Mute Math

No, really. This time for sure. Mute Math is seriously done with their sophomore LP. After three years, the follow-up to 2006’s self-titled debut (which itself endured a waiting game) is finally mixed, mastered and slated for a late summer/early fall release. Of course, who knows whether or not a date will even stick at this point, but if Paul Meany is willing to talk to us about the finished product, then I assume the light is clearly visible at tunnel’s end.

Lots of bands and musicians take their sweet time between albums, but with this band there’s good reason for anticipation. After all, Mute Math’s fan base is rabid, the sheer level of talent is sickening, and their live show rivals the best in the business (as illustrated by seven late night TV appearances with nary a real true radio hit and only one full-length under their belt).

This is my second go-around with Meany and both conversations were marked by the strife of the band’s recent history. Last time, the typical label woes were the answer, but this time Mute Math was its own worst enemy. As Meany describes it, the band fell prey to settling for mediocrity and scrapped an entire batch of songs ready to record (hence the reason for the delay). Luckily for us, a producer was there to tell them they sucked. And Mute Math couldn’t be more proud.

SSv: As we begin, I’d love to just hear where you’re at right now with the recording.

Paul Meany: We’re in cram time actually. We’re one week from our deadline or just under that. So we’re putting the finishing touches on the record right now.

SSv: It’s been a long time coming from the fan’s side. Does it feel that way for the band as well?

Paul: Absolutely and let me tell you why. We thought we had our record a few times over the past couple of years. We’re obviously writing on the road and when we get any breaks, we’re also writing and trying to get ready to get the second record out as quick as humanly possible. [Laughs]

But last year, the big wake up call took place. We went to New Orleans to record and we got off the road. We actually realized that we didn’t like anything that we had, so we just started writing the record when we got to New Orleans. So it’s taken us about a year to make this, I guess, but everything that ended up on the record is nothing that we originally thought was going to be on the record, which we’re actually pretty thankful for that. The record is actually beyond what we had set out to do, although maybe we weren’t really sure what we were setting out to achieve… [Laughs] Except for the fact that you know you’re going for that feeling – that feeling when you made music in the first place and you look back and go, ‘Oh, that’s great. I want the world to hear that.’ It just took us a while to get there.

I think we all had pretty high standards of what we wanted and thankfully we worked with a producer who didn’t let us fail. As a matter of fact, when we were meeting with different producers, he came to New Orleans to see what we were up to. We were in the middle of a band fight on this one particular song and none of us could agree on it. I mean, we’d worked on this one song for three weeks straight or something and had cooked up a bunch of different versions of it and half of us liked one and half liked the other. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Well, if Dennis [Herring] picks the version I like, then I’m gonna work with him. I’ll think he’s the right guy.’ [Laughs]

So we played all the versions for him and asked, ‘Okay, which one’s the good one? C’mon!’ And I think he immediately sensed the tension between all the band members who are waiting to see if he’s going to pick the one we liked and he actually said, ‘You know what? They all kind of suck. You all need to try to write some better songs, I think.’ He’s a smart man and that was actually the right answer. And when he said that, immediately we all wanted to work with him. We knew that was the right thing. We knew we had just been flirting up to that point with mediocrity.

So it wound up being a great hook-up and we just went into writing mode instead of just trying to record mediocre ideas. It was amazing how the turn happened. We went from one of the most frustrating times in our experience as a band to the most liberating as we just started to write a bunch of new songs and started going for it. It wound up being what this record is that you will hear.

So little jaunts like that has happened over the last three years, so we will think, ‘Oh yeah, over the next three months, our record will be done. We’ll go record it now.’ But it never happened. However, it would take us to that next step. Recording the ten songs that we thought would make the record at least yielded the one cut in the end, but we had to keep going.

So I’m listening to the final stages of it all right now actually and we’re really proud of what’s come out of it. It was definitely one of the more painful experiences of music-making that I’ve had. I think it was just sheer quantity really, just writing non-stop trying to make each idea all that it could be. I think I’m completely spent right now, which I guess is a good sign. But I couldn’t write a song right now if I wanted to or if you paid me. I’m done for a while. I need to get out of the studio, go live a little bit. But the record is great. I can’t complain.

SSv: Your greatest creative moments… are those usually birthed out of painful moments like this?

