Robocobra Quartet are a jazz rock band borne out of Ireland which, contrary to the name, is made up of six members. Utilizing a sound ranging from punk to post-rock to noise rock, they create layered music laden with all manner of saxophone style and tone and hard-edged vocals. In this interview, Chris Ryan and Ryan Burrowes sat down with SCAD Radio Production Director Megan Atwell to discuss their new release, “Living Isn’t Easy”, live performance, religion, and talking to dogs. Read the article and listen to the recording below
Megan: Hello SCAD Radio. This is your production director, Megan, and we are here with two members of the lovely band, Robocobra Quartet.
Chris: Hello.
Ryan/Burrowes: Hey, how’s it going?
Megan: So for the people introduce yourselves, what do you guys do in the band? What’s your names?
Chris: My name’s Chris. I’m the drummer and vocalist.
Ryan/Burrowes: My name’s Ryan and I play keys and sampler.
Megan: Lovely. Okay. So, the obvious question first. How did the name Robocobra Quartet come to be? Also considering that you guys are technically not a quartet, have you ever considered changing it? Or is it just like, for the sake of having it consistent?
Chris: It’s funny. It’s one of these things that like… The band started as a quartet as four people, and then kind of, for a while it was like, eight, nine, that was like really blooming up to a lot of people. And then it’s like, believe it or not, the six is actually less than, than the normal amount. Basically some of us swap in and swap out. So it’s always a quartet on stage, but it’s kind of like a collective that like feeds into, it’s sort of like a football team with like, a different starting squad.
Or I should say soccer, I guess, because America. But yeah, the name originally came from, we used to do this thing, like the very early stage of the band. We’d kind of studied improvised music and electronics and this kind of thing, and there was a little computer programming called Max MSP that I use and we all use for designing basically little instrumental production and stuff like that.
There was a patch within that that I made. This is very boring and complicated, but basically it designed improvisation, or it kind of prompted improvisation. And it was inspired by a piece by John Zorn and who’s a composer called Cobra. So it was kind of like a robo cobra.
That’s what it was then. It’s a meaningless name, but I guess it’s a nod to how we started, I suppose.
Megan: Yeah, definitely ties in with the jazz roots, so that makes sense. So, this, album cover is very evocative. I like it quite a bit. First of all, what was the inspiration for it? And who is it, who’s the one laying in the grass?
Chris: Let you take this Burrowes– I call him Burrowes, it’s his last name.
Ryan/Burrowes: Yeah. Well it was actually like an artist that our label sort of put forward to us. Chris, do you remember his name?
Chris: Yeah. Stephen Leslie’s the photographer.
Ryan/Burrowes: That was it, yeah. He does a lot of sort of just documenting what’s happening on the street and around cities in the UK. And that one, just as soon as we saw that one, it just kind of hit us all. It was like a guy in a business suit stressed out, just lying on the grass. Well, he might not be stressed out, but you know, it’s quite indicative of what the album’s about. Like that sort of modern life and constantly having to work and keep up with things and just sometimes you just wanna lie in the grass.
Megan: Makes sense to me.
Ryan/Burrowes: But yeah, we dunno who the guy is.
Megan: Maybe, at one point if you find him, you can bring him up and be like “This is the guy!” and he can be your fifth piece on stage. He just kind of stands there as part of the performance. So I’m always curious about, for each band that I talk to, what part of the songwriting process comes first? Like, is it an instrumental line? The general tone of the song? Lyrics, what comes first?
Chris: Like , I could say that the early days of the band, I used to be really the person who began stuff, began songs. But like this new record that you’re talking about, it’s, it’s like super, it’s been way more collaborative with everyone together. And even though I’m the person who does the lyrics, the songs are really like group stuff. Yeah, I think like it’s kind of come from playing in the room, hasn’t it?
Ryan/Burrowes: Yeah, I mean there’s even a song in the record, track five, Labyrinth; the sort of first idea for that came when Chris was in Brazil, so he was away down a music thing in Brazil and I just took the drums and we all just kind of made a song and sent it to him. Well, we sent him like six and then he said that five of them were terrible, but that the one was the one that we worked on. So that’s what you got there.
Chris: But you made that drum beat, like that’s the kind of drum beat– I’d never write something like that, so it was cool. So yeah, it’s definitely more democratized how it’s all written.
Megan: Awesome. So, on your guys’ website, speaking of democratized, you guys mentioned that some of the members of the group are more self-taught and others have classical training.
So in your songwriting process, do you find that the level of professional music education experience determines how a person approaches creating a song? Or does it just kind of all meld together? ,
Chris: I have really strong feelings about all this kind of stuff because I kind of grew up listening to punk rock and that’s how I sort first started playing music. And then I got really excited by like whatever that through line is, you know, the idea of music that challenges things or is kind of nonconformist or something.
And to me that was also like, I could hear that in jazz and I could hear that in really out there classical music as well, and like improvisation. I could hear that same idea in a lot of modern electronic music as well, like this same seed, you know? And I think education and music is so good to explain things and make sense of something.
Like, why do I feel this feeling? Oh, I can tell you why, because it’s a trione and it makes this augmented chord or whatever, or this diminished chord, it’s spooky, you know– it’s really useful for explaining things. But, the reason I have mixed feeling is because I mean, unfortunately one of the Frankenstein’s monsters is like people who are obsessed with theory and obsessed with the kind of box ticking of this kind of thing. And then it becomes less about what’s in your heart and what you’re feeling in your soul. You know what I mean?
I think I’m quite thankful that all of us have such different levels of technical skill, you know?
