Demob Happy on their album "Divine Machines", touring, and a new era of the band
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Alternative band, Demob Happy, has been making waves in the music scene for well over a decade. The group includes Matthew Marcantonio (vocals and bass), Adam Godfrey (guitar), and Tom Armstrong (drums). With their extensive touring experience and deep connection as bandmates, Demob Happy is continuously improving and experimenting to dive deeper in order to expand their sound.
Armstrong stated, “We have such a breadth of flavors we throw in there and try out. There's definitely an unwritten set of aesthetics we operate within.” Demob Happy released their third studio album, Divine Machines, this past May. The thirteen-track album preceded their Divine Machines Tour, which began in September, the voyage taking them all over the world.
We sat down with Demob Happy at an Italian restaurant in the East Village ahead of their Mercury Lounge show, where they were fascinated by the American use of the word ‘entree’ and spotted lantern flies.
You've been a band for over a decade, is the time shocking to think about?
Matthew: No, it's sort of quite a familiar part of my everyday.
Tom: It did sneak past though, that 10 year mark during the plague.
Matthew: You always date the band wrong though. The 10 year mark was in 2017. Tom likes to knock a few years off. Reality is we’ve been a band for like 15 years.
What have been some lessons you’ve learned and how do you continuously make it work?
Matthew: I suppose we've learned a lot of touring, a big part of what we do is touring. We've learned how to tour very well and very cheap, which means we get to do a lot of things bands can’t do because they can't afford it. But we've managed to do it because we can afford it.
Such as what?
Matthew: Tour America. We have friends in bands who can't afford to tour, but we do the same tours and make it work.
Tom: We've learned loads of little jobs.
Adam: Tour management, planning tours, techning. Just swallowing up a lot of little jobs you employ people to do. Eventually one day it'd be great to outsource that because it's a lot of work. It comes at the expense of our own time, but it means it's feasible.
Matthew: We sacrifice a lot to be able to do this. We're very punk DIY in spirit, and we don’t have a big flashy record deal, and we still get to do the stuff bands with big flashy deals do.
You have three full albums, all of which are considerably long, featuring over ten tracks on each one. How are you able to sit down and continuously write and craft songs?
Adam: It would be longer if we could fit it on vinyl. We’re limited by that format.
Matthew: We've got too many good songs, that's the problem. We're not trying to buffer it out. Actually there's about 1000 more songs.
Adam: I think the frequency of how often we released was a bit lower, several years. I think if we had the opportunity to do albums a lot quicker they'd probably be shortened. But because it's a backup of great songs, we've got to get them in, and it's usually quite hard.
Matthew: Blessed by the gods of creativity. When and if the tap run dry then we’ll be fucked. But right now I guess the tap runs. It comes and goes really. But I've been in some very difficult personal circumstances. Stuff kind of comes and goes. I think what a lot of people get worried about is, if the tap is dry, they panic. But in reality you've got to sit back and go, ‘oh it's dry today, maybe tomorrow will be different.’ With that attitude I've never found the ideas to stop coming.
Tom: It might be informed by why you write. Some people just write for themselves. Some write to get famous, make money, whatever it is. When you're trying to make music you want to listen to, I think that's a bit more organic place to sit in. You're the person you're trying to please.
*Menu comes*
Matthew: Can you explain this to me as an American? Entrees means enter, and you use it as mains. And that's nonsense. Because that's halfway through the meal, not the entrance.
What does the general songwriting process look like?
Matthew: It varies. Sometimes I'll bring in complete things, that we flesh out as a band. Then sometimes we'll sort of jam and flesh that out, or take some music and I'll write some melodies and lyrics over the top. Depends really.
Tom: It totally varies. Sometimes we develop together. A song can come out and be fully formed or it can take fucking seven years.
Matthew: Some of the songs on the new record are seven, eight years old.
Which ones?
Matthew: “Run Baby Run” is about eight or nine years old.
Tom: It was a demo.
Matthew: That started from a verse melody I wrote eight years ago.
Tom: It sat in the jam jar for a long time.
Matthew: On the new record, “Run Baby Run” was a hybrid of a good few years of working on it and changing it and adding bits and taking away. That was a hybridization of five different recordings of that song.
Adam: We kind of had the final form pretty much probably like 2018.
Your latest single is “Sweet and Sour America.” Can you talk about the creative process of that single?
Matthew: That was one where the lyrics were a fuck on because the first verse I wrote years ago, like 2017, ages, and I’ve always loved that verse. It just came off the top of my head and it just spoke to the song, it was almost improvised. I loved everything about that. When it came to write the second verse a few months ago it was so god damned difficult because I was trying to replicate what felt so good about the first one, which was that it was so improvised. I was in this sort of catch 22 where I was trying not to think about it but thinking about it loads at the same time.
Tom: The riff, you used to play that.
Adam: It used to be called “Intro Song.”
Tom: We used to open gigs with it years ago. It was a riff without a song and we knew it was great. We played it and then stopped playing the riff and then carried on for a while.
Matthew: That's been a long time in the making. If we think an idea is good enough we never let it go. We knew that was going to be a great fucking song eventually, we just had to get there.
How did the rhythm section come together? Was it a riff, or from a jam?
Matthew: I remember when that riff started, do you remember? It was at an early show in London, in like maybe 2014, it was one of our first London headline shows. It was in that little venue and we were about to soundcheck and I started just playing that riff and that was the start. There's another song on the record “Tear It Down” that came from soundcheck.
