Quickly, for the uninitiated: My Favorite (NYC) is band that first existed from the early 90s up until 2005 when they broke up after releasing a number of singles and two full-lengths. Following that breakup, the members formed The Secret History, which released a couple of acclaimed albums as well. Now frontman Michael Grace, Jr. has reassembled My Favorite, returning with a new lineup and sound, an incarnation that has been dubbed the “Second Empire.” I spoke with the band about what the “Second Empire” means to them, what it means to make a new band out an old one, and their upcoming single, “Christine Zero” b/w “Killed for Kicks.”
Michael Grace, Jr.: It's been good, we were doing a photoshoot in this space we rented through Breather, where people go for very indeterminate reasons. It’s like a living room that you rent for an hour. And you just try not to think about what people have been doing’ in there. [laughs]
Was there a theme to the photoshoot today?
Gilbert: “We have an hour and a half. Get it done.”
MGJ: Five people looking in different directions. That is the actual and metaphysical theme of our group. [laughs]
Well, tell me about the Second Empire.
MGJ: Well, yeah, you know, at the end of The Secret History, Lisa Ronson moved to London, and that was a long distance to try keep a rock and roll group together, and I was feeling a little bit sick of rock and roll, which makes sense, cuz I only liked rock and roll for those four years out of my life. [all laugh] And as I thought about what to do next, it just sort of—I realized I lived in a novel called My Favorite, about the suburbs, about escape, about sadness, about faith, about decay... and I didn’t really have another idea. After The Secret History, it felt like I was back in My Favorite by myself. So, as insane a notion as it was to try to move forward that way, I just decided to. The desire to do electronic music with Kurt was definitely a big part of it. But the idea of creating a third group that would do music influenced by the same things My Favorite was—that wasn’t My Favorite—also seemed a little bit crazy. Since the songs were gonna be distinctly mine and they were gonna be an extension of the sounds that we used then, it just seemed almost more artificial to create something new that didn’t feel as much a part of me as My Favorite did. So, I mean, I was super lucky that Kurt and Gilbert from the “First Empire” were willing to embark on that, and then really fortunate that Jamie carried over from The Secret History, and that Joseph, you know, stepped into some really big shoes that Darren left behind. But what we’re doing is somewhat different.
So you would avoid calling it, like, a reunion.
MGJ: It’s definitely not. I mean, Gilbert and I have been here since we were teenagers, but Kurt was near the end of the original My Favorite. If I didn’t think there was at least a chance to move the ideas of what My Favorite was forty-five degrees, I don’t think I would have done it. So, doing it with the exact same members I think would not have been enough of a change for me, and, also, I would have needed ‘round the clock security. [all laugh]
So did you start this new project—or new chapter—with a specific musical goal in mind? Or an aesthetic in mind? Did you all come to it wanting to bring something new to it?
MGJ: Recording drums and guitars and organs and everything The Secret History was doing, which was trying to be a really dense, progressive rock and roll band, got really tiring. And the idea that, really, Kurt and I could form a sort of Pet Shop Boys at the core of things, playing with computers and plugging in wires, and then build around that, just creatively at this stage in our lives allowed us to work in a different way. And I think that was the main inspiration, that Kurt and I would really be doing something organically from that seed, that would be about electronic music. Although the more we [all] work together, the less it’s sort of becoming that. I would say Joe’s role as a guitar player has expanded the more we’ve worked together. What I thought would be basically 808 State is now the Cocteau Twins. [laughs] I don’t know.
You’ve all been playing shows now in this iteration for about year, right? What’s the difference between now and then?
Gilbert: Well, most definitely the setup. We don’t have live drums anymore. So it’s definitely been an adjustment to sort of work that way. But, you know, there’s a bit more control we have over our direct sound out there. I mean, we’re still sort of trying to figure this out, having worked in our old format, but it’s also very, very nice to reinvent, to see what we can bring live. It’s a challenge that we sort of embrace.
Kurt: The Secret History came together as a live band, and now we’re kind of trying to make a live band out of something different, which is difficult—you have to devote the energy to making it different. But I feel like the live shows are now based on the recordings, when before it was vice versa.
