Music For The Honeys

Photo courtesy of Modular

Surely, the worst thing a band faces upon completion of an album, is the inevitable onslaught of retarded questions from interviewers everywhere. It may be a necessary part of the process but in the end, having to explain why your album sounds the way it does or why you decided to record the whole thing under your sink in the nude, can really only succeed in killing some of the magic. The Bumblebeez’ new album, Prince Umberto & The Sister of Ill, is an incredible genre crawl that will remind you, at different times, of most of the music that you’ve ever been into. The album was four painstaking years in the making and it shows. This is some good-old-party-time shit. We bothered Chris Colonna with our questions the night after his band had supported Hot Chip and felt bad for prying detailed answers from a guy who is essentially just into making good music and art. Vice: So, four years to make an album? Good effort. Chris: Yeah, a lot of shit happened in that time. We initially recorded tracks in a studio but what we ended up with just didn’t feel right so we pretty much had to start over. In the end we recorded most of the album from my studio in the country. I was out there by myself a lot and there were times when I was all fucked up. There were definitely some heavy patches where I just lost sight of everything. Big black holes. Like writer’s block? No, just like crazy block. You get to a point where you want to burn down your house. I don’t know what it was. I think when you spend so much time by yourself at home you just start to go crazy. The music is like your best friend and the devil all at once. I had this big sign on the wall that said “Don’t Sweat It” and I had to keep looking at it and believing it. Shit, so you went mad all alone in the country writing this album. That’s pretty awesome. Yeah, I had all these imaginary little friends that I’d talk to. There were the rats and Coca Cola boys. I know it sounds odd but they helped me through. I even thank them on the album. I remember the moment I finally finished it I fell to the ground and just cried. Your new clip for “Dr. Love” is insane. The idea was like one paragraph—get some funny guys, draw on them with black textas and make it their theme song. Who are the dudes you used? Crazies off MySpace and some homeless guys. You just played at Splendour In The Grass. How was that? It was good. We played on Sunday and then got really wasted and got into real big trouble. We ended up in the cop shop. You got arrested? The security guards wouldn’t believe that we were the band so they took all our passes and then we got accused of stealing everyone’s equipment. Then I remember people started spitting on each other and it got really crazy. Ok, I saved the worst question for last. How would you describe your new album? It’s pretty ADD. Everyone says it sounds like this or that but I don’t really listen to much music so I don’t consciously make it sound like anything. In fact, sometimes I just hate music when I’m making an album. It’s definitely got hip hop flavours but I also love early punk like Bad Brains and I like love songs too so I guess all that comes into play. It was more just about whatever was happening on that particular day. BRENDA WELSH