Interview – Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

Written for and published by the awesome The 405.

Alex Ebert portrait by Natasha Thompson, see her blog, here

It's no secret that I love Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – I've even blogged about them a couple of times before. So when the lovely guys at The 405 asked if I would like to have a chat with lead singer Alex Ebert I jumped at the chance: 

Before you guys were Up from Below and now you’re Here – does that mean Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros have arrived?

You’ve put it together, right? You’re the first one! I mean that’s exactly how I describe it – the first album was reaching towards something and this album is sort of speaking from somewhere. The first album is moving towards someplace it wants to be and it’s sort of chaotic in that sense, it’s sort of desperate. But this album is speaking from a place that’s arrived and yeah…you’re exactly right.

How do you even make an album – there’s so many of you? There was a nice video going round of you all in the studio making some amazing sounds.

Well yeah, that’s basically how some of it happens. I think writing is still very often a very intimate experience but sometimes it happens on a group level and all at once. The thing that we really all did together consistently was work out arrangements and put the time in and be present to play our instruments over and over again and work out what was what and what goes where. That’s something that we didn’t really do on the first album – the first album was all like demo’d up before we recorded it so…

So there is kind of a more relaxed feel to this album maybe?

Yeah it’s a bit more relaxed and I gotta keep reminding people that it’s one part of a double album and the second part is coming out in November. And the second part is definitely a lot more rambunctious! It’s not necessarily that the end of this chapter has been reached and that’s where we stand, but this album is just part of what we wanted to express and it’s where we’re coming from right now.

And what’s the message you’re trying to spread with this first half of the double album?

I think to me, it’s defiance. That is the biggest theme to me, and that sort of commitment to joy and transcendence – even in the face of realism or pessimism and all that kind of thing. We get called a very joyful, celebratory band and I think that’s true but I don’t think we ignore, or that there would be any benefit of trying to ignore, all of the sort of more painful sides of life, we just like to be about transcending that stuff into something else.

Audiences really connected with the last album and loved those songs, what’s the reaction been to the new tracks when you’ve played them live?

Oh it’s amazing! Man On Fire is amazing live and we’re starting to play that really well and that’s been amazing. Child is amazing and Fiya Wata – we’ve been playing that for a long time, but Man On Fire has become this very frothy experience where everyone just starts going bananas and it’s really wild. It’s so fun… so fun.

You’re getting bigger and bigger though, have you lost some of ability to connect with audiences now you’re playing to bigger audiences?

No, we’re playing bigger venues and the thing is that it gets stranger and stranger that we’re not changing and making it a suddenly “professional show”. The juxtaposition gets greater and greater between who we are and what the venue assumes you’re supposed to be. But realising that I felt that pressure on myself just by being in these venues and what these venues sort of expect from you as structures – they sort of ask you to be regal and sort of a bit more highfalutin – and rebelling intentionally against that has been a really interesting experiencing. We sort of just break down those walls and fly into the audience, and hang out, and do our thing, without a setlist and all that – it’s pretty wild. And I think for some people, to be in one of those larger venues, and for it to still feel somewhat chaotic is a pretty jarring but hopefully liberating experience.

You played a very theatrical show at the Old Vic Tunnels in London last year. Any plans for more of that?

You know, a lot of effort goes into that kind of thing and a lot of people and a lot of time. We would love to something like that again but I think the closest we will come to that is when we come to play at Latitude Festival. But other than that we’re mostly just going to bring our bodies not bring a whole giant show. But what we might try and do is to involve local artists and local people who want to participate in something and wrap our heads around something. But for the most part, right now, we’re just concentrating on playing shows and making the music.

Here is out on Rough Trade now. 

Christmas card

Merry Christmas!

This is my version of a Victorian christmas card - I'm thinking of making some cards depicting a more contemporary christmas scene but in a similar style.

Monsters, Ink

These are my designs for a competition to make a cover for the guys over at Little White Lies. The brief was based around the upcoming release of The Wild Things in that we had to design our own 'wild things' and include the words that feature on my covers above.

I am not an illustrator by any means but, as anyone who has sat next to me during a particularly long lecture, bus journey or even a short lecture, will know - I am a doodler! And I have to admit this was a way of being productive with my doodles and I quite enjoyed doing it!

Getting political

I recently ran in the student elections at University under the ridiculous alias of Emma 'Burgundy' Barlow (see one of my self-designed logos above) aka. Anchorman, the role made famous by Will Ferrell. I was running for the position of Head of Student Media and gair rhydd Editor, unfortunately I did not win!

Despite the end result being incredibly disappointing, the whole process was a fantastic experience as well as exhausting! The very nature of student politics means you have to leave all inhibitions at the door - donning a ridiculous outfit and adopting a gimmick is a standard requirement and unfortunately decent policies and experience seem to feature as rather less important.

However, I really did throw myself into the week and a half long campaign. Presenting a speech and dealing with some difficult questions in an official 'hustings' evening was a great opportunity to start flexing my self-promotion muscles and was in fact my first experience of proper public speaking. I also visited the various schools throughout the University to make announcements at lectures and speak to fellow students while they sat in cafes and refectories - taking me totally out of my comfort zone. It was testing too, when students wanted to question my ideas and ask me about my own political views but at the same time was also immensely satisfying to learn that people were interested enough to talk to me about it.

One of my main policies was to get all of our fantastic student media, Xpress radio, CUTV and gair rhydd, working together. I felt this was important as other media-savvy students would then be able to work together and share their skills. It would also raise the general standard, for instance Xpress and CUTV could benefit from working with the more experienced writers of gair rhydd. It is of course, also exactly the way most professional newsrooms now operate and I really think my experience at the BBC and at Honduras This Week would have helped me to get a more convergent media department up and running.

However, one my fellow News Editors, Emma Jones was elected and I'm sure she will do extremely well. I had been really unsure about nominating myself for the job a few weeks ago but even though I lost I am convinced just the experience of campaigning itself was worth its weight in gold.