Moon King Play Sad Songs with Joy and Energy

Photo courtesy of Julia Hendrickson

Daniel Benjamin is a natural performer. Along with his partner in crime; singer/guitarist Maddy Wilde, he’ll often be seen in a ratty T-shirt and parachute pants, commanding the stage in a way that seems almost forgotten. His body language is like a lost art form in music, last witnessed in bands from the 1990s from the lost-in-the-groove madness of the Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, the fevered spirituality of Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell, and the fluid, hip-shaking movements of James’s Tim Booth. Benjamin is a damn-near anomaly in an age where the biggest-selling rock bands are fronted by nameless dudes, like that Mumford guy from Mumford & Sons and whatshisname with the big drum in Imagine Dragons. Often likened to the shoegaze and dream pop acts of 30 years ago, or the crunchy alt-rock riffs of the Smashing Pumpkins, Benjamin definitely sets himself apart with his stage presence. But with the band’s debut album, Secret Life, he’s also made one of the year’s most galvanizing debut albums.

Before he started releasing music with Maddy Wilde as Moon King in 2011, he spent the better chunk of his teenage years in a quirky, art-pop band called Spiral Beach. ““I think we just grew up a bit. We did something like four cross-Canada tours and things were beginning to take off for us, but I think my brother was getting more interested in electronic music, and the rest of us just needed a break.” After coming back to Toronto after two years, he formed Moon King with Maddy Wilde “I said to Maddy, ‘I’ve got all of these new songs do you want to join me?’ And it wasn’t any more formal than that. And it still isn’t. I have all of these new songs written for the next record that I still haven’t explored with her yet.” Noisey called up Daniel Benjamin and he told us all about making Secret Life during an ice storm in a remote Ontario cottage, his side gig drumming for Grimes, and why he can only write sad songs.

Noisey: What made you and Maddy Wilde want to restrict Moon King as a duo?
Daniel Benjamin: It’s always just been the songs that I write, and trying to make it more than a collaboration between me and her isn’t fair because the rest of the line-up is always shifting. I always say that if you book Moon King for a show, all that matters is that me and Maddy show up and we do something. We’ve performed, just the two of us, many times. We just don’t like to do it anymore. I would say for the first year we were playing mostly DIY gigs in Toronto and New York, just getting on the bus.

How is it different with Moon King as a full band?
Well, a full band is a lot louder. I can move around a lot more, and provide a bit more entertainment for people with the full band. With the two of us it can be very focused but I do feel we’re restricted a bit by the songs we play. There are certain songs, especially on the new record, that I feel we can’t play. They just don’t work with two people. And I feel like to give people anything less than that-the point is to give a private stadium show, that’s sort of the attitude.

You were the drummer in Spiral Beach. Does the fact that you do everything in Moon King have anything to do with that?
I think it’s easier to run a band in this sort of benevolent dictatorship. Maddy and I have this unique relationship that has been the same for ten years or so now, which is that I am creating things, and when I run them by her, if she doesn’t like something, we don’t do it. So there's no sort of Lennon-McCartney double ego thing going on its just that running a band as a solo type of operation is a lot more fun and easier.

Does Maddy ever come to you with songs?
No [laughs]. Not to discredit her, because she is essential to the band. It wouldn’t be the same without her, largely in part because I write songs for her voice which is much higher than mine. I’ve been writing songs for her voice for ten years, and when I try to sing them myself it doesn't work out.

You spent some time in NYC after the band ended. Was that period when you started idealizing Moon King?
Exactly yeah. It wasn’t the end of Spiral Beach, but other things happening at that time. I had a sort of total meltdown and just disappeared. I was already interested in punk shows and DIY. And going to New York there was sort of this playground atmosphere happening where I could just dive in. It felt like I needed to grab that and bring it back up to Toronto. I tried to move to New York many times, but there are government issues with that. [Laughs]

Right after that you played drums for some shows with Grimes. What was the idea behind that collaboration?
I used to play with Claire [Boucher] a bunch. And I just started playing percussion with her, and ended up doing more shows. They would fly me out to do a festivals and we did two tours together where it was this loose group, like an Arbutus Records crew with me and my brother, and Claire and her brother. Although, technically, the performers were both solo artists: Doldrums and Grimes, but it was more like a posse. Things in that little group is kind of a nexus of a lot of creative people, where this big bang happened. It just exploded. It was such a unique time doing those tours together, because it was all handmade. I would go to Sebastian Cowan, from Arbutus place and burn 100 Blue Hawaii CDs and then take them to a show that night. But he and I booked the Grimes tour, and that was the first time either of us booked a tour. So these things kind of came together, this conflux that nobody would have ever predicted, this iconic figure that Grimes has become. I think Claire is pretty amazing. I’m pretty excited for her this year.

Your brother has a Doldrums album coming out around the same time as Secret Life…
It comes out the week before. But it was supposed to be on the same day actually, and then we realized that might be a problem.

Based on social media I can tell you’re very supportive of each other. Is there any healthy competition?
Yeah, absolutely. I would say it’s very healthy. We are always there for each other. If we were working on the same project I would say that would be unhealthy because we have very different ways of working. I think it's essential that it stays separate.

And you guys touring together too…
Yeah we are. We'll probably end up playing in each other’s bands too for a lot of it. That is just the way things happen. It's the same as the Grimes thing. Nobody went into it thinking there would be a collaboration, but you put a few creative people in a room together and something happens.

If you’re performing so much together, how improvisational are the performances?
Yeah, it’s funny. This has been my whole day up until this interview, literally figuring out the double band rehearsals. But this is the difference underlying our different attitudes towards being in a band: his is completely improvisational, and mine is the exact opposite.

You describe your music as “sad songs played with as much energy and joy as possible.” Where does all the sadness stem from? Is it ever too intense for you to be so open about your feelings?
I'm glad I came up with that quote [laughs]. Now everyone can tell me. I can't be bummed out with all of this stuff happening. This is exactly what I've wanted to do since I was a kid. But that being said it hasn't always been like that and I go through the same issues that everyone else does. A lot of these songs, lyrically, they stem from around 2010, when I was going through this downward, horrible spiral of not knowing what I could or wanted to do and not knowing who would be there with me. But at the same time the album is also about pushing through that bleakness. There is a song called “Golden Age,” which is about being happy about the fact that you feel bad, because it's better than feeling nothing at all. And that is something I went through, trying to numb myself, but then realizing that isn't the way to go.

What made you decide to retreat to a Northern Ontario cottage to return the album?
To be blunt its cheaper to just build a studio out in a cottage than trying to find studio time. The whole basic recording was done in five days, and then I just did the rest on my laptop. I really liked it up there. I'm not a very outdoorsy person, and my music doesn't sound very cottage-y. That was one thing too when we went over to UK, I felt we fit in a bit more. Our music is not really super Canadiana. Although I like a lot of that music, it's what I grew up on.

And then the ice storm hit while you were recording?
It's actually pretty cool because it knocked out all of the power in Toronto, but we were far enough north that we were fine where we were. The only problem was that we couldn't get back, so we had to stay an extra two days. It was great except we ran out of water and the drive to the nearest town was 30 minutes so we had to melt snow to drink water but otherwise it was good, and our power started working again. The funny thing is that no one documented it because we were all just working hard the whole time. No one was taking photos for Instagram or anything. And now looking back, I think shit, with that set up it would have been cool to document it but now it'll just be a memory.

Cam Lindsay is a writer living in Toronto - @yasdnilmac