When I saw David Lynch’s Lost Highway for the first time, I drove myself nuts trying to understand the film’s every twist and turn. I instead should’ve sat back and absorbed the experience, waiting till later to ask the whys and the whos and the “why did that house just implode?”
It’s best to use the same approach for local rock group Good Guys and their new first full length, The Social Engagement. Like Lynch, they specialize in dark, strange, abstract and schizophrenic works of art that don’t ask the consumer to entirely understand their madness. One second its doo-wop, the next Tropicália, the next Mike Patton-inspired avant-metal, and the next a lullaby. Fans of film scores and classical music, Good Guys thankfully always come back to a recognizable common ground in their songs, similar to how Tool has approached their last two albums.
Formed in 2004, Good Guys are led by vocalist, melodica and theremin player Jeremy Johnson and vocalist, guitarist and pianist Tom McLaughlin and rounded out by synthesizer player and trumpeter Greg Beaman, drummer Kyle Sharimataro and bassist Greg Smith.
The Social Engagement is more mature and thought-out than the band’s previous two EPs. Simply, it sounds like they killed themselves working out the absolute best arrangements. Produced by Mike Napolitano and augmented by Mike Dillon and Skerik, the album becomes better the more you listen to it. It’s a hard-worked triumph, to be sure. ANTIGRAVITY sat down with Johnson and McLaughlin at Mojo Coffehouse, just as a cop was about to mow over a pedestrian at Race and Magazine, to talk about Ennio Morricone, Kathleen Turner and, of course, their music.
Jeremy Johnson: I got a jaywalking ticket in L.A. for walking halfway through a “don’t walk” sign, and that guy just walked in front of a cop.
ANTIGRAVITY: It was funny how the cop got all aggressive.
JJ: I guess they’d rather do that than write you a ticket. [Laughs]
AG: [Laughs] Where do we begin? On the song “Halt,” you’re going in many different directions within the span of one song, like you have a lot of different ideas—that there are smaller songs within the bigger one.
JJ: Totally, especially the second half, I guess, where songs just cut and go into something else.
AG: Do you ever feel that there’s some kind of ADD thing going on in the band?
Tom McLaughlin: Sure, I think on a lot of songs there are different parts where we felt that a style or aesthetic or direction would be great, so we exploit different aesthetics or styles because we felt it would work within just one section of the song. Sometimes we’ll take a theme, melody or a section that’s written a certain way and explore other ways we can represent the same idea.
JJ: A lot of times reason it feel broken up is there’s a heavier part that goes into a softer part. The difference isn’t even so much that it’s that drastic from the other part—it’s just heavier or softer. A lot of times we’re dealing with the same melodies within the heaviness, but it’s such a drastic thing you feel like you’re in a completely different space.
AG: I like when artists do that—they’ll go off on a tangent, but not in a bad way, and then they’ll come back to the chorus and you go, “Oh, I get it.”
JJ: I think with this album especially, I don’t know if we consciously tried to do that but we definitely got a kick out of the, “Oh, we’re still in this song?” idea.
TM: There are a few songs like that.
JJ: Like there’s something that comes back and triggers, “Whoah, I’m still here.”
TM: This is something I feel that, with a lot of live performances as well, when you get into improvised music—not that that’s what we are—but the same thing applies to improvised music, if you’re doing something that’s a tangent, as long as you can come back to those beacons, whether it’s a chorus, and that’s the function of a chorus a lot of times, that there’s credibility. The listener gives you more credibility because they can recognize it, so it’s not just a jam fest.
AG: “In The Dark”? Some of these lyrics have to be tongue in cheek.
TM: [Laughs]
JJ: Totally, definitely.
AG: “Panties tight, pubic hair,” and then when you say—I can’t even say it without laughing—“I get my hand up on that ass…” Oh, my God, I mean…
TM: [Laughs]
JJ: In that particular instance, it was making you feel like a rhyme was coming and then throwing the “ass” in there. Sometimes we do quirky things with the lyrics to try and catch you off guard. Yeah, I do kind of go for this overt sexuality in the lyrics, and a lot of it is tongue in cheek. I’m not trying to get all metaphorical, but at the same time a lot of the songs have to do with themes, and even though a lot of it may be tongue in cheek you can find a central theme in it. With a song like “In The Dark,” it’s about a wet dream. There are a lot of songs about conflicts and battles, for some reason.
AG: It can be kind of lecherous, huh?
JJ: Yeah.
AG: I like the classical guitar and the Tropicália feel on “Social Engagement.” The music itself, and I’m talking about the album as a whole, can be manic, but its many moods suggest a lack of control and insanity.
TM: Yeah, sure. On a song like “Social Engagement,” it’s a natural expression—none of that’s really forced. Musically, I don’t think many artists think, or express inwardly, like a linear song. I think most people have many more moods than what they’re actually letting off, and they usually reduce that into one song.
AG: Maybe to censor themselves, so the listener can take it in more easily?
TM: Yeah, sure, but we like to give the listener more credit. They can understand more spastic things because people have really spastic thoughts sometimes. Even if someone seems a little more even, underneath it there’s still this spastic thought and that’s what we’re trying to represent with songs that go all over the place.
JJ: Having said that, I think we still have a certain amount of control over it. Maybe when you initially get into it, it feels like it’s spewed out, but after you listen to the songs a couple times even a person who’s not into that sort of thing can see the organization as a whole, that it’s not just spastic and thrown out there.
