INTERVIEW: MACULA DOG
TALKING RAINBOW ROCK AND SKA WITH THE A/V FREAKOUT DUO
Strictly speaking, rainbow rock isn’t a “real” genre. The term was invented by Twig Harper to describe a musical and visual style that started burning down the underground highway in the 2000s: Lightning Bolt, Dan Deacon, Extreme Animals. But it never really caught on. What is rainbow rock? Well, there is a lot to say, but I’ll keep it simple: it is distorted arpeggios and neon. (My friend Alex made a playlist that serves as a musicological study of the genre. It’s very good, though the only thing it might be missing is a bit of pop trance. DJ George Costanza also made a crucial rainbow rock playlist.)
Macula Dog aren’t a rainbow rock band. But the work they do, both as a band and as the co-heads of the great Haord Records, taps a similar vein. There is a continuum of damaged, theatrical electronic punk that maybe starts with The Residents and then moves to Devo and Neon Hunk and Sophie. I’m just kind of going off the dome here (I’m a rapper), but Macula Dog are part of this lineage.
The NY-via-FL duo’s newest record ups the stakes, both sonically and melodically. It’s a go for both the hyperpop kids and your weird record collector uncle. And the Macula Dog Live Experience, which at different points has incorporated props, masks, puppets and video, is sort of unmatched. Do not get it twisted: they were fucking with those weird front facing camera attachments long before that one viral trainspotter kid. Nobody is doing it quite like Macula Dog.
Does the term rainbow rock mean anything to you? I don’t think you are a rainbow rock band, but you do seem to be partly informed by that era of music: Load Records, Paper Rad, Etc. Was that an influence starting out? What were you listening to?
Ben: Definitely formative for us. I think of it as art school damaged heavy music or something. “Fun heavy.” Neon Hunk/Paperrad/Forcefield were huge for me. We were most of all into The Locust early on, they were probably more rainbow rock-adjacent than formal rainbow rockers, though.
Matt: Yeah that tour in like 2002 that The Locust, Arab on Radar, Lightning Bolt, The Blood Brothers and Get Hustle all did seemed sick… But was too early for us. I feel like I’d see posters for that tour around in different spots for years and it’s like a homing beacon for people and spaces that would be down with what we’re doing.
Tell me the story of Haord Records. I love looking at the Bandcamp. Sonically and visually, it was one of the most cohesive labels of the 2010s. Did you have any goals at the onset?
Ben: We couldn’t really find any established labels that would put our music out or respond to us. We also couldn’t imagine it working anywhere. We were really young and thought a DIY cassette label was the only way to do it or something insane like that. I think it’s the classic story where the idea was to create an illusion of a scene, when in reality there wasn’t much of one. We would do the artwork only when people asked us to and they kept asking. Only Cabo Boing (both albums), Baggie (Sour, 2021) and Tender Cruncher (one of her two albums, Juicy, 2019) did their own artwork.
Matt: There was a strong tape label scene at the time but neither of us are really good at the social part of the music community and we end up sort of going our own way most of the time.
What is your approach to songwriting? On the new record, you seem to have raised your pop ambitions a bit. I’m thinking “Neosporin.” That chorus always gets stuck in my head. Are you trying to write pop songs?
Ben: Wow that’s cool it’s getting stuck in your head. I think we are trying to distill down our songwriting a bit. I mean I don’t think that song is a real pop song or anything, nor do we really have the desire or ability to write what most people consider a pop song now. I think we make pop music in a historical sense… Like it’s not classical or jazz. It’s pretty traditional ABAB stuff from our perspective. With “Neosporin” we were trying to simplify and make something that had the vocals as a focal point but was ultimately unintelligible. So we stripped as much away as we could and had the vocals loud but worked a long time with the effect chain and editing to make sure each word had enough intelligibility to be understood as a word but not enough to actually understand it.
The A/V component of your live set is crucial. What is your history with costumes and video and all that? Was that a part of the band from the jump? Where is it going?
Ben: Visual components have been there from the beginning. They feel necessary. The live video part came in around 2017 or so. We wanted to somehow multiply the concertgoing experience. Like watching the show on somebody in front of you’s iPhone while they take a video of it. You’re watching several live performances at once.
Matt: Yeah it’s always been there. Conceptually we’re always balancing hot and cold at the same time–we’re a completely electronic band but we don’t sequence or use backing tracks–we have this gear we wear to make the performance “more interesting” for the audience but in effect it distances us from them.
What kind of media do you consume for fun? Are you looking at Tik Tok? Are you streaming prestige television? Listening to hyperpop? What's up?
Ben: I mostly just watch tons of like hobbyist YouTubers.
Matt: I watch The Bachelor with friends every Tuesday followed by this Showtime series Gigolos. I’m listening mostly to reggae and “bass music” stuff along with some metalcore that I never got into like Converge. Obv. I listen to WKCR, WFMU, dublab, Rinse, Ancient FM and NTS pretty regularly. And check out other smaller stations. I watch bike repair and restoration videos on YouTube mostly and fire up Tik Tok at least once every other day.
You two were in a ska band together? I need more details. Is Macula Dog influenced by ska?
Ben: Yes we were and absolutely it was. Even if it’s not always obvious musically I think it definitely trained us to be proud of being un-ironically uncool and then being treated like clowns.
Matt: Yeah you really set yourself up for humiliation by being in a ska band, so that was very formative for both of us. A lot of ska can be clowns and pizza parties, but honestly most of the ska I listened to was about being an alcoholic.
Orange 2 is out now on Wharf Cat Records. Macula Dog on Twitter and Instagram