tUnE-yArDs Discusses Traveling the World and How Her Surroundings Influence Her Music

Grace Morgan

If black comedy is humor painted in a dark colors, then indie pop act tUnE-yArDs flips the switch to serve up what some might call comic melancholy, addressing serious social subjects such as severe drought, addiction and economic injustice in the lyrics of her bright, and highly danceable songs. The brainchild of New England native Merrill Garbus, tUnE-yArDs has finally delivered its third album, “Nikki Nack,” after taking a few years off from recordings to refresh her creativity and pursue other passions, which included a very impressionable trip to Haiti.

While her delightful, colorful vibe has not changed, Garbus has come a long way musically since her first album, 2009’s surprise sensation “Bird-Brains,” which she recorded on the cheap, using primitive tools such as a Dictaphone and GarageBand software to create her early work. Word of mouth surrounding her unique, jazzy electronic audio-atmosphere quickly spread, and the addition of Nate Brenner on bass helped contribute to that unforgettable energy permeating through the band’s notorious live performances.

Now, grade “A” producers Malay and John Hill have jumped into the mix to lend their expertise to “Nikki Nack.” While in New York (and absorbing the breaking indictment news in the Eric Garner case), Garbus shared how her most recent creation contains traces of her new home city of Oakland, a quirky kid’s TV show, and the universal hardships that burden humanity.

Entertainment Voice: You’ve mentioned that Oakland greatly influenced your second album. As you’ve been traveling a lot, and to Haiti on your hiatus, how much of your surroundings influences the style and genre you compose?

tUnE-yArDs: It’s really been very influential. Sorry, there’s this stuff on the TV about Eric Garner and it’s so upsetting, I’m going to turn the other way. Today I feel very sensitive about being in New York when this Eric Garner indictment news has been released. I can’t help but absorb what’s happening in my vicinity. Being in Oakland, when writing “Whokill” and “Nikki Nack,” you can hear the city of Oakland in both of those albums. You can probably hear Montreal in the first tUnE-yArDs album. It’s a pretty moving experience to be able to travel the world and to get a glimmer of people’s experiences, to observe people around the world. And I do think it all ends up in the music somehow.

You’ve mentioned that “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” influenced the record and there’s an overall childlike quality in your music in terms of chosen percussion, influences, etc. Is this a conscious choice?

Yeah, not just because I was obsessed with “Pee Wee’s Playhouse,” but for good reason. As a kid growing up in suburban Connecticut, where things were rather bland a lot of the time, seeing “Pee Wee’s Playhouse,” it felt that was impossible that this could exist on network television. There was the freedom to be weird, and freedom to be crazy, and freedom to be hilarious, and that was very different than my surroundings and the town where I grew up. But I think you can get more serious and more dark if you couch things in joy. I use Grimm’s Fairy Tales a lot as a comparison. The stories say so much about humanity and really dark things happen, but they are fairy tales. Also, I think a lot of indie rock just takes itself way too seriously. It may not be as cool to be goofy. There’s a way to be kid-like that’s extremely serious, more serious than if you see a totally over-emotional singer singing about heartbreak.

Do you feel by presenting more upbeat music to disguise your darker music that you are able to draw a larger audience?

Yeah, I think people have a great time at our shows, but there are a lot of people drawn to sad music, myself included sometimes but very rarely. I do more dance music because I think there is a reason why people want to dance, regardless of whether they’re listening to the lyrics or being confused by the weird harmonies; if you put a danceable beat on it people are pretty inclined to get on board.

You’ve worked with Malay (Frank Ocean, Alicia Keys, Big Boi) and John Hill (Rihanna, Shakira, M.I.A). As tUnE-yArDs was primarily your production, why did you decide to branch out and work with producers? Was it difficult?

It ended up being so easy to collaborate with those guys. They are both very collaborative, flexible, understanding guys with very little ego. I mean really little ego. It was a big fear of mine that a producer would demand that their signature was on the songs. I was reluctant to go into a recording studio at all. When we recorded “Whokill,” the more I stretched myself and challenged myself to do things I’m uncomfortable with, the more I gained and the more I learned. I want to continue being a producer and produce albums for other artists in the future. What better way to do that than learning from pros who have worked with pros, and it was really positive experience overall.

“Water Fountain” has been a big hit. What was the inspiration for the song, lyrically and musically?

I was walking around my neighborhood, and “No water in the water fountain” came into my head. Then the rest of the song was a riff off of that idea, the deterioration of society. I love lyrics that are chock full of meaning, like kids losing their future and the drought in California – there was no rain for the majority of the time we were making this album. It’s still an ongoing problem. We are going to announce that we are starting a charitable fund just for water-based causes. Seeing cities all around the world go without access to water is so crucial for people to live in peace with each other, and to be human beings surviving in this planet. And that is something that is going to become an issue more and more. The violence between economics and trade had to do with Haiti because I had spent some time there, just seeing victims of certain economic policies that really screwed them over.

“Wait for a Minute” is a pretty dark song. Was it about contemplating suicide or more of a universal song for hardship?

For me, feeling suicidal is a theme of my early twenties and not so much of a recent past. But it certainly is about addiction. Last year, making the album I became more and more aware of how uncomfortable I was with living every day; just living is packed with discomfort, and I was finding as many ways as I could to avoid that discomfort. When writing, there’s a lot of time I was spending by myself and driving myself crazy. Sometimes at noon, I would want to drink. I don’t really drink! There’s this craving to just stop the discomfort. To me, a lot of that is asking myself, why can’t just be here? Why can’t I just be OK with myself? And during that time, addiction was hitting me hard. I was getting through some stuff, but then a lot of friends were also going through addiction.

What can we expect at a live performance?

It’s massive amounts of fun. We’ve been all over the world with this band now, and the benefit of that is that we’re really tight as a band. That’s when you can loosen up a bit, too. I described it to Nate [Brenner] as not the time for stressing out about these bigger shows — it should be the victory lap! We are so far ahead, we can just enjoy these shows. We have a new set and some new tricks up our sleeve, so it should be really fun.