How Muzz made it to the end of a two decade long creative road

Now that they have, the three friends haven’t as yet been able to do the things bands normally do when they release a record, a fact that isn't lost on the trio, comprised of Paul Banks, Matt Barrick and Josh Kaufman.

“It's crazy to think about how quickly the world changes like a little switch.” Kaufman ponders on the projects public unveiling. “Everything is so different now. At the time it was ‘Oh, let's just kind of be in control this music a little bit more’. We’d held it so close, and it had just been our fun little project that we were working on together.”

Muzz comes with three seemingly differing, yet completely compatible components. Kaufman is vibrant and loud and barrels into his answers, Banks brings straight-faced, joking rumination, whilst Barrick, like his drumming, treads lightly, but adds ferocity when it’s needed.

The wider story arc of their project together is one of ships in the night, with each member belonging to their own worlds, yet the Muzz bloodline entwines the three of them. Kaufman and Banks have known each other since high school, briefly performing music together as Julian Plenti, and they met Barrick later down the line, in the burgeoning New York indie scene of the early ‘00s.

Banks is best known for being the stoic front man of Interpol, the sharp-suited and booted trio, while Kaufman, on production duties, has been part of The National’s live band and fronted his own project Bonny Light Horseman, while Barrick took up drums in seminal ‘00s upstarts Jonathan Fire*Eater, before finding himself in The Walkmen, and joining Fleet Foxes live band. All told, Muzz is a band that knows what they’re doing, especially when it comes to operating out of the leftfield.

When it came to recording together as Muzz, I ask if, having such a rich history and friendship, they found anything surprising about working with one another. There’s an elongated silence as the pieces work their way into words, and Banks is the first to break it.

"I've known Josh to be a tremendous musician since we were teenagers, but I've not really seen him in action as a producer. I was surprised that - I think ‘surprised’ is the wrong word - but I was impressed to see that his ability to get from A to B in the studio was right up there with the most efficient and inspired producers that I've worked with.” “Thanks, Paul!” Kaufman pipes up cheerfully.

Muzz initially made their way into the musical world as a clandestine SoundCloud upload, however it wasn’t long before Banks’ inimitable vocals were recognised and the friends’ experiment was no longer privy to just the three of them. Kaufman explains their decision to slyly introduce the project came simply because “We had everything done.”

In the same way that fledgling bands try to figure out their lives and feelings through music uploads to the platform - sometimes to great success - the step backwards for these three indie mainstays was one they never had the chance to complete.

"There's a crucial part about art, where you just have to say ’It's done.’ As a musician, it helps me to creatively clear the slate, to release something into the world, because then it's really not yours anymore." Paul Banks

“We were trying to figure out a way that felt exciting,” Kaufman tells me. “You have to remember that when we put “Bad Feeling” up nobody had heard anything about it. Nobody even knew that we had a band together or anything like that. We were very much still in our bedrooms. It felt like to give it up so quickly felt… cheap? It would be fun if we put it up on SoundCloud, and in some ways it's still ours. It felt more like you're inviting people to it as opposed to ‘Here you go, here's everything right now.’”

Banks adds that “I just read somewhere, where somebody said, ‘Art is never finished, only abandoned’, and there's something really interesting in that. I'm not entirely sure I agree with it, but I do feel there's a crucial part about art, where you just have to say ’It's done.’ As a musician, it helps me to creatively clear the slate, to release something into the world, because then it's really not yours anymore. It's always somewhat cathartic and it allows for evolution to take place when you release music.”

Kaufman picks up his friends’ thread, adding that, “It's an interesting conversation, because the minute you're playing the music for anyone other than the people working on it, it’s almost like you're saying ‘It's done.’ Even if you're qualifying it and saying ‘It’s an early mix, it's not quite there yet’, you're still saying ‘This represents it.’ To express in some way, you’re looking for something, you’re looking to give it and you're looking to maybe get something back from it, right? There are multiple levels of that going into actually putting the music out there, that by the time it happens you're actually fully letting go of it.”

