THE National and Menomena toured together years ago but how did El Vy happen?
Matt: Brent and I have been friends for 12 years but the idea for collaborating kind of came up around five or six years ago.
I asked him if he had any ideas left over from other stuff and he ended sending me over 12 hours of music.
I put them on a playlist that I would listen to after National shows. I'd open them up in Garageband and just start singing along without thinking too much about it.
So it was a very casual, long gestation of just passing music files back and forth without any real schedule – we didn't really know what it would be.
Now that we're actually here and the record is about to come out, we're really looking forward to people hearing it.
You'll be touring in the US soon before heading over to the UK and Ireland. How is the live show coming together?
Matt: We've played a few times, like a handful of songs, just the two of us on piano – but not a proper show with a full band.
Brent: We are putting together one, though, a proper four piece with Andy Stack from Wye Oak on drums and Matt Sheehy from Lost Lander on bass guitar. It think Ireland is the last date of the entire run – so hopefully we'll have figured out the songs by then.
Matt, is it fun to step outside The National and work with a new selection of collaborators after so long with in the same group?
Yeah, that was part of the motivation to do this – just to see what would happen. It's fun to see how what you do bumps up against what other people do and the chemistry that develops when you put it all together.
I think that's why I reached out to Brent to see it he wanted to collaborate on something – I knew he was a very different type of musician than The National. I didn't know what it would sound like but I knew it would end up sounding of its own and very different.
But I can't speak for, Brent – I think it was a nightmare for him.
What are your thoughts, Brent?
Well, it's kind of insulting the way Matt treats it all like a big joke, y'know? (laughs)
No, I've always liked Matt's lyrics but there's a couple of lines on this record in particular which are that perfect mixture of like really sad but really hilarious at the same time. That's what I love about it – depending on your mood or the time of day or your environment at the time you're listening, the songs will resonate in a different way.
So, since I'm used to doing more serious, gloomy, "woe is me" kind of 'art' music, I really enjoyed the lyrics that Matt chose to use for this collaboration.
Matt, you've described the album as the most autobiographical thing you've ever done, but you also created fictional characters and stories inspired by Mike Watt and D Boon from the Minutemen. Was that a fun process?
It was fun, but I wasn't tracing the characters as I wrote. I mean, I was definitely concious of it – I knew when the Didi Bloome and Michael characters kind of took hold and ideas started collecting around them.
Then there was a mixture of my personal life, my marriage, places I knew growing up in Ohio and other things like my six-year-old daughter's obsession with the movie Grease.
I was also obsessed with Grease when I was young – the soundtrack was the first record I was ever in love with, I think. Mostly I would just stare at the pictures of Olivia Newton John.
That movie and that soundtrack was constantly in the background when I was writing lyrics for the record. Although the first 80 per cent of the work was more like free association, Danny and Sandy kept coming into it.
In a way, Return To The Moon is like a punk rock musical.
Was there any particular song that really spurred you on with the project once it started to come together?
Good question. I don't know if there was one specific song but there are definitely certain tracks that played a very important role.
Like, No Time To Crack The Sun, I always thought of that as like the swirling centrepiece of the record. Paul Is Alive came very late in the record, but it was the song that kind of glued together all the autobiographical stuff.
The single I'm The Man To Be was actually the very last song that came together and that just twerked the record in a whole different way for both of us. So there were a few different ones along the way that the record would suddenly pivot around and start to take on a whole different dimension.
Given that you've both got other bands with impending commitments, won't you be in a bit of a pickle if Return To The Moon becomes a huge hit and the offers keep rolling in?
Matt: I guess that would be a nice problem to have.
Brent: Yeah, that would be a nice pickle.
Matt: Making this record has been the reward in itself, for both of us. It's been liberating for obvious reasons.
The tour and the record coming out is kind of like the icing on the cake. We're going to do as much as we can, but we also want to keep it a little bit contained too. Brent is half-way done with another Ramona Falls record and I'm also in the middle of the next National record, which I'm going back to right after the tour.
It's going to be called Return To The National (laughs).
What effect do you think the El Vy experience is going to have on that record?
I don't know, I guess some of whatever I stepped in here is probably going to rub off on it and have some sort of mutating effect.
All of the collaborations that the other guys have been involved with over the years have definitely changed and inspired and influenced The National and I think we all recognise that's a healthy thing for the band. Collectively, we've built up a lot more confidence over the past five years.
Lately I've been trying to relax a lot more creatively, to not be so obsessed with kind of bleeding ideas from my forehead. El Vy has definitely helped with that – now I'm bleeding all over the place and actually able to enjoy it.
:: Return To The Moon is out now on 4AD. El Vy play Vicar Street, Dublin, on December 13. Tickets €22.90 from Ticketmaster outlets.
