New Englanders Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino were Brooklyn college students who started out with a plan to keep things simple and fun. The duo that became Matt & Kim maintained that DIY approach in their debut self-titled album three years ago. Their live act has been described by some as what happens when you mix Red Bull with Coke and even more sugar -- and then give three bottles of it to musicians. Indeed, their live show has brought them many fans and acclaim. Earlier this year, Mat & Kim followed up their debut with the more complex but still energetic and fun Grand. They are currently on tour with Cut Copy.
We spoke to Matt recently during their drive from Birmingham to Baton Rouge. After a brief introduction discussing the horrid weather at the time and Kim's Rhode Island pride (note: the writer of this piece originally hails from there as well), we discussed their tour, the scope of their new album, as well their means of sustaining themselves in a tasteful manner.
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Let us begin with the Cut Copy tour. Actually, let's just begin with the year in general. You start off touring in support of your new album, then you hit up a secret show opening for Lily Allen, and now you're supporting Cut Copy. It's a good start. How have you been holding up?
Good, good. We've been in the first week of this six-week trip we're on right now. We'll end up meeting up with Cut Copy in two days in Austin. We just had a run of shows down the West Coast, which was one of the best groups of shows we ever had. They were all sold out. And then we've been doing these shows, and they've been super fun. We're excited to meet up with Cut Copy in Austin. After working so hard on that album, I'm just excited to go out and keep playing shows.
[With the latter two], it seems like there's a bit of a divergence from what your audience has been as well as the scope of your audience. Has there been much to adjust with that?
I don't know. Our band has been very gradual in the sense that we just started playing shows early on before we had an album out. We started touring and just kept playing shows and kept building slowly and slowly. I remember the first time we were scheduled to play at festivals, and I'm thinking “Oh my gosh, there's going to be a barrier that's 12-feet deep in front of the stage. It's going to be weird because we're used to playing in art spaces where people hung all around us!” But then we just do what we always do, which is be ourselves, don't put on any front. Just do the same thing. And it seems to project really well. The kind of response we've gotten through people at festivals of 10,000 people like in Europe or the U.S. has been really positive.
Let's talk about “Grand” now. The first thing I noticed, in particular with just the first two songs you put out ["Daylight" and "Good Ol Fashioned Nightmare"], is the increased complexity, in particular with instrumentation and rhythm. Is that just a natural evolution or something you wanted to do before you had access to better equipment?
Yeah, we wanted to do that all along. Essentially, when we recorded our first album, our only other album, we just had no time to try anything. I remember when we initially went into that studio, we had only a week there. I was like, “Well, I don't really want to use our live instrumentation.” Matt & Kim isn't necessarily keyboards and drums; Matt & Kim is whatever the hell Matt & Kim choose to play. But just to track down your live instrumentation is a good starting point. We had no time, and that just ended up being it. So it is what is. I think it's good stance in time right then. But we always wanted to make more complex sounds and more instruments.
You've taken a certain pride, when you started out, as this band from Brooklyn. But you've made a certain point about how you recorded Grand out of your childhood bedroom in Vermont, as well as mentioning Kim's family appearing at one stop in Rhode Island on last year's tour. Your lyrics also seem to take a step away from the location. Has much changed in Brooklyn, in your mind, since you started out? Do you feel as much a connection to the borough as you did before? And how has that translated on Grand?
I don't see us moving anywhere else, but on the same end, we are hardly ever there. We're complete visitors at this point. We still have a residence there -- it's where my ID says I live; it's where I pay my rent. But we tour for nine months out of the year. When we decided to record in Vermont, it was more or less... to be in New York is a great place to get inspired. When your friends do rad stuff -- whatever it's in, whether it's music, or photography or film, or art, or anything -- it makes you want to do rad stuff too. But to sit down and make a completed, finished item, there's so many things like “Can you come out tonight,” and then you wake up tomorrow and you're hungover, and you can't work well. In Vermont, there was just nothing; there were no distractions. There were just three cow pastures around that house. We were able to just sit down and work.
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"Matt & Kim isn't necessarily keyboards and drums; Matt & Kim is whatever the hell Matt & Kim choose to play."
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Going back to that point about recording in Vermont. How did the isolation play out in terms of just recording?
