Their first record since 2004’s Cool to be You, Hypercaffium picks up directly where the band left off, with ample time given to songwriting and avoiding the stresses of rushing out an album. “We started making it a year and a half ago and we finished it up in April or May this year. It was a long time coming and took us a while to synchronise our schedules,” says Aukerman. “It’s something we all wanted to do. We try and play a lot of the new songs live. When we play in Europe next month we want to play at least half the album live. It’s exciting to be playing new songs.”
Since originally leaving the band in 1987 to pursue a career as a scientist, Aukerman has balanced his career with intermittent band commitments. Despite a successful career in the field, the call of music appears to have finally won the battle. “I had a corporate science gig and it was starting to get a little miserable. They were putting me in positions I wasn’t excited about. Over the past few years I’ve been thinking ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.’ It was really getting me down and then they laid me off. We were making the new record so the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I was at the company for 15 years and I don’t see the need to go back to science any time soon. It soured me. We’ve been playing shows again since 2010, and I’ve been biding my time, waiting for an opportunity to cut ties with my job and get back to the band. It turns out the band is probably what I should’ve been doing all along. Despite my advanced age, I finally figured out what I really wanted to do,” Aukerman says. “It’s the first time I’ve been in a band where I can say ‘This is what I want to focus 100 per cent of my attention on’ without having to dilute it with other interests such as science. I’ve always been very passionate about science and I always considered that to be my main career with music as a hobby, but I’m learning that I had it the wrong way around; perhaps music should be my full-time career and have science as the hobby.”
Keeping a band together for over three decades is no easy task, however Aukerman credits the strength of the relationship with his bandmates, especially founding member and health-troubled drummer Bill Stevenson, as keeping the energy and motivation alive. “When I was working on my science career we lost contact to some degree, however Bill Stevenson and I go back to high school and the bond there is so strong that we might not see each other for months, even years and I can give him a call any time. It’s one of those never ending constancies in our lives. In the mid-2000s we weren’t in contact much, but in 2009 when Bill had his health issues we got back in touch. I realised that I might be losing my best friend. He eventually had all these surgeries and recovered which reignited our friendship and the band. We were so ecstatic about his reversal of fortune where he beat his health issues and felt on top of the world again. It was a snowball effect from there. Since then, we haven’t looked back.”
The band has always focused on real-world situations, with trademarks of being a social outcast alongside everyday frustrations. “We’re married to this ‘documenting our lives’ thing. Bands write songs about made-up stories, we can’t do that. We’re so focused on trying to document our own reality. I’m committed to trying to expand that palette, trying to delve deeper into my imagination, but as it stands we just write about our lives. We’ve got Bill who’s gone through health scares so there’s songs about that, plus songs about family issues and other things that directly affect us. We’re in a band together because we were these nerdy kids that wanted to vocalise our frustrations in high school. Now we vocalise frustrations about things that we’re currently dealing with.”
While decade long gaps between albums and tours are often signs of a band lacking energy and determination, Aukerman used the extra time to their advantage. “Playing intermittently has meant that we’ve never burned out. It’s never been a drudgery or a drag. Now we’re all fully back into it we could put out another record in the next two or three years tour more often. We don’t do it because we have to, we do it because we want to and that’s what keeps us fresh and enthusiastic.”
BY JOE HANSEN
