“We end up doing things we think aren’t heavy, and people just think everything’s heavy,” says Monks. “We think we’ve written a pop song, and apparently it’s not. If you talk about primal energy, maybe we’re talking about the natural state of the band. We’re a better live band than we are anything else, I think. That said, I feel like we’ve been quite ambitious in some of the things we’ve done that I worry about how to replicate live.
“We got the Bad Bitch Choir to come in and help us out. We got Nerdlinger and Rick Dangerous and The Silkie Bantams to come and do some vocals. I think Sackcloth [The Sackcloth Saint Of The Cornfield], there are 72 vocal tracks, so we got a bit histrionic with vocals.”
In support of Monks’ earlier statement, for the most part the album circumvents anything that remotely resembles the pop sphere. However, that’s not the case with the record’s lead single, the aforementioned Sackcloth, which is easily the most accessible song in Gay Paris’ three-album catalogue.
“We tried to put some other vocals over the chorus, and then I was like, ‘I’m just going to sing the guitar riff,’ and we were like, ‘Actually, we’ve got a hook.’ But then the first road test it got was on tour with Sleepmakeswaves. We were playing wedged in between math-rock instrumental bands on either side of us, so I don’t know if their audience is a good way to judge how it goes live.
“We’ve got a lot of friends that have heard it who are like, ‘It’s the song man.’ What’s the song for Gay Paris? I just think it’s a catchy rock’n’roll song.”
The album recording and release was made possible by a crowdfunding campaign; a strategy Gay Paris also used to finance 2013’s The Last Good Party. In the unstable contemporary music world, crowdfunding has become an effective DIY outlet, giving some power back to the people. However, it’s rarely a stress-free exercise, and it’s probably not guilt-free either.
“I said, after we crowdfunded The Last Good Party, that I wasn’t comfortable with doing it again. I put my trepidation and my moral concerns on hold because the band is a democracy and the other three guys were up for it. It is fraught, it’s perilous, I don’t think that it’s great, and I do see a drop off in the success of it. Or maybe people are asking for more.”
Despite having executed two successful crowdfunding campaigns, Gay Paris’ relationship with listeners isn’t always quite so positive. It seems the blatant accessibility of Sackcloth has confused some newcomers. “People who got to hear it as their first taste of Gay Paris, just through some YouTube comments, were like, ‘I heard you were going to be like Clutch. This is weak.’ Or, ‘This is hipster cunts trying to be metal.’ I just thought, ‘This is great. If you still think that’s trying to be metal, what fucking metal are you listening to?’ It must be either the greatest or the worst metal in the world.”
The ‘metal’ tag is often thrown around in discussions about Gay Paris. The validity of this claim is debatable, but it’s of no great worry for Monks.
“I’ve got no beef with being called metal or hard rock, or hipster for that matter. We are the band that we are. I think us doing the tagging, it’s quite false, because I don’t see there being picket fences that you can’t jump over or kick down.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
