Thou, the loud anarchist New Orleans outfit with an ever-expanding cult legacy, recently has no new stuff out. Still, out of love, we contacted the vocalist Bryan Funck for a Zoom interview.
The light is hitting straight to my face, but you can see me, right?
Bryan Funck: Yeah, you look very angelic. Just like Edward in Twilight. (both laugh)
Earlier this morning, I asked my friend if she had any questions for you. She didn’t have a question, but a comment: She said that your Istanbul concert last week just rocked.
Oh nice, yeah, Istanbul was fun. I mean, it wasn’t anything out of the norm for us other than going to places we’ve never been, meeting some new people we don’t know that were really nice. The whole tour was pretty much like that. Berlin and France are a couple of spots we’ve been to before. It was a nice change of pace going to some places we haven’t been. The shows are kind of always the same.
In a recent Instagram post, you said that this will be your last Europe tour for a while. Are you taking a reclusion back at home for a while?
Oh yeah, we are trying to. We’re basically finishing out the year of what we have planned, and then we’re going to more or less take off all next year. I think we’ll probably end up taking the first six months off completely. If we do anything the second six months of next year, it’s going to be to work on a new record hopefully or break up, one of those two.
From a selfish standpoint, I hope Thou goes on forever.
We’ll see.
Someone has commented this under the Umbilical full album YouTube video: “Thou has transcended genre and can only really be described as loud,” which I find really funny. What I want to ask you is, how are your ears holding up after all these years?
(laughs) I’m definitely hard of hearing, but if you ask my mom, she’d probably say I have what we call selective hearing. I don’t know if you guys have that over there in Europe. It’s where you only hear the sh.t you want to hear and you don’t listen to the rest of it. I think everybody is probably missing at least a few frequencies. But no, my hearing’s all right. I don’t know. I’ve never gotten it checked out. I don’t have tinnitus. Matthew (Thunium)’s got tinnitus I think, but he’s the only one.
Does selective hearing enable you to also block fascists?
Yeah, pretty much. Give me another 5 or 10 years, we’ll say if I still have my hearing. I probably won’t be able to speak, that’s for sure.
I have a few questions for you about Umbilical. If you think back to the production process of the record, do two tracks stand out, one the easiest and one the hardest to make?
Everything’s pretty much the same for us. Honestly, our recording process is so streamlined at this point that it’s really easy. We’ve been recording with the same guy. It’s one of my friends from high school, James Whitten. We’ve been recording with him almost exclusively since I joined the band. There’s two or three records that we didn’t do stuff with him but with Andy’s and Matthew’s friends, before I joined, and our record with The Body we did with Seth Manchester, but by and large we’ve done 99% of the records with James. He’s not a producer style engineer, but in terms of the technical stuff, he is almost like just another member of the band when we go in there.
I think the thing that takes the most time is just setting up on the first day and figuring out the sound of the record. We go into the studio having an idea of what we want the sound to be and we tell James ahead of time. So he gets some stuff together for that, but it is just figuring out the guitar tones and how he wants to set up the mics and record things on his end. Umbilical was a little different as a whole from the other records we did just because his studio wasn’t set up. There weren’t a bunch of isolation booths where people can go in different rooms to isolate sound or do the different crossover and stuff on the mics. We had to get a little creative with that because we wanted to make sure that we live track everything. Usually when we record a song, it’s all the instruments in one room looking at each other playing and the amps are in another and everybody can hear things on headphones, but all the amps and stuff are in another room, which is fine. We basically live track. We’ll do a few takes, get a solid take, and there might be a couple of flubs we fix or whatever. This time, Andy and Matthew really wanted to be in the room with their guitars so they could get some natural feedback as they were playing and really dial in the energy of the takes a little bit more than we normally would. It’s basically the two of them in one room and Mitch and Tyler in another room doing the bass and drums, but everybody recording it once. So that was the only issue, but it wasn’t even an obstacle. It’s just that we had to figure it out, but once we got it, it was smooth sailing.
We’re quick by the time we get in the studio, we don’t really fart around too much. Whatever the chunk of songs we have, we usually do all the basic tracking takes maybe a couple of days and we’ll have knocked out all the basic tracks and then if there’s a guitar or bass flub, they’ll go in and fix it real quick. So by the end of the first couple of days, usually all the songs are knocked out. I can’t remember if we did Umbilical like that. I know we had a plan going into this record where we weren’t going to do that. We were just going to do a few tracks. We wanted to change it out. We wanted to do just a couple of tracks a day and really hone in on those tracks, but I think we didn’t do that. I think we just kind of went back to our old ways and knocked in. So usually we’ll spend maybe a day or two doing overdubs and getting crazy, adding more guitars or weird parts or whatever. And then I’ll come in in the mornings or stay late after everybody leaves and do vocals for a couple hours. I’m quick with the vocals too. It’s usually me and James in the control room and I’m just sitting on the couch or going through all the songs take after take till it’s sort of where I want it to be. That’s not really an answer to your question, but… (both laugh)
You are quick in the studio, but how quick are you in terms of writing lyrics? I particularly love the lyrics on Umbilical.
