Crustcake Interviews Made Out Of Babies

by crustcake gerf (NYC)

A few weeks ago, I met up with Made Out Of Babies' vocalist Julie Christmas for a drink and a conversation about her background in music, MOoB's new album The Ruiner (out today via The End), our mutual love for Earth, and more.

Crustcake: I want to ask you about influences. For the band, and you personally. I hear Quicksand, personally. I don't know if you guys get that at all.

Julie Christmas: I don't think that's come up just yet. But I could see why, definitely on this last album.

Crustcake: It's more of a drum thing, for me. Because I'm a drummer, and that's what I hear. It's got sort of that 90's post-hardcore energy. But what would you say you're influenced by?

Julie Christmas: I think everybody in the band has different, separate influences, but there are some that we all share. And those are like Melvins, Jesus Lizard. For me it's the singers, so... But I don't think I'm influenced by any of the-- I mean, I'm influenced by how creative Shannon from The Cows was... and David Yow, but my influences-- I don't think I really have any. There are people I'd like to sound like. Or be able to do what they can do.

Crustcake: Do you have formal training?

Julie Christmas: Yeah, I have some. I started singing when I was really little, which is supposed to be-- if you start singing at a really young age you naturally sing properly. But I also come from a big Irish-American family, so I've been singing my whole life. I was always involved in music in elementary school, and then for college I went to Juilliard for a minute. So I have some classical formal training, which I use when I'm doing warm-ups before shows or before we record. Classical music is-- opera especially is an influence of mine, especially now that I'm starting to work with the music and Made Out Of Babies made a conscious effort to sort of slow down the tempo of some of the songs.

Crustcake: I want to ask about the album cover. Was that your idea or was that Seldon Hunt's idea?

Julie Christmas: That was all Seldon. [T]here had been some discussion about how the album art should maybe encapsulate the idea of predator and prey and he came up with a couple different ideas that were all pretty stellar. I thought it was hilarious. I didn't get what everybody else did which is that they're actually running from something huge--

Crustcake: Oh yeah, I didn't get that either.

Julie Christmas: I thought it was like cave disco... But he did an amazing job.

Crustcake: It seems like I've seen a lot of album covers using photos from the Museum of Natural History.

Julie Christmas: Really?

Crustcake: Maybe not a lot, but definitely a handful. Like, last year-- the Interpol record.

Julie Christmas: Yeah, that's the one I've heard.

Crustcake: And there's a couple others I've seen too, but... pretty interesting, it's almost like a trend.

Julie Christmas: Huh...

Crustcake: Probably not, but... cave man porn.

Julie Christmas: Yeah. Cave titties.

[laughter]

Crustcake: Was there anything specific that influenced or inspired you at a younger age to want to be in a rock band?

Julie Christmas: You can explore huge feelings in classical music or in any music form, but for me there were none that were really raw. I have a lot of feelings that way, so that's the kind of music I've been drawn to. Also, I've always been loud.

Crustcake: Were you listening to The Melvins or those bands when you were young, or when you were a teenager, or...

Julie Christmas: I didn't find The Melvins until-- I saw The Melvins in high school at Webster Hall but I didn't get into The Melvins maybe until college.

Crustcake: The last track on the new album-- the beginning and end of that make me think of Boris, who were directly descended from The Melvins too, so... Any new records that you've really been blown away by?

Julie Christmas: I don't really listen to that much new music. I'm sort of cycling through the same stuff I've been listening to my whole life and then I add a couple things in here and there. But on the way over here I was listening to Barry Adamson. He was one of the members of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. But he does his own bluesy kind of stuff.

Crustcake: You like blues?

Julie Christmas: Love the blues.

Crustcake: Nothing new new, that you might have heard in the last few months?

Julie Christmas: The last Oxbow record was amazing. [T]here's this Belgian band Amenra whe were actually just playing here. They're awesome. And, I just heard Nadja for the first time and I really liked it.

Crustcake: They release like six albums a year.

Julie Christmas: I know! I looked at their discography and it was like 30 albums. [Also], the last Earth album.

Crustcake: Yeah.

Julie Christmas: It's good.

Crustcake: Did you see them when they were here a couple weeks ago?

Julie Christmas: Yeah.

Crustcake: You know what? I really wish they would have had visuals. You know, like Red Sparowes does. I love that music-- I put that one when I go to bed, it creates such a great mood. But that was the first time I'd seen them live, and it was great-- they play really well and they really have control of that music which is hard when you're playing that slow. But it's like, I want something to look at. It's so cinematic, you know?

