When it’s time at the end of the year to round up the best albums of 2014,, we already know Beck and St. Vincent (and well deservingly) will be on those lists more than, but let’s not forget Fanfarlo’s smart and danceable Let’s Go Extinct. Recorded by the band and David Wrench in a tucked-away recording studio in North Wales, ”Let’s Go Extinct’ (released Feb 10th ) is, in many ways, the true successor to the band’s heralded debut, ”Reservoir.’ The album is loosely themed around the concept of evolution described by songwriters Simon Balthazar as dealing with “the weirdness of being this thing we call a person and the double weirdness of other people.”
Despite the scientific lyrical core of the album, Fanfarlo reimagines the romantic flavors of the art rock movement championed by Roxy Music and an open-ended, groove-oriented style that the Talking Heads favored from Remain in Light onwards. Although he performs without a bow-tie and tailored suit ala Bryan Ferry, Bathazar still goes as far as to admit – “we get away with stuff that could easily be pretentious.”
Throw together tasteful percussion and clever sythn and vocal arrangements sink in your veins but hold a sense of sophistication and intelligence that will remain with mature listeners and not jive over to the Capital Cities/Bastille pop culture sect. Let’s Go Extinct deserves more praise than it’s been given and we only hope this record catches on as 2014 moves down the calendar. We recently talked to Balthazar about this landmark album in Fanfarlo’s three album career.
Can you please share with us about the inspiration behind Let’s Go Extinct and how you evolved from your debut and second album. Am I correct in saying that Fanfarlo has a stronger identity even though you appear more influenced by some legacy artists.
It became clear as soon as I started writing the songs for this record that they would be dealing with ideas of how we (that is: humans) evolved, how we deal with what we are and what might happen next to us. And I think that discussion involves playing with perspectives on what a person even is. Are we a conglomeration of billions of tiny little organisms and our consciousness just a sort of administrative function of that, a galaxy of cells, or are we a kind of bodiless spirit living inside a meat machine, looking out?
Regarding the future, well, in We’re The Future we suggest a scenario where we mutate back into the twin-souled creatures that myth has it we once were. Lonesome no more!
There is of course the title track about extinction, and I suppose it’s a bit facetious, more than anything it’s a positive sentiment about letting go, embracing the new. The world doesn’t end just because we end, it goes on, and something new happens. In a way you could read all these songs as if they were about relationships or friendships – the end is always the beginning of something, y’know?
How do you feel Let’s Go Extinct stands up as a whole and what songs are you most proud of best representative where you are creatively and musically?
One of the things we’re very proud of is how this record manages to be cohesive in its sounds and ideas whilst still being eclectic in where we draw our influences and also being sonically quite dense. Also how it’s playful and accessible even though the ideas aren’t that typical for pop music… I feel we get away with stuff that could easily be pretentious! But we very much managed to create our own world whilst making the album and I’m hoping you can hear that in the music. The writing happened quite quickly. I wrote the songs whilst staying in Berlin for a while, or whilst we did the odd bit of touring, then we got together in a house in the Welsh countryside and worked on them until they started to feel like a record.
How would you best describe how much the band has grown in the past couple years musically and do you see that growth mainly coming from touring, recording or something else that helped you evolve?
All of those things: time, touring and recording, have all made us grow of course. I think there was also a sense of having had a bit of a stressful time making our second record on a major label, that we didn’t know what was going to happen next, but that it didn’t matter and that we should just let go and let things come.
When reading about Fanfarlo names from rock’s past like Roxy Music and Talking Heads appear often. Do you feel these comparisons are justified?
Sure. I mean, those people have really influenced everyone right? We definitely identify with that territory between pop music and art rock, it’s very exciting.
One of the things that stands out about Fanfarlo is you guys don’t look like how you sound – you guys are young but sound like you’ve been honing this for many years. What do you think the key is to having such a sophisticated and dreamy sound but maintaining a rugged rock look?
Well first of all we have actually been going in one form or another for quite some time now. But I’d like to think that regardless of what people saying about showbiz making you disillusioned and blah blah, at the end of the day having a job where after you finish your day of work, dozens of people come up to you smiling and excited telling you that you made their day, that’s going to make you feel pretty great about what you do and retain a sense of wonder about it all.
Are there any other particular albums or songs or forms of art that served as a key inspiration for Let’s Go Extinct?
I seem to remember I was listening a fair bit to Calling Out Of Context by Arthur Russell at some point while writing. But I know in the studio Todd Rundgren and King Crimson were getting a lot of plays over dinner, maybe Flying Lizards and Krisma too actually. We had this pink little solar powered radio we’d play music through while slow cooking big family stews. We kept coming back to spaghetti western soundtracks too – you can hear it in the trumpets, backing vocals and percussion.
The band is returning to the U.S. this spring for a month-long tour, including two stops in NYC at Bowery Ballroom and Brooklyn’s recently opened Rough Trade. What has your experiences been like previously touring in the states and what cities most stood out to you in terms of fostering a good musical environment?
Touring the states is always a big experience, exhausting and exciting at the same time. It’s hard to say what’s truly reflective of a city because your personal experience is always down to all the particular circumstances of the show, the venue, the people you meet. Actually a lot of smaller places are really rewarding because people embrace the performance in a different way to a hip big city crowd, it’s more of a special thing and perhaps a more close-knit music community.
You recently covered the Beach Boys’ “Till I Die” from their 1971 Surfs Up album. For a band like Fanfarlo what do you consider and look for in a particular set of music prior to choosing a song to cover? What other songs have you covered as well?
We did a Neutral Milk Hotel cover yonks ago that people quite liked. It was pretty adorable, because we literally just stuck a laptop in a corner of the room and played into iMovie. Live last year we did “Rip It Up” by Orange Juice at a few festivals and that was super fun, maybe too much fun actually. In terms of choosing, we just pick songs that we love and that have stuck with us for a long time, it’s very simple.
What other current bands today do you admire and who would you most like to collaborate or share the stage with?
I’ve become increasingly deaf to the desperate clamour of music blogs trying to nominate the band of the day, but of course every now and then things pop up. Future Islands have been around for a little while but seem to have really come into their own and good on them. And ok Colin Stetson isn’t news anymore but deserves a mention. I’d also just like to say that my compatriots Dungen got there before Tame Impala and rest on a more interesting legacy.
What live performance in the band’s history most stands out as most inspirational and why?
The first time you do something is always going to feel like a really big overwhelming deal and stick with you. So for instance, the first time we did a big show in New York, to a sold out theatre, coming on to an escape artist performing an upside-down straitjacket escape during the first song of the set,that felt pretty damn exciting. And it’s always just the biggest feeling ever coming to a new city to find that people have been waiting for you to come, that they are excited about having you and they know the songs and sing along and there’s a crazy energy in the room. Honestly, that feeling is like falling in love a little bit.
