"It was a huge empowering thing for us to accept and almost embrace the fact that we were gonna do this record ourselves.": Interview with Ben Lieber of Head North
Interview by Molly Louise Hudelson.
Photo by Eli Ritter.
Buffalo, N.Y.’s Head North released their debut full-length album The Last Living Man Alive Ever in the History of the World on June 2, and it was a long time in the making. Their last official release was a 2015 split EP with Microwave, and while they put out the first single, “God (Bring It Back)”, last July, “music industry bull crap” meant it was nearly a year till the album was released. The choice to self-release the album- an ambitious effort that’s also a concept album, revolving around a world where both God and love are forbidden- ended up being an empowering choice, leading to “an insane amount of confidence in ourselves.”
Regardless of any external forces, the band- consisting of lead vocalist and guitarist Brent Martone, drummer Ben Lieber, bassist Alex Matos, and guitarist Eli Ritter- believe in what they’re doing more than ever. The Last Living Man Alive Ever in the History of the World sounds substantially different from the Microwave split or their prior EPs, Bloodlines and Scrapbook Minds, but it’s worth spending some time with. The “cosmic rock” album has 15 tracks and is 49 minutes long, and while they all revolve around the same theme, fitting together into a story line, each one sounds different. The earlier tracks hit harder but the second half is ethereal and ambient, and even features a spoken word installment (“Somewhere, n.D.”).
I spoke with Lieber a few days after the record was released, and we dove in to the recording process, their change in sound, and what fans can expect on their upcoming tour with Gates and Vasudeva. Read on for the full interview.
CIRCLES & SOUNDWAVES: For the record, could you state your name, what you play in Head North, and a fun fact about yourself?
Ben Lieber: My name is Ben, I play drums, and I like avocados.
C&S: You just released your debut full-length record- The Last Living Man Alive Ever In The History Of The World- that's a tongue-twister.
BL: It's a mouthful.
C&S: Yeah! The record came out last Friday, and it premiered the day before over on Substream- in the days leading up to the album coming out, what was going through your head?
BL: The record got put on hold for a long time, and for a while I was wondering if it was ever actually gonna come out, so for us to finally get in the motions of everything- we put out a song, we put out a music video- as it started to really happen it [was] kind of hard for me to grasp it. Initially, I feel like it just came out of nowhere; it happened really fast after such a long period of waiting that maybe I didn't get to bask in it as much as I hoped, but it's still- now it's out, finally.
C&S: You announced the name of the album last July- what took so long for it to come out?
BL: We got held up with music industry bull crap pretty much. We had finished our deal with our last label and were trying to find a home for this record, but it was a combination of having been off the road for so long and the record being, obviously, a huge departure from our previous sound- a lot of things played in to labels being very hesitant on picking this record up. We pursued avenue after avenue, talking to, you know, this new person who's gonna connect us to this label and yada yada yada, and it finally just got to the point where we realized that it had been so long since we'd had any sort of hype whatsoever- we had no movement behind us at this point- and we realized that there was no way that we were going to get any movement, get a tour offer or an offer on the record, if we didn't just put music out. We realized that that was the only way that this band was going to start gaining traction again.
And from the moment that we realized that, it was a huge empowering thing for us to accept and almost embrace the fact that we were gonna do this record ourselves and handle it on our own terms, and it's been awesome! I can't complain because we've had amazing support and it's been a really cool thing to go through putting out an LP ourselves. It's been crazy- a lot of work but it's been fun.
C&S: It sounds like the work has paid off.
Do you pay attention to what kids are saying online? Some bands are very in tune with what everyone's saying on Twitter and YouTube and whatever, and some purposely hold back.
BL: I take it with a grain of salt. I try not to care too much, but I also do value the thoughts and opinions of the people who care about listening to is. I feel like their voice is just as important as our voice. So, you know, I do read everything- I spend time talking to people and I think that that's really important- but at the end of the day, I don't weigh everything on it and I know that the record is sick as hell regardless of what anyone says about it.
I feel like what's come along with the whole self-release thing is an insane amount of confidence in ourselves and just knowing that, regardless of who wants to put money into us, we know that we're a good band and that this record is awesome and deserves to be heard by people. So- yeah, I don't know- I guess the answer would be I take it with a grain of salt. I do value it but not over-zealously, I guess.
C&S: No, that makes sense.
So you touched on it- I mean, anyone who's heard the record can say it's definitely a departure in sound from what you guys had done before, and it's a concept album as well- when you were first starting to work on this record, did you go in with this idea that it was going to be a total departure in sound and a concept album- or was that something that just kind of happened?
BL: Yes and no. We had this backbone idea for the storyline, I guess, but it wasn't uber-developed at the point when we started diving in to the record but [Brent] had had this idea for quite some time.
