Or maybe, if you remember what it’s like to have a human conversation, he’s a breath of fresh air. Yeah it’s virtually impossible to keep him focused on business questions – current tours, this year’s album How To Stop Your Brain In An Accident, press release regurgitation – but the guy’s got plenty to say and it’s far more interesting and funny than most people.
For a moment he talks shop, discussing the band’s recent British tour and their plot to return to the US sometime soon. “It’s quite difficult to the get to America but a band of our size can usually find a way to get over there and not lose money,” Falco says. “That’s always the insane dream anyway. It’s just an incredible experience overall so even if it’s just a month a year, the experience of the States is a wonderful thing. Other than that I’ve just been fuckin’ workin’, I’ve been disappointed but enriched by the cricket, drinkin’, runnin’, injuring myself running, having a tooth-ache – the usual things.”
After a successful crowd funding campaign FOTL released How To Stop Your Brain In An Accident in October of this year to an eager audience. Measuring the album’s success so far is something that Falco finds a strange process.
“It’s hard in a way,” he begins. “A person, unless they’re a close friend or someone whose views you value intensely, well it’s sad to say their opinions aren’t really that important. But I guess album reviews have been good – even though the influence of album reviews compared to 20 years ago when that was a big gateway for a band and how much they’d get listen to – I guess they have some influence. On that basis, and on the basis of the audience response it’s gone fairly well. Most people liked it but then there are people out there that just don’t fucking like things. You ask them why and they’re like, ‘I just don’t’.”
Is that a criticism on the state of keyboard activism, Reddit-style hatefests and internet communication in general? “Absolutely but the problem with criticising the internet in any way or the morals of the internet is that instantly, even with a fully functioning brain, it makes you sound like an 85-year-old man who’s just retired from 70 years as a weaver,” he says. “But yeah, I’m 38-years-old and much of the internet flowered on the heels of my generation and the people who drive the internet are teenagers basically. The people who follow the teenagers are those desperate people who desperately want to appear relevant.
“Something I find really interesting in all of this is how aggressive some fans can be of bands whose music isn’t aggressive at all. Some of the most aggressive people I’ve ever met are Stone Roses fans. Why is that? Why does, ‘After all she’s a waterfall’ translate to ‘I’m gonna fuck you up mate’? Yet a bunch of guys who listen to death metal somehow translates to them in a circle pit going, ‘Oh I’m sorry, did I get in your way?’ It’s really bizarre. It’s strange how people’s entertainment choices don’t represent who they are. So often in life the correlations are clear but not always. I guess there are exceptions; I’ve never been head-butted by a Keane fan. But of course our fans are just lovely.”
With a growing audience, though, often comes an increasing disconnect from artist and audience, but Falco doesn’t seem to view any separation at all between band and fan. “I don’t really think about it in those terms to be honest with you,” he says. “There’s sometimes a lot of entitlement in music and art and bands shouldn’t expect anything from their fans – and I use this term with the greatest respect just because if someone called me a ‘fan’ of something I’d punch them; it’s not the power position in that relationship, let’s face it. And all a fan can expect from a band is the record a band wants to make. A record should be, for better or worse, a work of art. A live show is a different thing, a live show, for me, is entertainment. You go up there and play the hits and make them more interesting; it’s an hour and a half assault where you’ll hopefully leave people bewildered.”
And then there’s Australian crowds. “Australian crowds can go either way – some of the best shows I’ve ever had have been in Oz but we’ve also had some of the most weirdly cantankerous. My theory, well our theory, is that if you go onstage too late on a weekend night in Australia, people are too drunk. Not every fucker in the room but the kind of people that shout shit out are too drunk. It’s very easy to get an Australian crowd on side, wherever you are, you say that place name and say they’re a bunch of c*nts there and everyone cheers. That’s really nice but that doesn’t work anywhere else. It really didn’t work in LA.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
