Go Outside: Cults

Behind the debut album

Accelerating the conventional processes by a couple of light-years, Cults went from anonymous demos to fawning attention from the world’s indie press in a mere couple of days.

It did, however, take us a little longer to see their faces. When they finally stepped into the light, they emerged as Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion, both film students at NYU.

Now they’ve moved away from the bedroom recording equipment and into a live set-up, I caught up with singer Brian and bass player Nathan Aguilar on the final night of their European tour – braving the crowds of Glasgow at a sold-out Nice’n’Sleazys show.

This all began with 3 tracks on Bandcamp. Talk us through what happened with Cults.
B; Well, we just made some songs and put them up on the internet, hoping that we could send them out to some friends and family. And then, friends started sending them to friends, and their friends to their friends and within like a week, we started getting write-ups in big things.

Like Gorilla vs. Bear?
B; Yeah, that happened almost like 7 days after we put them up, so that was really bizarre. But yeah, it took us a really long time to trace down how they got a hold of it. Because he got it from a person that we don’t even really know.

It just went viral? What was that like when the hype hit?
N: When you go to a website, its y’know, a faceless person and who knows? Maybe they’re going to give a band a good review about something that has nothing to do with the music? Or maybe they go the other way and dislike the band for reasons that don’t have anything to do with the music. And then everyone’s like ‘oh, yeah. That band sucks.’ It’s because the guy who wrote it had a bad experience.

B: It was exciting for like a month of it. And then it was like, how are we going to play this down and start becoming like a real band? Because a lot of people ride that hype train down into the graveyard. And everyone’s like ‘What’s the big deal?’ So we kind of went into hibernation and started writing a lot of songs and practicing a lot.

You did conceal your identity for quite a long time. Did you do that consciously or was it just what all to do with how the band was discovered?
B; Like I said, there was no need to have an identity because when it came out it was familiar personally to people, and once that started taking off, I think we just thought it was really funny. So we didn’t want to mess with it, because it’s like people were using their imaginations and filling in the gaps, having really funny speculation about it being some side-project of some person.

Side projects of whom?
B; I don’t know. One person wrote this big thing, thinking it was the side-project of Chris Walla, the guitar player of Death Cab, which I thought was kind of offensive! But either way, everyone had different ideas and I thought it was fun to let that spin for a while.

Do you ever miss the anonymity?
B; Yeah, but it’s impossible because I love playing shows and it would be pretty difficult to do without being a joke. Whenever anybody tries to be anonymous, it just ends up coming over really lame.

Why the name? I know you grew up in California, where the legend of the Manson family couldn’t have been far away. What is it that fascinates you about cults?
B; Growing up, a lot of our friend’s parents and stuff were getting involved. We lived in like a really New Age-y area and people get sucked into a lot of scam religions, end up wasting a lot of their money and time. And when we were kids, we were big fans of Timothy Leary and stuff like that, and all got really into transcendental meditation and shit like that. Growing up and seeing that…whilst some of it’s beneficial, a lot of it’s just a crock of shit. It’s less about glorifying the idea of cults and more about…

…examining them?
B; Exactly, yeah. A lot of our songs are about personal freedom and not listening to what other people think you should say or do or whatever. It’s more the opposite, rather than an affirmation.

Who would you consider to be a musical influence? There’s a lot of girl-group in your music with the sugary music and the really, really dark lyrics. What inspires you when you’re writing?
B; I don’t know. We like all that stuff, obviously, but we also like a lot of 90s guitar bands.

N; A lot of guitar influence in there. I really like Kevin Shields.

B; And Dinosaur Jr, Thurston Moore – guitar pop music. But uh, there’s also some influence of the idea – not necessarily practice – but the idea of hip-hop and electronic, with the repetition and songs that cruise on a loop and get bigger dynamically, not necessarily harmonically. We just sit back and listen to Salem ‘Trap Door’ all day.

N; …drink some cough syrup, smoke a blunt.

What’s next from Cults? What are you up to now?
B; Shit, we’re home tomorrow which is amazing. We go home and we’re on tour for the next 6 months. We’ve got a hip-hop collaboration. We actually just got it back today. We’ve just done a collaboration with this rapper Freddie Gibbs which I’m really excited about. I think everyone’s going to think it’s really weird but I’m pretty stoked, because he’s like really, really gangster and we’re not gangster at all. But we made a track for him.

How did that come about?
B; I just tracked him down and asked him. It’s kind of my dream, to produce and write songs for a bunch of people so I was like…Freddie Gibbs, let’s see if he’ll rap on a track. And he did!

It’s definitely an unexpected change of direction…
B; Yeah, the whole point of the next year is going to be touring and trying to make as much weird, challenging, surprising art as we can.

Are you going to consciously push for a change?
B; Nah, not necessarily. With our own music, we have our own way of working but like it’s just like you spend so much time promoting an album that…I finished that album in December. Do you know what I mean? You got to keep it.

That’s what I was thinking at the sound check. Do you ever get tired of your own songs?
B; The audience every night makes it different.

N; I mean, I don’t get sick of playing, but sometimes you get into a routine and anytime you get into a routine you’re bound to…

…get complacent?
N; There’s never a night when I’m like ‘Fuck, I don’t want to play’ It’s more like you know, I’ll think about how much I miss home, or something.

B; We have this thing when it feels like we’re getting a routine down, so we’ll throw a crazy wrench in the gears… like cut a member out of the band or get in a new member of the band. Or cut ourselves. Y’know? It’s always challenging.

Words by Marianne Gallagher

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