Cults on Rap, Style, and Taking it Up to Strip it Back Down

“You’re seeing us at our low point. This is the worst we’ve been,” says Cults’ Brian Oblivion. He’s slumped against one of the closets in the lounge area of his band’s tour bus, joined by his bandmate and former girlfriend Madeline Follin, along with a four-foot blow-up alien, who’s perched on the corner of the U-shaped leather sofa we all sit on. “We woke up at 8 a.m. and played

The Tonight Show

, which was amazing,” he continues. “The night before, we were out with our friends. Now I’m losing my mind. I need to get it together.”

But Cults look perfectly put together, even in the same clothes they wore to meet Jay Leno for the first time, 12 hours earlier. Follin has on a neatly-pressed chiffon romper with beaded trim, tonal tights, and red painted lips. Her hair is long and wavy, just like Oblivion’s—only his mane is topped with a Courvoisier snapback he stole from his friend before leaving to tour, two weeks ago. By the time they take the stage at LA’s El Rey Theatre, three hours from now, it’s impossible to tell they were feeling spent from a long day.

"It feels like a big house party in here," Oblivion says at the sold-out show a few songs into their set. Their energy is high and they’ve changed into a fresh set of clothes. Follin’s coquettish vocals are unwaveringly far-reaching, filling up the room along with the duo’s spacey new light show. The setup is a couple of spotlight towers and two hanging rows, each with four flatscreen TVs that switch between pixelated psychedelic swirls—a nod to their recently-released album, Static—vintage racing track footage, 80s-style geometric bursts, and stars or snow projected onto the band and crowd. “I want it to be like theater,” Oblivion said back on the bus. Cults’ new show is more of a production than the last time they were on the road, where the pair played a more stripped-down set of songs from their self-titled debut. Halfway through this tour, Oblivion already feels like “the show has gotten 100 times better than the last one.” It helps that they created their second album with their live set in mind—unlike their last tour, which Oblivion has described as a grueling experience, Static is full of “songs [they] have to play over and over again.”

Before their show, Cults talked about their shifting live approach and style, trying to make their own version of Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, how they designed the Static artwork to look like a rap album, and why A$AP Rocky isn’t relatable.

Noisey: What did you do on your off-day yesterday?
Madeline: I had to get ready for today so I did a whole lot of running around and trying to get clothes, sleeping, and preparing for our 20-hour day today.

What kinds of clothes are you drawn to when you’re shopping?
Madeline: I’m kind of in a flux period right now. My style is kind of changing. On the last tour I was wearing a lot of babydoll style dresses, but I’m 25 now so it’s not as cute to be wearing stuff like that anymore. I look for nice, classic pieces that I can wear over and over again and not get sick of. How did you pick the clothes you wore on your album covers?
Madeline: I don’t even know what I’m wearing on the cover. There’s static so I can’t recall.
Brian: The photos that we used for both album covers were basically taken within the same week. We did one photoshoot by ourselves with my roommate for our first cover and then the label was like, “We could probably do more of these and have them for other stuff,” so we did more and that’s what we used for this. Basically, those were the only nice clothes we owned at that point in time [laughs]—a nice white shirt and a Topman jacket I got on clearance for $70. That’s on all of the photos.

You guys are big hip-hop fans. Do you have a favorite rap album cover?
Madeline: It’s funny because we feel like our vinyl cover is hip-hop style. We wanted to put a parental advisory sticker on it like an Eminem record.
Brian: Favorite hip-hop cover… Madvillian. That’s a classic thing. I can’t believe that he’s committed to wearing that mask for so many years, especially considering what a sweaty guy he is. He is a real supervillian. He’s beyond human at this point. MF Doom is a genius. Is there a rapper whose aesthetic you guys’ gravitate towards?
Brian: The only rapper that we have any real rapport with is Freddie Gibbs, who is a legitimate dude. I feel like all of the rappers these days are full fashion and I can’t really relate to that-—whereas he’s just a dude from Gary, Indiana, wearing some t-shirts and saying some rhymes about real life. How do you relate to someone like A$AP Rocky? He makes himself someone you can’t get close to but I think rap should be more working class and honest.

How did the concept for the “High Road” video come about? Where did you get all of the butterflies from?
Madeline: That was a last-minute thing and the butterflies came frozen in an envelope and had to put them in a fish tank and wait for them to thaw out. A lot of them hadn’t thawed out and there was one with one wing flapping. We reached out to a bunch of directors and we gave Hiro Murai a few ideas and then he came back at us with an amazing treatment. We weren’t sure how it would work out until the last cut. They did so much in post-production.
Brian: When we saw the treatment and there was stuff about moths and butterflies, we immediately were thinking like, “Oh this is an illuminati thing.” But I didn’t want to make Hiro feel weird and say something.

The video is in black and white and it seems like you’ve mostly stuck to a minimal color palette in photos and covers. Do you think the darker colors lend a better mood for your music?
Madeline: We’re pretty goth.
Brian: When we made the two covers for the vinyl and the CD, we knew the album was going to be called Static and we had some rough drawings before it even started. The original idea was Poltergeist-y: a black and white TV in a dark room. But by the end, one of the major decisions that we spent three days working on was getting the color of the static just right. It was really important to us that it was blue because I didn’t feel like this was a black and white record. I wanted bring out the idea of buoyancy and brightness—that’s something we really worked for in the tambor and all of the instrumentation. We’re in love with goth stuff and horror movies, but I think there’s also a lightness there and I wanted it to be more of a cartoon than spooky.

