After nearly 15 years together, the creation of Dead Letter Circus’ self-titled fourth album was the first project that truly unified the band.
“Our appreciation of each other is way different. When you start out everyone wants to do the shiny thing, everyone wants to write the riff or the chords. We’ve dissolved those walls and our egos,” says frontman Kim Benzie.
“We went from being individuals who came together, to a band unified, which is really hard to do. This is our bromance album.”
This is Dead Letter Circus’ second self-titled release. 2007 saw the band debut with a self-titled EP, and over a decade on they’ve returned to the name. “It’s always a bold statement when someone does a self-titled EP,” Benzie reflects. “We set the bar pretty high with our previous album titles, but it feels like on this album we are back to the artists who wrote that debut EP.
“When you write lyrics, you hide messages in double meanings and it’s harder when you write more literally because you’re peeling back.”
Dead Letter Circus is an album that explores internal fragilities from a more extant perspective, a contrast to the reflective style explored in the past. “You get goosebumps when someone comes to you at a show and tells you the effect your song had on them, and it’s good when someone understands that you experience the same problems. I write lessons and I’m sort of this Yoda with the answers, but now I’m presenting what’s behind the mask,” Benzie says.
“I started writing these songs in the evenings. After writing the harmonies on The Endless Mile, it pushed me to go heavier because I was getting pretty done with violins and strings.”
Last year saw the release of The Endless Mile, an acoustic variation of Dead Letter Circus’ most beloved tracks. “That album made us come out the gates harder.
“99% of [songs] start with me having an idea on guitar, piano, or a sick beat and I’ll spend days on my own creating a chord structure. But because I’m in a band with such incredible players who play all their instruments better than I can, I’ll try not to flesh it out and spend a few days with the band creating it, I see an island on the horizon and the guys get us there.”
The production team behind this album are more than familiar to the band. “It’s a real powerful thing, we are working with friends – I was the best man at one of their weddings,” Benzie says.
“We separate vocals from the music, I do the vocals with Matt [Bartlem], and the rest of the band and Forester [Savell] do the music.
“With Matt we will record for a while, then play some table tennis and then record a few more takes, with [Forrester] it’s all technical, tuning guitars while we’re partying, the band actually filmed us one day because they thought we weren’t doing anything.
“I haven’t actually heard it that much, like a track will play somewhere and I’ll be surprised.” Benzie ponders over the effect that the project has had on him. “When you’re in a band it’s hard to not listen to it every day and revel in how awesome it is, but now I try not to listen too many times so I can appreciate it.”
Dead Letter Circus will be debuting most of these tracks live on their summer tour, as they are hesitant to preview tracks. “We used to preview a bunch before, but now people just put it up on the internet so we wait for the big reveal,” Benzie says.
