“Wherever people want to go and have fun, that’s where Matt & Kim make sense,” declares a super excitable Matt Johnson, the male namesake of New York duo Matt & Kim. Describing Johnson as ‘eager’ is to do the man something of a disservice. Cross a child’s Christmas Eve excitement with a puppy’s unwavering, tail-wagging affection, add a large dose of unconditional positivity and you have something close to Johnson’s disposition.
“Wherever people want to go and have fun, that’s where Matt & Kim make sense,” declares a super excitable Matt Johnson, the male namesake of New York duo Matt & Kim. Describing Johnson as ‘eager’ is to do the man something of a disservice. Cross a child’s Christmas Eve excitement with a puppy’s unwavering, tail-wagging affection, add a large dose of unconditional positivity and you have something close to Johnson’s disposition. As he chats from home town Brooklyn ahead of Big Day Out, Johnson’s implacable enthusiasm is to be expected given the unabated exuberance of Sidewalks , the pop-punk-indie couple’s recently-released third album.
In one exhale, Johnson describes how Sidewalks marks the first time he and his partner Kim have ventured back into the studio since recording their previous album Grand in his Vermont childhood home. Working with notable producers like Ben Allen (who produced Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion) suited Matt & Kim’s genre-bending tendencies, while allowing them to spend more time thinking about songs and less time thinking about technical tedium such as “how the hell to make a snare drum sound like a snare drum.” Johnson reports that the couple are resoundingly satisfied with the end product. “We put in painstaking effort to make sure that we were proud of every single song on there and for different reasons. The feedback has been great . . . It works as an album.”
Having graced our shores last April, Matt & Kim are returning for the Big Day Out circuit. Although Australia may be a country in which Johnson feels Matt & Kim have made less headway than the ‘States, he’s quick to add that it is still a territory that feels “very positive.” “People are ready to have fun and get wild. That’s what we like at our show. It seems like Australia likes to have fun.
“When we were in Brisbane we played at this public area where there was a pool but it was pouring rain, and it was going to get cancelled so we decided just to squeeze everyone in to the women’s locker room and bring half the PA in there.” Although it sounds closer to hell on earth, Johnson’s carefree demeanour seems immune to the frustration this experience might evoke in ordinary mortals… “It was a good time,” he enthuses. “It was my first and only bathroom that I’ve ever played in – so I’ve been proud of that.”
It’s just as well that Australian audiences are amenable to a bit of fun, as it’s something in which Matt & Kim are well practiced. If they’re not having food thrown at their white-clad bodies (Yea Yeah), wilfully abandoning their clothes in the middle of Times Square ( Lessons Learned) or squeezing into impossibly tiny spaces (Daytime) in their film clips, they’re being accompanied by a fully-decked-out marching band or giving impromptu covers of R. Kelly’s Ignition or Beyonce’s Crazy In Love on stage. I’m just keen to know how two people can have so much damn fun all the time. “Well, I think the secret is that being in a band and playing music is fucking fun!” quips Johnson. “I don’t know why there are so many people who play music for a living that look like they’re in so much pain. This is one of the most fun jobs I could ever think of.”
But even the most fun job must sometimes be trying when you’re working 24/7 with your partner, right? “Any other relationship I’ve been in, we would have murdered each other many years ago. But for some reason, Kim and I really see eye to eye on everything and we’re best friends,” Johnson assures me. “I don’t why it works, but it just works… it’s an ideal situation.”
As glad (read, moderately envious) as I am that Johnson gushes proud, happy enjoyment about everyone and everything that he’s ever encountered, I’m battling a rising queasiness associated with feeling trapped in a Brady Bunch, rose-coloured-lenses kind of parallel universe… Surely there must be something that makes Johnson see red. Well, as it turns out, there are actually two things. With Thanksgiving a recent memory, Johnson fesses up that “it is basically impossible to not make vegetarian gravy taste awful,” – and I’m impressed he has the ‘a’ word in his vocabulary.
Another, more topical annoyance is pretension. “What I don’t like is when musicians are contrived”, Johnson admits. “Like, you can tell they’ve strapped the guitar on and stood in front of the full length mirror and they’ve put on their too-cool face, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s the look for stage.’ I just wanna vomit a little when I see that.”
Good: vomit. That’s more like it.
Johnson, on the other hand, doesn’t seem contrived; his affably unassuming and genuine nature balances out the rhetoric he espouses – rhetoric that might, to the cynical ear, sound like vacuous, strengths-based, positive-psychology twaddle. Matt & Kim’s infectious verve seems hard to fake, and Johnson’s ardent sincerity arguably demonstrates that he is more than just a hyped-up lacuna of press release buzzwords. Way to demonstrate extreme life enjoyment. Bring on the live shows.
MATT & KIM bring their infectious positivity to Australia when they play BIG DAY OUT at Flemington Racecourse on Sunday January 30. They also play The Corner Hotel on Wednesday February 2. Tickets from The Corner box office, 9427 9198, cornerhotel.com and Polyester Records. Sidewalks is out now on Liberator.
