Finding yourself associated with a cult classic book series that launches itself into a wildly popular movie franchise is a great way to introduce your band to the masses, especially if your song is the lead single to the soundtrack of one of the franchise's films.
New Orleans-based Mutemath found themselves with this golden opportunity in 2008 when their song "Spotlight" became the lead single on the soundtrack for the first "Twilight" film.
Though it's possible that lots of rock fans didn't know about the band prior to "Spotlight," they had been making music for some time before that, even winning an award for their music from the Gospel Music Association before their switch to a major secular record label.
Since the "Spotlight" was put on them in 2008 and their 2009 album "Armistice" was released, the band has continued their tradition of touring as often and as extensively as possible, leading to turmoil within the band and a greater understanding of what the band wanted to do if they decided to continue along their musical path.
Their guitarist Greg Hill was a casualty of the long and difficult recording process of "Armistice," and the touring, leaving the band toward the end of 2010.
This left the remaining members - vocalist Paul Meany, drummer Darren King and bassist Roy Mitchell-Cardenas - with an even stronger sense of needing to make their own music on their own terms so the band wouldn't implode any further.
What was born out of this time of renewal is "Odd Soul," a record that takes a deep look into the stories Paul and Darren have accumulated over the years through their various experiences as teenagers, young adults and as the mature men they now are.
Even though they toured for the better part of six years, had their guitarist and friend leave their band and took a year off to record new music, Meany explains that there is a reason for him and the rest of the band to be excited right now. The Oct. 4 release date of "Odd Soul" is growing closer, and their Odd Soul Introduction Tour, which is coming to The Rave on Sept. 30, continues to hit different cities.
"It felt like we've been on the road really non-stop through 'Armistice,'" he said. "Actually, we finally in a way took a break to get off the road to make this record, which is really nice, but I guess in the scope of things it wasn't that much time. Our last tour was about a year ago, so I guess it's been about a year that we went away and did this record.
"Of course a few things have happened to our band since then. Our guitarist left the band. So, we've got a new guitarist with us right now; we just did our first couple of shows with him in Japan a couple weeks ago, which went great. So, we kind of got this inevitable new energy that's happening right now. The new chemistry and life in our band is beginning to take flight, so it's a fun new chapter right now that's getting started."
With that fun new chapter just beginning, Meany revealed that new guitarist Todd Gummerman wasn't leaned on for the writing, or recording, of the new record. They instead decided to do everything as a three-piece band in an effort to get back to the core of who they felt they were as a band.
"Roy, our bass player, who is a fantastic guitar player, did the guitars on this record. So, we recorded it as a three-piece, which actually worked out to be great," he said. "We wondered if that was the right thing when we first started but we immediately figured out that was the best way to go about it and not bring a new guy in as we were creating. Roy and Darren and myself go back about 15 years, so we have a lot of history between us being in the studio together. It's very comfortable, we know how to get to the nitty-gritty, and this is a record that we self-produced. It was really nice to just kind of lock ourselves down, just the three of us, and kind of get back to our roots, and it felt in a lot of ways like we've gone full circle.
"The sound of our band has certainly developed since our entering endeavors into this record. It was strange in a lot of ways, the guitar, because it became a new instrument for us; it's probably the most guitar-heavy record we've done. We kind of explored it and utilized it as a new instrument and it was really tough in a lot of ways and we really had a lot of fun with it. It's kind of like we worked off of what we thought, we kind of picked like three or four of what we thought were the best songs from the past two records and we said, 'Let's make a new record of those.'"
Locking themselves away as friends and musicians, without producers and a legion of people involved in the recording process, allowed the band to experience a freedom in writing that they hadn't had in a long time, explains Meany, and that led to a healthier atmosphere.
"We didn't have anybody around to talk us out of anything and we knew what kind of record we wanted to make, we knew how we wanted it to sound. We've done this enough, we've been on the road enough, we've heard our recordings enough to know how we wanted to take the next step forward. So the three of us kind of converged on it and it was a very enjoyable process for the first time in a long time. "Armistice" really took a toll on us and I think the process became very convoluted in a lot of ways because it became way too democratic, and even outside of the band, just with producers and label and management.
"I was in a place where I was just second-guessing and self-doubting everything through the process of the last record, so we wanted to make a 180-degree shift in what kind of environment we created this record in. "Armistice," I'm really
proud of that record. What I'm not proud of is the process it took to get there. We knew that we couldn't repeat that because we'd implode, and we kind of already had because our guitarist had left the band. We just couldn't do another record like that. We had to find another way to get to the end, so we had to reinvent the pathway."
