We’ve been listening to Far since the mid-90’s (shit, writing that sentence hurts) and getting a special boner for “Mother Mary” from Water & Solutions (just like every other black hoodie wearing, mix-tape schilling indie kid on the block). Try and deny an affinity (see: nostalgia) for the angst emanating from Jonah Mantanega’s singing or Sean Lopez’s distortion-ladled guitar and you’ll find yourself lost in a world of self-denial (melodic hardcore! Oxymorons!). We met up with the dudes in San Francisco to discuss Ginuwine, Obama, death by iTunes shuffle and their new album “At Night We Live”.
Far
FUN Artists: Introductions?
Jonah Matranga: Hi. I’m Jonah and I sing and play a little bit of guitar in the band Far.
Shaun Lopez: I’m Shaun, I play guitar in the band Far, all the time.
FUN Artists: So you guys got back together in ’08?
Jonah Matranga: Wow, was it 2008? That is insane. I guess so.
FUN Artists: Have you been touring since then or just focusing on recording the new album?
Jonah Matranga: For the past year the focus has been the record. It feels like we just fell down the stairs and we were a band again. It didn’t start out that we were gonna record a record, we were just gonna play a few shows, so we did a handful of those. And I swear, I don’t even know where it happened, all the sudden we were recording our new record. That was it, no big tours, no nothing; just play some shows for fun and hangout. And then we did this weird cover [Pony by R&B singer Ginuwine] and all hell broke loose.
FUN Artists: Does anyone have families?
Jonah Matranga: We both have 15-year-old children.
FUN Artists: How has that changed touring, recording, etc.?
Shaun Lopez: Well, I’m a producer and I have the studio at my house, my kid is a musician too so he kind of has it made.
Jonah Matranga: When the band split I kept making music, but generally I toured solo which was a lot easier logistically, going out for a little spurts of time. And with the band there’s kind of a lot of stuff you have to do and you can’t generally fly a bunch of places unless you’re really rich, and it’s a huge country, so driving… It just basically makes it harder to do. I mean, I did it when my daughter was really young and we made it work, but yeah it’s nice to be home. Our drummer has two kids now too, so, we all live in different cities. It’s awesome.
FUN Artists: Where do you all live now?
Jonah Matranga: I live in San Francisco, Shaun lives in LA, John our bassist lives in Sacramento, and our drummer lives in San Diego.
FUN Artists: What would you say have been your biggest creative influences in the last ten years?
Shaun Lopez: I guess I wasn’t really into The Beatles when I was younger, but as I got older I got really into them, and I’m still really into them, and I can only get more into them. I was more of a metal kid growing up, and I still love some metal. It’s really weird when I think about songs from the new record. I was really trying to capture that one thing about that one song I really like. For me it hardly ever sounds like that song, but there’s something, it’s like a feeling I get from that song that I want to put across. But maybe we’d be a bigger band if I ripped the song off.
Jonah Matranga: I think for me the single biggest sonic influence has actually been R & B hits; the most creative production has gone on in them. It’s not that I’ve made music that sounds like that, but I’m enthralled with it and it’s definitely the thing I’ve listened to most. I’ve always loved hip hop, but I’ve never tried to make hip hop, and I doubt I ever will, but it’s always inspired me, and that production has always been really, really great. And the, as cliché’ as it sounds, the biggest influence in my life, in the last few years at least, has been Obama. Aside from the fact that I agree with his politics, but just his focus, and his drive, and his fearlessness has been so inspiring to me. And just that he didn’t settle for anything but having the most incredible life. I think like a lot of other people in the world, it really lit me up to see him tear it up. And he continues to really blow me away.
FUN Artists: Did you ever have a reaction like that to any other political figure?
Jonah Matranga: No, no. That’s the whole thing, it’s…
Shaun Lopez: Yeah, it’s whether or not you believe he’s actually following through with all the things he’s promised. I feel kind of like what happened during that whole thing with people getting involved, young people, it was pretty insane just to see that.
Jonah Matranga: Again, I’ll defend him and sing his praise forever. I think he’s doing an incredible job actually, of being the president of a really really polarized nation that is even more polarized because we now have a black president. All that said, I remember when he was campaigning, he was just my favorite band in the world. And when he spoke it was like going to a rock show, it was like that intense. It was like the same feeling I got while I was watching a U2 concert, it was just big and huge and for everyone and really inclusive. It was just a really fun time that year; it was like my favorite tour ever.
FUN Artists: What is the relationship to your earliest albums and material; nostalgia, impressed, proud…?
