Throughout their long musical history, the island nation of New Zealand couldn’t lay claim to a single blog-worthy buzz band. Split Enz? Pre-internet, by a long shot. Shihad? They’ve been mining the same hard rock territory for 20-plus years, and they’re unlikely to extend their influence beyond anyone who’s not already a fan. Cut Off Your Hands? A contender, sure, but they’ve not released new music since 2008. Die! Die! Die!? Amazing band, but probably too punk-niche to be retweetable. Flight Of The Conchords? More of a comedy act than musical, I’d argue.

Formed around the creative partnership of Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith, The Naked and Famous took their name from a Tricky song. Soon joined by electronic whiz Aaron Short and then David Beadle and Jesse Wood, The Naked and Famous' fortunes took off with the release of ‘Young Blood’ in May 2010, much to the delight of music fans with an urge to scratch the same itch first disturbed by Passion Pit (and earlier, by MGMT’s debut). A divine slice of electro indie-pop, ‘Young Blood’ – 900,000 views and counting – is a monster single that taps right into the vein of naïve adolescence (for real: its first line is “We’re only young and naïve still”). The September-released album, Passive Me, Aggressive You, shot to #1 on the New Zealand off the back of that single and its equally addictive follow-up, ‘Punching In A Dream’. (Interestingly, first single ‘All Of This’ was released in November 2009, nearly a year before the album’s release. It failed to chart.)

Despite their neon-glow, both singles betray the band’s true sound. Influenced by acts like Nine Inch Nails and Tool, Passive Me, Aggressive You’s non-singles exhibit more of a fascination with walls of shoegaze-like guitars and electronic sequencing than bright synth-pop. This is promising; it suggests that The Naked And Famous have a plan that extends much further than a couple of hypeworthy singles. Ahead of their appearance on the 2011 Big Day Out tour, TheVine connected with the band’s co-founder, singer, guitarist and producer, Thom Powers, to talk hype, remaining independent, and Reznor.

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I've seen the word ‘hipster’ getting thrown in the band's direction a bit lately. How do you respond to that?

Dissing us, are they?

Sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's negative. The connotation of ‘hipster’ tends to shift a bit.

I don't know. Hipsters are always going to exist, I think, and then they move out of home and grow up I guess. [laughs] I'm not sure, I don't know. I don't really know what to do about it. I'm not one of them, so I can't really relate.

Good answer. Do you read your own press?

Sometimes, yeah. I skim through it. I try not to take it all too seriously. But it's really hard unless you're some sort of Zen Buddhist to actually detach and not become emotional about things, so it's more to protect yourself. Don't read the good ones, and don't read the bad ones either. I do skim through them. I take it at face value, really.

Do you care about what people think about the band?

It's a weird question. Yeah, I think I do, but at the same time if all I cared about was what people thought about [us], it would be superficial. I think that's a pretty complicated question to ask, because I would care about what people thought if they thought it was destroying the world. But if some hipster thinks that I'm not cool enough, and he wants to call me a ‘faggot’ on the Internet, then I don't really care about that. I can't quite answer that question because there are too many social levels to answer it on.

I saw you play in Brisbane early last month at The Clubhouse (review). At the time, you all seemed a bit overwhelmed by the response of being confronted by 500 people right in your face.

I don't know if we were overwhelmed. I think that was just probably us. I don't know, maybe we seemed overwhelmed. Or we’re just shy, maybe? I don't want to run around the stage screaming "Hello Brisbane!" [laughs] Some people have commented on that before and got a little bit confused because the music we make may be quite energetic and high energy, and some of it has angst to it or some of it has pretty fun pop elements. And I think people assume that the personalities behind that are going to mimic it or something.

We're not the songs we create, they're just our creations. I don't know, it's confusing. That's weird [to think] but it's an interesting point. People do mix up personalities and music as sort of one thing. Sometimes they are the same thing and, if you look at Iggy Pop, he is his music and here is a personality that goes along with it. I don't know. I think we have more to say with our music than we do just on the microphone on our own.

Based on what you just said, does that mean when you’re performing live, you’re essentially acting?

No, no - it's more [that] the only point we have is really the song. We don't really have much to say in between. We're not good at stage banter and things like that. I think we're confident about music and being musicians in the band, but all the things that go along with that, I don't think we feel that confident about. But no, we’re definitely not acting at all. There’s character songs and then there are completely personal songs, but it's not really some sort of thing that we detach from.

There’s one thing that helps, though - we're so involved in what we do. It's so personal that it's really hard to find a way to pull people into that without seeming like you're just in your own world, so I think we prefer to [be in our own world], above all. And especially with performing live, because it's different from the studio; do our thing the way we want to do it, seriously concentrate, put all our heads and our hearts into it. And then leave it at that, and not try and do anything that we're not good at. We're not trying to make jokes in between the songs or anything like that. What we think we're really good at is performing our own songs. Did that answer the question? I think I trailed in the end there.


The Naked and Famous - 'Young Blood'

That definitely answered it. I'd like to talk about Nine Inch Nails. I read in Rolling Stone that they were a big inspiration to the recording and electronic production side of the band.

