Mutemath are just about to release their fifth studio album Play Dead. The album has been five years in the making and explores a new sound for the band. We caught up with vocalist and songwriter Paul Meany to talk about the new album, what it was like working with Twenty One Pilots and find out if the band plans on returning to Australia.

SCENEzine
How’s 2017 treating you?

Paul Meany
It’s been brutal if I’m going to be honest. If life has taught me nothing it’s those brutal moments that there’s something worth pushing through. I feel really proud of the album that has manifested itself in this brutal moment for our band. I’m really stoked to be talking about it and start singing it to people. So there is light at the end of this tunnel right now it’s called Play Dead.

SCENEzine
I’ve been lucky enough to hear Play Dead and congrats it’s sounds awesome. It must be an odd feeling waiting for the rest of the world to hear it when you’ve had some of these songs written quite a while ago?

Paul Meany
Yeah I never enjoy the build up process from the moment we hand in the final to the moment people hear it. I’m always just begging people to put it out right now but I get the same lecture every time of what’s going to happen to get every one on the same page it takes time. But yes its torturous I’m still not one hundred percent at peace with that.

SCENEzine
“Hit Parade” has been getting a huge response already. Did that song come about easily in the writing process?

Paul Meany
No “Hit Parade” went on quite a journey. It started about five ears ago with a track that Darren had made for a drum competition thing that he did. I thought it was a really cool track and I started writing some vocals to it then we performed it in Australia for the first time on the Odd Soul tour. We knew it was a really exciting song but we had no idea how to finish it. It was fine to play in front of an audience but to actually get it in record form we just hadn’t cracked the code on it so we shelved it. It didn’t wind up on Vitals and we just knew it needed some time. All of a sudden I felt reinvigorated to revisit that idea about a year ago and it made sense to me I just saw what to do with the parts that had confused us for so long. A lot of the ideas on this new album kind of went on that same journey of certain jams or mediocre demos from years ago that all of a sudden we knew how to finish writing them. This record was five years in the making really when I think about it and we released an album in between.

SCENEzine
I find myself really drawn to the track “Marching to the End”. Is there a deeper meaning to that song?

Paul Meany
Well in hindsight it’s turning out to be quite a self fulfilling prophecy that I had no idea of. I think we are just coming of age. This is the first record now that I will have released in my 40’s. So there’s a whole aspect of life that I find myself mourning and trying to cope with the fact that certain things in life are over and finding a new way to look at things through my daughter. It’s actually a even more fulfilling state of existence I believe. That’s what this album really became about it’s the whole concept of life after death. Not even a literal death but the death of events in our lives and what happens next. So “Marching to the End” was the perfect was to sum that up.

SCENEzine
The overall sound of the album pushes the limits of your sound further. Do you think it’s cool that Mutemath can redefine their sound after all these years?

Paul Meany
Yeah I feel really proud of what we were able to do. The trick is when your writing a song even when you just throw a song in the voice memo section of your phone. What happens is you put these ideas down that in your head as the song writer you hear the finished product. It sounds like garbage in your voice memos to anyone else but you hear the finished product. You are already filling in the blanks where the crowd is cheering, maybe even your Grammys speech, you’ve got the whole end result mapped out in your head.
The challenge is how do you manufacture anything close to that. It takes years I think of just trying and trying and all of a sudden you get closer and closer. I think what I started realising on this album for all the guys in the band is that we were getting to this liberating place of what we were hearing in our heads each of us knew how to get out to come back through speakers. It was very exciting and the first album we did completely on our own with no collaborators. Writing it, producing it, mixing it, mastering it all the way to the end. Making it sound exactly like we wanted it to. It was quite an invigorating experience, we are proud of it.

SCENEzine
Is there much of a story behind the album cover art?

Paul Meany
We were throwing around images for a while to no success then Darren disappeared for three days and then came back with that. He was like what do you guys think about this and I was like it’s perfect that’s it. It felt right there was something about it I can’t explain it but that’s usually when you know it works when it just feels right. It looks like the record sounds to you.

SCENEzine
You are about to head out on a pretty extensive American tour. I’m assuming an Australian tour is on the cards for this album?

Paul Meany
Man I’m really hoping we get out there especially in the light of us having to cancel last year. I hope we get out there really soon again.

SCENEzine
How was the experience of playing Soundwave in Australia alongside a lot of heavier bands?

Paul Meany
It felt a little strange we did kind of feel like a red headed step child, pardon the expression but it was still fun. While we were on Soundwave we got to go to Future Festival the EDM festival that was happening. We attended it as patrons on our day off while we were in Perth and we had so much inspiration leaving that festival. It certainly gave us a lot of fuel for what Vitals became. It was in that moment that we decided what type of feeling we wanted to create on the next album and it became Vitals. But without Vitals there would of been no Play Dead because all the ideas we were working on at the time got shelved and just needed to be addressed at a later time. That’s the way it played out.

SCENEzine
Has working and touring with Twenty One Pilots influenced you as a songwriter?

Paul Meany
Well I think we share a lot of the same influences. The more I’ve hung out with those guys and especially with the project that we did and how fun it was to create. We shared a lot of the same taste in things. They are kind of like our long lost brothers that we didn’t know existed. It was really a great experience to get to tour with them and doing the collaboration was the icing on the cake.

SCENEzine
You have an amazing vocal range. Who inspired you growing up to craft the voice that you have today?

Paul Meany
Well certainly a hero of mine for a long time was Sting. I was a huge Police fan. Probably the first record I bought though that I really wanted to try and sing like was Huey Lewis. When the movie Back to the Future came out that was a big deal for me as a kid. That was the first cassette tape I had. I remember trying to sing like Huey Lewis as a ten year old boy (laughs). I was driving everyone in the house mad. I’ve been fans of Steve Winwood, Phil Collins and that era vocals and song writing style. That informed a lot of what I would try to mimic and fail. That’s usually what happens you fail to mimic what you really like and somehow you stumble upon something that becomes you.

SCENEzine
Do you think your daughter will follow in your musical footsteps?

Paul Meany
I don’t know. Selfishly yeah watching your child take interest in what your interested in is a very rewarding feeling. She’s already plotting in her mind who’s going to be in her band and how to start a YouTube channel. I’m trying to take it slow with her but every now and then she comes out on stage and definitely enjoys it. She’s a performer at heart.

SCENEzine
One of our favourite Mutemath tracks is “Spotlight” do you still enjoy playing that one live?

Paul Meany
I do “Spotlight” is one of the mainstays that has always been in our show for a while. Even on this current tour we are redoing a lot of stuff and taking songs out but “Spotlight” is still in there. It’s become pretty important and I still enjoy it.

SCENEzine
Lastly can you leave us a message for your Aussie fans excited for the new album?

Paul Meany
I really hope everyone gives it a listen. We gutted ourselves into this album I’m really proud of the A game that everyone brought to this. It feels like the first Mutemath record that we’ve made that was just the four of us the whole time. It was the first record we’ve done with no outside collaborators which was a little risky but we’ve learnt over the years at this point we could really trust each other to put together the puzzle of our songs. It wound up being a very rewarding album to make and I hope everyone is able to get something out of it.

(Interview by Christian Ross)