Nathan, who plays bass, like he’d be way more someone by ear, you know, he’d be able to do things much better. And there’s people who could read scores and, and then like Burrowes, I think you think the music very differently than how we do. I think you’re like a lot more kind of grid minded and stuff.
Ryan/Burrowes: A lot more electronic influence, yeah.
Megan: Yeah. I always find it very compelling to compare performance arts and other kinds of art to visual art, which is what I’m in and what happens at school here. Because that’s very much the same for visual art, where if somebody does everything on their own at home and then suddenly decides to pursue art and comes to school, they’re much more used to pulling it out of their brain. They’re much more imagination driven. Whereas someone like me who grew up in a studio and I learned atelier and stuff like that, I find it really difficult to do that. I have a really hard time just doodling because I like to have a reference in front of me. I like to have a concept. I like to be able to really elaborate on stuff like that, but I really admire people who can just bang out a page of doodles and it has like a very fun, unified tone to it. I’m like, I can’t do that, man!
Chris: That’s so cool. And is it kind of fine art that you’re studying? Like, what kinda field?
Megan: I grew up doing fine art, like oil painting, like all that kind of stuff. the studio that I used to learn in and now I actually teach at over the summer is very… it’s classical, fine art focused, like you’re building towards realism. And then, my compromise with myself was, to do illustration in school because I wanna be able to eat and like, make money . So I was like, let’s do something that has a little bit more of commercial focus. And it’s been a real– it’s been a doozy for me, to change my mindset completely. ‘Cause you really don’t understand how different the fields are, even from the little seed that the idea grows from. It’s just a completely different thing. So it’s been very interesting to change that.
Chris: Interesting. Cause illustration’s quite like brief focused, right? It’s like, someone wants something from you in a way. Yeah. I think that’s super interesting, especially like in music as well. I think sometimes having little parameters is really useful. Obviously in illustration you have to follow it or you get fired, but in music you can break them. I feel like you can break the rules as well when you have something in front of you to cue from, I guess.
Megan: Definitely. And I think that, a lot of the time some of the best music can come from having that parameter and then deciding to break it. You know, I’m sure, in jazz they say like if you play a note once it’s wrong. But if you play it three times, it’s justified.
So it’s like if you break a rule on accident and then you’re like, “fuck it, we ball” then it keeps going, and then suddenly you have a new style. So it’s just, it’s fun the way that you can really manipulate your mistakes into something new.
Chris: It’s funny, I’m a really visual person and like that there was a thing with this record where in lockdown, we just started like doing bits of merch, like little limited run merch items with Bandcamp Fridays and stuff. And one of the things that we did was like this cap with, just like RQ, just you know, band initials. And it was using this palette– like do you know the Zorn palette?
Megan: I do know Zorn palette, yes.
Chris: Maybe I’ll explain this wrong, but it’s right to say that it’s a very limited palette that’s useful for portraits, right?
Megan: Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s for.
Chris: Or I guess Western-centric skin tone– I guess like it’s probably got its bias, but in terms of like, the limited palette to represent something. And so that like really inspired the album weirdly enough, because we started talking about palettes. And it was like, especially when you have a lot of people involved in a lot of different backgrounds, it can become a jumble. So we had really strict rules, like what’s in the palette, what’s not?
And one of the things was like, there’s not gonna be any reverb on the vocal. Another thing was the only keyboard instrument is gonna be a Rhodes piano, just these little rules. And one of the things in the palette was distortion. So there’s levels of distortion on the drums and everything the whole way through. I mean, I’m telling you as a painter as well, but you have to have your palette, you know? Otherwise can can just be such a jumble.
Megan: Yeah, definitely. That’s so funny, I was talking to my roommate about Zorn last night. We were talking about it ’cause my brother’s a portrait painter, he’s an oil artist. And we were looking at a portrait that he did and I was like,” I can tell that’s Zorn because it’s like got such a look about it.” when you’ve like been looking at enough painters and you know what they’re using, you can really accurately kind of tell, “Okay, they use pthalo, they use crimson light,” stuff like that. And it’s interesting in music too, cuz sometimes– like my co-host on my podcast, Sophie has a bit more of a trained ear than me and she’ll like be able to pick out like, “I like this like specific kind of alto sax that they’re using” and I’m like, “Yeah. Oh wow. Cool. Okay. I believe you!”
Chris: Guitarists are like that as well. They’re like, Oh, that, that’s a Humbucker and this is that, and that’s definitely a Fender Strat. I can kind of do like half of that and then at some point I kind of lose what you’re hearing, you know? But it’s amazing when people have focus like that.
Megan: Yeah, it’s really cool. I actually did wanna talk a little bit about that palette– what a great segue! My next question was going to be about the different instruments used, specifically two of them. This one does come directly from Sophie, my podcast co host, and she asks “saxophone defines so much of your guys’ as sound that it’s crazy at times that your music still reads as rock rather than jazz or some other genre that sax is more associated with. What do you guys think the sax’s role is in a rock band and with so many different sax approaches through your lineup, what versatility does each member bring?”
Chris: Wow. What do you think? I’ll have to think about that for a minute.
Ryan/Burrowes: Yeah, I mean, I think especially on this album, we rarely lead a song with the sax. Usually in jazz music or whatever, it’s about the sax player. It’s about him taking the song or her taking the song wherever it’s going, and it’s all about what they’re doing. But with us it’s kind of textural, it comes in, it goes out. It doesn’t really lead the songs ’cause obviously the vocals have to lead the songs. It’s a story or whatever that Chris is talking about. With us the song tends be driven by the bass guitar, so that’s probably what the rock sort of vibe is. You’ll hear that a lot in our music, it’s very chord based, planned and stuff. But yeah, that’s quite a question.