Tom: And then it was really reinforced over the last few tours, the sweet and sourness of America.
What have been some of the hardships?
Tom: I mean when we tour here we're normally in a little van or whatever where we're fighting to make it happen. But also at the same time when there's other bands that are on an air conditioned tour bus where they sleep and wake up at the venue. Which I’m totally ready for. But we saw every piece of the country when we were driving through snowy Nevada which looked like the arctic and the next day were in the valley.
Matthew: knowing if we would have broken down there we would’ve been fucked.
Tom: The hardship I remember the most and take with me the most in terms of experiences, nearly dying through the desert in the RV when the awning inflated like a giant sail and ripped away. So many things, we've nearly died or crazy shit went down because we're touring on a shoestring and making it happen.
Matthew: Those are the good memories.
Tom: Not at the time but that's the shit I remember.
Adam: and you see a lot of affluence right next to complete desolation. And it's like some people have it so bad and some people got it real good.
Matthew: It's quite distinct in America. It's not as distinct in the UK, it exists. Street to street it changes which is pretty fucking mad.
Your latest album Divine Machines came out in May. You stated that it was a breakout album in a sense with your sound and letting loose. In what ways was this album different from your others?
Matthew: We just had time. Because lockdown afforded so much time it was what we call fairy dust that we've never had time for because of label budgets and limitations on studio time. Actually time to take the music and really sprinkle a lot of little bits of interesting sonic stuff, all of the stuff you want to do and dont have the time. Lockdown was a year to actually delve so deep into it and I kind of took all the stuff we recorded in feb 2020 and in my home studio. I delved in and produced the record and threw everything at it and saw what felt good really. Never had that opportunity before really. It was a nice liberating experience.
Tom: It was just an unusual process because the writing session became the basis for the album. So like for 90% of the album my drum parts, I just did them within an hour of us putting the songs together. And it was like we would make a song or Matt would bring in a demo we’d work on together and before we knew covid was happening two weeks later. We'd hit record, and get a quick recording to revisit.
*Spotted Lantern Fly Lands on Table*
Tom: Wow, look at you.
Adam: They'll fly at you?
Tom: Is it my responsibility as a foreigner to kill it because I don’t like that. It's beautiful as well.
“God's coffee” is the 9th track on the album and is 40 seconds of a distorted “Run Baby Run.” What was the meaning behind this track? Is it supposed to be an intro, was it a demo?
Matthew: It was the intro. But because of streaming you can’t have intros anymore. We decided to make the intro another song.
Tom: The honest answer is having our cake and eating it. Whereas the intro could form a small portion of the journey of the album.
Matthew: Also gaming the system. “God’s Coffee” was the original title of the song for no reason really. The original demo I wrote in, fucking 2015 or whatever, I just gave a title of “God’s Coffee.” So we used that.
The next track is “Run Baby Run,” the first line of the song is, ‘Run, run baby run, the planet you made, is coming undone.’ What is the backstory and meaning behind the song?
Matthew: For me, I was imagining this kind of doomed planet parallel to Earth where the planet is failing, kind of dying and there's only one person who can kind of see it that way. And so it's this kind of dystopian, sort of cautionary tale in the sense of it's not exactly Earth, kind of sci-fi inversion of Earth.
The song has deep heavy lyrics and then when the chorus comes it gets light and immediately goes back to such a heavy and dark sound, how did you craft this song to create this sense of transition between light and dark sound?
Matthew: Literally didn’t think about it at all. It's just the way it goes sometimes.
Tom: I think it's a theme running through our music as well, is that balance. We always try and I think whether consciously or unconsciously we've said in the past if music is really heavy and nareley it might be lighter in vocal delivery or lyric content.
The 13th track and the last song on the album is “Hades, Baby.” Can you talk about creating that song? Especially focusing on the addition of the horns, why add that in for the last song?
Matthew: We had the opportunity to do it. Record at Abbey road with Paul McCartney’s horn section and we just took it.
Tom: One of my favorite days ever, incredible.
There's a strong repetition of words and lyrics, such as, “power to you, it'll pass right through you, when it's time to return to the light,” “tetrahedron,” “oscillate.” What about these words and phrases stuck out to be such a focus in the song by repeating through the chorus and especially at the end?
Matthew: I suppose to me it's a bit of a mantra at the end, repeating a phrase circulating, sort of feels like it can go on forever. I think in Demob we like outros to be epic moments and the feeling of circular jamming and going around an idea. It all came very naturally and it all felt really good, and that's what we got.
Adam: The kind of end section as well is kind of uneven so it does feed into that.
Tom: It constantly tips over because we're not doing rounds of four.
Matthew: It was the perfect end, this final statement of intent, this final fuck you and closing.
Tom: It just felt right to put it last.
You said this past year has been a complete new era for the band. In what ways do you feel like you're stepping into a phase in the band and what is different than has happened previously?
Matthew: I suppose it's just a new start.
Tom: I think people are always changing and developing. What you want to say creatively changes with experiences you go through together or independently. The albums are just snapshots of that gap and they become kind of frozen in time of where you are creatively and together. Who knows where it's going? We definitely seem to be pretty in sync with what we bring in. For Divine Machines we were all leaning towards this more sci-fi thing organically. Sometimes you follow it and see where it goes.
Follow Demob Happy on Instagram, Spotify and their website. Catch them while they're on tour with Death From Above 1979. You won’t want to miss out.