Jonah Matranga: I’m proud of moments on everything we’ve made. I feel like the more music we’ve made the more consistently it gives me that feeling that I want to get from music I make. Even way back in the beginning I can point at little tiny moments where I thought “O, we got it!”, but then it’s surrounded by a lot of stuff I really want to never hear again. I mean not that I hate it, but I just wouldn’t play it for anyone trying to explain what I think is special about us. But I think on this last record there are a lot of moments and there’s a consistency… I think the main thing about this record verses the other ones is really that we… Well, it certainly took me by surprise, that there was really no time to freak out about out identity the way we might have done in the past. And also I think we’ve all really grown as musicians and so this record, I know I went to it as a singer with a lot more confidence. Not that I’m so great, I just think that before I was very self conscious about my voice and how I wanted it to be treated. This time I just told him [points to Shaun] “Go to town. I’ll sing my heart out and you just take it…” And there was a lot of freedom cause he was making it in his own studio. I’d be sending him mixes and he’d say “Yeah that sounds cool, what about a little noise here?” and I’d say “OK great…”, so it was this very collaborative process and there was a lot of freedom having him do it.
Shaun Lopez: I think there was less of a battle. I would say most of our earlier stuff, I kind of felt like I was trying to show off, and he [Jonah] was trying to show off, and we were trying to like out show off each other in a way.
Jonah Matranga: I don’t know about showing off. What I would say is, I was always scared of going too far into “your direction”, and if you’re too scared to go in “my direction”, which might have been valid cause we both have these very strong visions, but it was like we were always trying to pull it back from the other way. I don’t think it was that we wanted to look so great, but that we just wanted to make sure that our stamp was on it and that it didn’t get overwhelmed by the other dude’s stamp. And this time I think our actual visions of what a good rock group is kind of coalesced actually, and we both kind of settled down; [speaking to Shaun] like you like The Beatles more, and we both have kind of settled into it. For me, I certainly went into it with a lot of healthy detachment of like, “Alright, we’re just gonna make this thing, all I want is for us to be proud of it…” And the minute I started hearing stuff Shaun was tracking I was like “It’s gonna be fine.”
Shaun Lopez: And I think one thing we’ve both been better about is like, we just cared a lot less about stupid things that really don’t matter. And you know, we kind of just pick and choose and say “OK this is important, I’m gonna really stick to this, and I could really care less about this, either way the decision is going to be fine and something I can stand behind”. I think in a way that’s really been great.
Jonah Matranga: And I think it goes back to that identity thing. I think we’re not so worried about a particular vision being fulfilled. We saw enough being fulfilled and saw that it was gonna be fine and none of us were gonna run away with it. Really this is the most collaborative record we’ve ever made writing wise. Cause a lot of time before I was coming with a lot of full songs, and again it was a type of songwriting that you just didn’t do, whereas this time a lot of your musical ideas, they weren’t more like mine but they were more…
Shaun Lopez: …They were more varied, and also if I would send him something it would never have to be exactly that. And in the age of computers I’d send him something and he’d cut it up and all of the sudden it was something totally different that I had never envisioned, but it was always for a reason and always good. So I was like, go for it, cut it up.
Jonah Matranga: And it was fun for me cause he would just send me these… I’d just look at them like these little puzzles cause they’d just be these really cool little ideas here and there and I’d just get to play and he was so open to me messing around.
FUN Artists: These are most of the songs on the new record?
Jonah Matranga: These are all the songs that are on the new record. There’s two songs on the new record that weren’t co-written by us… and even those I like how they turned out, but the reason I like the way they turned out is that he took them to town and really produced them in a neat way. But also, frankly, those two songs kind of came into the band at a stage when we weren’t even sure we were making a record. It was sort of like “Hey, what do we have that would be easy to do right now?” and I was like “well I have these songs and I think we can play those well…”. But I see them as, I love them, but I don’t see them nearly as strong as some of the other stuff on the record, and they’re my songs and I love them, but I think the collaborative stuff is way better.
FUN Artists: And the collaborative efforts are mainly you two?
Jonah Matranga: It’s only us two. Back in the day there was more from the other guys, but because of the way this record was being written with all of us in different places, it just… Well I mean, we were just the ones that were just doing the ideas. We’ve all got , everyone in the band, really full lives, but Shaun and I are the two people, in some ways, in the band who are actively still doing something like the record we made. John our bassist is still playing a bunch of music in several bands actually. So he was kind of busy with that. Chris has got a very full life… We’re still like the two hideaway music geeks, so we would just be on our computers and pass ideas to each other.
FUN Artists: Is there anyone in your individual projects that you guys would like to collaborate with?
Shaun Lopez: I just love… I really didn’t write music for like four years, I didn’t write one song just cause I got really busy producing other people. If anything, even if this band doesn’t do anything, it kind of really renewed my love for writing music, and now I’m writing all the time… I love working with other people period, so it’s just fun, especially when it’s stuff I write, if it’s people that I really dig what they do and they’re talented and all that…
Jonah Matranga: I could give you a dream list… Give us a couple days with Timbaland, Johnnie Greenwood [Radiohead]… Who do we want on bass? I could build you eight bands and producers.
