Interview: Charming Liars' Kiliyan Maguire on New Music and a Cinematic Sound
We are living in a strange time. It’s safe to say that a few months ago, no one ever would have thought we’d be in the “quarantine” situation that we’re living in at the moment. While the music industry has taken one of the hardest hits of an industry in the world during this period of time, people have been adapting, working to fill the void that shows no longer occupy. Artists now have to adapt to a changing landscape, in which digital releases and shorter attention spans are the new norm.
But even so, our world was primarily digital, and our attention spans were pulled in numerous directions already, with the unbelievable amount of content that’s pumped into our smartphone screens every second of the day. Charming Liars were already ahead of the curve; while the album (or LP) is still the preferred delivery mechanism for new music, the Los Angeles-based alternative band opted to try a new method: one song at a time, for a year, until the entire album is released. Now, this is not an uncommon thing to see nowadays; John Mayer used this methodology for releasing one of his albums a few years ago, releasing songs gradually in small EPs until the end of the year. But you generally don’t see a smaller, independent band taking this route, and their reasoning makes perfect sense.
We sat down with Charming Liars’ vocalist Kiliyan Maguire to talk about the reasoning behind their release schedule, the experimental nature of their new music, and how cinema plays into their songwriting process.
You’re not the first band to do this as of recently, but I’ve seen a number of artists releasing new music as singles rather than full albums. Since the start of the year, you’ve released 3 new songs. What was your motivation to release individual songs in lieu of an EP or full-length album?
Well, I think for right now, it really makes a lot of sense, because a lot of our fanbase (and everybody’s fanbases) are at home, quarantining. We can’t go see live shows, so what can we do? I guess the next best thing would be to release music constantly. But it’s very interesting, because we’d already starting releasing singles before the big quarantining and social distancing thing had already hit. We really didn’t have to change too much of our approach, obviously other than going out on the road.
We did two EPs and we did a full-length. Each was rewarding in its own way, but we figured, as far as releasing a full record goes…it’s very satisfying as an artist to go and release one full body of work, but you also have to cater to the times and the fact that peoples’ attention spans are not necessarily shorter, but expecting more and more music, more and more content more frequently. We’re not Coldplay or U2; we can’t go away for two years and then release a full record. I mean, we can, but it’s a little more difficult. But what we’re doing is releasing a new single every month, and then at the end [of the year], we’re going to take all of those singles and release it as a whole record. We give [the process] a little bit of the best of both worlds.
These three songs are “Golden State”, “Blame”, and “Favorite Show”. These are three very different songs, but they all have a distinct “Charming Liars” sound. What would you say is the common thread between these songs, as a writer?
Well, it’s interesting. Out of the three songs, “Blame” was written for Thought, Flesh and Bone, the full-length that we put out last year. In my opinion, it just didn’t really fit with those songs. And it’s kind of neat though, because it fit in even better with this next batch that we’ve been writing. But for us, I think the common thread is kind of difficult to say right now. One thing is for sure that we’ve been doing: we’ve definitely been experimenting a lot more, even with just orchestral sounds and things like that. On “Favorite Show”, we brought in an actual saxophone player, and that was a really great experience, because I’m a really big Bruce Springsteen fan. I got to live out the Springsteen fantasy of having a saxophone solo on a song.
The common thread, right now, is really just – I think we’re taking more risks as far as the songs go. We’re not really shooting down as many ideas as we used to in the writing process.
There are two music videos out for both “Golden State” and “Blame”. “Golden State” looks more like a short film shot on a 16mm camera, whereas “Blame” is somewhat of a stop-motion video. Would you say that there is a cinematic element to the band’s music?
Definitely. Whenever we’re writing, especially when I’m writing lyrics, I like to approach lyrics in kind of the way a screenwriter will approach a script. I like to be very detailed, and I like to capture dialogue within the story. That’s just kind of the way I’ll approach the lyrics, and even that has a really big impact on the music as well, and vice versa, when Karnig is putting together a lot of these soundscapes.