Chris: Yeah, I guess that’s probably what changes, it’s the hierarchy, right? The hierarchy in our band is like the bass guitar is kind of the most important. We just got back from tour and we don’t tour with a sound engineer and most of the time sound engineers we talk to, you just say “Think of the bass guitar as a piano.” because it’s gonna give you low end and mid-range and top end. It’s gonna be the full spectrum. By the way, both Nathan and Burrowes play bass on the album. This is funny as well about the band, it’s like [Burrowes], you played bass on half of the songs in the record and you wrote one of the drum parts.
You’re like the wild card.
Megan: The secret sauce!
Ryan/Burrowes: Yeah, that’s me!
Chris: That’s it, right? It’s like all the roles are very… I think there’s not that much hierarchy in terms of the traditional roles. Like as you say, in jazz or something, the saxophone is like, “I’m the melody. Everyone else is beneath me.” You know? So yeah, it’s that kind of jumbled up hierarchy. I think that makes it feel different.
Megan: Yeah. The next thing that I was gonna ask about is the synth work. Cause I’m most familiar with, Music for All Occasions and Living Isn’t Easy, those are my two points. So seeing the jump is big for me, and the more focused introduction of synth on this album was really compelling to me. Specifically on Chromo Sud, because there’s like that moment with the solo and that hierarchy really comes out where you’re talking about this sax just going ham. Like it is wailing, it’s emoting, it’s like roiling, it’s beautiful. And then you have the drum keeping it all together with those really hard hits, to really punctuate it. And then it’s awash in that synth and it just is so… It’s so distinct and simple in its construction, but it’s so impactful because of the way that the hierarchy is constructed and it’s super clear. So, in incorporating the synth, was that the goal? Was it to give it sort of a backbone, like a milieu to sort of sit in? Or did you wanna have it just be like another part of the palette? What was the intent with putting it all in there?
Chris: You’re a proper listener!
That’s amazing. Sometimes you get people who are like, you know, “*checks notes* uh, and who plays guitar in the band?” so that’s great. Thank you for listening.
Megan: Of course I wanna listen. It’s a fantastic album!
Chris: But this is an interesting thing– so Burrowes didn’t even play on Music for All Occasions at all until the very last kind of steps where he introduced a noise solo thing at the end of Album of the Year. That was like your first introduction to the band, was you almost weren’t even in the band.
You were just about to play bass on a tour, I think. And then you did that one little bit and, and that was like the first I think introduction of your kind of sensibility, which is really cool, as a screeching noise as a solo at the end of that song. And then, yeah, fast forward, I guess now to this record.
I will say that we broke the palette on that track. It uses it. I think it’s a Roland Jupiter synthesizer for those like *wshhhhh* sounds. But yeah, I can’t say personally. How did that come about? I mean, that song was, was in progress for like three or four years actually.
Megan: Wow.
Chris: Yeah, it was like crazy long to figure out how the pieces go together. And those chords originally were done over a different section in the song and then we transferred onto a sampler, and I think it was Tom who did that little arpeggio *dunu denne denne denne* over it and kind of made the end of that song blossom into, I guess, what you’re hearing now. Like the kind of more cathartic sort of thing. That happened in the room together, and I don’t think we would’ve ever written something like that if it was in the early days.
Megan: Yeah. And then speaking of sort of the early days versus now, I think that jumping from. Music For all Occasions to Living Isn’t Easy, the change is pretty staggering. I think that even knowing that there is an album’s worth of growth between those, between the heavy expansion on lyrics, [this album’s] a lot more story driven, versus Music for All Occasions is a little bit more sparse. The rich compositions, the improved production, it’s really amazing to see how the growth has happened. So what have you felt that you’ve learned from each album’s production, and was there anything distinctly challenging or enjoyable about recording Living Isn’t Easy?
Chris: I’ll probably butt in again. Sorry if i’m talking too much. So I produce all our stuff cause I work as a producer, that’s what I do for a living. I produce other people’s music– I was actually just mixing something before we got on the call– and definitely it’s always been… the band has always been like bit of a playground for me. And one thing I, I guess going back to your very first question, one of the things I learned along the way was like, production is just as much about the decisions you make with musicians. And, and one of those things is letting other people, if they’re really great sensitive people much like Ryan Burrowes, then you should leave them to express themselves instead of dictating, you know?
It’s funny like, cause the second album that you didn’t mention, that was one where it was like there was no rules and I think it’s really, in a way, difficult listening. That’s why it’s called Plays Hard to Get. Robocobra Quartet Plays Hard to Get. Yeah. Cause it’s just like, dense, it only really works on headphones, I think. I’m pleased with the album, but it’s so much less immediate. And I think that was a result of maybe me going off the rails a bit, but I was like, “if the Beach Boys could do it, why can’t I?”
Megan: That’s your Smiley Smile!
Chris: Yeah, exactly. It’s like “Oh, I know why, because I’m not a genius like Brian Wilson. Right. Okay. That’s why.” but yeah, I think definitely there’s more focus now for sure. I think that that was one thing I learned anyway, and I think we all learned self-mediation, like filtering good ideas.
Megan: Yeah. That makes sense. What about you, Burrowes? Do you have anything?