FUN Artists: Besides The Beatles, who are you guys listening to, like heavy rotation style?
Jonah Matranga: Dirty Projectors is probably my favorite recent band, they are killin’ me. And full disclosure, I know someone in the band, but it’s not, I’m not trying to vote for my friend, I just think. [looks to Shaun and says] Have you seen them yet? Man you gotta. Go check em out, I think it’s on the…what show did they debut this on? Saturday Night Live dude with The Roots as his backup band… Jimmy Fallon! They debuted a new song on his show that was insane. And it was so, the way they do the vocals was so nutty that Questlove and the rest of The Roots kind of thought they used tapes or something like that and so this amazing Flip Video shot by Questlove in backstage where he’s like “will you play that song?” and they do it and it’s amazing. So anyways, Dirty projectors rule, Band of Horses are one of my favorite bands the past few years, and then again, all the R & B stuff; Beyonce, like no sarcasm, I think she’s amazing. I think Jay Z’s new record is really good, I kind of admire him more as a person then as an “artist” in some ways, I don’t listen to his records that often, but I think he’s done some amazing stuff. And kind of that stuff that got made for him, like for his a capellas, like The Grey Album and Jaydiohead and weird… you know, the whole weird remix mash up thing is something I don’t really like, but some of it can be really exciting.
Shaun Lopez: Fever Ray, this girl sings for this band called The Knife, she kind of has her own thing and it’s really cool, just really cool production, and her voice is so sick… I like this French band called M83, it’s just one guy, but he’s kinda… it’s very synthie, and kind of 80’s, but it’s really sick production and I really dig the songs.
Jonah Matranga: I feel like there’s a synthie thing that we did…
Shaun Lopez: Well yeah it’s funny, cause The Ghost That Kept on Haunting, which to me off all the record is my favorite thing I wrote, and that was the first thing you wrote too, which I thought you would never write… That’s me trying to be M83… in a way, Because the newest M83 record, the opening song is like this thing that is kind of like that, but it’s on piano, and he’s just repeating this vocal over and over, and it’s very Prince style, and it kind of gave me this feeling, and I wanted that, and I kind of mixed it with this like Nine Inch Nails… that drum thing… But, I don’t know, it’s kind of tough for me to say I really like this band, because I get into songs; and I hate that because I hate that we are living in such a song world…
Jonah Matranga: So True…
Shaun Lopez: I mean, I really think that the shuffle has killed my… my soul. And I shuffle all the time, that’s all I do, and even when I’m on shuffle I still skip to the next song, I don’t finish, it’s like a problem.
Jonah Matranga: Yeah, the shuffle’s kind of weird, but even that’s kind of OK, what I really think is destroying music is this whole music in the cloud, endless streaming, aggregated music where it’s, “If you like this, then you’ll like…”, that sort of Pandora thing, and Pandora is a fine idea and everything, but I just don’t want a machine telling me what it thinks I’ll like, I want a friend to tell me that. And maybe that’s old fashion of me, but I just like that better… But there are still… I think Band of Horses and Dirty Projectors they are two bands that I think are making really quality records, but getting back to the hip-hop thing, I think Lil’ Wayne has made a couple of the coolest most consistent records over the past bunch of years.
Shaun Lopez: Yeah that last Lil’ Wayne record, not the new one, it’s terrible, but the last one is so sick. It lived up to all that hype, it sold millions in the first week, and I really do think it’s just a good good record… There’s also this band, I wont say I dig all their stuff, but, called The KickDrums and its basically these two white hip hop dudes that are more known for making beats for rappers, but you can tell they are like really into Radiohead. They made this record where the production is great, and that’s the weird thing because when you produce music sometimes when something just sounds really good you’re like “O man, I love the way this sounds”, and they are definitely like that. Their songs are really cool, I wouldn’t say they are great, but just the way they put it all together, it’s very hip hop influenced, but it’s mixed with more of a rock song format.
FUN Artists: Are you guys happy?
Jonah Matranga: Yes. I recently had a good realization that I think that I do not articulate how happy I am around other people because I’m scared of it somehow being uncomfortable for them…
FUN Artists: Wow, you gotta get over that.
Jonah Matranga: Yeah and I did, it was this great realization that I get to say “O wow, I get to say that I’m happy in my life!” and if they’re not happy in their lives…and like most things, it’s a way back to childhood thing… but it was a really good thing for me to realize that. So, it’s not like I’m walking around smiling all the time, but I just feel so lucky. I mean I have raised my kid making music, this whole thing is a total miracle in a lot of ways; I mean I’ve done literally hundreds of interviews saying “Nah, I don’t think Far will ever play again,” and so I just didn’t see this coming. So there’s a lot of… I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.
Shaun Lopez: O yeah. Amen.