MGJ: Which is definitely what I envisioned. I had this phrase, this idea in my mind called “Top of the Flops.” I used to watch the Top of the Pops, the 80s music program on the BBC, and the performances were, like, 90% canned, you know, backing tracks, lip synching, and the artists would just sort of try to express this other thing on top of it. You know, Morrissey would rip his shirt off, or The Associates would have people in nurse outfits, you know what I mean? We’re not doing that—we have a decent amount of actual live instruments [laughs]—but I did like the idea of a kind of theater that’s half-live and half- sort of, like, memory of media. So that little catchphrase I have in my mind: what if there was a TV show for losers, for flops, for outsiders? And we would be doing this sort of hybrid of a kind of canned performance and this really human thing. The Secret History would always maximalize, you know what I mean? And we’re sort of, there’s something claustrophobic about being locked into the technology, which I really enjoy, because people with anxiety like when things press on them really hard.
This might sort of be—I hate these questions sometimes, but how has the New York scene changed since the first My Favorite iteration—
MGJ: We’ve been doing this long enough that we saw a few changes. Like, we struggled as really young people in the 90s during the sort of lo-fi indie period where My Favorite didn’t make any sense. During the “New York Renaissance” of Interpol and The Strokes and bands like that, we were able to at least be contextualized a little bit more, where what we were doing all of a sudden seemed like, “Oh, maybe those guys had an idea that was slightly ahead of its time instead of just ridiculous.” Like, we were playing with The Softies, who I loved, but it was like Duran Duran following The Softies. [all laugh] When we were doing CMJ shows with Interpol, you know, there was at least some continuity. Like, these guys dig the pointless aspects of Joy Division, and My Favorite digs the important ones.
That’s a good way of putting it. [laughs]
MGJ: I’ll take a shot at Interpol at this point! That’s not very ballsy of me!
Jamie: I was gonna say a big difference is instead of being in the audience for the My Favorite shows, I get to be in the band, now, which is a huge difference.
MGJ: That is a tangible difference.
Jamie: Because I was a huge fan before. I think Joe and I were both huge fans and now we get to be in the band which is something that’s really, really special.
MGJ: That’s the only way I can possibly get bandmates, is to just reap the small population of fans.
How has songwriting changed?
MGJ: It’s always been “Michael Grace shows up with a folk song,” you know? And with The Secret History that expanded into this mope-rock opera, and with My Favorite it sort of constricts into this circuit with Kurt, where it’s about what he hears in terms of electronics and then that’s what we sort of bring to these guys. So, in a way, it is more of a studio band in that sense. It’s like Kurt and I are two producers trying to do movie music and then everything comes to life after that.
Gilbert: They bring that framework to us and it’s through that that we try to realize their vision. And we try to recreate that on our respective instruments. I mean, you know, you work with someone for a long time, an extended period of time, you understand their sensibilities, you have a good understanding of your relationship. But usually that’s how it begins, with both Michael and Kurt.
Kurt: At first it was, like, Michael would have an idea for a song and then I would try to sabotage that, and then Michael would try to save it from [that].
MGJ: In all honesty, The Secret History was, in a way, a form of a hair shirt for me.
MGJ: You know what a hair shirt is? Like, they would make monks wear this painful garment with hair on the inside, to atone for their sins. And my breakdown at the end of My Favorite finished the band. [Kurt laughs] So, The Secret History was a form of penance for me. Let Darren, let Kurt, let Todd sort of take my songs wherever they want to take them. And when I felt like I paid enough penance, it’s back to depressing dance music. I took my hair shirt off and put my, you know, pleather tuxedo on. I’m much happier this way, to be quite honest! I’m putting on the ritz! [laughs] That’s an honest statement, you know? I felt, like, in a way, creatively, I had to re-balance. I went too far into the caverns at the end of My Favorite, and took everyone down that tunnel with me. But at the end of The Secret History, it was sort of, like, “Okay, I’ve heard you guys make two amazing rock albums, it’s back to—let me hurt myself.”
Tell me about the new single.
MGJ: The new single, “Christine Zero / Killed for Kicks,” what do you wanna know about it? You heard it once!
I heard it once! It was great. How’s it been recording it?
Kurt: I feel like that’s the oldest of our new songs. It was like the first one that we kinda had something sketched out, then it just got dropped for about a year.