Ryan/Burrowes: Well, Living Isn’t Easy was recorded quite differently than the other ones. So the other ones were like me and Chris lived in the same house and Nathan the bass player, we lived in the same house. So most of those albums were recorded by me eating my dinner and Chris being like, “Oh wait, we need a bass part on this song.” and then like, write up in an hour. Then we go up and record it in our house. This one we went up to county Donegal in the north and just booked the studio for the week and all moved up, stayed up there and just worked on the record. Recorded mostly live, just sort of basic tracks for the record and everything, which is quite different for how we’d work previously. You can probably hear that in the record, I think. Like you can hear that it’s a band together recording the songs.
Megan: Much more of like a one time controlled thing versus like little patchworks put in?
Ryan/Burrowes: Exactly. Yeah.
Megan: When you guys were living together, did you ever find it difficult to separate work from home? Like, were, would you just be like sitting there like, “Ohh, when’s he gonna ask me to record something?”
Ryan/Burrowes: Well, my bedroom was directly underneath the control room, so I could hear everything that was going on, whatever time it was. So I’d get sick of my own songs before recording on them.
Chris: Yeah. I found that so difficult. anytime like I’m talking to bands, they’re like, “We’re all gonna move in together!” I’m like, “Don’t do it!” because you’re like, you think it’s gonna be genius, like we’ll always get to work on everything, but really what happens is you fly back from some festival or you like come back from tour and you’re like, “You again!” like the person who like played amazing at the show is the same person who didn’t take out the rubbish, you know and it’s like, it’s so funny. I think the best thing for our band was us not living together. That was the best thing ever.
Ryan/Burrowes: Yeah, that was the best move.
Megan: I’m sure that also if you’re thinking about like recording all the time, you roll out of bed and suddenly you’re in the studio again, it must lead to you kind of overworking some ideas too, right?
Chris: Exactly. I wish you were there, Megan, to have told us that!
Megan: It’s from experience. I hang some of my paintings on the wall at home and I’m like, God, I hate you. I look at it like three months later and I’m picking out things that I could fix and I’m like, it’s done, I already varnished it, I can’t touch it, and I’m just like, “grrr!” oh man. So there are some very interesting titles on this album, most notably, Chromo Said and Kilmore Close. So what do they mean and what’s their relevance to the songs?
Chris: Do you know what Kilmore Close is, Burrowes?
Ryan/Burrowes: Yeah, I do. so basically in our old rehearsal room, wasn’t it? We basically recorded it on the iPhone and it geotagged the closest location that it could get, which was a housing estate beside where we lived, and it was the close of the estate and it was called Kilmore close. So it just geotagged the demo as Kilmore Close , and we never changed the name.
Chris: I realized we probably shouldn’t tell anyone that, but it was like one of those things where, when you have working titles and you’re like, “That’s gotta change,” you know? Like, you know, New song two. But I always thought that kind of just was a gift or something.
Ryan/Burrowes: Yeah, it was cool.
Chris: And it’s like, the song is quite domestic. It’s about a person and it’s like in the house and family and so it was like, “oh, it’s a person’s address,” you know? It kind of felt like it had already been designed or something.
Megan: Yeah. You guys owe a lot of your naming conventions to technology .
Chris: Yeah. Well, it’s funny actually. So Chromo Sud is like–well, it’s technically French, Megan, so…
Megan: Oh, so sorry so sorry, I learned Spanish in school!
Chris: Ah, well Chromo Sud, I think in French it means like colorful South or something. But, where the word came from is because one of the earlier iterations of that song was in 2000 and I think 18, now that I think about it. 2018 the Belfast Film Festival booked us to do like a live improvisation to like films from I think it was the French student uprising, student riots and stuff, I think that’s what it was. There was a film that we played to called Chromo Sud, and we wrote a very rough kind of thing and improvised around it, and that’s kind of what the song turned into.
Megan: Wow.
Chris: So it’s another one of these things where it was like a little bit of a nod to like where it came from. You can watch the film Chromo Sud online. It’s a pretty intense art film. We actually ended up doing the music video, we projected that film onto us and played to it. So there’s a little bit of an Easter egg, you know? It obviously sounded very different when we did the live score as to what it turned into, like three years later, four years later. But yeah, that’s where it came from. It’s a little bit of a nod to that– if anyone ever goes Googling, they’ll connect the pieces together, you know?
Megan: Ooh, yeah! So now I wanna move on to sort of the values that are kind of talked about on the album lyrically. So there’s a very palpable disdain for capitalism across the album, all the way from criticisms of like conditional healthcare on Labyrinth with the dialysis line to the character portrait of like this hyper capitalist Christian on Heaven to this simple, conversational, bleak criticism of housing on Chromo Sud. So what were you hoping to communicate with this? Is it just something that weighs on your mind in modern life?
Chris: Yeah, for me as like a lyricist I’m not really a preachy kind of person. Like I always find the things that really connected with me when I was younger were like, I guess a huge example would be the Dead Kennedys. And the Dead Kennedys would always write from the point of view of the corrupt police officer, or they’d write from the point of view of like, a dictator in Cambodia, right. They would write from these unfaithful positions in allegory so that you could as a listener be like, I hate this character, you know, which is in some ways better than being like “the government is bad” you know, “Thatcher is bad,” “George Bush is bad.” it’s like, what if you actually went from their angle, you know?
Megan: Yeah. Shout out Kanye West with “George Bush hates black people.”
Chris: Right, right. Exactly. Yeah, and then fast forward like 10 years to like wearing a MAGA hat with Trump. So that’s kind of where it came from. I’m not really a preachy person, so I’m not like “Hey, capitalism sucks.” I’m just like, this is fascinating that we’re in this world, you know? It’s basically the foundation of how the whole world works. I’d rather just like ask questions and like hold the mirror to stuff. I think sometimes that gives more room for people to make their own decisions that may be political through that process, rather than something outright.
