Muscles: ‘I Need To Prepare My Body’

The enfant terrible of Australia’s electro-pop scene has returned as a re-energised gym rat with a fresh perspective and a new EP, writes SHAUN PRESCOTT.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Muscles’ 2007 debut LP Guns, Babes, Lemonade wasn’t all the Melbourne songwriter needed to remain in the press. After that record’s overnight success – which transformed Muscles from an awkward bedroom project into a widescreen and widely adored electronic pop star – he managed to piss off his influential record label Modular (by threatening to sue them), play an all acoustic set with Tim Rogers, and generally run his mouth off in a way unheard of in an age of quiet acquiescence to the hand that feeds.

But after an uncharacteristic year of silence, Muscles is back with a new EP, Younger and Immature. As the 21st 15-minute phone interview in his publicity spree today, Chris Muscles (not his real surname) is in auto-promo mode by the time I get to speak to him. Younger and Immature was released on the day we spoke, and closes the first chapter in Muscles’ Modular-backed career, with his forthcoming second record Manhood expected to incorporate elements of his early experimental pop into his better known dance floor ready material.

How’s life?
Life is cool. I’ve got a tour coming up, the EP is out, and I’m just tossing up what I’m going to do to celebrate – whether I should go out on a 24-hour party binge with a couple of mates, or if I should go to JB-HiFi and see if the CD is there, and then buy a copy. I don’t know what I should do. It’s a bit of a dilemma.

And I hear you’ve been working out in preparation for your third studio album. It’s nice to see you’re planning ahead.
Working out is good, I’ve got a personal trainer once a week, and I try to go to the gym three times a week. Just in general, from touring in the past, you need to be fit to play live, especially when you’re shouting the way that I do on stage. I need to prepare my body. I did a festival in Newcastle on the weekend [Fat as Butter], and that was a nice comeback onto the festival scene. I did a secret show in Sydney as well, which was fun. The new live show, I’m tossing up a few ideas to upgrade it, I’ve got some new lights and some visuals, and I’m thinking of getting two girls on stage to play live keys and to sing harmonies, to try to recreate the ones on the records live. We’re going to experiment in a few different ways.

But are you really thinking that far ahead, about a third album?
I’ve been playing piano since I was three, I played drums in school, and I’ve been making beats on the computer since I was 12. I feel like I’ve spent the last 10 years getting to where I am now. After taking a year off I spent that time thinking about what I want to do over the next 10 years as Muscles, the kind of songs that I want to write and the kind of stories that I want to tell, and expanding myself outside of just being a singer/songwriter slash producer slash live performer. The future has a lot of exciting things to come, especially with the internet and digital stuff.

“I could write a piano acoustic album within a two or three month period, but I can leave that until I’m 50-years-old.”

You also said in the press mail-out that you were questioning your mortality. Is ‘Forever’ about that?
‘Forever’ was actually a song that I’d written long before those on Guns, Babes, Lemonade. It’s a track that I’ve had on my computer for a while. I recorded half the song and I couldn’t think of a second chorus for it, but I went back and listened to it and thought it was really futuristic and cool. The idea of the song is - what if I just stopped doing Muscles and started doing something else? I thought to myself, as long as people still want to come see me live and listen to my music I’ll continue. Playing the festival in Newcastle to 6000 people who knew all the words to the songs on the first album was a really good indicator. I think people want Muscles back.

The EP sounds like it was made by someone in a pretty good place. Some of the songs on Guns, Babes, Lemonade had an edge of anxiety, but this EP sounds more celebratory. How have you personally changed over the past couple of years?
I’ve had to grow up a lot. Working with people, working with music and working with record labels, it’s all just ... [trails off]. I’m not sure how I’ve changed. The songs on the EP are a bridge between the newer material and Guns, Babes, Lemonade, and each song sounds in limbo, a bridge or a connection between what I’ve created before and what is to come. I feel younger, and I know how all the processes work so I can relax a bit and just party and have fun and focus on doing my job – just writing the best music that I can. For the new album, the material is going back to the experimental music I used to make, and somehow working it into a kind of dance club track. That’s been part of my growing up. As a producer I’ve been finding my own style and pushing it to the limits.

The clip to ‘Girl Crazy Go’ is funny, but slightly disturbing. Was the clip your concept?
The clip was done by a guy called James Beaufort from Sydney, who is a friend of Modular. We sent him the song and he gave us a huge 10-page treatment, and everything you see in the video was written down on paper. He just totally got the song. We thought, “It’s not like it’s going to get played on Video Hits or Channel V or MTV or anything”, so we really pushed it to the limits with the gunshot. The original treatment was really extreme but I pulled it back a bit, but at the end of the day I’m really happy with it. I’ve had a lot of feedback from young girls who say it really captures that age when you’re leaving high school and you’re going to uni and you’re learning what your limits are and when not to go too far. And if you go too far you get consequences. Obviously not as extreme as some in the video though.