For some of the photoshoots, we were down to wear something weird. We were doing a photoshoot in the ghetto of Brooklyn wearing full-on Elvis rockabilly clothes and the cops came up to us and were like, “You can’t be here.” But I was into it. I used to be such a stickler about wearing the same suit every time, which is kind of the David Byrne everyman idea where you open up the closet and it’s all of the same outfit. But I think we’ve both gotten into different kinds of stuff. Have you started thinking about your next album?
Brian: Yeah. We had crazy ideas going into this record. When we first started it, we were thinking that the main reference for this record would be Screamadelica by Primal Scream, like it was going to be new house. We made all of these songs around that idea but no matter where you set out to go, it just becomes you after awhile. And it just didn’t feel right. I didn’t actually like it. I just liked the idea of it. And then we took a lot of those songs and turned them into the songs that they are now. So we’ll probably start out with another crazy concept.

Will the Screamadelica songs ever see the light of day?
Brian: We have so many B-sides. I’m tempted to make a record out of all of the songs that we’ve never finished over the years. But we don’t ever like going back, if it didn’t work out the first time.

What kinds of visuals are you using on this tour?
Madeline: We have a very serious visual show. Pretty much the trailer behind us is all visuals.
Brian: The guy who does our visuals is my friend from middle school. He was working here at a production company on Baby Geniuses and I asked him to take three months off and do crazy visuals. He tours with us. Everyone in our band is from 15-minutes away from each other in San Diego, whether we knew each other or not from high school. That’s what makes this whole endeavor worthwhile other than music, that we’re all a family. Any job you have, no matter how cool it is, isn’t worth it if your co-workers suck and your boss sucks. If we hated each other or had a hard time in our relationships we wouldn’t do it. What’s the concept behind the visuals?
Brian: It’s very graphic and textural—instead of content-based—which was something we were shifting gears into for this record. Even with the “High Road” video, our old videos were so narrative-based. They were great ideas from great directors but I didn’t want to tell a story. I just wanted to create a moment. That’s what a lot of our show is. We just saw Nine Inch Nails play twice this month and both times it was the pinnacle. People at our label have told us that if Trent [Reznor] has a festival and he can’t afford to bring all of his stuff, he’ll just pay to bring it. He doesn’t go half-way on anything and I love that. I think bands need to be more theatrical. Nirvana had a great influence of stripping things back, but I think we need to take it up again so someone else can break it down again. Everyone wishes they could have a bigger show, but there’s cheap ways to do things.

You recently talked about how you find it advantageous to be on a major label for this reason—so you have the support to fully execute your creative vision.
Brian: Yeah, they don’t help us with the touring stuff. We do that all on our own. It’s not so much a monetary thing as it is, the people we work with are really awesome. The guy who does our videos will always push us and introduce us to really smart people. If anything, it’s just the fact that there are so many awesome people there-- that they even have a video department; no one has that. This guy will call me and be like, “Hey, I’m just down the street getting drinks with FlyLo,” like oh my God, these people are so cool. Everyone is so nice and can help you work on the highest level.

When I was walking over here there was already a huge line for your show, and it’s super early.
Brian: Teenage girls?

Yeah, totally.
Brian: They’re here for her.

Are you caught off guard by your success at times?
Madeline: Showing up anywhere and having people want to be at your show is a really awesome feeling.
Brian: And a really terrible feeling, which does happen sometimes.
Madeline: It’s always shocking, even if 20 people show up. We played at Albuquerque and there was at least 100 people there and I was like, “Whoa, how are people in Albuquerque hearing about us?” It’s nice to see people excited about it. Do you feel like you have a responsibility as artists to your fans?
Brian: Absolutely.
Madeline: We’re not the kind of band who are out there and instagramming or tweeting all day but, as far as musically and putting on a show, definitely.
Brian: Because it’s just the two of us who do everything, I think that we often feel a responsibility to be curators of the whole situation, like making sure we have a good sound guy and good visuals. I relate to that Trent Reznor philosophy: I get really bummed out by anything that’s not exactly what we want to do. I feel like it’s a big deal that people would take their night and come to your show and I just want them to leave and remember it forever.

Cults' Tour Dates
11.20 - Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater
11.21 - Omaha, NE - The Slowdown
11.22 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
11.23 - Chicago, IL - Metro
11.24 - Cleveland Heights, OH - Grog Shop
11.25 - Toronto, Canada - Lee's Palace
11.26 - New York, NY - Webster Hall
12.05 - Philadelphia, PA - Theatre Of Living Arts
01.31.14 - Durham, NC - Durham Performing Arts Center
02.01.14 - Asheville, NC -Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
02.02.14 - Nashville, TN - Ryman Auditorium
02.04.14 - Atlanta, GA - The Tabernacle
02.06.14 - St Louis, MO - Peabody Opera House
02.07.14 - Columbus, OH - The LC Pavilion
02.08.14 - Detroit, MI - The Fillmore Detroit
02.11.14 - Kansas City, MO - The Midland by AMC

Static is out now. Get it!

Marissa G. Muller is a writer based out of Los Angeles. She's on Twitter — @marissagmuller