Megan: Yeah. That’s interesting you say that you wanna hold up a mirror and like ask a question because once again, back to art comparisons, that’s a fine art approach versus an illustration approach. One way that I heard it when I was a kid was conceptual fine art, you’re asking a question and then not answering it so that you make the viewer think about it on their own and come to their own conclusion, versus illustration you are asking and answering a question in the same breath. So I think that it’s interesting to hear that that’s sort of where your brain’s at.
Chris: Yeah, I mean there’s things that I feel strongly about that I’m thinking about. I mean that line, you’re talking about the dialysis thing, the lyric is it’s like “I pay for my dialysis after life’s worth of weekends,” and maybe it’s a bit wordy, but basically what it’s about is like in Ireland really, we have like this crazy drinking culture. And I think it’s the same in the US as well in the UK and where it’s like you kind of drink on the weekends to obliterate yourself from thinking about how crap the rest of your week is. And I extrapolated that super far into someone who’s like working for the health insurance, so that they can destroy their liver, so that they can bear the work that pays for their health insurance, that then they have to escape by destroying their liver, that then… you know what I mean? It’s that cyclical, labyrinthian thing, you know? The kind of culture of self destruction to bear existence, you know.
Megan: It definitely also applies in a macro to most places I think. ‘Cause even aside from the the issue of obliterating your liver and needing to pay for your dialysis in Ireland, there’s the whole issue of in the US, healthcare is not guaranteed, period. So even if you didn’t try, if your kidney fails just cuz of genetics, you still have to work to pay for it. You did nothing wrong. So it’s equally depressing in a different way. So thank you for the answer! I wanted to ask what inspired the character portraits on the album? Was it characters in media, real people, archetypes, or just like a mush together of all of it? Like on Wellness and Heaven and even Kilmore, all the people that you see.
Chris: I’m just answering by these lyrical ones cuz I’m the one who writes the lyrics, but, I’m a really big fan of the Mountain Goats– you’re familiar?
Megan: Yeah.
Chris: Yes. So actually I think they might be from like, not too far away from you right? Or, no, they’re like Carolina, North Carolina think–
Megan: one of them.
Chris: –one of them. But yeah, they’re a huge inspiration for me. Singer John Darnell, I guess he is the Mountain Goats, he would kind of make characters sort of talk to each other from songs apart, you know, maybe albums that like reference the same thing. And it’s almost like– what’s it called, the marvel…?
Megan: Oh, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You guys got the Robocobra Cinematic Universe.
Chris: Yeah! So it was a bit like that, just things being put together. So I guess Kilmore Close, like that kind of person came from a lot of different snapshots in real life that makes something fake. Like even, I was doing something once where I was recording someone and they lived in this house and their dog had chewed up all the chairs in the house, all around every leg. Every leg over the chair was like, chewn to smithereens, like a corn cob! And it was such a visual thing where this dog’s obviously frustrated.
It was just like always visual thing. That always stuck with me as maybe a vision of a household that is quite like closed in, you know? Like that that person, weirdly enough their father was a pastor? A pastor or a vicar or something like that.
Megan: Something religious.
Chris: Yeah. Quite like a closed in domestic life. There’s a lyric in that song as well, it’s like our sax player Tom. He was talking to his wife and they were talking about going to Disneyland. They have a kid now and stuff. And he said, Oh, Disneyland next year.
And that also feels like quite a domestic discussion to have and really specifically, you know, middle class family home things. I could go on forever about this, but like, they all come from reality quite often. And then I sort of steal things and then make it into something.
Megan: Yeah, yeah. Sort of a simulacra, like you’re kind of creating a fake image of a real thing.
Chris: Totally. Exactly. And Wellness, all the lyrics like in that one are from an article of all kinds of daily routines of influencers and it was this just absurd thing to read. So that was just stolen outright and read out loud, you know, so that was something where the character had already kind of been made. But it was like seven or eight different health influencers talking about their day and these insane things that they get up to, like staring at the sun for an hour and stuff. So they all got mushed together into this one character as well.
Megan: Yeah. Creates this really like, uncomfortable Patrick Bateman type of person where you’re like, you’re gonna snap, you’re gonna snap eventually. And then they’re like, “Ugh, we’re so blessed in Britain.” It’s like, Oh yeah. That’s so interesting.
I had interviewed another band previously who has a kind of a similar cinematic universe type approach. Their albums tell contained stories. And they had talked about how one of the ways that they came up with ideas for characters was going to a thrift store and buying a box of old photographs and like pinning them up and seeing how you can connect the pictures.
So yeah, it’s sort of a similar thing, like equally visual, just a different approach. It’s very it’s cool to see how different characters come up.
Chris: Totally.
Megan: Yeah. So you guys are, as we’ve established, from Ireland, which is a very historically Catholic country, right? So, I’m curious specifically about the track Heaven. Did you grow up with religion and how does that tie in with kind of the messaging in the song?
Chris: It’s interesting. I mean, there’s so much backstory, I guess because we’re based in Northern Ireland, which it kind of has its own history of Christianity and sects of Christianity and between Catholics and Protestants and this kind of conflict in from the seventies through the nineties and troubles. So all sorts, that’s a whole thing as well. But specifically in terms of the song, it’s funny actually you say that cause there was a review of a show like a few weeks ago and the review is like they must be exorcising their Catholic demons or something.