It’s the same as the other guys writing songs. Sometimes I’ll have an idea and it just comes out and it works and it’s good. And other times there are songs -even on this record- I’m not perfectly happy with. There’s an idea for something and you sort of fix it. I mean, there’s stuff I changed in the studio. I don’t know. I mean, I appreciate the compliment, but I don’t think of myself necessarily as a great lyricist. I think I’m serviceable. There’s definitely other people that I kind of look at that write lyrics I wish I could write. Either more poetic, more flavorful, or or more direct. I’m somewhere in the middle of that, but it’s fun.
Who are those people, by the way? Can you give a few examples?
For the poetic-clever-witty-metaphoric side of the spectrum: Fiona Apple, the quintet Mira, The Smiths era Morrissey, James Mercer, from The Shins -I really like the first two The Shins records, they are insane-, Ed Kowalczyk from Live -I think that stuff’s real good, I’ve stolen a bunch of that stuff-, these are all great lyricists. Then for the more direct stuff, I can say Sam McPheeters from Born Against -obviously-, the Left for Dead era Chris Colohan stuff, and a guy from here, Joey Gates. He was in a band from New Orleans called The Faeries that was insane, amazing. Incredible front man. I hate using this word front man (laughs), but he was an insane front person and great, wild lyricist, like a bonkers Sam McPheeters. Just awesome. Yeah. So that’s my list of “I wish I could write like these people”, if I needed to pick.
Well, everyone has their own voice, right?
Yeah, right. Well, that’s the thing. At some point I kind of realized what my strengths or weaknesses were and I just lean into that and just write the way I write. It’s the same way with the band in general. At some point we realized what the Thou sound was, and now we just keep it in this sort of box, but then try to push that box as far out as we can with it still sounding like us.
Do you have three objects you can pinpoint that are associated with the creation process of this record?
I’m not sure. Umbilical for me was trying to write more of a punk record, so it’s hard for me to conflate it with an actual tangible thing. Actually, I don’t even want to say it was a punk or DIY like ethos. It was more just the very romantic ideology I had as a kid, as a teenager, and as a 20-something-year-old young adult. If there’s a totem or whatever, it would just be the records or ephemera or fashion style, you know, what I think of as punk and 90s hardcore fashion or whatever. But there wasn’t really a thing I could grasp onto.
Maybe roughly in the band, Nirvana’s In Utero was a North Star for us. Not that I want to say this is like anything in that record, but when we were working on it and figuring it out, that was like a touch point for us. We wanted it to be more of an our take on a noise rock ish thing. At one point we were even talking about how we wanted to go to Pachyderm, the studio where they recorded In Utero. We were trying to grab James and go to another studio somewhere else and sequester ourselves for a week where we didn’t have any other distractions and just work on the record. We couldn’t find a studio. I think Pachyderm was maybe booked or something, or maybe it was available. It was kind of logistically untenable because we would have to bring all kinds of gear up. They didn’t have the right gear. All spaces we looked at either weren’t the right space or didn’t have the right gear or whatever. Maybe we weren’t available. So nothing worked out. But yeah, at some point, we had talked about really leaning into the In Utero thing. At one point I think we’re even like, “Oh, when did they record it? Let’s figure out what time of year they recorded and go up whenever that was.” I don’t know. This is the story though. We always have these real ambitious, ridiculous goals for something. We just start chipping away at it till it’s a little bit more manageable for us.
At times you described Umbilical as a diss record toward yourselves, and pondered on how your younger selves would consider the current you as sellouts. I for one think you aged greatly overall, and in a way that includes healthy self-criticism. I think being self-critical with a clear mind -and with the correct politics- is a crucial component for our humanity. Think of Thom Yorke: Radiohead used to be a left-wing band criticizing the Bush government’s involvement in Iraq, yet today Yorke posts a cowardly, long Instagram post about the Gaza genocide only to say nothing significant and and also to draw attention unto himself. I guess my question is: Do you also think healthy self-criticism can benefit a lot of people?
Yes, absolutely. I mean, isn’t that the point of therapy and going to therapy? (laughs) I don’t follow the Thom Yorke stuff. I don’t know anything about him. Honestly, I only really like the first two Radiohead albums.
Yeah, don’t read that post. It’s a waste of time, honestly. It goes on forever to say nothing.
Yeah, I don’t know. It’s not for me to say if Thom Yorke or anybody is or isn’t self critical enough. It’s hard to tell. I feel like even people who are self aware can be very unaware of things they do and things they say a lot of times, or how it affects other people in the world. I’m a big sh.t talker in general, you know. But I’ve always been of the mind where if I’m going to talk sh.t about X, Y and Z stuff I don’t care for, I better be also be willing to say things and be reflective about the things that I do care about, and be critical of those things and be willing to pick them apart and defend them or not defend them or, you know, be able to live with sort of a contradictory lifestyle or whatever. But to answer your question, yes, everybody can benefit from some self critique and therapy and whatever.
