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X-clusive: The Mooney Suzuki Go Pop?
The Mooney Suzuki spoke exclusively to Lauren Laverne today (July29) to discuss champagne, private jets and how working with Britney Spears’ producers The Matrix affected their new single ‘Alive & Amplified’.
Speaking to Lauren on her Drivetime show, Suzuki frontman Sammy Jones Junior explained how, after requesting such classic rock producers as ELO frontman Jeff Lynne, the band ended up with Britney and Christina’s producers behind the desk.
“They reached out to us as they were interested in broadening their horizons,” he begins. “And they said they had written some material for us, and we were like ‘What? Are you kidding?’, so we had to meet these people just for the curiosity of it. We met them and we hit it off so well - there was great chemistry between us.
“But the first day working and writing with them was just a nightmare. Sometimes they’d come up with an idea and they’d be really enthusiastic about it, which made it even harder to say no to them. They’d be like ‘Check this out!’ and sing something that sounded like a million selling hit, but not something I would sing,” Jones Junior continues. “We fought about everything creatively, but if they liked it and we liked it, it must be good and made it onto the album.[Working with The Matrix] definitely helped us, the more absurd psychedelia needed those kind of resources.”
While The Mooney Suzuki may be new to most, the band have actually been together for years. However, it’s only with the forthcoming release of the single ‘Alive & Amplified’ that their universal air-punching rock ‘n’ roll appeal has begun to be noticed.
“We put out our first record in 2000 on Estrus and have been touring since then,” Jones Junior reveals. “I feel in a lot of ways we’re changed and developed, but at the same time there are things on this album we were trying to do from the very beginning. It just took that long to come up with the perfect riff.”
With The Matrix’s midas touch in place, it’s surely only a matter of time before the band have a plane for each member and one decides to leave to concentrate on a bizarre World Music charity project in Nepal. Not so fast, the frontman argues.
“This time next year we’ll either be on tour still or working on the next record,” he insists, before reconsidering, “In fact, I would hope to be eating cheese and drinking champagne on a lear jet that has the logo of the band on the side. But we’d be playing shows too – not just be on the plane the whole time.”
The Mooney Suzuki release the single ‘Alive & Amplified’ on September 6 followed by the album of the same name on September 20.
Tagged as The Mooney Suzuki, archive
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