In addition to the- for lack of a better word- fictional story that the record tells, there's a lot of real life personal elements in there as far as what happened with the band, and why we stopped doing things, and us growing as people and moving out and whatever- and they kinda intertwined with each other- but as far as the story goes, the backbone was there.
As far as the sound- I have to give a lot of credit to the- truly, like, original sound that I think this record has- to the engineers that we worked with, Brett Romnes, Gary Cioni, and Kevin Kumetz at Barber Shop studios. This was our first time ever recording anything at a studio that wasn't in Buffalo and we just wanted to try something different. We connected with these guys in the studio through our booking agent and we did the one single "God (Bring It Back)" as a test run to see if we wanted to do a record there-which is why that song came out and then nothing- but we really, really liked it and then scheduled the recording time.
As far as recording techniques and everything, we just really did a lot of out-of-the-box, strange stuff, like- this is the first time we were able to have the whole studio to ourselves for two weeks- so we left everything set up and that allowed us to- A, go song by song instead of instrument by instrument- and B, jump on any spur of the moment idea that we might've had- and we had enough time to where it was okay for us to like, spend three hours on a random trumpet part idea that we had even if we don't end up using it, because we had the time, we had already paid for it, essentially, and the whole studio was at our fingertips for this. So that was incredibly conducive to us getting in the zone and [getting] our creativity flowing- like, I had never been so enveloped in a musical experience for that long- we were there for a little over two weeks, I believe, and the whole time I was just extremely down in it. I can go in to nerding out about weird recording techniques and stuff but the point is, we did a lot of weird shit that we've never done before and we kinda just ran with every idea that we had.
I feel like a great example of that is the bonus track, "Broke"- there's just so much weird stuff on that song. We were like, "Okay, this song is the bonus song, it doesn't really matter, we can put all this random shit on it."
C&S: Why is it the bonus track?
BL: Because it didn't fit the story of the record. It didn't really fit in any specific place. The rest of the songs were like, "Yeah, this song is gonna go here in the outline of the record because it fits, it makes sense"- but "Broke" never really had a spot in that. We were done recording the record at that point and we had a couple days left and we were just like, "Screw it, we'll just record that song and make it a bonus track." And we just had fun with it.
C&S: You are heading out on tour with Gates and Vasudeva in a couple days, and you had a tour in March with Heart Attack Man; when you were touring in March- you had announced the album title but I don't think you had announced the release date at that point?
BL: No. We played a lot of new music on that tour, too.
C&S: How did that go over? Did people get it?
BL: I feel like- yes and no, again. I feel like it went over well in that people vibed with how it sounded live; obviously you can take live music with a grain of salt cuz you can't really hear the vocals, whatever- but general consensus was people dug it, but they didn't get the full picture- they hadn't heard the full record- and we really feel like the full record needs to be heard to understand what we're trying to do here. There was definitely that little bit of, "Okay, this is just weird but I kinda like it"- but you know, regardless, it was cool to play songs and we did that as a kind of transition into this new, I guess, era.
C&S: On the Gates tour, you'll be headlining the Buffalo show, can people expect to see you play, the whole record front to back, or is it gonna be mixing songs up from this and from older releases?
BL: I don't think we'll play the whole record front to back, simply because we haven't practiced that and we don't have another opportunity to practice before the tour. But we're gonna play a lot of new songs; we have most of the record rehearsed and ready to go. We're only playing new music on this tour; we're not playing any old stuff. That's kinda the deal.
C&S: Are you ever going to be playing old songs again? Or is that pretty much…
BL: Maybe. Probably... but we feel like the last tour that we did in March was people's chance to hear old songs again; and it was like, "Oh this band hasn't toured in a year, I wanna go hear 'In the Water' again"- and that's totally cool and we really appreciate that, but the record's out now and we're moving on, and we really wanna play new music.
C&S: Definitely. Wow- so you were not touring for a year- did you get restless at all? I mean, in 2014 and 2015 you were hitting the road hard.
BL: Oh yes, Molly. It was the hardest year of our lives, needless to say.
C&S: So you have this tour with Gates and Vasudeva coming up; what else can people expect from Head North this year?
BL: More tours. We're getting ready to grind- that's all I'm gonna say.
C&S: That's gotta feel good. Well, thank you so much Ben- anything else that people reading this should know?
BL: Thanks for your time and hope you like the record.
Thanks Ben! Be sure to keep up with Head North on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and their official website. The Last Living Man Alive Ever in the History of the World is available now; you can purchase a digital download or vinyl copy here and stream on Spotify here. Read our 2014 interview with the band here.
Dates for Head North’s upcoming tour with Gates and Vasudeva are below.
