Ahead of his show at the Virginia Theater on Wednesday, Josh Carter of Phantogram took some time to speak with us about the band’s new album, Voices, their work with Big Boi, and their current world tour. Carter included a little tip for those planning to be at the Virginia: Get up and party.
Smile Politely: I really enjoy your new album, and one of the things I enjoy most is the array of musical styles and influences I’m picking up over the course of the album. Where do you draw your inspiration from and what were you feeling when you made this album?
Josh Carter: I draw inspiration from everything, really, but I listen to a lot of old jazz music, and always Motown music. I always listen to Motown and old soul. I was listening to a lot of Krautrock, too, and some French “Ya Ya” music from the ‘60s. I’m into Sonic Youth, too, and kind-of strobe-y, shoegaze-y stuff, like Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine… just all kinds of music. Sarah (Barthel, singer for Phantogram) and I like trance and shit like that; some David Bowie.
Working with Big Boi down at Stankonia got me into using some 808s and stuff. Then there’s always gritty New York hip hop, like Mobb Deep, then Detroit, Dilla, and California, Madlib. I really listen to everything. I guess when you listen to our music there’s no real direct influence, it’s just kinda like — when I make beats or make songs or we write together, we’re just trying to make music that we’d like to hear, that’s fresh and interesting and not necessarily trending. It’s more music that blazes its own trail.
Phantogram & Big Boi
SP: When you are writing how does that process work? Do you come up with a lyrical melody and put a beat to it, the other way around, or something totally different?
JC: Its different every time. Probably more often than not I work on the production, make beats, then I’ll chop up a sample or something and we’ll write a song in the same key as the sample. Then Sarah might write something on piano. Sometimes it’s just a voice memo on the iPhone, just humming together or I’m beat-boxing a rhythm I have in my head. Sometimes we’ll just jam over a drum machine pattern for hours until we come up with ideas that we like.
SP: Cool. I also notice on Voices, as opposed to Eyelid Movies, that there are more challenging aspects to the music. I’m thinking specifically of the chorus on “Fall in Love,” where the synth is falling away from the vocal melody. Is that something you really put a lot of thought and effort in to on this album?
JC: No, I don’t think we put any more thought into this than Eyelid Movies and Nightlife, it’s just a more natural expression of what we’re doing artistically. It’s a learning process, writing music, and we’re always experimenting with songs. We weren’t intentionally trying to do anything — I mean, we weren’t trying to mimic our old stuff by any means — but we weren’t trying to do anything complex. Part of trying not to be too complex is because sometimes that can overshadow a good melody, and we always try to maintain a good pop sensibility within our sound.
As far as “Fall in Love” goes, that was a beat I made five years ago, and then we were going through a bunch of beats and ideas I had written and Sarah always really loved that beat, so she’s responsible for breathing new life into that and turning it into a song. We just wrote it, and she put a really cool vocal melody and then we worked on a really gritty bass line on the Moog synthesizer and that’s just how it came out. The fact that it’s a single was very surprising. We weren’t trying to write singles, but the way that song came together there was no intention of thinking it would be that catchy. It was just kind of dope sounding to us.
SP: It certainly is catchy, I’ve had it in my head for a few weeks now at least.
JC: Wow.
SP: You mentioned how your songwriting has grown, which leads me to my next question: How did the collaborations you’ve worked on since Eyelid Movies, the most notable being Big Boi, help you grow as musicians?
JC: Working with Big and becoming friends with him has been an incredible thing for us. We grew up listening to Outkast, we’re huge fans, and from day one a part of us modeled ourselves after Outkast. Sarah’s an Aquarius and I’m a Gemini, so we call ourselves Aquemini like [the] Outkast [album of the same name]. We’ve always loved how their music is so forward thinking and there’s no real constraint on what they do as artists. That’s what we do, and working with Big confirmed that we’re on this path artistically that’s really special. He kind of gave us a little bit more confidence in what we’re doing because we respect him so much. He is so into what we do, it’s really cool.
Working at Stankonia, hanging out with the Dungeon Family and Goodie Mob and Andre (Benjamin, aka Andre 3000) and stuff like that was so cool. Sonically, part of what influenced Voices is mostly the 808 influences with more of a dirty south hip hop sound that you can hear bits and pieces of, but obviously it’s not saturated with anything like that. Working with Chris Carmouche, Big’s producer, and some other people down there opened us up to this different world – especially me with beat making. There’s a minimalism involved in dirty south that I find really interesting as opposed to New York. Like there’s a drop on “Blackout Days” that just goes into pretty much straight 808s, and that I really love to jam to. That’s all a long way of describing that.
SP: How’s the tour going for you so far? With the Big Boi connection and this stellar new album you seem to have some more name recognition for this tour.
JC: That’s possible. We’ve been touring for a while, since we started making music, just touring and building our fanbase very organically. We started touring the U.S. and playing in front of hopefully five people a night so that maybe the next time we hit up that city there might be 15 or 20 people. Now it’s in the thousands when we play shows. I think that’s a testament to touring and just really connecting with our audience and honing our live act. This tour has been really great. We’ve been on the road for a month now but they’ve been fly-out dates, like South by Southwest and California Run and a couple festivals here and there. Right now we just got on the bus and we’re in Pittsburgh, then a whole month in the U.S.
SP: I’m sure you’re not familiar with the Virginia Theater, but in general how does playing in older, seated spaces fit you guys?
JC: We played the Fox Theater in Oakland, that was amazing, it’s such a beautiful theater and a fun show. We did the Paladium in Los Angeles — we do theaters every now and then, it just depends on where we’re at. Sometimes a seated space does change the vibe. I’ve only played one show where it was all seated. That was weird, because I like standing room. We’re a rock band, we like it to feel like a real show. As long as there’s standing room and people in the balconies it’s cool. It’s always a trip when you see people up in balconies.
SP: That’s all I had for you, is there anything you’d like to add?
JC: Don’t miss the show. We are having a blast, just come to our show and we’ll give you a good time. We have a new band playing with us, a new drummer and multi-instrumentalist that are backing us. It’s a lot of fun. And thank you to all the fans for their support.
Phantogram performs tonight at the Virigina Theater with opening act TEEN, presented by Star Course. Tickets are still available, and doors open at 6:30 p.m.