produced on the album, there was able to be more sounds, and the sounds could become a lot bigger and thicker, and, in turn, so did the live show as well.
SG: What moment in the studio stands out in your mind more than the others?
DB: “Punching in a Dream” does, because it was really hard.
TP: That was horrible to record and finish and stuff – it was such a stressful song, but we felt like it needed to be finished. It was just really stressful: every instrument, tracking it, recording it, writing it, the key of the song - everything about it was stressful, but it ended up being very pleasing and one of the most fun songs to play live, and ended up doing really well as far as getting on the radio and all that kind of stuff. So after all our trial and tribulation put into that song, it…
DB: It sort of nullified it after that point. It made it all void after it was released and finished.
TP: But “Young Blood” was probably a great album moment really, because it was the first song we went and did on our own in a big studio, running everything on our own… and it was just flawless. The drum take was perfect, editing was perfect, guitar noises were… so much fun, and then it all sounded perfect. It was pretty much, as it was as a demo, we just went into the studio and re-tracked the stuff that was there as a demo, and it was done. And then we sent it away to get mixed, and it came back sounding amazing. So there was such an inspiring start to the record. We kind of felt like, “Oh, we’re pretty good at this, aren’t we?” [Laughs]
SG: With a little bit of hindsight, what about the album are you happiest with?
TP: It was such a long process and so much reflection for us that I don’t think any of us see anything separately. It’s just one big massive year of our lives poured into it. We wrote so much music for it, had lots of B-sides and ideas that didn’t get used…
DB: The fact that it all came together and was finished – that’s the thing that sticks out about the album. [Laughs]
TP: Yeah, huge achievement really.
SG: Talking of achievements, “Young Blood” went straight in at #1 in your native New Zealand. You were the first homegrown band to go #1 for almost three years. What is it about the music scene in New Zealand that…
TP: …sucks so much?
SG: Well, why is it that artists from New Zealand don’t dominate your own chart?
TP: We have lots of successful bands back home, but our industry is peculiar and self-contained and very much like Australia in some regards. It caters to its own sometimes. So I don’t know. We, like England and like Australia and other predominantly white western societies, absorb a lot of music from America, and we seem to get much more from the UK as well – we have kind of an even feed of UK music, American music, films, books, media – all that kind of stuff very much dominates our culture. We have McDonald’s everywhere, and Starbucks and that kind of thing. [Laughs] So I think that’s why Snoop Dogg and Katy Perry were at the top…but we beat them! But in New Zealand. [Laughs] I don’t know how much of a big deal that is here…
SG: Your two music videos so far have been a big deal over here and have also been strikingly different from the norm. Aside from the fact that it appears to be imperative for you to dunk Alisa underwater in each clip, can you tell us about working with the company Special Problems to create those?
DB: They’ve been the visual team from the start – not just with videos but with artwork and website design and the cover of the EPs and the records. They’re visual artists and we’re not, so we trust them with the videos and all that kind of stuff, because that’s the world they’re immersed in. So whenever we hand something to them and it comes back, we’re just blown away. They’re really good at what they do.
TP: As far as dunking Alisa in water, that was definitely their decision. I guess they like doing that, but they’ve done some weird crap to me though. They like doing weird crap to me in videos, and I’ve injured myself a few times doing stuff for them.
DB: …had your arm shaved…just for no reason.
TP: …For fun, Joel [Kefali] wanted to shave my arm. It was cool, though. I kind of liked having hairless arms for a couple weeks. They’re amazing guys to work with, and they have wonderful ideas, and it’s very inspiring to let something go and be like, “Can you add to this? Can you do something for this, to it?” And then there’s a video and it’s like, “Wow, this is so cool”, because it’s the same reaction we have that everyone else who watches it has. It’s not like we made it and we’re proud of it. They just put it together based on what they thought should match the song, so it’s a really inspiring, cool thing for us, so it’s heaps of fun. I enjoy it a lot.
TP: David starts giggling from the corner, and he’s got this real goofy smile that he does when it’s a good show, so it’s like a real heavy, dark moment and he’ll be like, [giggle]…
DB: But for the most part, we’ve got faces of concentration. I don’t really have much more to say, actually. It’s quite a taxing experience. You have to concentrate quite hard. I know I do, but I’m not that smart, so…
TP: [Laughs] So it takes a lot out of him. Live shows for us used to be so…we’d want to be in control of everything to present the music in the way it’s supposed to be presented and our idea of how a live show should be. It does become about execution. A live show is not this sporadic, crazy experimentation…
DB: There’s nothing that changes; there’s nothing that’s different – it’s a very logical execution of what’s on the record. We make sure that happens live as well.
TP: It’s kind of scary, though, because some people have such a bad view of that. Some people think if you’re not spontaneous, you’re not real or something, but the way we’ve done everything is that we’ve spent a long period of our lives creating this album that has heaps of creativity, loads of experimentation…but it’s this huge process to make that – it’s this huge piece of art, and then the live show for us is about showcasing that – showing it off, and more so for people who like the record to come and experience it live.
That’s how we all grew up: listening to live music. We never went to live shows to be like, “What’s this band about?” It was like, “I love this band. I hear they’re from blah-blah-blah – miles away like the moon—they’re coming to New Zealand… Oh my god! I’m going to go see them live; it’s amazing.” And then you see all these songs that you love so dearly, performed for you by the people who are in the band, and that was this immense privilege and a pleasure to be involved in that. So I think that’s our take on live music.
