Electro rock crew Mutemath have just dropped Vitals, a stunning 12 track LP and pretty much the first we’ve really heard from them since their 2011 effort Odd Soul and there’s a reason for that. Nothing has been particularly easy on the band these past several years since their 2011 release, as well as changing management and replacing a band member, add in marriages, births, deaths it’s been a turbulent time, but we’re glad they’re back and better than ever.
Citing bands like Steely Dan and The Police as a source of inspiration, the band’s new LP is a collection of album of stadium-sized hooks designed to reach rafters, yet delivered from deep within the smallest caverns of this band’s very soul.
To celebrate the release of Vitals (out now via Sony) the band’s frontman Paul Meany has kindly given us a track by track run down of the LP which you can check out below.
Joy Rides
This song came about during a momentary obsession I had with Linn Drums. I got together with my friend Jonathan Allen from one of my favorite bands out of New Orleans, Club Of The Sons, to work on a track.
We were sort of obsessing over a bunch of 80s synths and drum machines and made this instrumental track that I took home and tried singing over. The original demo track sounded notably different than what it is now, but the first intelligible vocal that emerged was the chorus part and it fell very much in line with the type of songs we were after for Vitals.
I took the demo to the band and we all started exploring if it could be turned into a Mutemath song. There must have been three or four iterations of this song before we landed on the final album version. We kept getting stuck in how organic vs. how programmed to make it, and as it usually is for us, some relentless negotiation of the two would prove to be the way to go.
Light Up
This was one of the last songs written for the album. We did a tour in India late 2014 and used that time to try one more round of writing before we headed into finishing out the whole record. I’m really glad we did, Darren had just made this great instrumental track that paralleled really close to a jam we had just started in rehearsal. So in my hotel room in Dehli I took my off days to merge the two ideas and construct a song.
The lyrics that surfaced came from a blindsided argument I got into with my wife right before I left for tour. And I was in a headspace acutely aware of the work that goes into getting a relationship to last. Falling in love is the easy part… Keeping it alive and vibrant for the long haul is a little trickier, but the happiness attached to it, I think is unlike anything and worth the fight.
Monument
We were in the middle of a song writing marathon where we were all working remotely trying to write a new song every day. We were working fast and intensely. I had just received a track in my inbox one morning from Darren called ‘Our Time’.
I loved it and quickly threw a vocal on it, and renamed it Monument without thinking much about it. Once I sent it back to everyone along with a bunch of other ideas I had been working on, Monument struck everyone immediately as a stand out. So in the months after, we spent developing it and this is one that really had us stumped for a while as far as how to take it from demo form to a finished recording. We played it at a bunch of shows, each time tweaking it a bit more and even recorded it with a couple different producers. I think all of those experiments yielded good information on how we should produce it out and ultimately we knew we should do this one ourselves.
It’s always tricky for us when we happen upon what seems like a solid pop song. We’re usually in denial if it’s really for us even though we want it to be and it’s always a challenge to figure out how indulgent vs. Immediate to keep an arrangement. I’m really pleased how it came out though. We worked hard to keep things simpler then we normally would and make our “band-ness” serve the song as opposed to forcing the song to serve our “band-ness”.
Stratosphere
I think I wrote this song as a fair warning to myself to keep my priorities straight. I’m telling the story of someone who finds him or herself at the summit of one’s ambitions but all alone. This person is coming to terms with the emptiness that resulted from maybe some mixed up choices made along the way for the sake of chasing a dream or impulse and it costing a very special someone.
All I See
These types of songs are always a welcomed change of pace when they happen. A simple love song that doesn’t get revised and re-written over and over again. Just a few things added from the original demo along with an Outro to get it finished.
Vitals
Another track that came to be from that last block of writing we did in India. We started playing an early version of this track for the first time at the shows in India to try it out. We hadn’t really gone too far into instrumental tracks since our first record.
So this kind of represented a return to form for us. It started out as a one minute segue track that Darren made for the show and then we began to sample snippets from a recording session we did in New Orleans two years earlier for some other songs. With those re-purposed elements plus Roy coming up with the main guitar line, we found our title track.