Paul: Yeah, absolutely. The old adage is correct that pain produces great art. I don’t know if label people are on it or not, but it seems to be a textbook response that the label is supposed to tell you that what you’re giving them is not good or it sucks or whatever. I think they do that on purpose because they know that they’re going to piss you off by telling you that and then you’re gonna go write some great songs. Probably the label thinks what you’re giving them half the time is actually great, they just can’t tell you that because you’ll stop trying or something. I don’t know. It feels like a strange mind game we’re always in with our label people. [Laughs]

But I can’t complain because whether it’s a manipulation tactic or whatever it is, I’m really happy with where we’re at right now. And had we not been pushed along the way, I’m not sure this would have been quite as good as it is.

SSv: Did you know the material was mediocre before Dennis said anything? Would you have released mediocre material without his intervention?

Paul: That’s tough because we find ourselves a lot of time in mediocre denial. At some point, when you first start a song, you have to believe it’s the greatest thing ever or else you won’t write another part for it. So the toughest thing is when you start in on any song idea to then come back to it a couple days later or whatever and have the realization that, ‘Man, it’s not really that good, although I thought about it in the beginning the way this other great song feels.’

So it’s hard to sort through that, especially when you’re writing a ton of songs at one time. I think there’s always something that you’re dealing with where you’re not really sure if the song is good but you want it to be. You want them to be better and usually they are. We found out really quick that the role of a producer, for our band, was vital. We probably would have not put out the mediocre stuff, simply because we would have argued too much in the van. That’s a telltale sign for us, if one of us thought it was great and the other ones didn’t, then you’re usually dealing with a mediocre idea and you need to move on to something better. But that’s hard to do in the moment. It’s hard to let go when you think something’s great and no one else does. You think, ‘Oh, shit. Maybe they’re right.’

But anyway, Dennis ended up being a great addition to what he referred to as a ’sad terminal democracy.’ We wound up always spiraling downwards when we started talking about ideas about why it’s not good or how it should be better. You waste a whole day on it and don’t realize it. Dennis is good at helping steer us back on trying to make good music again and not figure out if it’s not.

SSv: It’s interesting to hear you refer to being stuck in mediocrity, when Mute Math is a band often praised for its creativity – the textures, the rhythms.

Paul: Well, that’s nice of you to say, first of all.

SSv: But surely you know that already, or at least read and hear the same things.

Paul: But it’s funny you say with textures and stuff. The thing we find ourselves doing is you can get lazy. You have a so-so song – and obviously, we all want to have great songs – but you have this so-so song and then you think, ‘Well, let’s just throw crap on it. Let’s just throw textures or whatever down on it and it makes it better.’ When really all we want is to make the song better. Let’s figure out what is not working at the root.

I think a bad habit we kind of developed since we started making music – and I’m not saying I’m not happy with the things we’ve recorded, because I definitely am – but in the quest to do something better, we realized one of the bad habits we’ve had is throwing stuff on top of other stuff to try to make it sound better as opposed to just writing one of the key parts to make it better. Sometimes you have to go to the foundation of the song, such as the melody isn’t that good or whatever.

We’ve learned a lot about our band this past year – what’s worth chasing and what are the worthy experiments. I can honestly say that we’ve tried it all but usually a good idea is pretty immediate. And if it’s not, it’s just good to shelve it. It’s not easy to do for us. Some artists can just shelve something and say, ‘Well, who cares?’ But man, we get invested in certain ideas, especially if it’s your own. That damn selfish thing. [Laughs]

SSv: Are “Spotlight” and “Clockwork” part of the post-Dennis sessions? Is that an example of the new music we can expect?

Paul: You know what’s interesting is that “Clockwork” was actually the song that we had worked a bunch of versions for and it’s the one that he said, ‘No, that’s not good. Try something else.’ So we ended up shelving “Clockwork,” which we thought was going to be a cornerstone song on the record. If someone had told me a year ago that it was going to be a b-side… well, that’s exactly what Dennis said. So I guess there’s greater music to be had for us.

Shortly after we moved off “Clockwork,” we got to “Spotlight.” And “Spotlight” started out thinking it was not one of our better tracks. I mean, we liked it. And it became a gateway song for us, too. After we wrote “Spotlight,” we wound up writing the rest of the record. I think the EP kind of commemorates a transitional period of moving to our first record to the new record.