It’s kind of strange, though, because the further you go into the rest of the world, the more people are sort of expecting you to do weird stuff live, that you haven’t done on the record, and that’s so not us. We’d just be like, “What are we doing? We’ve never done this before. [Laughs] This is stupid.”
SG: In terms of creative control, the album is on your own label, and you’ve then licensed it territory by territory. Without wanting to get too much into Music Business 101, can you talk about what that does business move does for you artistically?
TP: It’s real weird being the director of a record label [laughs], because you can just pretend like you know what you’re doing all the time. You can be like, “Yeah, we licensed our album and hit our sales via ‘Somewhat Damaged Limited’…”
DB: …I want to be our A&R.
TP: You can be ‘Head of Snacks.’ [Laughs]
DB: All right. [Laughs]
TP: “Do you want to be in a band? Do you have an album? We can put it out.”
“Oh! You put out albums?"
"We can put out music!”
That whole thing is a façade… It’s just an imprint really. It made heaps of sense back home, because we figured out enough about how the music industry in New Zealand works. Just us and our managers could handle putting out a record through a label – we have a distributor, we have relationships with all the marketing people at TV and radio stations, which is not a lot of people to deal with, so it made total sense for us to do that. And again with Australia, our management has heaps and heaps of experience there.
We have Universal as a distributor as well, so it just means that all the marketing costs and all that – we decided to put ourselves and what we say yes to just completely falls on us, which is great because we can be lazy or proactive and suffer both consequences if we screw either one of those things up. But as far as overseas, we don’t really know what the hell we’re doing in the UK market or America, so we needed to license it to a big label. And they gave us a lot of money, so it’s pretty good.
SG: Nicely done. Okay…I have to ask… We all love Tricky, but what is it about that lyric from that song on “Pre-Millenium Tension” that makes you go, “Yeah, all right – we’ll go by that for the rest of our professional lives. Let’s do that.”
TP: [Laughs] I was sitting at work one day, I was processing CDs, believe it or not – back in the day when they were still real… I was processing CDs in a music store – all the traded, second-hand CDs – and I was thinking of band names, I spent all my time at my record store job thinking about my own band… I got fired because of it – I just spent too much time doing my own band! I’m still on good terms with them though…
But I was looking through some albums and lyrics and stuff, and was like… Tricky’s got some great ideas, and I’d love to reference other pop culture and music and stuff, and I just saw “naked and famous” and thought, “That is so over-the-top. That’s a great band name.” And the way he does it as well, is cynicism I think. He’s not being like, “Yay, I’m naked and famous.” It’s very much like an anti-celebrity culture commentary on that idealistic reality tv view that everyone has about music and films and pop culture and stuff, and that’s not us at all.
It was more of a joke when we started, because people who didn’t get the social reference just got the over-the-top-ness of it, and they thought that was funny. But now it’s kind of confusing because we’re doing interviews with more mainstream media, and they’re going, “So: which one’s Naked and which one’s Famous?” And it’s like, “You seriously can’t take this literally. You know this is a joke, right?”
SG: I think we’ve identified why people expect you to do crazy stuff on stage, though. It’s your own fault, as it turns out. Actually, while we are on the subject, did you see what Tricky did last week?
TP & DB: Joined the Mongrel Mob…
SG: Right! Can you talk to me about that? Because that seemed like the most bizarre news story I’ve ever seen in my life, starting with the reporter and everything else.
TP: Totally. We’ve been Mongrel Mob members for a while now, so it’s not a big deal to us. Most people in New Zealand are in gangs… [Laughs] It beats me… I’m pretty scared to meet him now.
SG: Don’t be scared, just revel in the circle of life moment: you listen to Tricky in New Zealand and name your band after one of his lyrics, and then Tricky, seemingly out of nowhere, joins a street gang in New Zealand…you couldn’t make that up… But feel free to make the answer to this question up though if you like: What has been the single best rock-star moment for The Naked and Famous to this point?
DB: I haven’t really had one. I sat down on an airplane and put my sunglasses on, but then I took them off because I felt real stupid… Actually, I give the rock-star moments to other people: Like, I saw Andrew W.K., so I ran up to him, bought his t-shirt, and I got him to sign it. So I don’t have rock-star moments. I give them to the real stars…
TP: …I took a pee next to him.
DB: [Laughs] Did you?!
TP: We were in the toilets at the festival we were playing at… that was pretty cool.
SG: We can’t finish there: Please tell me you can beat that…
TP: I probably can, but I just can’t remember… I only remember dumb crap like that because I’m an idiot, but… What else? Met Justin Chancellor from Tool – that was pretty cool. We supported Nine Inch Nails back home at an arena – that was pretty epic. They are heroes of ours, so meeting Trent [Reznor] in all of his four-foot glory was pretty awesome…. well, he’s the same height as me, though, so it was like, “Hey, cool. Someone else my height.” But he was lovely, he was really cool.
We kind of felt like retiring at the end of that: we didn’t even have the album out yet – it was just “Two EPs… and then support your heroes”… it already seemed like a pretty good career right there...
‘Passive Me, Aggressive You,’ the debut album from New Zealand’s The Naked and Famous, is out now on Somewhat Damaged/Universal Republic Records.
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