Yeah. It’s a scary age we live in, and in order to maintain political consciousness, you gotta have self reflection.
Totally.
I know you are a reader of comics and books. What have you been reading lately?
I’m deep in a Thomas Ligotti phase right now. I really like his books. It’s sort of like Lovecraftian-unnamed-fear stuff, but instead of monsters, it’s existential dread. It’s great, very nihilistic. Loving his stuff. So I’m deep into that. Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters is still one of my top comics. I love all of his stuff. There’s a Swedish lady, Linnea Sterte, who’s done a bunch of books. Stages of Rot is is a real good one, but she just did a newish one called World Heist. Awesome. It’s like Amano meets Moebius, mangaesque but not really super stylish. It’s great. Matt Emmons is another guy I just recently discovered who’s great. It’s good, obscure underground. All that stuff’s great. I still haven’t read the new Jeff VanderMeer. I know he did a fourth book for the Southern Reach thing, but I haven’t got to it yet.
(Bryan’s dog barks) Sorry, my dog hates it when I do these interviews. She’s tearing stuff up right now. I’ve been quietly trying to throw shit at her but she doesn’t want to listen. She’s just sneezing. Istanbul has a lot of cats and dogs, right?
Yeah, it’s basically the cat heaven.
Yeah. It was wild. I thought we’d see a lot more in Greece. Everything I saw, read and looked at said Athens was covered in cats. But yeah, Istanbul took the lead for sure.
Yeah, there’s actually a documentary about the Istanbul cats called Kedi if you want to check out. It’s a very cute documentary.
Yeah. I’ll check it out.
Here is a fan question: You have made many collaborations in the past. Are there more collaboration ideas on the horizon for you?
Yeah, there’s a couple people we were talking to about doing stuff, but I don’t know if we’ll get to any of it anytime soon, if ever. Definitely not this year. I have a feeling that if we get back into writing next year, we’re just going to work on a new record, we’re just going to start writing. We will just write to write and see what comes out. When we’re doing a record, we sort of have an idea of what the record’s going to be about and what sound we’re leaning into. Usually there will be rough ideas for that and somebody will come up with the song that’s like the blueprint for the record. And then we sort of stick with that sound for the record. If we end up getting back to it again next year, we’re just going to write and see what comes out and then see and let the songs go wherever they go. Maybe it’ll be a record or maybe it won’t. Maybe it’ll just be a bunch of songs. So yeah, no definite plans for collaboration anytime soon. There’s a couple people we would do stuff with, but I don’t know if it’ll ever happen or not.
Wherever the roads may lead you.
Yeah, we’ll see. That stuff’s just hard. Tyler doesn’t live in New Orleans, he lives in Chicago. So getting together logistically is just difficult. And then trying to do it where you’re adding in extra people for us is just another layer of logistics. And whatever the collaboration is, a lot of times it’s even more of a mix of both yes and no. We’re trying to fit the two things together in a way that works and also sounds cool and interesting and isn’t just the sum of the two parts. It’s not like it sounds as the A & B together. It needs to sound like C, you know what I mean? It needs to sound like a new thing. I don’t know, that’s the way we approach this collaboration. What I’m saying is it’s just logistically and creatively, for us at least, a lot of work and prep time. Also, it’s a big commitment. You have these extra commitments in terms of the whole process and stuff when you’re adding these other people. Whereas for the five of us, we just know how we work together and stuff. So it’s really easier to just make our stuff work. We’re a bit more flexible.
When you check out your streaming platform’s history, what are the last three songs you played?
Usually I’m listening to stuff at the shop, so I don’t know. Let’s see what were the last couple things I was looking at.
The Harder They Come soundtrack. I’ve been jamming that real hard. There’s this song “Six Day War” by Colonel Bagshot. It’s old psych. I don’t know anything about Colonel Backshot and I only know that song because DJ Shadow sampled part of it. We were talking about doing a collaboration with Midwife at one point, and I was like, “Oh man, if we do that, I really want to see if I can convince everybody to cover this thing, make a good cover with her.
Then comes the song “Laid” by James. I think I just randomly had that on. The Spotify radio for that was kind of garbage, but anyway. And then A Tribe Called Quest, Geto Boys and Earth Crisis.
Hear me out. What if there was a DJ Shadow collaboration?
Well, that wouldn’t have to be a collaboration. We could just give him a bunch of our stuff and he could just remix it however he wanted.
That’ll be interesting though, right?
Yeah, we have to take me out of there probably, though. (laughs)
There are some songs by him that sort of serve as duets. So maybe it will be just you.
Yeah, just me. Maybe.
Let’s imagine we’re at a Musicians Theme Park 100 years from now, where every artist or band featured has their own memorial stone with a certain lyric by them written on it. Which one of the lyrics would you like to see written on Thou’s stone?
Let’s go with the last lyrics from “Siege Perilous”, which I ripped off from Sublime: “I’m not coming back.”
You can check out Thou’s official website here and Bandcamp profile here.