For all of the musical understanding between them, the wider game at play is what’s kept the three friends not only in each other's lives, where twenty-plus years after the fact, they’re able to create music together. Muzz is a symbol of this coming together, and, on a larger scale, the durability of similar souls. The mysticism surrounding such notions isn’t lost on Kaufman who professes “the project just sounds like good Juju.”

“Paul and I will come and go from each other's lives, but there's a bonding that happens when you're young,” he says. “But also, I can double back on that, because I find myself meeting people now in my life that I feel like I've known forever, so maybe there's some sort of simpatico there? Some sort of mythic quality.”

“Mystic Juju!”, interjects Banks.

"That exists between certain personality types.” Kaufman continues. “We were always in each other's lives, in that sense, in a spiritual way, that kind of coming in and out. I mean, we're 3,000 years old, so it's like, ‘All kinds of things happen.’”

The joy for these three friends was managing to find time to hunker down in a studio, even when the outcome of what they were working towards was still up in the air.

“I'm always making music, no matter what. Whether it's just for fun, that nobody hears, or for a project, or for another band, it’s all a part of my life to make music.” Banks says. “Once in a while I stumble into a situation where I've got amazing chemistry with other musicians and it's a special kind of fun, because it's this magical alchemy. Music is always great and very giving, and the experience of finding great musicians and writing cool music together is a whole other realm of… just enjoyment.”

He continues: “I always see it like if I'm gonna do something, a record is always implied if I think there's chemistry. It was clear to me that early on, because we even brought a bunch of songs that we were all working on individually to the table in the beginning. We had a big batch of music, so it felt like, ‘Let's work towards that goal of record.'”

“I'm always making music, no matter what. Whether it's just for fun, that nobody hears, or for a project, or for another band, it’s all a part of my life to make music.” Paul Banks

Kaufman explains the trio realised they needed to do more than simply jam together, they wanted to put a body of work into the world, before adding a caveat that underlines the trios desire to create something meaningful, beyond the realms of a Supergroup. “Paul, I don't know if you remember, but there were times where we would be working on the music, we'd be really up close on it and then I’d be ‘I don't know if I can think about this as a record yet. I don't think I can even get there with it until we get a certain amount of songs that are in a good place.’

“There were times where I was doing a little psycho-gymnastics with myself, or trying to move stuff out of my mind, so that I could focus on what we were making. In the back of my mind I always felt we were working towards an album that felt like an honest and sweet thing that we all made together.”

Coming into the project, the three were each at different stages of their individual careers, with touring, producing, recording and every other element you can imagine of the music industry being involved, even down to Banks and Barrick owning a studio together. But once the room was open to Muzz finding a heartbeat, and with no one knowing about their intentions or attaching a date to anything, the three of them found themselves back in the throes of a youthful feeling.

“There was a joy that existed when we played together, and when we hang,” Kaufman says. “I think it’s the sense of humour of the three of us, and maybe the ability, like Paul was alluding to earlier, when he was surprised at how good it felt when we were all on board with an idea. That feeling was great to chase. I think we're all pretty joyful musicians on our own, so I don't think we were coming in spent on music necessarily. I was just excited to be able to blend our sounds.”

Their self-titled record Muzz encompasses a world that traverses Banks’ darkened city skyline home base of Interpol and marries it with tinges of melancholic rumination of The National and the rhythmic flourishes of Barrick’s NY indie scene pedigree. Given Muzz is a democracy, writing together involved each of them getting immersed in ways of working outside of their respective comfort zones. For Banks, this involved opening up the lyric writing process, a step which he deems as being “educational”.

“I was writing the lyrics but everyone was expressing when they weren't feeling something. And through that process of people being really upfront - ‘I don't know, I don't like this one line’ - I think that helped us to refine as a collective, where we were coming from with this music, and also the lyrics.”

"You need to examine what's going on and try to make it something that expresses what the three of us are looking for." Josh Kaufman

A dog barks in one of the three black rectangles on the Zoom screen. “Who’s dog?” Kaufman pipes up. It turns out to be Banks, sat next to an open window.

“When someone would say ‘This or that line is kicking me out’, that would prompt a conversation” Banks continues. “That often would go into the whole concept of lyric writing and the different ways it can be done, and the different approaches to telling stories. That was really rewarding, just even the discussions that that prompted.”

“I think we all looked at the lyrics, the approach to singing and all that stuff, as 'Oh, this is our band', we're all in this band together,” Kaufman adds. “Like, if Paul has some kind of issue with a kick drum pattern or a bass part…” “Yeah, like I take umbrage with the kick pattern”. Banks slyly interjects with a thick, deadpan comedic cadence hanging.

“He might have an opinion to raise, so then I think algebraically, to the other side of that equation, you have to keep the same thing. So, if Matt and I are like, ‘I don't know man, that lyric is kicking me out, it's making me feel funny about this music that we all are wearing together’, then you need to examine what's going on and try to make it something that expresses what the three of us are looking for.”

“I think when you say lyric writing is collaborative, maybe the distinction is there, it's like the editing is collaborative.” Kaufman continues. “With the music, there are some songs where we were literally sitting in the room, improvising together and came up with the basis for a song, and I would say that’s spontaneous, collaborative composition, musically, right? But I wouldn't say we were hanging around playing Exquisite corpse with the lyric writing. It's Paul bringing in ideas that I think we all feel open enough - just like Paul said - to have conversations about how we feel about them, and whether or not the music is wearing them properly.”

Bringing the each other’s musical ideas to the table was one thing, but when a mutual understanding has been in suspended animation for so long, with three separate lives being lived, what it stands for had to be something they all agreed upon. Muzz is a band in the most rudimentary sense of the word, it’s three friends - a gang.

Given each of them has spent their parts of their careers in the realms of the world of melancholic, brooding indie, particularly Banks, his writing from “a point of melancholy” should be no surprise, which he describes as "a way to kind of process an emotion, or to exorcise something painful.”

“But oftentimes it's just toying with the instrument and then something comes up that sounds cool and then I go from there. As a vocal writer, I get inspired by what I'm hearing, and if Josh has brought a song in, I get inspired in that moment by the music to do the lyric and the melody.”

“I don't ever want to worry about too much going in. If I was needing to fit everything into some preconceived concept, I think that would block me up creatively” Banks says about his desire to keep the lyric writing process as natural as possible. “I just take it song by song as a lyric writer. I think the filter process and the editing process that Josh mentioned led us to a place where there’s a cohesive aspect of it in the lyrical dimension. It hinges on things that feel and sound authentic and also a little bit sentimental. I think there's quite a bit of sentimentality on this one.”

Even if it’s another decade before Muzz get back in the studio together, the milestone has been reached, and even though the live aspect will be missing for the foreseeable future, anything after this is a bonus. “All three of us are pretty good at multitasking and having multiple projects going on at the same time,” Kaufman says brightly. “So, I think there'll be a lot more Muzz and there'll be a lot more of our other projects as well.”

The sense of patience brings us back to the very beginning of our conversation. When I ask the trio how they feel now that Muzz, a project years in the making, with life having been lived, has all been brought together, Kaufman replies: “I don't feel that much different, because I think in a lot of ways the creative conversation is still happening, if that makes any sense? I feel like, ‘Oh, cool, we’re getting that music out there and that feels good, I'm excited for people to finally hear it’ but I think internally, and maybe because of the time that we're living in, I don't feel any difference…” He begins chuckling. “I don’t know if that’s the right answer!”

Striking like a bolt of twinkle-eyed lightning, Banks pipes up, “Let me step in you guys. I think I got this one. I feel really excited to have the music come out. It's a shame we can't tour, but I'm excited to share the music with the world for sure.”

“Did that part not come across in my answer? I definitely said ‘I'm excited about the music right? Did I not say that?” Kaufman asks chuckling. "Because I am!”

And just as swiftly, Barrick summarises the wit and bond of Muzz in one sly and cuttingly joyous answer. “You said you felt nothing.” And the three disappear into a mass of laughter as if no time has passed at all.