Formed in 2008, Brooklyn-based group The Men are impossible to categorize: punk, post-punk, hardcore, psychedelic, they are all these things and much, much more. This has never been more evident than on their new album, “New Moon,” which introduces strains of country and classic-rock into their sonic mosaic. ARTINFO’s Craig Hubert sat down with the band – Mark Perro (vocals, guitar), Kevin Faulkner (bass), Ben Greenberg (guitar), Rich Samis (drums), Nick Chiericozzi (guitar, vocals) – at a bar in the East Village to talk about recording in seclusion, getting their songs “down to basics,” and their prolific recording output.
I know you recorded the new album, “New Moon,” in a town called Big Indian in the Catskills. What was the reason for recording up there instead of Brooklyn?
Chiericozzi: We wanted to get out of the city. That was the main goal, I guess. Also, the band had a studio that we did the last record in that got closed down, unfortunately. We didn’t really have a home base. Ben had a friend who had a home up there, a second home like most of those houses are, just people from the city or something, and we ended up going up there and recording for about two weeks.
Did you stay at the house you recorded in? How secluded was it up there?
Chiericozzi: I mean, we were playing pretty loudly at 1 a.m., and no one knocked on the window or anything.
Greenberg: There was one neighbor, one house, literally.
Perro: No cell phone, no Internet up there. There wasn’t much communication.
Chiericozzi: We had to stock up on groceries for a week.
Does being so secluded, outside of the city, change the recording?
Perro: You definitely had to focus on the songs a lot more when you don’t have to go back to your life, when you don’t just clock in and clock out of a studio. We were living and breathing the songs the whole time we were there. I would imagine that has an effect.
Did you have all the songs written when you went up there?
Perro: There were skeletons. There were a few songs we had been touring for a few months, like three songs maybe. The rest was just fragments of ideas, or just parts.
How did you approach “New Moon” that was different than “Open Your Heart” or “Leave Home?”
Chiericozzi: We wanted to do more live sound. Well, we always did live, but we did lots of overdubs and we wanted more of an acoustic guitar compliment to the music instead of just being a layer, or something like that.
Perro: I think that was the idea – a little more down to basics without building all the stuff on it, just have the songs be what they are. No frills on it, really, or as few frills as possible.
The new album has a warmer sound. It sounds more intimate.
Greenberg: We recorded it the same way we did “Leave Home,” but more live I guess. Most of the tracks were live vocals.
Perro: Some songs were one take; nothing was more than two or three takes.
Is the live sound something you want to explore more in the future?
Perro: Yeah, we always mess around with that stuff. It’s important to us. I don’t know what the next step is going to be or anything.
Greenberg: It was really positive all around. Recording live is really important for a band like us because…
Chiericozzi: It just is [laughs].
Greenberg: It’s just what we do. We don’t build things up. It’s already there, that’s the whole point. The idea is for the songs to exist as they are – they can change, or whatever, but they’ll change as we feel it on a given night or given moment, not necessarily in a super planned way.
Perro: Yeah, the way the songs are recorded is not the definite end of those songs by any means. A lot of those songs we wrote up there have changed pretty drastically since we recorded them. They breathe and expand and contract based on what’s going on.
I know “Open Your Heart” was already almost finished by the time “Leave Home” came out, and you said you’ve been playing songs from “New Moon” for a while. Are you always quickly moving on to the next thing?
Perro: We’re actually working on another record right now. We’re like 95% done with it, I’d say. New ideas keep coming up. It’s important – writing, keep practicing. If things exciting are going on it’s crazy to ignore it, so if inspiration hits you just have to go with it.
Have you thought of releasing songs in a more immediate way?
Chiericozzi: I think recording’s the priority; the chips fall where they may. “Open Your Heart” was going to be a double album, so there were a lot songs that didn’t make that album, so those songs surfaced on compilations and singles, things like that. Generally, you can see an album, carve it out, right about now, when you’re about 95% done.
When listening to “New Moon,” I noticed it goes in waves – in begins with quieter songs, and ends on what is the loudest song on the album.
Perro: We’re definitely into flow – I think that was a definite thought in sequencing.
Greenberg: It came pretty naturally, though. It was clear what would make sense first, and what would make sense to follow up. Then when you’re done you do a weed test, a coke test….
Chiericozzi: Are you drinking whiskey right now?
[laughs]
“New Moon” is out today on Sacred Bones.