?You talk about us like we?re electricity or something,? Alkaline Trio frontman Matt Skiba jokes when Rolling Stone mentions the pop-punk trio?s heyday at the turn of the 21st century. But at this point, it?s a simple fact: The band, representatives of a movement that once seemed eternally youthful, are now bona fide veterans. And if there ever were a comprehensive tome on the history of pop-punk, Alkaline Trio?s chapter would be penned in blood and signed with a black-stained kiss.
Unlike genre progenitors Descendents, Green Day or Blink-182 ? we?ll get to them later ? the Chicago band always stood out for its dalliances with the macabre, in songs that chronicled the squalid lives and death wishes of sad-eyed heroes (and feistier heroines). Kicking since 1996, Alkaline Trio now celebrate more than 20 years of gloom and rage on their upcoming ninth studio album, Is This Thing Cursed?, due August 31st. Produced by Cameron Webb (known for his work with Motörhead and Sum 41), the band?s follow-up to 2013?s My Shame Is True draws from the same brackish well that birthed early-2000s highlights ?Maybe I?ll Catch Fire,? ?Armageddon? and ?Queen of Pain.? But the ghouls and vampires of previous Alkaline Trio records have taken on new forms in 2018 ? some more sinister than they could have previously imagined.
Currently headlining their first U.S. tour in five years, Alkaline Trio singer-guitarist Matt Skiba and singer-bassist Dan Andriano spoke to Rolling Stone about how depression fed into their new songs, how Skiba joined forces with Blink-182 and keeping their heads above water in the madness of the Trump era.
You?ve described your new record, Is This Thing Cursed?, as the companion to your 2000 record, Maybe I?ll Catch Fire ? an LP that put Alkaline Trio on the map with the song ?Radio.? What about writing this new record caused you to revisit the old one, 18 years later?
Matt Skiba: 18 years? Holy shit. I need a minute.
Dan Andriano: Our beautiful producer human, Cameron, found us a studio called the Lair, in Culver City ? if Alkaline Trio could design a studio, this is what it would look like. The owner of the place, Larry Goetz, collects cool shit from all over the world ? he had these big castle-like doors, old beautiful wood beams and red velvet curtains everywhere. We basically recorded [Is This Thing Cursed?] as we wrote it. So Matt and I started talking about Maybe I?ll Catch Fire while writing [this record] ? because we wrote it really quickly. We wrote it in two weeks, in the Chicago winter. Matt wrote ?Radio? in that recording session, and that ended up being one of our more well-known tunes.
Skiba: I feel that the pace of the record and the feel of the record is not directly related, but structurally, [Is This Thing Cursed?] felt very similar to Maybe I?ll Catch Fire.
Andriano: There?s songs like ?Demon in Division,? that really reminded me of ?Maybe I?ll Catch Fire.? That song is filled with references to Chicago. I was writing this opening riff on the bass and started coming up with this saying and Matt was like, ?Oh, that sounds cool. Reminds me of the Nineties. Reminds me of Chicago.? At that time, we didn?t know what was happening with our band. We had just written our first record, God Dammit, toured on it. It seemed to be going well, but we didn?t know if we would be doing this for 20 years, or longer.
Now, there?s a bit of a rebirth of the band. Again, we don?t really know what?s going to happen ? we?re just really excited about these songs. I think there?s a sort of freedom to not making a record in five years and coming back to it and just writing in the studio. There was no talk of a single. There was no, ?What song are we going to work on to push on the radio?? That?s not something we really focus on ever, but it is something that gets brought up by the producer, or the record label. People want to sell records and that?s 100 percent understandable. But this time, it just didn?t come up. We just made a record.
What inspired the title of the new record? What is the possibly cursed thing?
Andriano: It?s an idea that spurred in my head about being in the throes of depression. Being stuck in those moments, looking around and feeling like it doesn?t matter what you do or where you?re at, things don?t seem to be going right. And a lot of the times, we look for things to blame and we look for other things instead of looking inward. You know, I was not officially diagnosed with depression until about three years ago. I?ve never mentioned that, like, publicly or anything ? I just assumed everyone else knew. But it?s something I always felt was there.
You?ve always been really candid about depression and mental health issues. Even if it confirmed what you already sensed all your life, there?s something comforting about having somebody else validate that for you in a professional setting.
Andriano: Exactly. And I have great family and friends. Matt and I write in a cathartic manner, and that?s
What brought you back into the studio as Alkaline Trio? Your last album was in 2013, so you guys took a bit of a break.
Andriano: We did. We made [My Shame Is True] and then toured on it quite a bit. Then we did these sort of anthology shows that year, we called them ?Past Lives? and played all eight of our studio albums up to that point. We played two albums a night and then did 12 or 13 cities total. I don?t want to say we were burnt out, but we were going to take a minute regardless ? and always had plans to continue making music as Alkaline Trio. Six or seven months later I was in San Jose, California, working with Jeff Rosenstock a solo record called Party Adjacent ? he was playing as a member of the band, but he was also producing the record. I was doing that when Matt called me and said he got a weird call from Mark Hoppus asking him to play in Blink-182. It was a pretty strange turn of events!
09-08-2018 - Vidéo