SSv: If the creative wells you go to for inspiration lead to the mediocrity Dennis was describing, I would guess that would lead you to wonder where to even go for new levels of creativity. If the things you know don’t work, in other words…

Paul: As strange as it was, it was as simple as we were working to impress him. We wanted to keep trying and waiting for that chemistry to rise in a room as we went with an idea. When our producer would react to it and say, ‘yeah’… well, it wasn’t all ‘you suck’ even when something great happens. But when something great happened, he would identify it. It didn’t happen much, but when it did happen, we knew he meant it and that fueled the fire and we were feeling it, too.

SSv: So what does Dennis say after this new material?

Paul: Well, we’re all excited about it obviously. We went through the writing process in New Orleans and then we spent some time with Dennis at his studio in Oxford, Mississippi just to develop it and get the songs as far along as they could be. But it takes time. We’re finding out for a Mute Math song, especially in this experimental mode of searching for songs beyond our template of what we thought our band worked in, that it takes time. You gotta let it cook in the oven for a little while. We would go on journeys even with a simple song idea and record hundreds of tracks to go on top of it, only to come right back to the way that it started. But then at least we knew, so it was worth it.

That’s one of the things that surprised me on this record was the minimalism, which is not characteristic of the songs we’ve made in the past. Had we not had a producer to tell us to stop, we would not be one week out from finishing this record. But it got to the point where he would push us and good things were happening, but then he had to make sure we didn’t screw that up.

I don’t know how certain bands or artists do it who produce themselves. That’s a tough gig. I always thought we were more capable of that than what I’d learned in the last year, or at least myself. I guess to some degree, we still co-produced on this record, but that’s quite a gift for artists who can produce their own records. Maybe we can and we just had a lot to learn on this one.

SSv: How did you guys become hooked up with Dennis in the first place?

Paul: We were just throwing around names and his name came up. It wound up being where he knew about us, he was a fan of the first record and I had called him on the phone and sent him some music. He had some interesting things to say about it. So we met with him and played for him in person a lot of the new stuff. It was just that connection, you know? It was when we started talking, we just knew that together we could make something great. We needed him to be a part of making this record with us. That was just it. It was something you felt immediately.

SSv: I didn’t know if you were a fan of his production or not.

Paul: Yeah I had heard his records and I knew he had done some great records. I try not to get too steered by that. I hear the horror stories, too. You work with a producer you’re such a fan of and then you get into the studio and it’s a disaster. He’s got a different thing that he’s wanting from you, so track records mean only so much to me. At some point, it’s about how we’re vibing on the music we’re trying to record. It’s about trying things out and asking what each other thinks.

When it comes down to it, we’re the kind of band where we really sound like we sound. We know how to record ourselves, so that’s not the issue – the technical aspect of it. So it’s having that feedback and having someone around to help us identify what’s good, what’s not good, what’s working and what is not. That’s more of a vital role for us.

SSv: So the timeline on the album or the name?

Paul: To be quite honest, we still don’t have the title yet. We’ll have the title in one more week, so we will have to post that as some bulletin or something when we get it. But they’re telling me the timeline will be the end of summer, if we are truly done in a week. We really want to get this record out this year. It’s been a long time. Then we’ll start touring in the summer again.

SSv: Is that hard to name an album?

Paul: It is for us. I know a lot of band friends and artist friends who start with the title before they even write a song for it and it ends up fueling the record. But it’s not like that for us at all. So the title for something always comes last for us.

SSv: What about spirituality in your music? I know various people have wanted to pull you into one camp or another or those types of battles.

Paul: Absolutely. Music in and of itself, even if you’re not talking about it overtly, is spiritual. Music is spiritual. It is in this strange, out-of-your-conscious-mind place. That is what makes it pure and real and that’s definitely the part that I’m addicted to. All that stuff channels into the live show and how it feels when you present the music to people – which is another vital part of it for this band.

SSv: Finally, how aware are you of critical response? Do you try to avoid that?

Paul: That’s why I try to do. I am sensitive to it, which is why I try to avoid it. It does affect me in a way and it will that first six months to one year. That’s how it was on the last record. The first year after we put it out, you love it so much and you’re hungry to get on the road and play it and you start reading or hearing about whatever it is – people that think it sucks or whatever. It’s hard. So you have to steer away from that.

I don’t know what it is, but when I get online to check my e-mail, I’m drawn to it. I go and check and see who’s got a review up. But I gotta stop that shit. That’s no good. [Laughs] But talk to me in a year from now and it will be totally different. We’re right in the final stages so we’re too close to it.

Related posts:

1. Mute Math – Armistice

Tagged as: New Orleans