It was just a trial and error learning process. I dabbled with recording before, but this was about needing to make a finished-sounding album. Something that we were concerned with the last time we recorded was that we kept trying to make the engineer make it sound crappier. We didn't want to sound cute and clean and sterile. I was like, “I can do this myself and make it sound crappier!” So, there is a lot of experimenting, which is cool. When you are traditionally trained in anything, you have certain ways things are “supposed to be done.” But it's whatever sounds cool in the end. There's nothing, no know-how in how it's supposed to be done. We found that we could get cool sounds by putting mics in other rooms or in the washing machine. We had plenty of time to experiment.
I can see how that would work out. I'm an engineer as well, and I've been working out with certain things like recording vocals in a closet, so I can see where you're going with that.
Yeah. All the vocals were recorded using three microphones. One close mic, one mic that's for the room. And one mic down the hall in another room, to get as much space as possible on the vocal.
Maybe I'm just cherry-picking here, but a certain few songs lyrically represent some sense of struggle, either financially or otherwise. Is that something you are relating to real life in some way?
Well, no. Some lyrics can kind of seem like a struggle. With one of our songs, “Good Ol Fashioned Nightmare,” essentially what it kind of turned into being about was the difference between how I grew up in Vermont, and before we were doing the band full time, Kim was this nanny for these two little girls. It was the difference of how the growing up really was. Basically, while I was recording [in Vermont] between these three cow pastures, it was just “sidewalks are unassuming fields,” but it's not in a negative way. It's just an observation that they would sit on the stoop and view sidewalk chalk and draw pictures on the sidewalk in the same way that me and my brother would go sledding on these unassuming fields. Even though there's all the differences and all how it's seemingly difficult is to raise a child in that sort of environment, they are just the coolest kids, these two little girls. So, it was just about comparing the differences and overcoming the odds.
With that note, you've been particularly vocal about how some people have claimed, in light that you released one of your songs via sponsorship with Mountain Dew as well as collaborating with Converse, that you've sold out, you've become a brand. Do you think their arguments have any merit at this point in time?
It's weird. We thought a lot about whenever we take part in something like this. I understand that we got some hate when we've done a couple things, like we did a Virgin Mobile commercial in Canada or we were in that commercial for Juno in the United States. And we got some emails like, “Aw, man, what's with this? I used to DJ your songs, and now I'm not going to do it anymore.” And I'm trying to think about it and putting my mind set especially back to being a little bit younger. Music is a special thing, and people hold it very close to their hearts, especially when it's something more on underground level that not everybody knows about. It's theirs, and as soon as you start giving it to the masses or putting together something else, they feel like you're taking it away from them. And so I understand that. On the other hand, we try to work with partners that will be very tasteful about it. With Green Label Sound [the Mountain Dew sponsors], that whole campaign was they were willing to put money forward to advertise stuff like that, to give away free music, and to have us go on this trip with a band we really liked, the Cool Kids. And they had the shows only cost $5 for people to get into. As much as we were worried that there was something wrong with it, in a way, we just couldn't see it. At the end of the day, they are trying to sell their product and we have to be things, but if they are willing to do it in a tasteful way, then I think everyone wins in the end.
Do you think it's even possible to survive at this point as a musician without having to resort to commercializing to some degree?
Record sales are a non-existing factor pretty much. It's never really something that existed since we started as a band, so it's never something we banked on. We do shows, and that's how we get by. But if we can find good partners to work with, sponsors that are, in my mind, done tastefully and not offensively -- and we get to have our ticket prices lowered, and we're able to travel more; and we don't have to choose the wrong shows for the wrong reasons, just play at the best place -- then it works out really, for ourselves and for people who would like our band and come see us. It helps compensate with us not having to pass all the expenses onto them. In my mind, it just seems like a positive thing to utilize. Not just a necessary evil, but something that works well.
Back to touring, with your meeting up with Cut Copy in Austin, it seems like you're skipping South by Southwest. What are your thoughts on such events, and do you feel you are skipping it intentionally, or was it something that just happened that way?
Well, the tour isn't going to South by Southwest, but Kim and I actually are going to South by Southwest. We have one day off -- I don't know if it's listed yet or not -- between Chicago and Toronto, and we're going to fly in and do a Green Label Sound show. You know, we went there the last three years the whole time, and I've had a total blast while I'm there. But I never believed in the doing one show that helps you with the industry and stuff like that. People would ask, “So do you think being down here brings up your status with certain people?” and I'm like “I'm just down here to hang out with my friends and drink and do shows.” But it's different than living in New York City. When you are from there and you play a lot there, you are around a lot of those people a lot more times than if you are a band that's from the middle of nowhere; and this is a time where you can be at closer proximity to a lot more people who help in that department. But all that said, I think it's a lot of fun and that's why we're going to be down there for one day.