It’s like, “God, help me!” is the lyric. You know, we actually did a radio session like last week on the BBC and didn’t how much I blasphemed in that song until I said “Christ forgive me” like five times on the BBC . But yeah, I dunno, did you go to like churches to kid and stuff Burrowes?
Ryan/Burrowes: No, my parents are both agnostic, but I come from the sort of Protestant community here. So I just grew up with the troubles basically, so it’s a political thing to me, religion, just cause of the obvious things that were happening on the streets and stuff, so, to be honest, I’m kind of areligious, like non-religious because of that reason. So Yeah. Not a lot of people in my generation are because of that here.
Megan: Yeah, I can definitely imagine. I mean, I think that that’s sort of the way that most places are going, like with what you see happening in Iran right now.
Ryan/Burrowes: Oh, totally. Yeah.
Megan: It’s just brutal. And, especially even during the pandemic in America, like people using religious exemptions to not get the shot, things like that. The way that I read heaven, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, is as this, this guy who, I mean, he opens the song by basically talking down to somebody on the street and being like, Let me tell you how I made my fortune while you’re filling your stupid little cup. And then later on he becomes sort of religious, almost out of convenience. Like, Oh, now that I’ve made a problem in the stock market, I’m gonna put it on God. Like, it’s no longer his issue. It’s only him if he can be the self-made million millionaire, not if he’s the self-made bankrupter. You know what I mean?
Chris: Right.
Megan: So I think that that’s very interesting and I definitely see that happening here in America where people in the upper class find it very easy to be Christian because they’re like, God blessed me with this wealth. Oh, I have, I live a beautiful life. And then people who are more downtrodden are like, you’re a Christian, You’re not helping me. Where are these values? So I thought that that was kind of an interesting way to frame a song.
Chris: That’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So lyrics in heaven, the reason’s called Heaven is because I’m a little bit obsessed with like cults and this kind of thing, and so it’s, you know, the Heavens Gate massacre. So, so like the middle section of that song is kind of inspired by that.
Megan: That’s so crazy. I looked up the white Nikes line the other night and I was like, I wonder if that’s intentional.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah! Cause they all wore the same Nikes.
Megan: I get you. I get you.
Chris: Yeah. They actually, they all wore purple robes, but I changed the lyric to plain white robes because it worked better phrasing wise. So yeah, I could then, so I didn’t exactly say like, “this is about this massacre” just, I guess to be sensitive or something, but yeah. But it’s another one of those things about taking reality and making a fiction out of it, you know? But yeah, it’s, kind of like inspired by that idea of… Capitalism’s the same as the cult. There’s faceting with cults, like you have the cult of obvious things like that or like Osho (Rajneesh), all these kind of common cults that you think of. But then also there’s a cult of personality, like celebrities. They maintain cults, you know, bands of cult status, so it’s kind of an exploration of that and cult of like identity as well and that whole thrust. I really like that reading of it though, because a friend of mine, she made a really good point about like, gambling. Gambling’s kind of what you’re talking about. It’s it’s an addiction where you connect a lot of it with faith, right? So if you’re addicted to like, prescription drugs or even cigarettes or something, you kind of know that it’s you who’s doing it or maybe your family has caused you some trauma or something like this. But with gambling, when things go wrong, it’s like, “ah, I might be lucky next time.” And you kind of connect the bad times and you blame something else for it. And it’s kind of like what you’re talking about where someone might thank God for their successes and then blame God for their failures, yeah. But I, I’m not a religious person, but I find it so interesting. Religion is like such a narrative center of so much. You know, the style of writing and character themes, like character archetypes so based in like religious fables and stuff. Yeah. So I find it’s a really interesting thing to take from.
Megan: Yeah, definitely. When I was in high school, I remember, I did a lot of literature classes. I’m just a big fan of English, so I liked to kind of explicate books and stuff like that, as you can probably tell by how lyric focused I am. But I remember one of my friends was like, I don’t get anything about this book. And I was like, I get all of it. And it was cuz I grew up Christian and she didn’t, and everything in the book was a Christ allegory. And she was like, “Why is all of this happening?” “cause Jesus, you know,” I think it was Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway. I was so mad, “I was like, the fish, he’s getting eaten, and Santiago’s just gonna die,” and my teacher was like, “He’s Jesus.” And I was like, “If I have one more Christ figure in a book, I’m gonna cry.” You’re right though. Religion is the foundation of a lot of societal structures too, so therefore it influences every aspect of life and literature is no exception.
Chris: Totally, and also musicians, like they say that most like artists, when they get to a certain point, they start for some reason wearing white all the time. It’s like they start going through this kind of messiah complex, like talking about Kanye and even like, I think James Blake, like all his videos is the moment.
Ryan/Burrowes: Ohhh, yeah.
Chris: I think he’s going through like a bit of a Christ moment or something, you know? There’s so many. It’s easy to think of yourself as the messiah, I guess.
Megan: Yeah. People definitely have a way of doing that now, especially with social media where they’re like, I got canceled. I’m a martyr. And then suddenly, they can’t take accountability for anything because they are the modern Christ. As soon as they reactivate their Twitter, they’ll be resurrected. It’s so stupid.
So, the last, the last of my questions about specific songs is about the closing track night. So it’s sort of an understated close to a very packed, dense album. Especially after the kind of one two punch of plant, which is super explosive and then like the more angsty Kilmore Close. It seems to be like our only real, solid example of optimism on this album with its focus on the future and keeping your eyes fixed beyond present. So when in the songwriting process did this song come about and was it intentionally sequenced at the end to prevent the album from being too brutal of an end?
