Foreign Born

The members of Foreign Born haven’t forgotten their DIY beginnings. Before signing with Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak records to release their debut LP On The Wing Now, the group – Matt Popieluch (vocals, acoustic guitar), Lewis Pesacov (guitars), Garrett Ray (drums) and Ariel Rechtshaid (bass) – self-released their efforts before finding the album a proper home. Additionally, the Los Angeles band has produced their own albums and, without any financial backing, has completed several cross-country tours.

Now the hard work is beginning to pay off. With a sound that blends the style of the Velvet Underground (“Into Your Dream” showcases Popieluch as a dead ringer for Lou Reed), the pop talents of U2 and even the ethereal moments of Radiohead, Foreign Born has a fine debut on their hands and a massive amount of new songs ready to blow 2008 wide open.

Foreign Born’s frontman, Popieluch, stepped out from demoing the band’s new material on a rainy Los Angeles day to give SSv a ring and chat about new songs, old albums and the joys of vegetable oil-powered touring.

SSv: So I heard you guys are in the studio right now.

Matt Popieluch: Well, not exactly. We’re in home studio, you know, in my living room. I’ve got some gear here. We’re just working on new material right now. We’re kind of making demos and picking each other’s brains.

SSv: Can you tell me about what you guys are working on and how it differs from On The Wing Now?

Popieluch: Well, we’ve amassed a truckload of songs. We recorded our last album in winter of ’05, so it’s not as new as people think it is. So we write a lot of songs. We have a huge back catalogue. And we’re just kind of trying to flush it out right now. Basically, the vibe is turning out to be very rhythmic and otherworldly, lots of percussion. So far there’s a lot of dreaminess. There’s a world music vibe that’s getting in there. We’re using new instruments, like I got an instrument over in Thailand, a traditional Thai instrument. Our guitar player is really obsessed with percussion instruments and African music, so a lot of that will be featured as well. It’s still taking shape right now, as you can imagine.

SSv: You said you have a massive amount of songs. How does the songwriting process work for you guys? Who brings what to the table?

Popieluch: Well, usually the genesis of the song begins with Lewis, our guitar player, and myself – usually one of us comes up with an idea and we just kind of hammer it out together. There are times where Lewis will write almost all the music and I come up with the melody and the lyrics or I’ll come up with all the music and he’ll alter it in his way, put his stamp on it. And our bass player Arial, he’s kinda like our producer and he kinda shapes things and offers some insight and our drummer kind of bangs away. It’s pretty collaborative.

SSv: You mentioned that Arial is kind of the producer. It is easier working with someone in the band as a producer, rather than have someone come in from outside to produce your album?

Popieluch: Yeah, I mean, we haven’t really done that yet, but I don’t know. We think about it sometimes but we also feel that would be too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak, for an outsider. And we kind of know what we want and we have the ability to make it happen. And we don’t have any money, so it’s cheaper. There’s no middleman if we keep it in house. We all kind of produce it. Arial is a producer for a living but when it comes to our music, we kind of all help. Lewis has also gotten really good a producing.

SSv: So here at Stereo Subversion, our bent is to cover meaningful music. What is meaningful music to you? How would you define it or what would you say is meaningful music?

Popieluch: To me meaningful music is transcendent music, music where you don’t think about how it’s made. It just kind of takes you above yourself. I feel like we’re still striving for such things. I don’t know, sometimes a song can have a meaningful moment in it that’s really hard to put your finger on. Sometimes it will come in moments you can’t really explain why they’re transcendent. Sometimes it’s the music or the lyrics, or even, like a mistake or something will happen and it will just make the entire song you know?

It’s really just like, meaningful moments come, for me, when I’m recording, they come through accidents and they come through improvisation. It’s like through planning, you plan the improvisation but it combines with something you did earlier and, although you didn’t plan it, all of a sudden you’ve gotten something really amazing.

SSv: Is there an example on On The Wing Now where you had one of those kinds of ‘accidents?’

Popieluch: There are some moments, but I wouldn’t call them ‘accidents’ per se. Lewis is a composer so he’s pretty methodical. There’s a song called “Holy Splinter” on the record, it’s kind of a slower number, and at the end of that song there’s violin and steel drum on the end of the song. And it was really kind of an experiment, he didn’t really plan out the melody, he was just kind of jamming on it and it just turned out into this beautiful work. And when we set out to record the song we didn’t plan on having steel drum or violin on it, but it turned into something really special.

SSv: You mentioned before that On The Wing Now was recorded in 2005, and it was self-released before you guys hooked up with Dim Mak and got it put out through them. How did that all come together?

Popieluch: Well, Steve Aoki he said from the get-go that he was interested and we were on tour and looking around and stuff and just wanted to see what our options were. Then we just wanted to get it out, and he was eager and willing.

SSv: When it was re-released, the track listing was reordered. Why did you guys switch it up?

Popieluch: They say hindsight is 20/20. We made the original track listing and then we were going to re-release it and we got to realize that it needed it, just for flow reasons. We took off a song called “We Had Pleasure” and put one on called “Don’t Take Back Your Time.” That song was a little newer, and just to freshen it up for ourselves a little bit because the music was a little old and to make it a little more current.

SSv: Since those songs have been around for so long, do you ever get tired of touring those songs? Or have you been able to mix newer songs in with it?

Popieluch: Yeah, we’re starting to play new songs. Even if we’ve played the songs 100 times, it’s for people who haven’t heard it. It’s constantly a new world of strangers. We’re starting to work in new stuff, and we’ve gravitated towards the really strong songs for a really strong live show so maybe we don’t like the idea of playing them, but once we start playing them it’s really good.

SSv: I read somewhere online that back in 2006 you guys were traveling in a van powered by vegetable oil? What’s up with that?

Popieluch: Basically we did two cross-country tours in the fall of ’06. We were borrowing our friends’ van, they’re called Dios Malos. It was a dirty pleasure, driving around to restaurants all across the country and just sneaking in back by the dumpsters and bailing out buckets of grease and pouring it into a tank in the back of our very greasy, dirty van. We had special clothes, we had grease clothing that we used. It was a very messy process. And it’s methane free. We didn’t have any financial support, so we needed to do everything we could to save some dough. Also, politically it’s good, I guess.

SSv: A friend of a friend of mine drives a remodeled Volvo that they power with vegetable oil, and they were somewhere and people from the restaurant came out and yelled at them for taking it.

Popieluch: Yeah, yeah, that happens all the time. Most of the time you don’t even ask because some people are cool with it and they’re really nice about it but other people are just really don’t know what you’re going to do with it. And Asian restaurants have the best grease.

SSv: Do they?

Popieluch: Yeah, it’s cleaner. And you get used to it. At the beginning it was ‘what did we get ourselves into, this is really hard!’ but eventually you get into it and then you begin marveling at good looking grease. You’re pointing, like ‘This is good stuff!’

SSv: So what are Foreign Born’s plans for the future?

Popieluch: Well, as for our immediate plans, January we’re going to really concentrate on the new songs and then we have a tour coming up in February with St. Vincent, so we’re supporting her up the East coast and then trying to get another tour back and then stop by SXSW and then record as soon as we get back.

SSv: When do you think we’ll see the new album?

Popieluch: Well the plan is to get it out by late summer. So, ideally, I don’t know these things always take longer than I think they do but hopefully we can have it out by August, September – something like that.