Over the past 17 years, one band have cultivated a rabid following of hardcore fans known for inking themselves with the well recognised heart skull logo… Nine studio albums and several side projects later, Alkaline Trio, the seminal pop punk band from Chicago are returning to Ireland for a show in The Academy and we spoke to lead singer and guitarist Matt Skiba whilst he was in L.A. preparing to tour.
Embarking on a European tour, that includes Ireland, for the first time in a long time, Matt tells us “it feels far longer than it probably has been” since they’ve made the stop here.
The latest album, released in April, was recorded under the scrutiny of producer Bill Stevenson.
“We’ve been friends with Bill a long time so I can say this, but we’ve heard bands horror stories about what a brute and a taskmaster Bill can be, and we actually had a really great time. I mean Dan and Derek are such a great rhythm section and Bill was a fan of the songs as well which helps, so we got off really easy working with Bill. I mean he’s obviously a hero of ours so it was awesome.”
‘My Shame is True’ has been critically acclaimed, with a lot of critics calling it Alkaline Trio’s best record since Good Mourning was released in 2003. The common consensus amongst these reviewers is that, Matt appears to be wearing his heart on his sleeve now, more so than ever before, understandable considering the album came out of the end of a three year relationship.
“It’s hard for us to step outside of it and really be able to tell the difference between every record, we never want to make the same record twice, how different it is from another is hard for us to tell but as long as people like it, I’m happy to hear that. We’re always trying to try new things without losing our audience… I mean its punk rock music but its still art, you get in there and it feels like you’re crafting something and I’ve loved that, and getting paid to do it is something else entirely.”
Let alone influencing an entire generation of artists as well as listeners over the last 17 years, Alkaline Trio have still found time to find their own influences elsewhere, and not just in their own life experiences.
“Me and Bill were doing what we liked to call pre-pre-production where we were just sending each other videos and links on youtube of just really obscure weird stuff, a lot of early totally off the path and left of centre punk music… stuff that was only going on in southern California and Canada and it was kind of new wave punk rock, that era were punk bands were more angular like Wire. There were a lot of musical influences and whether it shows on the album is up to the listener. It essentially was us trying to out do each other with weirdness.”
Classic Alkaline Trio has been seen as being veiled in metaphors, with every lyric having some sort of meaning. ‘My Shame is True’ is more of a straight shooter where the band get right down to it, with one exception, the first single, I Wanna Be A Warhol.
“People thought that song was about wanting to be famous or some bullshit like that but its actually about a Warhol or any famous work of art that appreciates in value over time, it’s perfect and as long as its well taken care of nothings ever going to happen to it and I used that as a metaphor for a relationship, so it’s about being in a good relationship where every day you’re appreciated more and more and that’s something I’ve yet to experience. And it’s not, oh poor me, when I’m single I get a lot more done.”
Throughout the interview Matt went back and forth about the band and their history, where they’re all at now and what music means to them nearly two decades into being a band. Prior to the release of this record, to celebrate 15 years as a band, Alkaline Trio released ‘Damnesia’, an acoustic album covering a range of tracks from previous records. A lot of people asked why they didn’t just do a greatest hits album.
“We thought about doing a greatest hits thing but there wouldn’t be any songs on it because we don’t have any greatest hits, so we decided to just do it as a celebration of the 15 years we’ve spent making music so we just wanted to revisit our back catalogue acoustically. Also this is the kind of thing that allows us to play smaller record stores like we have planned in Belfast”
After this long, writing about heartbreak and the darker sides of life under the pop punk moniker, Alkaline Trio have continued making an impact on their fans whilst consistently keeping to a sound that will always be recognised as their own, where others have fallen by the wayside. This Chicago threesome have found a formula that works and shows that, even at 37 years of age, heartbreak and teen angst can still play a big part in your life.