Music > Interviews

Interview with Darwin Deez

03/04/13

Reading an interview with Darwin Deez’s frontman - the man Darwin himself - recently, I read a quote where he said, “If you read a Grimm’s Fairy Tale, you have to use your imagination… The story is only as rich as your interpretation.” With a second, less immediate follow up to his 2010 eponymous debut, entitled ‘Songs for Imaginative People’, I asked Darwin if that’s what he expected from us this time around, that similar to Grimm, there’s some work to do on our part? He told us this, amongst a longer chat, before he set off for his UK Tour that sees him take in Norwich this month…

How are you doing today? I’m pretty good. How are you?  

Not so bad thank you. What have you been up to today? Just driving; we woke up in Minnesota and we’re in Minneapolis and we’re driving to Madison. We stopped for lunch, but that’s it. Just doing some interviews… 

Life on the road. You played SXSW last week, didn’t you? You must be beyond the point where it’s an important networking event – do you get to have more fun now? Er, it’s always a bit of both; the latter, the music business is so long that there’s always a ladder to climb, but that part of it is more for our label and management. Our job is more to perform and have fun, meet other bands and stuff, so we did that a little bit, it was cool. 

Did you get to check out much new music? Er, yeah, I checked out a few new bands but I only really liked one that I saw and that was Delicate Steve. They were the best new band I’ve seen for a while and I enjoyed watching their live show.

You’re coming to the UK again next month to promote your new album. It’s called ‘Songs for Imaginative People’; I read a good quote from you that said, “If you read a Grimm’s Fairy Tale, you have to use your imagination… The story is only as rich as your interpretation.” Do you think with this album, there’s similarly some work to do on our part? Yeah, exactly; you nailed it.

Are you pretty cool with that? You create something the way you want it to sound, then you let your baby out into the wider public scope to be interpreted in any way… Yeah, definitely; I mean, I feel like my lyrics do circumscribe a certain limit to what you can imagine with them, but I think specificity is good – the more you specific you are, the more it stimulates the imaginative urge in the listener. If you get down to the nitty gritty detail, in a way, it paints the whole picture. In a way that’s a lot better than if you try to describe the whole broad background. It’s an interesting thing to focus in on the dewdrop of the rose petal, and then suddenly you see the whole spring day, you know.

What I’ve found with both your albums is that even on initial listens, I can follow the narrative of your lyrics straight away. Your diction is clear and the stories kind of drag you in. Is this something you always consciously wanted to do? It’s something I always consciously wanted to hear. Growing up, the first rock records I ever listened to were just, like, impenetrable, the lyrics were so weird… The Breeders – I had no idea what the songs were about and I thought that maybe if I was older, I’d know if they were doing the subtle drug or sexual references, but you know I felt alienated by that kind of writing. So I always wanted to hear that; I wanted to know what people were singing about because I liked those artists and I wanted to connect with those artists, but I couldn’t connect to their lyrics and I found it really frustrating.

Now we’ve got a second album to make a comparison, we’re able to see that the tracks on your first album were all short, they were concise, under four minutes. Was that purposeful at the time, and did you burn the blueprint on album two? Yeah, exactly; I gave myself a chance to break free whilst still remaining in the same ballpark. You know, I had to do it; I had to break out and try some different song structures and it was fun. Next time I’ll try something else. I think it’s wrong if anyone interprets these two records as aesthetically different though.

You mixed the record in London. I don’t understand fully the mixing process, but what was it that brought you to London for it? I didn’t actually get to go; it was actually done over email, even though I love to go over there. Our management just picked some mixers that were in the right price bracket…!

You seem to have an appreciation for British music; I’ve seen mention of Churches and Everything Everything, to name a couple. Absolutely, British bands seem to have an innate knack for melody. The Beatles had it, The Rolling Stones; it’s within them.

Your lyrics are poetic, in as much as they’d stand alone without music. There’s no filler. Do you write the lyrics first, as they seem like they haven’t been compromised to fit the music. I don’t always approach it in that way, but I did this time. I was inspired to write first.

There’s a recurrent notion on ‘Songs…’, which you’ve described in an interview quote as “Basically the idea that you can do whatever you want with your life.” Was there a time where that wasn’t an option for you, where you were being advised against doing what you wanted, over what you should be doing? Erm, I think, yeah… When I was 18, my parents weren’t happy with me quitting college. They were very worried, which I think is normal, but that’s what I wanted to do. They’ve over it now!

I was leafing through your album artwork earlier and saw a picture of you cuffed to guitar, then there’s plectrums framed as crime evidence, more guitar… you seem to have had a strong relationship with your guitar on this album. Absolutely; I took myself away to write the album, and just to practice playing guitar. There was anguish in the beginning where I couldn’t some of the stuff that I really wanted to do with the guitar at the beginning, so I just holed myself away; it was kind of like I was in guitar prison in North Carolina, for a while. I now don’t have that problem anymore; I’ve sort of plateaued at a certain level of playing, which is OK. It’s enough to entertain myself and to entertain people. If I were to do it for another summer, it would be another huge chunk of homework, so I don’t know, I’m not gonna do that!

How do you remain disciplined when you have a task like that in front of you? Writing the album is a creative process, but there has to be some discipline to get it done… Yeah, I just remove as many distractions as possible. To make this record, I left New York City, I left my entire world, all my friends, all the distractions of New York and moved into a quiet mountain town where I wouldn’t have anything to do except make music. I didn’t get cable TV, I didn’t get TV, I didn’t get Internet in my house. Basically all I could do was take a walk, or meet up with a friend or make music. Removing the distractions is what enabled me to finish the record, I think.

To talk about a couple of songs in particular from the album, I love the kinda guitar solo in ‘Alice’ – were you allowing yourself to be playful, to let the instruments do the talking for a bit? Yeah well, definitely. I like that whole bit too. Just with everything else that’s going on, it just feels really happy and I like that particular effect on the guitar; it’s an effect that makes it sound high and I dunno, cute.

Yeah, it’s wicked – I really like it. Oh, thanks! I guess I just wanted to show off my skills a little bit… and I wanted to have skills! So I was kind of doing both at the same time. Just to pick out another song, I read a quote from you that said, “Well I sort of like ‘Good To Lose’. That song I think has the most to do with life that I’ve been living in the last year.” It’s such a concise song, I wondered if you could elaborate on that life you’ve been living… I guess I just meant, like, working from home, being single. Being a homebody, being a little bit lazy, I mean, I’ve lived like that before – I’ve experienced periods like that – but I felt like I hadn’t experienced it enough until I started to write the song about it. It started happening and I sort of recognised it, you know. It also started happening to a friend of mine up the street and so that gave me extra perspective to think about it.

Now lastly Darwin, I don’t know if you’ve seen that Darwin Deez’s Hair is on Facebook – have you seen that? Yeah, I’ve seen something like that.

It’s nice! It’s the adventures and misadventures of your hair, which is cool. How much do you feel like your hair is an extension of you? It’s iconic in its own right… Well, it’s a symbol! And symbols have power, don’t they?! Erm… yeah, it’s good!

Emma Garwood

Darwin Deez comes to The Waterfront on April 29th. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk