Peter Matthew Bauer: "No-one knows what the hell is going to happen. It’s like starting over"

Yet Bauer shouldn’t worry; Liberation! is a fine rock and roll record that takes the grittiness of the early Walkmen records and adds some welcome detours into new wave and Tom Petty-esque FM rock, while retaining a playfulness that definitely wasn’t present on the last couple of records he made with his old band. Speaking to Bauer from his home in Philadelphia, I guess the place to start is by asking if he’d always had it in his mind to make a solo record.

​“You know, I mean, probably not any more than the next guy!” laughs Bauer. “I don’t think I was ready at all [to make one] until I sorta had to. It was kind of ‘do I want to keep making music?’ but now I don’t want to do anything else but make music. What is it that people say…‘it took a while to find my voice’...” Was that something that troubled him? “I do think it took a while for me to do that,” confirms Bauer. “It was good being in a band; it was such a formative experience and I learned a ton from Paul [Maroon] and Ham [Leithauser] about how to play music so I don’t think I could have done this without having been in a band first.”

Having been a fan of The Walkmen since I saw them on their first European tour, third on the bill behind Tanya Donnelly and Mary Lorson of Madder Rose, you could almost visibly see that by Heaven this was a band that wasn’t really enjoying themselves or where their music had been heading in the last five years. Although Bauer stops short of admitting he wasn’t having fun anymore, he does admit some frustration: “I don’t think I was frustrated with my role in the band any more than anyone else was frustrated with their role in the band.” Did he find himself sidelined or in a place where he was contributing less? “I don’t think anyone contributed as much during the last record!” says Bauer, with a chuckle. “It became less of a group and more just guys pushing their bit, writing little things by themselves…I don’t know what my role was anymore - but if I’d been in the same role from the start I’d have been tired of it too, so I dunno! I think basically what it boils down to is that it’s great to write songs for your friend and to help him for a while - you create this idea and it’s a thing bigger than yourself, and then all of a sudden you just don’t care anymore. You don’t want to help your friends along anymore, and he doesn’t want to help either and then that’s that. When you’re in a band you kind of convince yourself that this stuff is incredibly important to you…”

As soon as The Walkmen had decided among themselves that it was time to call it a day, Bauer moved quickly to start making his own music. He explains: “We had decided to end the band in February 2013. We went on a European tour and a US tour - we did a lot of shows to make ends meet and we didn’t want to say anything, for about half a year. So I made the whole record from February to August; it was recorded and mixed in probably half a year. It was pretty much working night and day that whole time.” He embraced the whole process, particularly in having the freedom to work as he liked: “I played guitar, basically, in The Walkmen by the end. I didn’t play the organ anymore - I hate the organ! I was used to playing guitar again after the last while, but I had no idea how to sing!” Did Bauer lack confidence when it came to that part? “That was so scary and it took a real process to learn how to do it,” he affirms. “I mean beyond just learning the mechanics and the skill of it….how you’re gonna sing and what resonates with you, y’know? That was a big part, but it was fun because for someone who’s been in a band for fifteen years to make a first record - and who doesn’t know how to sing - it’s easy to get that energy which is kind of inherent in a first record; and that’s something that’s not always easy to do if you actually know what you’re doing already. So I wanted it to be a completely new thing and not a continuation of anything. It was important - the way I recorded, the way I was singing - that everything had to be built up from scratch. Even the studio - well, we recorded in this factory which we moved all the recording equipment in to - it was just a pain in the ass the whole thing! Which I think was helpful…”

What’s intriguing about Liberation! is that you can noticeably hear Bauer finding his voice across the record; there’s a throaty confidence on the ragged and euphoric “Latin American Ficciones” and “You Are the Chapel” but on the title track his singing is uncertain, tight and nervous…so is it the case that he’s still searching for the right delivery? “Yeah I’m trying to get a hold up on that! It’s so terrifying! I remember watching Hamilton singing, I was like ‘I don’t think I like that face!’ but he didn’t know it was happening. It just happened naturally with his voice. So I’m trying to work out where in my throat or where in my chest everything is coming from so you remember what you did when you heard something you liked. It’s very fluid and now my voice is changing a lot again; the songs I’m writing after this record are very different…but it is fun when you’re singing because you’ve got this whole physical body thing to deal with which you don’t get with other instruments.”

Liberation!‘s main themes are religion and spirituality. Bauer was raised in ashrams as a child and religion has always been a part of his life, for better or for worse: “It comes from my whole life, I guess. It’s a big part of what I think about, whether it’s childhood experiences or not…it’s just what I’m interested in.” Is it the case that he’s working through some unresolved matters from when he was younger? “Do I have unsettled issues with it? Not in a psychological way but just with writing songs…if things feel left undone and there’s something left to investigate. To me, it was a very good way of making everything about who I am too. It’s a very direct door to that; that’s why it became the overall theme of the record - it is what’s most important to me.”

When I ask Bauer if he’s reached any clear conclusions about how religion and spirituality fit into his life, he’s happy with not coming to any concrete decisions: “I don’t have an answer; the record is very angry and I’m sort of making fun of religions,” he explains. “One of the first I wrote was the Scientology one [“Scientology Airplane Conversations”], and it’s based on this flight I had to Chile. I sat next to this guy and he said ‘my life is falling apart…I got a story to tell you’. So I was like ‘oh shit’, y’know? I can’t hide from this guy and I’m gonna be stuck on an airplane with him forever. He told me his wife was leaving him: she’s a Scientologist and he’s been labelled a suppressive, and she’s moving back to Russia. He tells me this big long story and I’m thinking this is great, I’m listening to this! So that was the start of that song, and it’s a very nasty song but that’s the emotion I got. Also, I was reading Going Clear [Lawrence Wright’s dissection of Scientology] at the time…so it goes from there and I’m trying to take spirituality seriously, in a sense as opposed to being polemical and nasty about it.” Was it important that Bauer didn’t just write a record that was savaging organised religion? “The thing I wanted to get across, or I think arose naturally, is that there is a lot of darkness and shadow that goes along with organised religion and contemporary spirituality…but there’s also very real, very strange experiences people are having, regardless of situation and that’s one little aspect I’m touching upon in a lot of the songs. There’s a lot contradiction, and I want to hold on to that contradiction - that’s what I care about. I wasn’t trying to make a thesis about what I think of this and that but I was trying to get as much of those feelings into the songs.”

Despite the potentially heavy themes, Liberation! retains a playfulness and fun that makes it a sort of freewheeling and carefree rock and roll record. With Hamilton Leithauser’s Black Hours also containing a certain playfulness and fun aspect, and Walter Martin making a record of songs that he wants to be enjoyed by families, is it more than just coincidence that the members of The Walkmen are suddenly having fun again now that they’re on hiatus? “It’s hard to make music funny, I mean laugh out loud funny, when it takes itself so serious,” says Bauer. “But you want things to be at least a little goofy or over the top…you know, when you write something and initially you think it’s silly and over the top…but eventually you come to realise it’s not over the top at all, it’s fine and it works as opposed to the ‘woe is me’ sad stuff which you end up hating. It was a rule I had, to try and make it as funny as I could make it.” The feeling I get is that this is exactly what The Walkmen lost in the last few years…“Yeah, it’s very plausible!” agrees Bauer. “It’s a lot easier to write music by yourself and record music by yourself than it is with a band. It’s so much easier than saying ‘what the hell is wrong with the drums? Why did they record that way?’ There’s no thought of that when you’re doing the whole thing - so it’s easier to get that playfulness. It’s great having a band and great having friends but in the end it’s also better to be able to go off on your own little journey to wherever you’re going. Maybe that’s why, I dunno! But that’s also the type of music a lot of us like; we’re not self-serious, sad people. Even the people that do that well are funny people. Rock and roll music: that’s comedy.”

Liberation! is out now on Memphis Industries.