failure-7

read pt. 5 of Failure's studio diary for 'The Heart Is A Monster'

photos by Priscilla Scott

Failure

Failure have already shared parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of their studio diary for their first album in 19 years, The Heart Is A Monster (due 6/30 via INresidence), and here’s part 5. This one’s written by Greg Edwards (also of Autolux) and can be read below.

The band’s upcoming tour includes a recently-added co-headlining run with Hum, which hits NYC on August 13 at Webster Hall. Tickets for that show go on presale via Failure’s Pledgemusic page today. Full list of tour dates, a stream of newest single “Mullholland Drive” and part 5 of the studio diary, below…

Issue 05: THIAMIDE– Theme as Side Effect by Greg Edwards

Hindsight is always twenty- twenty. Beyond this illusion of objective fact, it’s also true that memory loves the shit out of order, even if there’s very little of it around. Most compelling art, whether the practitioner admits it or not, owes at least some essential portion of its existence to an open mental channel, a focused filter of sensibility, and the retroactive overlay of intention.

Believing the above, I tend to approach a recording studio as a staging ground for accidents: the quality and longevity of the product is often a measure of how much attention has been paid to the happiest of mistakes.

A simple example of this concerns the writing of “Counterfeit Sky”. The verses were based on a jam between the three of us, but there was no change– no chorus or bridge. The day I went in to write the chorus I just happened to pick up Ken’s Jazzmaster– one of about 10 guitars I might have grabbed. This guitar had been re-strung the day before and for some reason the highest two strings had been mistakenly tuned a half step flat. As I found the chorus change and subsequent chords, the thing that immediately stuck out to me was the slightly dissonant, slightly beautiful ringing tones in the high open strings. More than anything it was this element of the chorus part that made me pursue a fairly uneventful chord sequence. From there, the melody and lyrics spilled out almost unconsciously upon it. If the guitar had not been tuned incorrectly I very well may have thought better of that change and chord progression– but my feeling now is that there is no possible better chorus for that song. The accident dictated the entire process. The mistake was correct.

There is an almost magical sense that the less my conscious effort is steering the process, the better the result. Sometimes it seems my only real job is to pay attention, get out of the way, and exploit what is definitively unique and unintentional.

The discovery of an album’s theme follows the same haphazard precision. Take Fantastic Planet. Failure is often referred to as “space rock” (whatever that means)– the only justification I can find for this is from the album’s title and the thematic use of space in a few of the songs (“Another Space Song”, “Solaris”, “Blank”). But the way we came to name the album and include “space” as a metaphor for detachment was almost entirely accidental.

I had discovered the French animated film Fantastic Planet in 1990. Its strangeness, mood and texture had an immediate appeal for me and anyone in my life was well aware of my fondness for it. In 1994 a girlfriend gave me a framed promotional movie poster for my birthday. Our relationship did not make it to the hanging, which took place near the beginning of Failure’s time at the house where Fantastic Planet was recorded. The framed gift was hung on the side wall of the living room/ control room.

One day early in the making of the album I glanced at the poster and saw those words in a different way– as a pop album title that was dark, ironic, and almost comic book like. The source film had nothing to do with it. Further it was referring, as an album title, to earth– nothing outer space about it at all.

Failure

Soon after this came “Another Space Song”, which was a sheepishly self-referential apology of a song title– wholly sarcastic in tone. Basically: please excuse yet another hackneyed use of the detachment/ space metaphor. It was dead charred ground as soon as Major Tom came crashing to earth twenty years before.

It’s hard not to find irony in the earnestness with which people label us “space rock” given the sarcastic use of its metaphor on the record.

Nonetheless, by the time “Another Space Song” had been written and titled, we had a strong enough sense of thematic coherence to carry us to the end of the record with plenty of metaphorical steam.

Once a title and direction have gripped me, then my general interests and obsessions (which never seem to change) adhere to the surface of the theme and amplify themselves like tics gorged on the blood of concepts.

One morning early in the recording process of The Heart Is A Monster, Ken said he’d had an idea for a song or direction, maybe a controlling idea for the record: “Morning Amnesia”– When you wake up from heavy sleep or a heavy dream and for a few moments you don’t really have any idea who or what you are.

We rolled the idea around, changed the name to “A.M. Amnesia” and wrote it up on our dry erase board.

This album would be about the flimsy nature of identity. The flimsy nature of the very concept of identity or personality. The more you look for a self, the more it dissolves.

Here are some of the earliest notes I scrawled after Ken and I had our first discussion about THIAM’s theme:

The only true authenticity is absence. Every night we lose our identities completely, we essentially die in deep sleep or live as others in dreams and we are reborn to personal amnesia every morning, even if only for a moment.
The fathomless brutal infinity of space– out of that evolves consciousness, conscience, a human heart– and what have we done with it… in the face of our position in the universe? The heart is a monster.

The whole range of human behavior from deranged to divine is a blueprint for each individual.  All we have to do is look out into the world at its most terrible, most mundane, or most generous to see who we are and what each of us in some portion is capable of.  The heart no matter its temperature or shape– not the organ, but its figurative projection– is the driver of both the most sacred love and the most sociopathic perversity.  Identity is merely the tissue-paper raincoat this ambivalent spirit wears.

Failure — 2015 Tour Dates
July 2 Lawrence, KS Liberty Hall
July 4 Milwaukee, WI Summerfest
July 5 Cleveland, OH The Grog Shop
July 7 Columbus, OH LC Pavilion Amphitheatre *
July 8 Lansing, MI Common Ground Festival
July 9 Cincinnati, OH 20th Century Theatre
July 10 Pittsburgh, PA Stage AE *
July 12 Ottawa, ON Ottawa Bluesfest
July 14 Quebec City, QC Quebec City International Summer Festival
July 16 Portland, ME Asylum
July 17 Syracuse, NY The Westcott Theatre
July 18 Westbury, NY The Space at Westbury
July 21 Nashville, TN 3rd & Lindsley
July 23 New Orleans, LA Republic New Orleans
July 25 Austin, TX Emo’s
August 7 Louisville, KY Mercury Ballroom
August 8 Atlanta, GA The Wrecking Ball
August 9 Charlotte, NC Neighborhood Theatre **
August 11 Washington, DC 930 Club **
August 13 New York, NY Webster Hall **
August 14 Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory **
August 15 Boston, MA Royal Nightclub **
August 18 Toronto, ON Lee’s Palace
August 21 Chicago, IL Metro
October 25 Sacramento, CA Aftershock Festival

* – with Jane’s Addiction
** – Co-headline dates with HUM

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