A PERFECT CIRCLE IS BACK
The Doomed marks return for band
It was Halloween, and the news out of New York was unfittingly horrible. A monster, a truck, innocent civilians, another atrocity from the New Normal. Because that was just the one day. Days later, there was the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. And before that, and after that, a Groundhog Day of horrornews. An endlessly repeating cycle.
So when A Perfect Circle released a new song called The Doomed (“Bless the slothful, the wrathful, the vain ... What of the pious, the pure of heart, the peaceful? ... All doomed”), you could hear a very large tuning fork pinging its resonant message with a forlorn plea for … what? Decency?
“I can see that,” says guitarist Billy Howerdel. He doesn’t write the lyrics — singer Maynard James Keenan does — but let’s say the music he wrote suits them. “I look at (the song) as timely … but unfortunately, it was probably timely 300 years ago. Unfortunately, perhaps (it’s) more potent than ever.
“But music is cathartic, it’s powerful and healing and provocative for most people.”
So let’s step away from the bad news. It will still be there when you log back in.
There are some good-news stories from A Perfect Circle.
First, for the band’s legion of fans, they are back. The Doomed is their first single since By and Down in 2013.
It presages their first full-length album since eMOTIVe (which was an antiwar covers record, after all) and their first in 14 years (!), due in 2018.
“The goal is to make music that’s hopefully timeless,” Howerdel says as he prepares for a gig in Virginia.
Given the devotion of the band’s fan core and the “who?” of, perhaps, the general public — here: A Perfect Circle is like Keenan’s Tool reimagined as the Smashing Pumpkins, less brainiac progressive-punishing and more intuitive, making the most of Keenan’s wounded voice and Howerdel’s Les Paul guitar textures.
The band emerged as essentially a Tool side project at the end of the ’90s and has been on semi-hiatus since 2004.
The second good APC story addresses their founding.
“It’s an interesting talking point,” Howerdel says.
He met Keenan in the early ’90s when Tool opened for ska/funk/ punk loons Fishbone, Howerdel being that band’s guitar tech at the time. He and Keenan stayed in touch, and when the singer formed his side project Puscifer, guitarist Mat Mitchell became Howerdel’s guitar tech. A perfect circle.
So, given the load of good stories, here’s a bad one: Ask Howerdel how much he loves the “alt-metal” term. You can see him roll his eyes from here.
“‘Alternative’ is such a strange tag in itself. I liked alternative music when I was growing up.
“I get why people use it. I loved Killing Joke and Echo & the Bunnymen and The Cure — things that were truly alternative and weren’t on a radio station that was easy to find. I was lucky that I had a station in Long Island that my mom’s single-speaker clock radio picked up — WLIR. That was how I discovered them, and they were completely left-of-centre. ‘Alternative’ is a label that used to mean something.”
This writer felt it was his duty to inform Howerdel that “alt” is lazybones rock-critic shorthand for “the smart version of X.” “Ah. Well, then, I’m flattered.” The band was away for the better part of 15 years, aside from a 201011 tour and some other scattered shows. It must have felt good to return to a scorched-earth rock landscape and find people still care.
“Yeah. There are definitely new fans, and definitely those who’ve come along for the ride,” Howerdel says.
The set list leans heavily on their 2000 debut, Mer de Noms, and 2003’s Thirteenth Step, with new songs Feathers and Hourglass updating it.
“There are certainly plenty of fans in the crowd who were probably in utero when we put out our first record.
“And the spring tour we just did, most shows were sold out and it was just heartwarming to see people paying attention.”
A third good story? “We have a no-phone policy at our show,” Howerdel says. They mean it, too — more than 60 people were ejected from a show this month in Reading, Pa., for breaking it.
“First of all, it’s just rude. Putting up a phone in front of someone’s face so they get to watch the show through it? Getting a memento of the show — sure, I’ve done it myself.
“But then you ask, ‘What am I gonna do with this?’
“But the other point is, people talking about the show is so much more powerful. We’re inundated with videos and images, and getting back to a campfire conversation, letting people express how they felt in the experience — it says something more.
“And it speaks to, what does the music mean to you, and how do you want to tether it to your experiences in your life?”
Here, Howerdel has yet another bit of good news. “I do a VIP tour every day for 15 people on the stage. It’s a ticket you buy that gives you early access and a few extras, and a 30-minute tour with me on the stage.”
At a recent show, one fan had a surprise: He got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend. “And the guy was telling me, ‘This is what the band means to me.’ There’s nothing more flattering than that. You want people to have it mean more.
“That memory will be ingrained in my head forever. And they didn’t even take a picture of it.”