The Naked And Famous

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OVER A DECADE, THE NAKED AND FAMOUS ARE A TWO-PIECE. AND JUST LIKE IN THEIR EARLY DAYS, THE KIWIS ARE IN HIGH SPIRITS WITH SOME OF THEIR MOST ENERGETIC HITS TO DATE.

Everybody loves a good comeback story – it’s in our human nature to embrace a narrative of resilience and rehabilitation. It gives us the motivation to persevere when shit hits the fan in our own lives; to keep our chins up and kick life’s little inconveniences where the sun don’t shine.

For Kiwi synthpop scorchers The Naked And Famous circa 2018, a good ol’ fashioned comeback was just what they needed. Longtime members Jesse Wood (drums) and Aaron Short (keys) both abandoned ship that March, and both its remaining members – keyboardist Alisa Xayalith and guitarist Thom Powers, both of whom founded the band and serve as its interchanging frontpeople – were in the midst of their own personal tumults. For a short while, it seemed as though The Naked And Famous had run its course.

And then came a spark – a few errant chords on a keyboard that led to a defiant rush of inspiration for Xayalith and Powers. Fueled by ruthless determination not to let their flame fizzle out, they decided not to enlist replacements for their expired collaborators, instead pushing forward as a two-piece and smashing out some of their sharpest, wittiest and most explosive material to date.

Cue album number four, Recover, which Powers is overwhelmingly happy to agree is a resounding return to form for the band.

In the press release for this album, you say it’s about “recovering ourselves and our artistic vessel,” and that it’s “a statement of creative . healing.” How exactly did making Recover act . as that form of therapy for the band, and was . it more about liberation or catharsis? .

I don’t really believe in catharsis. I read some really interesting stuff about it recently – the idea of ‘catharsis’ can effectively create an emotional feedback loop, and doesn’t actually help people let go of emotion. It creates a kind of encouragement mechanism for the emotion that you’re going through; the idea that if you’re angry, you can just punch a punching bag to release that anger, is apparently a psychological myth. So I’m not as big of a believer in catharsis, but I do find that it gives me deep purpose and meaning to create something out of tragedy.

If I have a terrible experience and I can put it into a song or turn it into some kind of lesson, I find that extremely useful. And to be honest, because I don’t have this connection to the word ‘catharsis’ that I think a lot of other artists do, I almost find it like more valuable to turn my negative situations into a story, or sort of solidify them, if that makes sense. I feel like this album has the most of that for me, personally – it has the most diary-entry-like songs.

So behind the music itself, this is a pretty huge album for The Naked And Famous because it’s your first release as a duo since the first few EPs. What was it like to navigate that setup again after so long?

It felt like going back to basics, because Alisa and I began this group in 2008 as just the two of us; it wasn’t uncharted territory, as far as it went with us making music as a duo. And we’ve always been the songwriters in the group, so it’s not like anything really changed at our core.

It was like returning to form, though with ten years of experience and life behind us. And, to be honest, everything that we’d done up until about 2016 was basically justin the wake of Passive Me, Aggressive You. We were still trying to live that dream, if that makes sense. And then after Alisa and I separated and we wrapped up our second album… I mean, Simple Forms was kind of like a reset button in some ways, but not entirely – this feels like a full reset, y’know?

We’re not just on the tail end of a separate decade. Alisa and I live in LA now and we have friends here; we feel settled. Those old records are far enough behind us that we’re not just tacking onto that buzz – it really feels like we’re starting all over again, in some ways.

What’s your guitarsenal like right now?

I used to have a couple of Les Paul Studios and I would play those live a lot, but they have extremely hot pickups, and I much prefer the wide range humbuckers on my ’72 Deluxe Tele. I’ve been playing that guitar with [The Naked And Famous] since Passive Me, Aggressive You–it’ s the oldest guitar I own, and I just love it so much.

It’s a really important guitar for me because I have big, chunky bass-player fingers. You know Minecraft?

The little block hands? Those are my hands. And so the ’72 Deluxe has this amazingly wide neck so that you can really get a sense of how far apart the strings are, and it’s excellent for big, fat, chunky hands like mine.

So I’ve been playing that guitar for as long as I can remember – although I did recently switch over and start playing this really unique guitar that I adore, and I can’t find anything like it; there’s this series that Fender did called the Pawn Shop Series, where they’re all Frankensteins of all these different guitar parts put together, and I have a Pawn Shop Mustang.

It is just the most beautiful, elegant guitar I’ve ever seen. It’s got a miniature Jazzmaster or Jaguar body, but it’s the size of a Mustang, everything on it is just a little short-scale and the pickups are wide-range pickups, but they’re elegantly smaller. I’m a small guy, and I find that the Deluxe sits really heavy on me – it’s a big guitar – but the Pawn Shop Mustang is the only guitar that actually feels right on me.