![]() I just hear what’s there and if I’m not hearing what I think I need to hear I’ll have him change the signature or mute everything but the drums or the piano, break it down more. The direction he took was in the way we had been going. Were either of you surprised by the other’s approach to songs? ![]() And with writing, the purpose of writing is in service to the movie and, like I said, with A Perfect Circle I’m trying to get it the best for Maynard in a similar way. The movie had flashbacks to Romania in this girl’s childhood and I had to get into that Eastern European mindset and it put me in that place for writing. “The Contrarian” and “The Doomed” came from that in different forms. How did that influence what you did with the music on the album? At the end of the day, I’m in service to inspire him and bring his best to the table.īilly, you scored the movie D-love recently. It was one of those things where I have to trust when he has an intuition about something. That stumped me for a long time and was painful. Originally it was in 4/4 and then it became 3/4. Howerdel: “TalkTalk” was a song that was one of my favorites but he wanted to switch the time signature. What song went through a painful evolution? Some of them come quickly and some are this painful evolution. You never know how it’s going to come out. It wasn’t until Dave, the producer, said, “Let me just mute all these extra things” that I heard the song – the drum beat and the melody – and I could hear enough of the song that it leapt forward. Like most guys who play guitar or write music, he had extra time on his hands and was adding things and layering things to the songs. Keenan: He sent little pieces, maybe 10 or 20 things to start with. How did the two of you work out the songs? There’s a bunch of songs that didn’t make it that I think are really strong and that will leave us open for the future. I would say that 75 percent of them are from the past three years. In the Eighties? There’s one on this record that’s older, but I won’t say which one. ![]() So if I see a spot like, “Eh, there’s just not a lot of movement,” I’ll shift gears.īilly, when did you begin work on the music for the album?īilly Howerdel: God, I don’t know. With everything I do, there are deadlines for progress. Maynard Keenan: I had a lot of things I needed to do, but it sounded like things weren’t, um, going forward so I had time to shift focus and dabble in something else and see where it would go. How did you decide to start working on a new A Perfect Circle album? ![]() The group has released two songs from the album so far, the relaxed “Disillusioned” (seemingly about a society that’s gotten lost in its own self-interest) and “The Doomed” (a more upbeat song with lyrics about survival of the fittest). Gone largely are the walloping riffs of “Judith” and the propulsive rhythms of “Weak and Powerless.” Eat the Elephant is a moody, sensitive portrait of a band that decided to grow up and make a record that reflects where they are now as artists rather than trying to recapture the past. What Keenan and his Perfect Circle partner, guitarist Billy Howerdel, made was somewhat of a departure from past albums – a quieter display of the complex emotional tableaus they made their calling card in the early 2000s. “I only really truly embraced the things that made sense and inspired me.” “Do you do what you did before to satisfy the people who were there before? And when you’re no longer 27, are you even relevant? Does it matter? There were many, many questions, and you try not to let them direct everything you’re doing, but they were looming.”Īnd how did Keenan reconcile those doubts? “I just put the blinders on and do it,” he says. “Do you reinvent yourself and try to look to the future?” he posits to Rolling Stone. So much so that he found himself asking a litany of philosophical questions when making the group’s upcoming full-length, Eat the Elephant. It’s been 14 years since A Perfect Circle last put out a new album, and frontman Maynard James Keenan is acutely aware of this fact. ![]()
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