Yeah definitely. Something that Aaron and I bonded over really early on is that we produced the album ourselves, and it was the first thing we were actually friends over. We sort of sat down and went “Oh, you’re into them? I’m into them too!”. [They have] always been a really strong musical influence and a really strong… it's not an ideal, I think, but about this type of band we'd like to be. Even the way we set up the instruments in the band - there’s a drummer, synth player, guitar player, bass player, and a singer - so there's a lot of things that we modelled off [NIN], and have been inspired by. They’re big heroes of ours. We were lucky enough to support them actually when they performed in New Zealand last year. That was pretty amazing. Kind of felt like retiring after that. [laughs] Get to open for your heroes; it’s like, “Nah, fuck it! Good career, end it there!” [laughs]

Your own label is called Somewhat Damaged [a Nine Inch Nails song title]. Do you think Trent was aware of that when he picked you to support?

Ha, no, we didn't actually have the label at that point. We were putting stuff out on a New Zealand indie label. But I hope he knows it now. [laughs]

Did you get to spend much time with him?

No, we didn't, but he came into our dressing room after we performed and was, like, telling us how awesome we were and all that junk. It was pretty cool. Yeah, it was pretty magic. We really love the guy.

I imagine you'd be interested in having a guy like him as a mentor.

Oh, definitely. That’s the sort of person I think that, if we were going to look at producers, it would be someone like that.


The Naked and Famous - 'Punching In A Dream'

Help me to understand the relationship between Somewhat Damaged and Universal. You use Universal for distribution. What else?

In New Zealand and Australia, we have our own record label, Somewhat Damaged, which just basically retains us all the control, so that we get to say, “Right, we want to do this, do that” - whatever. “We’re gonna make these, we’re gonna put these singles out.” Then the deal with Universal is a distribution plus deal. So they spend some money in different places, and we can ask for money to spend in different places. But essentially they have no marketing obligations to us, so we have to pour all our money into that.

Anyway, it's kind of boring and complicated but essentially it means we get to do whatever we want, but they distribute and support us, and do the ‘muscle work’. They send all the posters out, send the CDs out, get things sorted out to iTunes and yada yada - but we retain all the control. Which is different to the deal we have elsewhere around the world. We have a record label now, Fiction Records, which is out of the U.K. Then there's a US partner as well. So the rest of the world is a good, old-fashioned, big fuck-off record label deal. But it's still our record, that we've recorded ourselves. So it’s a completely indie, self-made record; we're just putting it out through big labels now.

Do you see yourselves continuing to pursue that independent route?

Completely, yeah. It's different though, because we’re not childish about the industry. And I can't stand people talking about the music industry who aren't in it, who aren't looking at financial figures, who aren't talking to marketing people. It's so, so dumb when you hear people on the Internet talking about the music industry. It's like talking about the food industry, or any other industry that they have absolutely no economical grasp over. It's just retarded.

But in saying that, we are going to do everything ourselves. Not because we're trying to be cool about it and not because it makes us better than anyone else. [But] because we feel very confident at producing our records and we like being creative about the holistic picture. I don't know, it's a hard question to answer because I want to say, “Yes, we want to do everything ourselves”. But at the same time I fuckin’ love my new label. They’re great. They gave me heaps of money to put out heaps of cool shit and they've just basically said...we said, "Here’s our record," and they said, "Awesome, can we put it out?" If I said that to anyone on a blog or something, they'd be like "Oh, whatever, [The Naked And Famous] are homo. Indie for the win." You know? [laughs] “Major labels are gay.” Yeah. Confusing subject.

Okay, let's move on.

I’ve said too much. [laughs] I should’ve said “no comment”.

Too late now, mate - it's all out there.

That’s alright.

Moving on, I think the most interesting part of your band's sound is how you bring together electronic and shoegaze styles of song writing. I was wondering if that was a result of you and Alisa being interested in different styles of music?

Actually, not so much. It's more just our collective music taste. A lot of that production sense that you're talking about comes more from Aaron and I, and being conscious of how we're producing the tracks. Rock is moreso my territory. Electronic is more Aaron's, so us combining it together I think is just what happened to come out naturally. But we're always referencing different bands and that's half the excitement to us, about being producers. It's almost like being DJs - we're thinking about guitar bits, and we'll put on a record and reference that guitar, and this guitar, and this drum sound, and these synths, and whatnot. So it's quite fun.

Which one of you is the bigger shoegaze fan?

I think that'd be me, being a guitar player. Aaron's definitely a massive fan but he doesn't come from a guitar background. He grew up getting into DJing and house music, so he had proper turntables, and was buying records and stuff.

My final question Thom; what was it about that particular song by Tricky that compelled you to name the band after it?

We were thinking about band names, and we were chucking some ideas around, and it just sounded funny. [laughs] And over-the-top, but it just had that nice sort of mysterious, comical value about it. I don't know, it just clicked and made sense and it was everything silly about music. I wanted to make sure we had a sense of humour and that we weren't ultra-serious. I wanted to name it [something that] made people aware that there was some irony behind what we were doing, or at least our attitudes. Even if it's not obvious.

Andrew McMillen

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The Naked and Famous will appear around Australia in January and February 2011 as part of the Big Day Out festival.

THE NAKED AND FAMOUS - AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES 2011

23 Jan - Big Day Out, Gold Coast
26 Jan - Big Day Out, Sydney
30 Jan - Big Day Out, Melbourne
4 Feb - Big Day Out, Adelaide
6 Feb - Big Day Out, Perth

Sideshows:

8 Jan - The Corner Hotel - Melbourne
2 Feb - Oxford Arts Factory - Sydney