It’s not a particularly fashionable idea right now but if you scratch any interesting artist you’ll hear that one of the key components to how they do it is that they don’t really know what they’re doing. […] If you don’t know what to expect, there’s a chance the listener and reader will find themselves in a place they wouldn’t expect to end up, that’s where interesting art resides.
One analogy I draw to help people understand is you wouldn’t expect a film actor to go on stage and be a stage actor or a film director to be a theatrical director. They’re two different worlds. People get into one because that’s their passion. For me, the live thing is like theater. What I do is more like a film director because it’s all about piecing things together. Live music is not my thing. It’s not what I do. What I do is recording.
If I’m working on a particular track and I’m not particularly into what I’m doing or not sure what to do next, the natural thing is to have a break, just do something else. I have lots of tracks I’m working on at the same time. That’s changed over the years because I’ve got all these sketches on my phone as well.
I never treat anything as a reject, I never delete anything. It’s just a matter of when I’m ready to work on it again. Having this huge archive of unreleased, unfinished music, I can dip into any of it if I don’t feel like starting something new. It’s good to remind myself that I shouldn’t pressure myself into coming up with new ideas all the time. Sometimes there’s gems in there that just need watering and giving some TLC.
Everybody is brought up with the idea that you need to make great art. But most of the things that I listen to and I really love is very modest art. Like, even if you think of library music, it’s not made to be art. It’s made to be used for commercials. But there’s so much love in the craft that it becomes amazing. And it’s very modest. I think this struggle is a good thing to go back to, and retreat from. It makes you progress. Even if you’re not going to make the greatest record or write the greatest novel, the process of doing it helps you progress.
Prince has a humorous streak, David Bowie has a humorous streak, The Beatles had a humorous streak. Humourless music is not nice music as far as I’m concerned. I’m not trying to compare Metronomy to Prince, but I think people often forget that being humorous and being cool are not mutually exclusive things.
I only really think it’s important in as far as it allows you to see what you do from a different, less self-absorbed perspective. There are countless musicians out there who take themselves way way way too seriously.
This song isn’t me asking for money, and this song isn’t me saying that its bad to make money. In fact ever since I released the song “bank account” (when money was real low a lot) I’ve been living pretty comfortably. The point of the song is: my mission with music is not to make money, my mission is to make the best music I possibly can. And shittily, that is not the mission of a lot of music you have heard. A lot of music is money driven. And that $ mindset dilutes the absolute FUCK out of the realness and spirit of art. So I’m saying I want to keep the money separate from the art, and I really actually only need enough money to be able to live a life where I can create freely (food, shelter, instruments, no day job), that is TRULY the ultimate dream life as a die hard artist.