seemed like they were spiraling into oblivion. The psychedelic synth-pop dup of Andrew VanWyngarden and Benjamin Goldwasser exploded onto the scene back in 2007 with their debut LP,TikTok crazewas no fluke — and it sent them back into the studio with renewed confidence when the time came to cut their fifth album.
It felt like it wasn’t something we were fighting against on this record. The studio side of it just felt effortless. We know how to get the sounds that we want. That was a nice realization that we could get together, especially after spending some time apart, and just be like, “Yeah, we know what we’re doing.” We have level of confidence that I think we maybe didn’t have before.
On “I Wish I Was Joking,” you sing “Nobody calls me the Gangster of Love.” Where did the Steve Miller reference come from?he sings, “Some people call me the Space Cowboy/Some people call me the Ganger of Love.” That’s just so bombastic. I loved the idea of somebody saying, “Nobody calls me the Gangster of Love.”, we’re maybe hoping people are going to see that without hearing the music and expect that we’ve gone darker and we’ve gone more hopeless. And in my mind it’s actually the opposite.