Composed
This is a special track for me. It’s a short three minute song that’s basically a self constructed therapy session. Sometimes you just need a vacation from the normal hustle and bustle of writing songs you think you’re expected to. I always enjoy when a very programmed synthesized track can express something very personal. This is the best we’ve ever pulled that off.
Used To
The first song I was able to see to the end that started as a voice memo on my phone. There was something alluring about the first demo but it probably left a little too much to the imagination. So we all knew we liked the roots of the song, but how to dress it up for the album became a never ending rabbit trail and debate.
I remember I was super hung up on making this track a full time shuffle instead of half time. If anyone was at recent shows, you know we tried out a bunch of different approaches while trying to decide. I was hell bent on making it full time but when I got honest with myself, I knew it just seemed too disconnected from the sentiment of the song.
This song was about sorting through regrets and the poisonous train of thought it can cause, but flirting with the idea that maybe in the right dose, one can turn this poison into a useful immunization. There’s something mildly poised in its delivery, so the half time approach with the occasional full time sections seemed to resound the loudest for this one.
Best of Intentions
This is one of those ideas that I started based off of a synth riff I came up with and just started singing to it. I didn’t think much about it, started singing and I had no idea what this song was about at first. It did feel infectious but I was stumped.
I remember one of the producers we were talking to, Eric Palmquist (Bad Suns) heard the rough track and immediately raised his hand that he knew where to take it. Since we were stumped and already starting to shelf it, we decided “why not” lets drive out to LA and work with Eric on finishing writing and recording the track. I think as I was challenged to dive in further and write more I started to realize what this song was about all along. I was just calling myself out for being a tool.
This song has a lot of demon inventory going on about wanting to be a generous kind person and the excuses I come up with to just not. How many times have i talked myself out of helping someone who could really use it because I justify my own problems as more pressing. And some limp justification of why should I try to help anyone else when I can’t help myself. It was all a lame excuse for me. This song was a message to myself saying “come on Dude… Do something!” LAnd a big inspiration to me on why we started working super actively with Songs For Kids here in the states around this album.
Bulletproof
A track that started with Roy sending me an instrumental he made for me to sing on.
And this song became an experiment in proving that sometimes the best thing for a song idea is muting the vocalist. Oh trust me, I tried extensively to find the right vocal for this track, but it kept feeling forced. And more importantly it felt like a vocal that wasn’t consistent with the same POV that the other songs were sharing. I tried re-writing but kept hitting walls.
I wound up really hating this song and so did the rest of the band. We were going to cut it until we got to the end of the album assembly and felt like the whole album would benefit from the musical vibe Bulletproof had. I decided to go back to work on it, but this time, mute the vocals and push the musical parts to stand up on its own and aspire to be the second instrumental track on the album. There was a rare really great drum performance that I felt that the album still needed and I think as a composition it felt more powerful without vocals. Glad we didn’t give up on it.
Safe If We Don’t Look Down
Strangely enough this was a track Darren started back when we were touring for our first album. It was one of the contenders for the second album, but fell short at the time. I probably hadn’t developed the vocals to a far enough place yet. But we all liked it’s potential so we shelved it.
We looked at it again for Odd Soul, but it became quickly obvious that it was not right for what that record became. And then Lo and behold we’re in a home stretch for Vitals and battling out 4or 5 songs to see who best serves that 11 spot. On a whim we pulled out this 8 year old track and the lights came on. We all got on our instruments and started re-tracking and re-producing, writing more parts in the creative headspace that the rest of Vitals was in and it finally clicked. That song was meant to be in the company of this record. Sometimes it’s good to keep the old shelf stocked.
Remain
We wrote this one in the fall of 2013 around the same time we had Used To and it was those 2 songs that convinced us we had to fight through and do whatever it takes to see this record to its completion. Remain came to me in the form of a demo from Darren where he was singing versions of the melodies here and there.
I immediately knew though it was an essential Mutemath song. Ethereal and epic in nature. I got to work on it, twisted a few things around and it immediately stood up as exactly what this band needed to say to close out this album. My goal is that every MM album always has a moment reserved on it for these kinds of songs.