Chris: I mean, this one was like a real writing in the room together thing, wasn’t it Burrowes?
Ryan/Burrowes: Yeah, yeah. It kind of came outta nowhere, a lot of it.
Chris: Yeah. I remember it definitely began as something very small — not small, but like, somber or plateau. I remember you started hitting the sampler and at that time we were touring the record before, and there’s a song on that record called Blue Sky Sinking that has these chords, and on the sampler the first chord of that song was loaded, and I remember you were just jamming with that one chord, and then we turned into this new song. So like, the chord in Night is actually the chord from that song, the exact same sample of chord from that song. It just felt re nice in the room. It almost felt like a remix or something in that, like a very small part. Remember you were just jamming that and then you started doing the delayed keys and so it just became almost like a lofi kind of song, like a really dark thing.
My favorite song in the world is Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed. There’s a very simple drum beat to that song, and I just did that drum beat. And it was like, this is just sitting, let’s not go anywhere with it. It was almost just like a loop, almost like a beat, like a hiphop thing or something. So it felt like a really nice way to end the album. Like I think we talked a lot about that in terms of like, the sequencing. At least from like a lyrical point of view, it was originally started as a song that was like a dog talking to someone.
So do you know It’s My Life, the song by Talk Talk? No Doubt did a cover of it. ” It’s my life. Don’t you forget?”
Megan: Yeah!
Chris: Yeah. So apparently there’s a theory that that song is written from the point of view of a dog and it’s about maybe being put down or it’s about– God, I’m always thinking about dogs, all these songs. But yeah, so I wanted to write a song from the point of view of a dog, maybe almost like someone talking to their dog. You know, sometimes you talk to animals, “like what do you think?” and you know, they’re not gonna talk back to you, but they have a therapeutic–
Megan: always an ear to listen to.
Chris: Yeah. And like, they might not say anything, but maybe that’s actually what you want. You don’t want a human to fuckin be annoying and, you know, give you answers back, you kind of just want an animal to like hear you. So that’s kind of what that was about, is like getting older and this kind of rumination on on time passing. So that’s why there’s a lot of lyrics, like the dog replies and says things are looking up, or so he hears. Cause like, you know, dogs can’t look up. So yeah, there’s all the little things like that. He hears things you never will because dogs like have supersonic hearing, so, you know. I’m glad you read it positively, that it feels like a positive song.
Megan: Yeah. To me it feels sort of like the whole album is like a rumination on what’s happening right now, it feels like. And then I guess it makes sense if it is from the, the point of view of a dog. A dog is kind of divorced from, from capitalist society.
Chris: Yeah.
Megan: Like I always look at my dog and I’m like, you have no idea.
Chris: Yeah, exactly!!
Megan: Yeah. So it makes sense that it would sort of feel like an at peace kind of ending cuz a dog lives a simple life. He’s sort of saying like, there’s a future, you know? Things are looking up. Even if that’s like a clever kind of like, nod to biology, it conveys that even though things are happening right now that might not be ideal, there’s a future and you too can have the peace that a dog feels.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. No, totally. I’m really glad that it got through like that in that way. There was a really early version of that song that I’m glad we never used. It was like, it was gonna just be me and a saxophone, and saxophone was gonna be the dog basically like screaming at each other, nothing else. It was just be like, tenor sax like *brunununu* and I’m like, “things are looking up!!” and it was like super atonal.
Ryan/Burrowes: It would’ve destroyed the album.
Megan: Sounds like it would’ve belonged on Plays Hard to Get!
Chris: Yeah, exactly. It was designed for that album and then it was like, “No, let’s not do it.” And then it got reworked into the lyrics.
Megan: That’s so funny, that rocks. There’s another song– wow, this is so weird. This is tying back to like so many things that I’ve been talking about recently, but I showed a music video to one of my professors for– you know the band Fleet Foxes?
Ryan/Burrowes: Yeah.
Megan: Yeah. I love them. But, they have a song called The Shrine/An Argument off of Helplessness Blues, where the ending is an argument and it’s two horns fighting each other. They’re super atonal, they’re screeching at each other and there’s only like a violin and like a really slow drum beat in the background. Just a really drawn out note. In the music video, it’s two dragons that are attached together, fighting each other for food. And then eventually they just let the food drop and they end up intertwining. So that’s like the ending of that section. So that’s, that’s funny that you had that sort of idea cuz that’s one of my favorite conventions in music. I love stuff like that.
Chris: I’m gonna listen to that after. That’s really cool.
Megan: I recommend the music video highly. It’s gorgeous. Okay, so, are you guys working on any new material right now? And if so, are there any songs on Living Isn’t Easy that kind of foreshadowed the sound of it? Or is it a new direction?
Ryan/Burrowes: We’re definitely working on stuff. For a while there we weren’t really sure what we were doing.
And we were just doing lots of ideas. Lots of ideas, and then I think we’ve about four or five songs, maybe six where we’re like, “Got it. Right. We’re on something.” So, we’re moving now at pace towards trying to get LP four done before we get a little more touring so that we can actually get the thing out. But yeah, I dunno, it’s still like early enough days, but it does seem that it’s very focused material again. A lot more beat driven. Yeah, I don’t know. Chris, what are you reckoning? We’re still very much talking about it.
Chris: What do YOU reckon??
Ryan/Burrowes: I just reckon!