A lot of the time, we’ll discuss what the song is about, based on the sound. You can almost see the music video before we write the song sometimes. There’s definitely a cinematic to our songwriting, that’s for sure.
Are there any particular films or style of film that you pull influence from?
All of us in the band, especially in this quarantine, are all watching so many different kinds of movies. For me, I grew up on a variety of films, but a lot of movies from the 1960s and 1970s. One in particular, that I watched for the first time in long time the other night, was the first Phantasm. What an incredible film that was!
“Favorite Show”, for instance, definitely pulled some references from some 1980s films and things like that. It’s too difficult not to watch those movies and not take influence from them; personally, I’m very impressionable; I’m very influenced by what I see and hear, and that usually finds its way, somehow, into what we do.
Karnig and Mike are from the UK, and they make this jump in 2013 to move out to Los Angeles. How did you all meet, and when did you notice that your way of writing and producing music meshed well?
Well, we met through a mutual friend. Around that time, they had departed with their previous singer. I had already been playing in a lot of bands for close to a decade before that, just like them. It was interesting because when we all met, we were looking to change…just experiment with different genres of music and different playing styles. We got in a room after meeting, and one of the first songs we wrote was called “Out Of My Head”. We wrote it in like two days. After that, we all kind of knew and thought, “Okay, this is gonna work.”
We’d obviously written music with other people before, and you can tell if that chemistry isn’t there, if it becomes a lot of work. But writing music with them, to this day is very natural. It doesn’t feel forced.
I know that the band has worked with John Feldmann, but I wasn’t sure of the timeline. Did Feldmann produce these tracks? If not, who was the producer on these tracks we’ve heard thus far?
So John Feldmann was pre-my time in the band. But I’ve met John, he’s a really nice guy. As far as who produced the stuff that I’m singing on, that was Karnig, our guitar player. It’s a really in-house process, and that’s the cool part about it. It’s less chefs in the kitchen.
Him and I have this really cool bond when it comes to writing. Like I mentioned before, we all have this really cool chemistry going on, and it’s really exciting making music with him. But yeah, he was the mastermind behind all the production, all that fun stuff.
That’s an interesting avenue to take. Usually, when you hear a band coming out with a new album, you’ll hear “New album coming from this band! Produced by such-and-such big name producer.” What kind of environment does that make for when it’s totally in-house and you don’t have that “fifth member”?
Well, Karnig and I will write together, and it can have its moments of turmoil, just like any other recording session will have. But I’d say, for the most part, it’s pretty organic and natural. It’s nice, and there obviously benefits to being able to do everything in-house, in that we’re able to control everything that we want to do and how we want to execute the songs. And obviously, you can make the argument of “Oh, well you don’t get another set of ears on it, or another opinion”. This is just the way that we’ve always done it. We’ve been very fortunate. When I joined the band, and they were already busy working on other music and things like that, but they’d worked with John Feldmann and Bob Rock, some really cool people. I think Karnig has learned some really interesting things from them. I think he’s a genius personally; and I may be quite biased for saying that, because I hang out all the time and work with him, but he has a unique way of approaching songs and the soundscapes. And he’s not afraid to do things, which is one of the main themes within our music. With this new stuff, we’re just taking risks, constantly. We’re just going, “Let’s see what this sounds like.” And we spend very little time talking about it. If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, we try something new.
In regards to any upcoming music (as much as you can reveal), what can listeners expect as far as any new singles or an album?
Well as far as new music goes, there’s going to be new single coming out on Friday.At least I think we’re planning that! It might be a little later in the month, but we’re definitely still staying on the train of “one a month”. So very, very soon. (The new single, “Flames”, will be out on May 22nd.)
Finally: Anything to plug?
Yeah! On Instagram, usually once a week, we’ll do live sessions. We actually just did one today, but it was through a different publication. It was very cool though! We’ll take requests, do a Q&A, hang out, and if you’d like to get to know us, that’s the best way to do it, since at the moment you can’t meet us after a show at the merch booth or anything like that.
Charming Liars
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