Rick Mitarotonda claims not to understand the bullfighting metaphor at the heart of his new album, BIG MODERN!, and he’ll spend two minutes explaining why he’d rather not find out. A natural talker, the Goose frontman goes long on the importance of listening. Witty and verbose, he is skeptical of his own intelligence, trusting the way his body responds to ideas more than his conscious mind. Throughout our conversation he returns again and again to little incongruities like these, interested in his own contradictory impulses.
In an overstimulated world, Mitarotonda thinks of himself as an “antenna” caught between transmitting and receiving. The metaphor cuts both ways: With BIG MODERN!, Goose aren’t just responding to overstimulation, they’re adding to it. This is the Goose you love, wearing sunglasses at night; a high-volume dance record about a world too loud to think in.
As someone who appreciates the appeal and perils of oversaturation, Mitarotonda proves good company for our modern too-muchness. We talk BIG MODERN!, different breeds of songwriters, and a certain other band named for the same waterfowl species, as we try to separate the signal from the noise.
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Consequence: The album opens with “(begin).” It closes with “Good Times // End Times,” “((nocturne)),”(((postplace))).” There is a perceptible thematic movement across the album. Would you consider it a concept album, or how would you describe the way the themes hold together?
Mitarotonda: I wouldn’t say it’s a full-blown concept album, but maybe in some gray area. It’s certainly got a lot more thematic and interwoven themes and ideas than an average collection of songs. And there was a lot that kind of evolved throughout the process making of the thing.
But yeah, I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say it’s a purebred concept album, but it’s on the map somewhere there.
What do you think is the difference between this and a concept album? Or what do you think are the similarities?
Mitarotonda: That’s a good question. I wouldn’t say I’m super well-versed in the determinant factors of a concept album. I’d imagine that in a concept album, every song plays into a single narrative and it’s all kind of building one story. And in this case, I think nothing’s really out of the world, in my opinion.
But there’s some varying disparate subject matter, approach, perspective things going on within. It’s such a — broadly speaking — pervasive, relevant-for-all-of-us sort of thing that’s being explored there. It’s sort of unavoidable, interacting with the world around us right now.
I think everyone’s got their own ideas and voice in reflecting some aspect of it, you could say.
“Torero” and “Faena” sit at the dead center of the record. We have a torero — a bullfighter — and the faena, which is the section of the fight where the bull is killed. Bullfighting as a metaphor is a heavy choice. That’s death, ritual, performance for a crowd. Where did that come from?
Mitarotonda: Sometimes I have a tendency and inclination towards arriving at things through not hyper-analytical, hyper-intellectual means. And I think this qualifies in that case. In my experience, when I approach things from a heady, intellectual, analytical place and I’m trying to create and write from that place, I’m not good at it. Whatever comes out, I’m often very uninspired by.
And when things just move in a direction and arrive in a certain way and it feels good and I don’t know why it feels right or good, oftentimes it’s kind of the opposite — it’s just like, this feels like the right direction or idea surrounding this thing. And then oftentimes later, upon analysis or intellectualizing the thing, there are aspects of it that make a lot of sense, in ways that I often resist spelling out too much in my own mind.
In this case, there’s a lot of layers. Obviously technology and the modern age and advancement and reflecting absurd aspects of that through our own experience is a common thread here. In that case, I think there’s a more personal emotional layer to the analogy of a bullfight for what that song’s doing.
But that one’s one of the more vague, emotionally nondescript ones — there are things I related to on a personal level that I often keep pretty close to the chest. At the same time, there’s the musical aspect of it, which evolved into this Latin American-inspired composed section. So there’s the obvious correlation there in terms of where “Faena” evolves to. But yeah, it’s a winding, vague answer. I don’t know if that helps at all.
I want to pick out one of the threads you just mentioned. You said that oftentimes you want to avoid intellectualizing something. When you’re working through it, does your intuition feel physical? When something feels right, is there a feeling in your gut? What is that experience like?
Mitarotonda: Yeah, all of the above. That’s a really good question. A lot of times it’s pretty mysterious. If I knew how to do it reliably, I’d do it a lot more than I do. It’s tricky.
But I think it just happens sometimes, when in the right moments, an idea emerges, or you just write something down or start singing something or whatever it is. And it feels right. It feels like you caught a wave. I’m sure there are similar things in any kind of practice or writing. We certainly feel it in very tangible, perceptible ways when we’re improvising.
Sometimes we go to improvise at a show and we’re just up against a wall and no ideas are flowing, and we’re all struggling, and it feels like we’re going nowhere. And then other times you catch a wave and there’s this energy that’s just taking you. It’s kind of the same thing when you’re working on a song.
Some people are very well-tooled songwriters, and maybe it’s a completely different experience for them. Everyone has moments of inspiration. But it seems to me like some people are a lot better at sitting down and using certain tool sets to work on songs as a practice. For me, I’m kind of subject to the whims of whatever weird waves come in and out.
Can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean by tool sets or well-tooled songwriters?
Mitarotonda: Kinda what I was referring to before — this is just my own opinion, my own perspective. Observationally, I can’t speak to other people’s experience, but I’ve always observed other songwriters that I feel are very equipped and very good at writing from an intellectual place, where they’re crafting things that I feel like I could never write, and I’m just amazed by it.
In terms of their minds being well-equipped and having sort of tool sets and databases and just working in a way where you’re able to write songs in a more machined way, or just sit down and do it more regularly and consistently. But that could be projection, I’m not sure.
Going back to the album and its themes around modernity and overstimulation — you had Jake Lacy as the unhinged record exec, the matching jumpsuits at the Knicks game, the face sweaters. So you guys also become, in some ways, an example of the overstimulation and absurdity. What’s your relationship to overstimulation at this point?
Mitarotonda: I mean, we’re all in it. I look at my phone more than I would like to. It’s everywhere. I’m probably part of the last generation that grew up without supercomputers in the palms of our hands. I was in high school, going into college, when that became a thing that everyone had all of a sudden.
So yeah, I’m just experiencing it, and there are lots of perspectives. Obviously so many amazing things have come with it. But I think a lot of us feel, on various levels, things that are lost too, and it’s hard to have clarity on that.
I certainly think about it a lot — observationally, I think creativity in general has taken a hit because of the brain state that our phones and media and overstimulation puts us in. It’s high beta brain states that we’re in all the time with all this stimulation, and it’s the antithesis of the place we were just talking about — of being receptive, being an antenna. Everyone’s an antenna in some way, and everyone’s got different channels and frequencies they’re able to tune into.
But that state of overstimulation and being inundated with content and ideas and images and words and videos and just all of it — it’s kind of the antithesis of the state that I believe makes a person the most receptive to receiving whatever ideas and downloads come from, arguably, a more potent place.
And then how do you anticipate AI fitting into this already very stimulated modern world?
Mitarotonda: That’s the billion-dollar question right now, right? I don’t know.
Trillion-dollar, even.
Mitarotonda: Yeah. I mean, honestly — yeah, fuck if I know. I’m just an idiot out here playing jams. I don’t… that’s a crazy thing. I’ve been hearing lots of people talking about it, and I’m no authority on the subject.