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Time, travel
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by JACK OATMON “At times, Nancy and I sing at each other onstage, and I sometimes feel like Nancy’s yelling at me onstage, standing inches away from my face. It’s pretty intense.” John MacLean, aka DFA Records’ the Juan MacLean, is describing his current live show, which features a number of fiery duets between he and Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem. The intensity of this quasi-real lovers’ quarrelling is amplified by an incredible tangle of analog synthesizers, hammering drums and percussion, cowbells, whining Theremin, booming, funky bass and flashes of blinding light. They definitely know how to drag out the domestic angst. In fact, the apparent sincerity of the two musically accomplished New Yorkers’ onstage quibbling and longing begs the question as to whether they are currently an item. “Um, we’re not together right now,” says MacLean. “Everyone thinks we’re married or something. But I’d rather not say, really. I’d rather not speak to that directly, but it’s all drawing upon more than one relation, I can tell you that. And it’s all honestly autobiographical.” The Future Will Come is the group’s latest outing. It provides the material for the explosive performance which, by the way, is straight up one of the most raw, psychedelic, fun live house music shows you will ever witness, and is among the few chances to see someone truly rock the Theremin. The record itself is a funky frenzy of melodic vocal house and new wave tracks that take a good look at the trials of romance in a fast-paced world. It makes no attempts to follow the hip, ironic attitudes or stuffy, mechanical styles rampant right now. Candid lyrics and pop melodies stand in stark contrast to the often impersonal fare on the club menu. Right to be trite“It’s definitely putting yourself on the line, being that honest, and it’s something that Nancy and I discussed at length before making the album,” continues MacLean in his halting, thoughtful manner. “I’ve realized that, in electronic music, lyrics tend to be either very throwaway, ‘going out on the town to party’ lyrics, or so laden in irony that they’re not really about anything. So we made a conscious decision to write honestly and sincerely. At the same time, we’re well aware that, as soon as you do that, you’re putting yourself out there for a different sort of criticism than if you were simply being clever with lyrics. You’ve immediately opened yourself up to more direct criticism. That’s why I think irony is always very tempting. It’s an easy way not to be accountable to what you’re writing about.” Avoiding smarmy bullshit and intellectualism also allows MacLean to get to the bottom of what he sees as the key to writing good love songs and solid pop music. “Get rid of all the clever stuff and write down exactly what you mean. It will look funny on paper and it will sort of seem stupid, but when you listen to the lyrics of the great pop songs, you realize that, on paper, they’re very trite, but it’s very effective. It’s difficult because you immediately feel stupid and self-conscious. But as soon as you’re ironic and clever, people will readily pat you on the back for that.” The instinct to cut through conventions in the often arcane club world is not a new one for MacLean. The first Juan MacLean LP, 2005’s fascinating Less Than Human, was a unique acid and house experiment that, along with previous singles dating back to 2002, played a central role in DFA’s vanguard of genre-redefining records, introducing the millennial dance-punk sound and refocusing on fun, funky, flippant freakiness in the club. Before that, MacLean played guitar in avant-garde, synth-heavy post-punk band Six Finger Satellite, whose eventual sound engineer was James Murphy, DFA founder and LCD Soundsystem frontman. Now, the simple, intimate vibe of the second full-length is a deliberate step away from the impersonal monotony of much electronic dance music. “It’s interesting because it’s actually become a selling point. People have taken it well. It’s also a sign of the times. I think people appreciate more melodic, song-based material right now in the dance music world, after being beaten over the head by electro for the last couple years. I think people are yearning for it.” Live versus lifeOne of the album’s strongest points is taking advantage of the band’s raging, visceral live energy. MacLean used the entire band in the writing and recording process, rather than developing a live show from the record. MacLean is one of the few true masters of taking pared-down, elemental house tracks and translating them live in a fully psychedelic, multi-layered manner, exploring the sounds onstage like a jam band rather than just reciting the material, as do many standard-fare club music live acts. The record also marks MacLean’s progress away from a turbulent lifestyle, and compares his increasingly stable mindset with the continuing difficulty of the touring band life. “Going back to the past couple of decades of my life, my life as a kid and a young adult was pretty disastrous—having some pretty well-documented drug problems, being a heroin addict for at least a dozen years and then coming out of that and getting my life together. Which is where I’m at now, getting myself together to the point where I can be much more productive and subsequently more successful in my music career.” The progress has not, however, added much stability to his personal relationships. “I think the way it plays out in this record is having the ability to evaluate what’s gone wrong over recent years, while still feeling unable to actually get it right. Much of the subject matter came out of our touring experience in the past years, Nancy in LCD Soundsystem and me playing as the Juan MacLean and DJing as well, and what this life has done to our personal relationships. At times, it seems like they’re nearly impossible. The life of a touring musician is a quite insular experience and can be quite alienating to anyone else outside of it. It’s a common theme among most of our friends. The same things come up over and over again, the difficulty of trying to be married or have girlfriends or boyfriends back home.” Allusions and illusionsThe title of the new record evokes MacLean’s long-running sci-fi theme, with robots, futuristic imagery and alien abductions common elements in his music, videos and stories. But it also speaks to the loss of mystery and fantasy associated to the pop artist. “It’s not meant to be an entirely literal statement. I had been thinking so much about this idea that, especially in music, it seems very difficult to do anything that sounds futuristic or new or revolutionary. And I think that’s kind of an illusion. I’m very much inspired by music from decades ago, in the ’80s, that was meant to sound futuristic. Kraftwerk or Gary Numan. The music, the presentation. You’d open up a magazine and you’d literally think that these guys looked like robots or that they came from the future. They were playing this music that’s made with new technologies, with synthesizers. Your only access to them was through a printed medium and maybe the odd music video, and then going to see the live performance. It all added the air of mystery and gave it a believably futuristic feel.” In contrast, MacLean’s use of those same elements gives his records and videos a distinct retro air. He suspects this is because of the rapid availability of in-depth information, which demystifies the image of a pop artist. “Now, with the Internet, anyone has access to the entire history of pop music, instantly. All influences are made known by third parties. There’s no shortage of guys on message boards or whatever who are dissecting your album and telling everybody where you stole everything from. You can read this stuff and then go on YouTube and find a video from these influences. The entire lineage is all there at your fingertips.” For example, the release of the album’s first single, “Happy House,” quickly led to observations that the piano line in the track was lifted from Dubtribe Sound System’s 2001 “Do It Now,” though Sunshine Jones of Dubtribe contacted MacLean to say how much he loved the track. As a result, MacLean has been very candid about the derivative influences of his album, from the obvious Human League-like arrangements to the pared-down electropop style of Yaz/Yazoo, evident on single “One Day.” “It’s great for music fans. The downside of it is that it’s eliminated any sense of radicalism in music. It gives people the idea that there’s not really anything new that can be done, which I think has always been the case. ‘The future will come’ is an obvious, self-evident statement. The future always will come. Every minute, the future is unfolding.” WITH THE FIELD AND JORDAN DARE |