TM: The main point is there’s a direction to all of it. Even with a lot of avant-garde compositions or music we listen to, sometimes it can be forced.
AG: I really enjoy how pretty “Clown Saga” can sound. It sounds like a lullaby one second and then completely doomed the next. Is there an electronic bow in there?
TM: Yeah, good ear.
AG: Tom, did you do all the programming, the beat stuff?
TM: Yeah.
AG: It fits in—it’s seamless. Did Mike Napolitano have anything to do with that, or was that pretty much you?
TM: Initially all the beats were sequenced by me but, for instance, take a song like “Da Da Do”—he took a beat with three different instruments, and I gave him separate tracks of those and I wanted it a certain way—there was a way it was supposed to sound and he completely changed it up, but in a great way, and made it even better.
JJ: He was responsible for giving the beat construction its place in every song. Going in, a lot of it was sparse—not that it wasn’t good—and we got in the studio the songs took on different tones and textures and went to places where some of those things needed to be brought. He took a lot of these songs on and helped make them what they are, for sure. He was a huge part of getting this record to sound like it does.
AG: So, he was a real producer—he was offering insight.
JJ: Definitely. At first, he didn’t really know what was going on because I think we’re different from what he’s used to working with, but he totally embraced it and assured us he’d get there eventually. I think that once most of the parts of the songs were intact, he started to hear it and was able to do things that he knew. On the little hip-hop intro for “For Murder, With Love,” he actually pulled that out with the real drums and the guitar line that was embedded in the song because you couldn’t hear it once everything was covered up, and he really brought that out and reconstructed the entire intro. Quirky little things like that can only happen when someone else is dealing with you.
AG: That must’ve been great, to work with someone trying to figure out ways to make the music better.
TM: Absolutely. I feel if we had even more time with the project he could’ve done more things like that. It could’ve been endless, but we had to call uncle some time. With the limited time he was given he did a great job of wrapping his head around certain ideas enough to help them stand out.
AG: How did the inclusion of Skerik and Mike Dillon come about?
JJ: That came along as process of, “We need a percussionist.” “Well, hey, Mike Dillon’s coming over tonight. Why don’t we have him play some timpani?”
AG: [Laughs] That’s awesome.
JJ: We’re like, “Absolutely.” Skerik was in town for JazzFest and it was kind of the same thing. We sent him the track and he thought it was cool.
TM: We went with Skerik as a saxophone player because we felt he could do something no one else could, and not for any other reason. We felt it would suit the song better. I think there’s a stigma associated with his name where people are trying to use him for whatever other reason, but we felt that with the operation he runs with all of his gear and the style he plays with, he would serve the music best.
JJ: If you listen to the song he’s on, I don’t know if you can tell but all the stuff in the beginning that sounds like a guitar lead is a saxophone.
AG: That’s great. That’s what he does.
JJ: All the distortion and effects pedals, then he drops down and plays the sexiest solo imaginable. He’s perfect for it because we go all these places, he goes all these places—he can tap into any style we have in a song.
AG: Where did your instrumental curiosity start? Was it years ago, or did being in the studio afford you that freedom or inspire you to branch out more?
JJ: I think all this has come from a combination of a lot of things over a lot of years. Tom has been a musician for a long time, while some of us got into this at an older age. I wasn’t even a musician until we started this band, so I had years of just thinking about things I wanted to do, as opposed to people who start playing earlier and mimic a lot—which I also did to a certain degree—but I think there was more there to start with.
TM: Classical music has a lot to do with it, for me. That might be an oversimplification, but I love classical music, I love instrumental styles of musicians and I also love when there’s depth on a rock album, as far as taking it down a bit so that some songs stand out and there’s an instrumental thing going on as well. It all stems from the fact that we’re trying to create the music we want and either aren’t hearing or wish we heard more on rock albums.
JJ: Film scores are a big influence on Tom and me. They do a better job at creating a mood music-wise than anything else because they’re designed to create the mood of a character, where maybe the acting fell short. Or the really hilarious scenes in movies are funnier because of the music played behind it. We’re trying to create more of those moods, where people feel like that with our individual songs.
TM: I think at its best, film score is the marriage of two of the greatest mediums in the world. Just taking the music aside from the films—on their own, I’d put up some of my favorite film scores against some of the greatest music ever written.
AG: Who are some of your favorite composers?
TM: I think I can speak for both of us: Ennio Morricone, who’s responsible for creating the sound for the Italian westerns that we love.
AG: “Ecstasy of Gold (from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly).”
TM: Yeah, all that stuff. We did a version of one of his songs, and certainly people like Bernard Herman, Nino Rhoda, and Fellini’s music.
JJ: My personal favorite, which isn’t the most in-depth by any means, is John Berry, who’s responsible for the majority of the James Bond scores. I think it’s easy for people to write off the James Bond scores, like, “Oh, that’s the James Bond score,” but I actually have every individual Bond movie soundtrack. He’s done a lot of other things, like Walkabout and Out of Africa. You would definitely know his stuff if you heard it. The Body Heat soundtrack is really awesome. I don’t know if you’ve seen that movie.
AG: I’ve seen it, but I’ve never listened closely enough.
JJ: That’s the beauty of film score, sometimes it’s there and in your face and other times it’s just behind the scenes creating moods you don’t even realize. Hopefully some of our stuff goes in the subconscious also.
Interview by Jason Songe
This interview first appeared in ANTIGRAVITY Vol.5 #8 (June 2008).