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]

You were saying before that you’re feeling younger. When do you think that a musician making music like this reaches the point where it won’t work anymore?
I dunno. Compared to other bands like the Presets, Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem – they’re all guys in their mid-30s – I feel like I’m still very young in my music career as Muscles. There’s a lot more left to come, but I’ll know it in my gut when it’s time to stop making current upbeat electronic music. I could write a piano acoustic album within a two or three month period, but I can leave that until I’m 50-years-old. At the moment I want to play with synths and come up with catchy sounds. Actually, I can’t believe I just used the word catchy: I hate that word in reviews.

When Andrew Ramadge interviewed you for M+N in 2006, you came across as quite reserved. You had a very set routine. How much has your day-to-day routine changed since?
Totally. As a person I’ve changed quite dramatically since then. At that point I didn’t really know anything about how the music industry works. That interview was half done half through email, half through meeting up. Going back to then, I never thought that I’d have an album that would chart in the top 20 in its first week. Back then I thought I’d be lucky if it got played by Fenella Kernebone on Sound Lab [triple j’s experimental music program]. The popularity of ‘One Inch Badge Pin’, leading into ‘Ice Cream’, I had the songs for that album and it all came together. The path as an electronic pop songwriter is the path I chose, and that’s where I can see myself going in the next couple of years. But after that, who knows? It could be anything.

You’ve managed to stay in the spotlight since Guns, Babes, Lemonade. All the controversy, threatening to sue Modular etc [timeline below], was that a meltdown or were you just taking the piss?
That was when Twitter first came out, and I was having a bad day ... The whole thing was a storm in a teacup really, it only went for a week, and it was just a miscommunication. I was having a bad day, I posted something on Twitter, and a whole bunch of journalists kind of got on it and turned it into a story. Now people know not to take artists and DJs’ Twitter posts as news stories anymore, unless you’re Justin Bieber or something. At the end of the day, Modular is like a family – you have fights and you make up in the end, and that’s all part of being part of the label and part of the family. They’re incredibly supportive of the new EP and the forthcoming album, which will be out hopefully next year.

So there was never any feeling that that was the end of the relationship?
You just fight and you make up and that’s it really. It’s in the past and we’re looking forward to the future.

Is it important for you not to be categorised, not just known as what Muscles is?
When you start a project like Muscles you have a commitment to your fans to deliver what they want and what they expect. But you kind of find a line between what you want to create and what they want to hear. I can easily write a weird experimental album under another name, but I don’t think Muscles fans would be into that. As I said before, I still feel very young in my music career, and I’ve got 20, 30, 40 years ahead of me to create a vast array of recordings.

That sounds like an exciting prospect.
Modular are very open with recordings, they say just write what you write and when the songs come together that’s when the album is ready. I’m just at the point now where I’m going through all the songs and making them the best that I can, and making it a much bigger album than Guns, Babes, Lemonade. I’m looking forward to getting back on tour and seeing the fans, because fans are one of my biggest inspirations. Seeing girls up the front who may have been there for four hours waiting and just dancing and not having a water bottle and getting carried away by security guards and stuff. Yeah, sorry I can’t remember what the question was...

Muscles’ ‘Girl Crazy Go’ Tour continues this week with shows at Sydney’s Mona Vale Hotel on November 11 and Gaelic Theatre on November 12. More dates here.

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Muscles Vs Modular: How It Unfolded

December 2, 2008: Muscles issues a statement on his website that his performance at Nevereverland — Modular’s 10th birthday bash — has been cancelled. Further fuelling reports that his relationship with Modular had soured, Muscles’ Wikipedia entry ends controversially with the line: “Modular amicably parted ways with Muscles in November 2008.”

December 3, 2008: Modular drafts a lawyer-like response saying that he is signed to them for 25-to-life and his offer to play at Nevereverland still stands.

December 4, 2008: Muscles calls shenanigans on Modular’s response, saying that, “It's crystal clear modular, DO NOT want MUSCLES on their festival line-up, so ignore whatever silly press releases that come from them.” His MySpace page now claims he’s signed to Universal and he makes a blog post on his website saying he’s quit the biz altogether.

December 16, 2008: Muscles threatens to issue legal proceedings against Modular. He issues a statement claiming he “had no choice but to cancel all of his arrangements for his new live show and tour, immediately advising his fans that his record company had reneged on the arrangements and that he would not be part of the tour.”

December 22, 2008: Muscles continues the Modular bashing on stage at an acoustic gig with Tim Rogers at Melbourne’s Corner Hotel.

January 7, 2009: Muscles tells all in an infamous interview with Ben Lee, venting his spleen about Modular, the state of the industry and the “boring” MGMT.