After foundation-shaking change, it's natural for a band to try to reinvent themselves and the way they go about doing things, and ironically their reinvention was simply to get back to telling their own stories.
"This record in a lot of ways is thematically the summation of our experience, in a lot of ways," said Meany. "We certainly dig deeper into our roots on this record and where music started for us. I grew up learning how to play music is church, and in New Orleans, so that shapes your musical DNA in a certain way and I'm not sure we've ever allowed ourselves the chance to really delve into that on previously made records. So we felt that was an opportunity on this one."
Changing the identity of the lyrical approach can be a risky thing, but what is even more risky is telling the label that holds a contract with you to forget about you and that you'll let them know when it's time to put out another record. In today's industry, artists are even more expendable due to Internet pirating and the change in the attitude of the typical fan to wanting something bigger, better, now, through the over-saturation of media in a person's daily life.
But taking that gamble inevitably paid off for the band, even if they weren't bringing their new record to the people who were well-versed in Mutemath within their label.
"When we came back with our record, which was about seven months later, everyone at our label was pretty much gone. It felt like we were playing our record for a whole new label when we brought it to them," said Meany. "Thankfully the response was favorable.
"After we began talking about the stories of the songs, where they were coming from, it became evident to us and the people at our label that perhaps we hadn't written as many songs as what we had to talk about. So, maybe we should scrape the bottom of the barrel and see if we had a few more songs in us, which wound up being a really good idea. For one, we got the song "Odd Soul," which became the title track, and we got two more tracks out it. Those three songs that we added I think really became pivotal in kind of summing up the whole record, and I think really addressing really what we wanted to say."
Not only was the writing process freed by the lack of outside influence, but it happened in a very natural way for the trio.
"Me and Darren have been writing together for a long time but we've never really delved into lyrics together as much, and as that began to happen it was really great," said Meany. "We both come from very similar backgrounds and upbringings and we wanted to make a record that really talked about that, what we would call eccentric Christianity, which is a very specific sort of cultural thing that happened to us throughout the '80s and '90s. It was really fun to kind of find a way about these stories, these anecdotes that we've had on the shelf for a long time and never really put into song form."
As young men that were raised in the Bible belt, the stories one would expect are those of intense church-based experiences and aggressive outreach.
"We went to church three times a week. That was it, that was life," he explained. "We were home-schooled and we went to church, that's all I knew. You buy into the fact that you're changing the world passing out one track at a time and telling people that their probably going to Hell if they don't get their lives right. When you look into the psyche of how you get shaped like that and then sort of coming to a place as you get older that you begin to see the world in a more balanced light, it's really fun to look back at some of those stories.
"It's been sort of this 10, 15 year journey of just trying to figure out, oh wow, maybe I'm not supposed to be this fire breathing preacher that I thought I was going to be. I don't have that in me. I have these other types of songs to write, from a different angle. That's kind of evolved into this person, along with Darren, that in a lot of ways I feel like it was meant for us to write this record and all of those experiences were to led to what we have to say on this record."
And though some of the song's themes may be centered around those stories, Meany believes that there is something universally relatable about growing up in something and then growing into your own person with your own beliefs and ideas.
"I think there was something that a lot of us were kind of buying into and following and then all of a sudden realized that even if it's just the starting place, it's not the end all be all of our particular journey and that's OK. It's just the beginning of things, the beginning of this path that we need to take and that's healthy, and that's what I think we are saying on this record too."
Meany also promises that their stage presence has not changed with the addition of the new guitarist, but rather it's actually become something even more interesting for the concert-goer to experience due to their level of excitement over being able to play fresh, new music for their fans.
"The dynamics of the show certainly have not changed. The material certainly has changed, and I would argue for the better," he said. "We have a new record, we're playing a lot of new songs that were meant for the live medium. The electrical charge is all still there. Just like at the start of whenever I think we were right at the beginning of playing new music, there's this sort of unbridled excitement and you know, things are constantly changing and evolving as we're getting back on the road and we're just kind of finding what it's going to be – this new show. It's an exciting time."
Here's the new Mutemath single "Blood Pressure" from their forthcoming album "Odd Soul."
Here is the official music video for their song "Odd Soul."
Here's a short teaser video of the Odd Soul Introduction Tour.
Born in Milwaukee and raised in the Milwaukee suburb of Brown Deer, Concordia University Wisconsin alumnus Poppe has spent the majority of his life in or around the city and county of Milwaukee.
As an advocate of Milwaukee's hip-hop community Poppe began popular local music blog Milwaukee UP in March 2010. Check out the archived entries here.
Though heavy on the hip-hop, Poppe writes about other genres of music and occasionally about food, culture or sports, and is always ready to show his pride in Milwaukee and Wisconsin.