Chris: I think with these things, it’s so hard to know what it is until you like step back from it and you’re like, Okay, okay, these songs all have this thrust, you know? I think there’s some songs that feel very much in the world of like Chromo Sud, like that kind of feeling of a song. Maybe things are going kind of more in a pop, less punk kind of direction. And then, yeah, maybe a little bit more synthesizer, because Burrowes, you started really using the sampler fully only really touring this record. So it’ll be a bit like how the tour for the second album informed the [third]. Because we’re always improvising and stuff, the tour from the album before informs the next album. And I think the things that Burrowes has been doing on tour for Living Isn’t Easy has actually pushed that sound forward to a more sample based electronic kind of sound. It’s kind of always following like, the impulses, you know? But yeah, it feels early days to me. I think we definitely have a lot of material, but we would really wanna do it right again and I think have a solid palette. Which I don’t think we exactly have that yet, do we?
Ryan/Burrowes: No, I wouldn’t say so.
Chris: Yeah. There’s like a few things that we know we want.
Ryan/Burrowes: The through lines.
Chris: We’ll get there.
Megan: Finish the drawing and the underpainting before you pick the colors.
Chris: There you go.
Megan: That’s cool. So you guys, speaking of live performance and touring, have really kind of risen in your reach and you’ve been able to play festivals like End of the Road and touring pretty consistently in the UK these days. So, what’s your favorite style and size of venue to play, do you think?
Ryan/Burrowes: Well, to be honest, I’ve actually been really enjoying the festivals we did there like a couple of months back. They were all amazing. Like we did like Green Man Festival and End of the Road as you said, and it was just so cool to play a festival and just see tons of people show up, just dancing. Everybody’s drunk, everybody’s having fun. That’s a really nice vibe. But usually I would say like, sort of small to mid-level clubs I like, cause I just like people right there when I’m playing. Cause we used to be in punk bands and stuff years ago, so that’s what I’m comfortable with, I guess.
Chris: I really like the small rooms. It’s exactly what you’re saying, people are just in front of you. Isn’t there a thing with… someone told me this recently, Shakespeare had this thing about how at a certain amount of people to perform into you actually like lose something. So something like, I think if you’re performing a play to 300, it’s like that’s the perfect amount for people to be close enough to experience it. And then obviously the extrapolation of that is, you know, a stadium with like 50,000 people and they’re looking at the big screens, and that’s kind of more like watching TV than it is experiencing a performance, you know? Obviously, I mean, listen, I wouldn’t turn down the stadium tour, but I really love the small rooms. We just did a tour, last couple weeks, and there were some shows where I felt so privileged that, for whatever reason, we’re able to ask a couple hundred people to come into a room in a city, and we’re in that same room, and we just make something together and there’s no distractions.
One of the shows, the show in London, everyone was pin drop silent. And there was a moment in between songs where I just did a little drum solo, and I never normally do that kind of thing. But it was a really quiet drum solo, just tapping the microphones and there’s something really intimate and explorational that I don’t think we would ever get on a festival stage, you know? These festivals are kind more transient audiences. I think intimate is definitely where I feel most joy, I guess.
Megan: Yeah. That’s awesome. I, as someone who cannot play instruments but is a deep enjoyer of music, I agree. Those are my favorite shows too.
Cause I mean, I have a ton of love for the big shows that I’ve seen, just because I love the bands that played them. But, if I’m ever able to see a band in a large venue and then I have the chance to see them later in a small venue, I’m always gonna pick the small venue. One show that I saw like last weekend was the previous band that I interviewed, Heffner, they had a pool top party, a hotel pool.
And it was like 15 people and we were just getting rowdy and like tossing each other in the pool. It was awesome, it rocked. And then another time I saw Squid– I saw them at like a 150 person capacity venue. I was front row, like face to face with the guitarist pedals, and I was just watching him in the songs, tapping all of them and changing it around. It’s just a crazy experience, it’s awesome to be able to see all of the nuance of how things get done.
Chris: Totally. One of my favorite things about festivals is standing by the side of the stage for bigger bands and kind of just being able to look across the band. Which is kind of like what you’re describing, that thing where you’re able to see little nuances that you would never see from the audience. I think it’s such a privilege as well. To see… almost, their faces kind of change a little bit when they’re not looking right at the audience. It’s really fascinating. I love the inner workings of music.
Megan: Definitely. We have a small festival here in Savannah called Savannah Stopover and it’s basically what it sounds like, it’s people in between stops at their tour, stopping in and doing a little show.
It’s like a weekend long, it’s cool. We had it at the railroad museum, which was really fun. You’re just standing on top of like historic trail lines, trying not to trip on the rails. But, I got the privilege of doing hospitality for them. So I was sitting in the green room, basically just making people feel comfortable, and it was just really neat to like, be at a table chatting with somebody who’s tuning his guitar. It’s just like things you don’t normally see. And then I get to see them go up and tear up a stage, and it’s just amazing to see not just the actual product, but what goes into it.
Chris: Oh yeah, that’s cool. I’m looking it up now. It looks amazing.
Megan: Yeah, it’s a great little festival. We had Soccer Mommy and Of Montreal headline last year, which was really fun. I think this year it’s just gonna be a lot of small shows, so I reached out to my guy and I was like, “Please get me in!” But that’s all I got for you guys!
Chris: Well thanks so much for chatting!
Megan: Of course, thank you guys so much for your time, I appreciate it! And thank you for such thoughtful, detailed answers.
Chris: Thank you. Hope you have a lovely day!
Megan: Yeah, hope you guys have a lovely evening. Bye!
Ryan/Burrowes: See you later Megan.
Chris: See you later. Thanks so much.
