mattgoodinterview

MATTHEW GOOD'S LOSER DISCUSSIONS by Aaron Brophy

So here it is in all its glory. The man himself, Matthew Good, discussing events in, around and vaguely connected to the Matthew Good Band's new EP Loser Anthems, their forth-coming cross-country tour and other things that tick the man off.

ChartAttack: What do you want to talk about?
Matt Good: Anything in general, that's cool.

Then let us first discuss all the intricacies of Loser Anthems. First off, "Flashdance II": smart strippers, is that the best or the worst of both worlds?

I don't know. There's always an inferiority complex involved with any woman who takes her clothes off for money. But y'know, I wrote that song for Underdogs, that song's five years old. So, it was about somebody I knew. That song, that album [Loser Anthems] I put out for fun, for shits 'n' giggles. It was kind of a weird thing. "Flashdance" we had done for Underdogs and we also demoed it for Beautiful Midnight, which is the version on that record. "My Life As A Circus Clown" I actually wrote on a piano. It was a piano number that the band then tried to do in a Frank Zappa-ish, Primus kinda way [detect the coy Chart slam there] or turned out that way because of Dave's guitar part, which I've never really agreed with.
I'm not keen on it either but I mixed those two songs when I was on vacation in England and I was kinda like, 'I don't care.' If I put this out it will be on some fuckin' b-sides collection so whatever. Fuck it. And then I wrote "The Man From Harold Wood" to match those two up and I did that by myself in England. And then the last three songs on the record I did by myself in 12 hours with Zack Blackstone who engineers most of our stuff.

The recording style seemed very old-school. Everything was done quick.

Everything's got a story behind it. "Flight Recorder From Viking 7" I did first and Holly [McNarland] came in real quick, in 10 minutes I think she sang that part. "Life Beyond The Minimum Safe Distance" I wrote the night before. About 12 [midnight] the night before. "The Fine Art Of Falling Apart," that's live, first take. I wanted to do one song in my life where I sat down with nothing on anything, no fuckin' effects, anything. I sat down in front of two stereo mics and I basically played and sang the song and no matter how flat and out of fuckin' tune it was I didn't touch it. I walked into the control room and said, 'That's one time. And that's it.' And I left it alone.

So the EP was very much, "I'm going to try all this new shit?

Stuff that I would never do or stuff that I would have more components of it in our music than if I just did it myself or if I was hired to do soundtracks and that kind of thing. It's kind of difficult to put small, very focussed kind of thoughts, like two minute thoughts, on a major record. I really dig soundtrack-y stuff like that. I mean, not in a Radiohead sense, because I think that what they do, especially in the last two records, sounds fantastic but it feels horrible.
I was interested in recording the last three songs with a lot of air. In "Life Beyond The Minimum Safe Distance" I actually set up mics in the hallways. Just to record nothing. Just air while I was tracking. So that when we mixed it there was just this huge envelope above the mix that added all this hiss which I just adore from old records. I kinda really wanted to do it that way to translate vibe. In the last five months I've been all about that. Shit feeling good, not particularly sounding good.

That counts for so much, getting the "vibe."

It's totally true. And there are up sides and down sides to it. There are up sides and down sides to everything. I mean, "The Fine Art Of Falling Apart,' for example. I wrote that song in C-sharp, like a drop tuning from E-flat. Basically I couldn't get the fuckin' acoustic to stay in tune so I tuned it up a half a fuckin' semi-tone which stretched my fuckin' range up. So I'm flat all over the place on some of those high notes right, those mics just compress the shit. I listen now� for the first two days I was like, 'Ohhh, dude!' And then, I put it on and I was like, 'I fuckin' love that.' It's out of fuckin' tune, it's grainy and too bassy an' shit�

But you're going for that genuine thing. It's the flaws that make it.

Totally. And unfortunately in this day and age in music that doesn't happen a lot. I don't think a lot of bands go looking to do it in a sincere way. I think either they do it and it's contrived - they look to do that but so much so that it's contrived. And then there's these bands, the majority of bands, who are so caught up in making things sound so right that they lose a great deal of their credibility because they feel terrible.

It almost seems like the whole EP format is agreeable to you.

I enjoyed doing it primarily because it's a cool fucking fan thing. And that's the only reason. This EP is me period. If I wouldn't have the fuckin' gumption, Dave or Rich wouldn't have went 'Let's put a fuckin' EP out.' I love doing shit like that. It's 35,000 copies and all the copies are numbered. And y'know, it's kinda like a no-win situation with our fans especially because they're all fuckin' hotheads for some absolute weird reason.

Would you rather them have passion or not though?

It's cool. I think it's great though. But it's kinda funny because you put out 35,000 copies because it's not about selling shitloads of records and making cash. You need something cool? I made 35,000 records. It's done. If you got one, cool. Then people start bitching because there aren't enough of them. On one hand I'm a fuckin' corporate sell-out and on the other hand there aren't enough records for them to purchase.

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