MGJ: I think that song convinced us that we could do it, you know? I think that convinced us that is was worth doing because it was clearly something that was as intense as anything My Favorite had done, but something that was also clearly different, because it’s a Moroder-y disco track that we’re building on top of. We’re not building on top of tribal beats…guitar riffs, the sort of circular things that Todd and Darren would do that were amazing. We’re really building on top of this sort of psychotic pulse. I think there’s a lot of darkness in that song, but there’s also, there’s the life, the propulsion of it. So that really was the track that made me think, “Okay, this is gonna be worth doing.” And then “Killed for Kicks,” you know, I always wanted to do Sophisti-pop. Cuz I thought that's what Gatsby would have listened to. So I wanted to be Prefab Sprout, I wanted to be Spandau Ballet. Gilbert’s been dealing with that since high school. [Gilbert laughs] He’s the only one that actually would encourage it. When I talk about “Top of the Flops,” I have this image of the 80s, of like a blue spotlight hitting Jamie, and doing “Killed for Kicks” on TV, like after Haircut 100.
Sounds like there’s a music video there.
MGJ: Yeah. I think there’s a real subversive quality about doing pop music that is only subversive in its sort of “meta.” Not in distortion pedals, or upside crosses, just in the pure defiance of its pop-ness. It’s essentially a song about a kid kicking around the suburbs, trying not to commit suicide, but it also sounds a little bit like Swing Out Sister. [all laugh]
Cool! Well, what’s next for the band? Plans?
MGJ: Yeah, we’re gonna play a show at the end of April to celebrate the single in New York, and then we’re gonna go to Philadelphia with Mercury Girls in May. And we’re gonna keep working on the record. So we’ll be chippin’ away at the record and playing shows, as many as we can.
If you could recommend some stuff for the readers to check out, if each of you has something you’re into right now...
MGJ: Music and culture? Jamie! Jamie knows lots of stuff!
Jamie: Oh god, all I’ve been doing is listening to classical music at home. [laughs]
MGJ: That’s cuz you won’t take Xanax. That’s not a recommendation, that’s a prescription, that’s self help.
Joseph: I just bought the new School of Seven Bells album, but I haven’t listened to it, yet, so I’m not sure if I can quite recommend it, but I’m looking forward to it.
Gilbert: I’m just listening a lot of throwback, classic rock. I’m listening to a lot of Who once again.
MGJ: He put on The Who during the photoshoot and we all just let out a stream of profanities at him.
Joseph: We vetoed The Who, I guess.
MGJ: Kanye just sampled Mr. Fingers, which is a late-80s Chicago house act that I’d vaguely remembered, and I hate to give Kanye credit for making me go back and listen to Mr. Fingers, cuz I had been listening to a lot of Frankie Knuckles before that. I think I had exhausted what I could get out of that. And I never talk to Kurt about what I'm listening to, I just sort of visualize something and he, for some reason, makes something that sounds like that. Are you listening to that stuff?
Kurt: I don’t even know what you’re talking about. But the new Kanye “Sister Nancy” song is amazing.
MGJ: So I’ve gone back to Mr. Fingers, which is really cool, and some other Chicago stuff. I mean, when you play electronic music, you just try to keep it broad in what you’re listening to, so I’ve been listening to The Associates, Iggy Pop’s The Idiot and, you know, Steely Dan’s Gaucho on repeat, a bunch of stuff.
Joseph: I’ve sort of been obsessed with this music called Synthwave. Essentially it’s sort of like mid-80s video game music with, like…
Joseph: It’s like Miami Vice music.
Gilbert: Jan Hammer-influenced?
Joseph: Yeah, it’s kind of like Sega Genesis-influenced, Knight Rider-influenced. I’ve been listening to that a lot—
Jamie: A lot, a lot. [laughs]
Joseph: I’ve been imagining myself driving down some, like, barren European highway and listening to this music.
MGJ: You can see why he fits right in. [all laugh] I mean, My Favorite’s always been like a film that you have a shitty part in that doesn’t make any festival. You know what I mean?
Jamie: I’m reading Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles.
Jamie: Which makes me want to kill myself, so…
MGJ: And you can see why Jamie is singing these songs!
Kurt: I’ve been loving the new Baroness album. It’s all I can listen to since Blackstar.
MGJ: Kurt and I were obsessed with Blackstar and sent love-y texts to each other about it for about a month, then we had to draw the line.
MGJ: Longitude and solitude.
