The Eagle had the exclusive opportunity to sit down with Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith of The Naked & Famous backstage at 9:30 club on Oct. 7. This gig marked the band’s second night of sold-out stops in D.C.
Trent Burns: How has the tour in support of the new album been going?
Thom Powers: Its been good. We had to iron out a few kinks when we first started, because we were jumping straight back into the same level of “show” we had when we stopped [the previous tour]. So it’s got to be quite streamlined, it’s very slick. You know like, it goes dark, it comes back and I’ve got a new guitar, and we start a new song (snaps) just like that. It seems really simple, when you see the whole show, but there’s so much small detail that you have to iron out to get confident in doing that. When you don’t do that it’s just in shambles, you know? It’s really awkward and the night just slows down. So it was pretty difficult to jump straight back into that, but two weeks in and I think we’re almost back to where we were in touring for “Passive Me, Aggressive You.”
Alisa Xayalith: It’s been exciting. I mean you can tell, from being up on stage, how many people have bought the album. Everyone’s been really receptive so far, and that’s always good because it’s quite scary when you’re playing new songs because not everybody knows them and sometimes people take a bit of time to warm up to them. You need to win them over all over again.
TP: And we thought it was funny, as musicians in general, you can get a very narrow-vision of what you’re doing in your own little world. And we were thinking about all the new songs; they’re all performable live. So we were thinking about this whole record, and it’s just come out (laughs), so we were going “oh shit, we can’t actually put people through a whole record every single night from start to finish”. And we’ve got so many songs that people already know, so it was a bit of a wake up call for us really. We had to actually figure out how and when to put the new songs into the set. That’s been challenging but fun.
TB: So has the overall experience of concerts and touring changed over the two to three years of touring for your first album?
TP: Yeah well, when we started we were just doing these small clubs and we were just this ‘small indie band.’ And then we got to playing stuff like South by Southwest.
AX: Much like the other bands we played eight shows in four days, and in between all those shows we had press, we had all these other things that were crammed in between the shows. It was just absolutely crazy, but fun.
TP: So we went from doing that to slowly doing bigger shows, bigger venues, bigger audiences, more radio play and more videos. So it was growing all the time, and it got to the point where we were playing proper shows like this with a decent PA [system] and decent sized crowds. As a producer I started to get a really good idea of how the band works as a five-person unit. And that had a really big impact on the approach to producing “In Rolling Waves.”
TB: Were there any big differences in producing “In Rolling Waves”? You co-produced two of the tracks?
TP: Yeah, we worked with Justin Meldal-Johnsen and he was great. We just felt stuck, like we’d hit a brick wall. We were driving to the rehearsal studio every day, getting to work, and just sitting there going “what are we doing?” There was a stale element to those two tracks; we reproduced them 10 different times and still nothing. Justin came in basically to say “this idea is really good, keep doing that” or “this idea isn’t working.” So he was just this opinion, this voice outside of the group, who hadn’t been working on the music so he could just sit back on the couch and say “I don’t think this or that is working.” So he was really wonderful to work with, and it opened me up to working with someone else as a producer. It was a really eye-opening experience for me, it made me excited about the idea of working with other people on those terms: not because we felt like we had to but because we wanted to get past that wall and make things exciting for ourselves.
TB: Was that the biggest challenge in making the new album, doing it mostly yourself?
TP: Well we did that with the first record as well, so it just felt like we were doing what we’d always done, except that we were able to use all the experience that we had to do it again. We weren’t feeling as naïve this time, like we were punching above our weight level, or whatever that expression is. That’s how felt making the first record, just that ambition to make an album and to put it out. To be a “real band” was a huge ambition. So after doing that we felt like we could do it again, but this time we wanted to take everything that we’d learned from the first experience of making the first album and touring it and base the new record on those experiences.
TB: You relocated to Los Angeles while working on the new album, so was that weird having moved from New Zealand?
TP: Pretty weird, but at the time we were so used to it. We were just traveling all the time, so to me it doesn’t really matter where I am; it’s a bed, it’s an indoor area. So at that point it was an almost arbitrary decision. We’d had some good times in LA, it seemed cool, so we thought “alright, let’s go there.”
AX: At the time we were deciding to move, it was wintertime in New Zealand. LA was sunny every day, and we thought why not trace the summer? Let’s go live in LA.
TB: Do you have a favorite experience from the time you spent writing “In Rolling Waves” and living in LA?
TP: You know I don’t really have favorite anythings anymore. I just can’t fathom the idea of that singularity, you know? I love music, how can I pick a favorite? Like, “What would like to eat for the rest of your life?” That’s ridiculous, I can’t do that, I don’t think life is like that, really. I don’t anything great works like that. I have so many awesome memories of the time we spent working on the record, but that’s an accumulative thing.
TB: Are you happy with the direction this new record has taken the band in? Is it something you’d like to continue with or will we see another radical change on the next album?
TP: I wouldn’t say radical, no. But I definitely think we’re happy with what we’ve been doing: taking everything we’ve done and saying “what do I know? What have I learned? What do we want to repeat or not repeat?” And I think music, or any creative discipline really, give you experience. And you get better at playing and performing and knowing what fits and what doesn’t. Your perspective becomes more refined, and hopefully that continues to happen for us. If that stops happening, if we’re just going through the motions, I think that’s when most bands decide to call it quits. When it becomes stale, it’s probably best to stop.
The Naked & Famous are currently on tour.
