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Q1/ This is your first studio album in almost 20
years but there is a timeless feel to both the sound
and songs; it’s like you’ve never been away…
After so long a gap between full albums I wanted
to see what my songs would record like using
modern techniques and I wanted there to be a
connection with what had gone before. We have
normally avoided as much as possible sounding
like what was going on around us, and that has
helped the music age well on its own strange
outside timeline.
Q2/ From what sort of time period do the songs
date from?
Perhaps a third of the riffs and concepts date
back over anything up to 20 years or even more,
but, once there was a go ahead to record a new
album, the bulk of the writing was done over a
period of about a year. Some songs, like Warm
Waveform, have been kicking around in my head in
many different forms for years and that particular
song was released as a short lyric-less version
called Warm on my album of home recordings,
Sketch Book Volume One, back in the ‘90s.
Q3/ There is a strong political edge to lyrics,
something which you’ve not been known for in
the past.
I have generally avoided making political
statements in my music as I have seen that date
other people’s music badly, but I found that those
were the concepts that were really firing me up,
and I decided that I didn’t want to simply add more
light-weight rubbish to the mountain of music being
produced currently. Also, as a song-writer and
lyricist it was a personal challenge to see if I could
use my skills to actually say something important
without it descending into slogans and clichés.
Q4/ You also seem to be in particularly strong
voice at the moment – what’s your secret?
I have been taking better care of myself but
I have also learned not to force my voice, as I
thought I had to when I was an earnest young
post-punk. Plus I have actually learned to change
the key of the song I am writing to suit my vocal
range - something I knew nothing about when I
was younger!
Q5/ Flying Nun is enjoying something of a revival
both here and overseas. How do feel about being
seen as an older statesman of the scene?
It is wonderful that the music from that time
in New Zealand is still sending waves around the
world and I am proud to be part of that. But I do
wish I had better recall of facts and dates and a far
larger reserve of snappy, amusing
anecdotes!
Zac Carper and his FIDLAR (F*ck It Dog,
Life’s A Risk) cohorts have had all kinds
of modifiers thrown at them since the
inception of their group’s skate-punk (putting
it simply) sound.
“Leave Me Alone is about people saying,
‘These kids just party, and they’re stupid,
and they’re slackers, and blah,
blah, blah,’” Carper says. “The
reality of it is that I worked
really hard. We’ve all worked
really hard to get to where
we are, and after a while I felt
like we weren’t being taken
seriously. And it’s just the way
it goes. It’s the way that the
media has knocked us into a
certain spot.”
The song he refers to sits
bang halfway through the
tracklist for FIDLAR’s second
album Too , which the vocalist
and songwriter sees as a huge, blossoming,
forward leap. For one thing, he decided to
get a producer.
“I started noticing records that I really
loved always had a producer,” he chortles,
“and, in the reality of it, I just wanted to
try something new. It was scary. It was
really scary. There’s f–ing interviews of me
saying ‘I will never work with a producer.
We will always record our own stuff.’ But the
producer we worked with is awesome; his
name’s Jay Joyce. We flew out to meet this
guy and he was a totally eccentric dude, and
smoked two packs of cigarettes while we
were hanging out with him, and just had this
weird mystery about him, and he talked like
Tom Waits.”
The resulting album is crazy
and irritated and petulant and
completely compelling; Carper
attests it took him a little while
to tap into the energy which
has ultimately spilled out into
the recordings.
“Honestly, I wrote about
30 songs for the record and
the first 20 songs were f–ing
terrible. And it was only until
I started to actually just write
songs for myself... I was like,
‘Wait a minute, that’s not
how FIDLAR started. FIDLAR started from
just writing songs about what’s going on
in my life.’ I’m not as agro. It’s more sad or
whatever. So, I’m f–ing sad as f*ck, dude. It
works.”
Yes, yes it does.
Too by FIDLAR is out now
Martin Phillipps
The Chills
Silver Bullets by The Chills
is out now
FIDLAR frontman Zac Carper on the band’s second album, Too, and
why the group have been unfairly pigeonholed in the past. By Zoë Radas.
FIDLAR ON THE ROOF
The producer we
worked with is
awesome; his name’s
Jay Joyce and he was
a totally eccentric
dude. He talked like
Tom Waits.
14 NOVEMBER 2015
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