Joshua Powell
I first interviewed Joshua Powell in 2018 for his record PSYCHO/TROPIC, and I think my blog was still called the Music LIFT? It’s been a minute but I’m happy to share this new interview with him. His band’s music is not usually what I listen to but I somehow always enjoy listening to their songs. This new album Skeleton Party is so well-produced. It has anthemic and powerful songs, and it’s a record that just feels good. Congrats guys on this stunning record !
Skeleton Party is out now !!
Photo credit: Fred Miller
Hi, Joshua! How are you? You and your band are about to release your new album Skeleton Party - how's it like to release this new project?
Thanks for talking with me again, Virginie! I couldn’t be more excited to release this sick lil pup. I didn’t know where our sound was headed after PSYCHO/TROPIC in 2018, but I knew I wanted it to be more unmoored from genre boundary lines so we could grow in whichever direction we wanted. That’s very much how it’s gone. I don’t think anyone expected us to morph into a shreddy rock band, I know I didn’t. But these songs are the most fun I’ve ever had, and doing it with my three longest artistic collaborators, that makes this record really special.
When did you start working on this album? Could you describe the songwriting/production process for this record? Who helped you create it?
April of 2020. I’d taken off touring for a couple months and recorded 30 or 40 demos. We had about 50 dates booked for the summer, but then the earth swallowed itself. My brother Jacob had come to visit for a week between drumming for two different cruise ships, but lockdown happened and he got stuck with us. Our prior drummer, Jake Haggard, had been in the band for almost a year but only played one show opening for the Verve Pipe. The plague saw him quarantine in Nashville and then move on to another job working for a Texan rodeo TV station. Jacob was right there to pick up the yoke.
With our keyboard player Enrique Olmos on hiatus, we just had these core four together every weekend. On the last LP, we worked for two weeks straight with a producer. This one we made from home in furious spurts, trying to tackle a new song per week from the seed crystal to a working recording. Jacob, Adam, and Josh all have songwriter credit because I’d bring them most of a song before I could get too attached to it and we just exploded out the arrangements from there. At the end, we sent it over to our friend Wes Heaton who had mixed us live at the Hi-Fi here in Indy a hundred times. Most of his work has been with heavier bands, so we were curious as to how that would work for our new batch. Turns out it rips.
What different topics are you talking about on this project?
I think of this record like an anthological surrealist coloring book. The identity of the narrator is fluid because without warning, I slip back and forth between my own perspective and those of my characters, like the cosmonaut on “Hole Mesa Fangs” or the detective in “White Lodge (fire)”. It’s very inspired by Virginia Woolf in that way, especially “To the Lighthouse.” So mix that with the horror movie “The Lighthouse” by Robert Eggers, and you’re getting close to “Skeleton Party.” Deeply mythological-feeling vagueries full of cryptos and bearded dudes with propane in their beards in a bizarro aspect ratio.
What did you feel when writing "Sad Boy at the Skeleton Party"?
Just like, your garden variety manic ecstasy. I thought we’d cull from my solo demos to make the LP, but we wrote all new stuff from the jump and this one was the first. The line “Don’t you bother the moon” came to me based on its cadence, then the subsequent anthropomorphization gushed out like Sam Raimi blood splatter. The central image of the chorus is these two unlikely friends who are making the most of a strung out situation. Me and the moon, eating pills and skateboarding, carousing with goatkind, cancelling plans, surfin’ through egoic incarnations and such. Then harmonize a couple guitar solos man, I dare you!
What can you tell us about the music video?
This is our fourth video over three albums directed by our friend Matt Panfil, hallucinated art-spider of the Beyond. He’s the co-founder and art director at Healer, an immersive psychedelic art installation and venue in Indy. The icon of this record is the monk hunkered over his writing desk trying to realize his holy work, but being pulled at by demonic entities from all directions. The video concept was to bring the album cover to life. I thought we’d be able to achieve a schlocky 80’s latex version of it, but when all the lights and smoke hit, what I thought would be tacky-cool ended up looking so much creepier and actually cool than I thought. There’s some great little easter eggs in there too, like Jacob playing drums with leg bones or Josh meditating on top of a giant mushroom.
What was the hardest part about making this album? And what was the best part?
It was an experimental undertaking for us to all fish out our best gear and combine our acumen to try to achieve the quality of recording we wanted to make. The first time we recorded drums, we only had two channels, so we had a kick mic and a strategic overhead. Then we started to surprise ourselves with what we were getting and Jacob convinced me to let him go back and re-track drums under everything else, which is a weird order of operations, but well worth it. What you hear on “Rainbow Trout” is still just two mics on the drums though. The best part was just doing it together all the way through. It’s nice not to be the only person in the ruck. And the accountability in real-time of producing each other helps you avoid compromise. A cord of four strands is not easily broken. “Skeleton Party” was summer camp, and we came back an actual band instead of a lone wolf spirit scarecrow with a belt full of hired guns.
What did you learn about yourself after finishing this album?
A long time ago a really smart lawyer advised me to savagely protect the rights to my music. Going back on that advice has made me really happy.. I’d been blind to the fact that my idea of self-preservation in this shark industry was creating a barrier to the buy-in that I dreamt of fostering with a team. And now we have literal jerseys. You learn to recognize the ego for what it is and say thank you to it for trying to protect you because it’s just doing its job. But I am working toward the goals of total compassion and total detachment, and so you can’t kill the ego, but you can teach it its place.
What made you want to name your album Skeleton Party?
I’m a spooky Halloween man pulling up with Miller Lites. Just kidding. It’s meant to evoke the TM mantra about bliss being a flak jacket. I believe we have the power to manipulate energy and if you’re carrying joy in your ribcage, then ain’t no metaphysical weapons can be formed against you. When all that’s left over is the bones, you can still start a circle pit. Like maybe we’re on our last legs but we’re using them for dancing purposes.
What can you tell us about the artwork?
D. Jeffrey is a gargoyle among men. When we did the last record, I had him draw up a death metal inspired shirt design. The aesthetic was mismatched with the breezy vibe of that record, but it was meant as a wink to other scene alumni and as an unironic tribute to the style I’ve been drawn to forever. A joke about the shirt became the title of the song, and then the song became the title of the record. Daniel reimagined it and added some incredible hand-drawn typography and then we all simultaneously morphed into skeletons and a disco ball came down and the sun turned red and ripped open the sky to let out all the confetti.
How's it like to release an album in 2021? Any challenges?
The hardest part of this one was coordinating dates. Exciting, right? But this is our first time putting anything out on a label and we switched distro companies, so the album release show and the digital release and the vinyl release are all spread across a month. That freaked me out at first, but it’s rolling pretty copacetically.
What are your thoughts on today's music industry? If you could change one thing, what would it be?
I’ve been proud of the way that live music in particular has, in a lot of places, led the way on reopening responsibly. It was a tortuous year to watch small clubs we loved all over the country having to shutter. The fact that venue owners have soberly faced a shared reality and in most of the cases I’ve seen, demonstrated courage in the face of backlash reminds me that most of the people who do this job are here because they honestly love it.
You know, we’ve gotten to work with a few hip hop artists as a backing band, and that’s vastly changed my worldview. A lot of people in indie, in rock, see things on these competitive capitalistic hierarchical terms. When you consider how much harder black and brown people have to work in this industry (and every other one), you see why a heroic figure like J Cole flips that script when he’s asking what’s the good of first class when his people are in coach? Imagine what a kinder place this would be if we all took that attitude.
What biggest lessons have you learned since the beginning of your career?
Man, take your people to first class. And be here now.
What message do you want to deliver to the world?
“I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” Death to false metal.
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