Julie Christmas: I know. I do think Dylan Carlson-- well, he's amazing but he also-- to me he was pretty-- he held his own out there. He's very much the main focus point on the stage. I really was watching him very closely. Bands really fall flat when there isn't like a--

Crustcake: A focus point?

Julie Christmas: Yeah. If there isn't somebody that's got some presence on the stage, you might as well just pack it up and go home. Or back to the studio, you know?

Crustcake: Yeah.

Julie Christmas: But these guys... you know, Adrian too-- she's got it too.

Crustcake: Yeah I found myself paying more attention to her, just because I'm a drummer, but-- and again, I was blown away by how she was able to control those tempos. You know, the more space there is--

Julie Christmas: The harder it is.

Crustcake: The harder it is to be consistent, as a drummer. As a musician in general, but she was just so fluid. She laid it in there, you know?

Julie Christmas: She's really cool.

Crustcake: Who'd you guys work with in the studio for the new album?

Julie Christmas: We worked with Andrew Schnider from Translator Audio. He did an amazing job for us.

Crustcake: It sounds really good.

Julie Christmas: Oh man, he is fantastic. For anyone who doesn't know that much about recording, the engineer of producer of the album is as important as any instrument in the band. Andrew was really into it, he really gives tons of his own ideas. He works unbelievably hard, and he's also one of the best guys around.

Crustcake: He's New York based?

Julie Christmas: He's in New York, he's in Dumbo. Spectacular guy. He's really done some cool records-- he did the last Unsane record, he did some Cave In albums. And he's worked with Pelican.

Crustcake: How did that come about, working with him?

Julie Christmas: On Battle of Mice, another project I have with Josh Graham from Red Sparowes-- ex-Red Sparowes-- [Andrew] worked on that for a minute.

Crustcake: Did you guys do anything differently, consciously or sub-consciously, on the new album than on the two previous albums?

Julie Christmas: Everything was different, from start to finish. We rented an apartment that had a partially-formed recording studio in the basement. So we built the rest of the studio so we had a practice space, so we would spend a lot of time... The other two records, we were still writing-- or I was still writing parts of the lyrics while we were recording with Steve Albini in Chicago. It just didn't really-- everything for us has been really rushed.

So [guitarist] Brendon [Tobin] got the studio together and we all decided that we were really going to try and sink our teeth in. And we wrote the album in four months-- it's not like we spent a year on it, which would be nice at some point, but we all decided that we really wanted to try other ideas. See what worked, and not worry so much about making a specific kind of music or how we would be received or anything like that.

And what ended up happening was, because we had all this space to work with-- and time-- the boys started to work on the music-- [bassist] Cooper and [drummer] Matthew [Egan] and Brendan started working on the music during the week, and I would have what they made from week to week for a while, and be able to listen to it, which is how I've learned I write the best.

Crustcake: So it's not an active process with you and them? They write the songs and then you work off of that?

Julie Christmas: Yeah, usually. They map out the songs, and then when the vocals come in there's changes to the music. Because instrumentalists don't always think about how things go with vocals, so I would work on it and then me and Brendan would get together at a totally separate time and do vocals. So I almost didn't work with them at all. There were as many fights as ever about the music, but they were a different kind of fight. It was more ingrained into the music, not as much about who's gonna park while the other person writes the drum beats.

Crustcake: It definitely shows. It sounds like a progression from the last two albums. So, what are you guys up to now? The album comes out in June...

Julie Christmas: June 24th on The End Records. They've been amazing. And I should mention that Greg [Burns] from the Red Sparowes [is] on the album. And also Jason Watkins from Mouth of the Architect.

Crustcake: What songs are they on?

Julie Christmas: Greg is on-- you know, I don't know the names of the songs.

[laughter]

They tend to have working titles that stick in my head, and then it's very hard for me to learn the titles .

Crustcake: And you guys have a gig coming up soon...

Julie Christmas: Union Pool on the 24th, and then--

Crustcake: That's the record release party.

Julie Christmas: Yeah. Record release party with the Austerity Program and Dionogah. And we have a bunch of other gigs surrounding the record release, and then we're going to tour in August. And we'll do dates throughout the year.

Crustcake: Do you know who you're touring with yet? Want to spread any rumors?

Julie Christmas: I do want to spread rumors, but not about who we're playing with.

[laughter]

Crustcake: Fair enough.

Made Out Of Babies' record release party is tonight at Union Pool in Brooklyn. The Ruiner is out today via The End Records.