Uttering Silence: An Interview with Matt Finney of Finneyerkes

About a week ago, I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with Matt Finney, from the band Finneyerkes. Over the course of our conversation, he provided many insights into the inner workings of the band and how it came to be. He was modest and gracious throughout, his voice soft and unassuming. It is with great pleasure, I submit for your perusal, my interview with the wonderful Matt Finney.

AURAL BUFFET: What sorts of bands, writers, film directors, etc. have influenced your work?

MATT FINNEY: We’re really into Mogwai, they’re probably what really got us into post rock and instrumental stuff and we’re big Godspeed fans and [fans of] God is an Astronaut. I’m more into the classical stuff than Randy is, stuff like Mozart and Arvo Part. Our friends Cylon and Yawning, they’re pretty big influences on us. We work with them all the time, so it kind of rubs off on you.

AB: Are there any real distinctions between Randy and yourself, in terms of musicians that have influenced you?

MF: [Chuckles] Randy is really into death metal. I’m not a metal fan at all really. He loves speed metal. I’m more calm, like indie kind of music. We really click musically, I guess metal is the only thing we don’t click on.

AB: Do you find yourself influenced by other media (films, etc.)

MF: Film is a huge influence on us. We’re big Coen brother fans. We love everything they do. The Big Lebowski is probably our favorite movie. No Country For Old Men. Randy’s really into Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the Michel Gondry film. I’m influenced a lot by art, abstract art and surrealism. [Artists] like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Their lives are just fascinating.

AB: Could you take me through the songwriting process the two of you employ? How do you write songs?

MF: All the spoken word that we have recorded was written about a year ago. Without End was kind of current, it was written a few months ago. I usually just write poems and I send them to Randy. I’ll record the vocals and send them to him and he’ll get a vibe off of them. We’re big mood fans. We just go off our moods. Sometimes he’ll send me something and I’ll just try to go off of it, that’s how it’s gone lately. He lives in Virginia now. We’re kind of like the post rock version of The Postal Service, that’s a really bad comparison, but we just send stuff back and forth. He used to live here, that’s how we met. In high school, we were pretty good friends. We’ve just been friends ever since. We talk through AIM and e-mail and piece our albums together.

AB: Was there ever a point where you guys were physically in each others’ presence putting together music?

MF: When he lived here, he was in a band with his brother called Franklin and the Neatos and I went to their basement show and they were a hardcore punk band. I wasn’t really that into it, but he was a friend of mine and I wanted to go check it out. I can barely play anything at all. I’m surprised he wants to record with me. I’m just a fan of his guitar playing. He knew I was a writer and I can talk [laughs] so we just put that together. We’ve never actually recorded in person together.

AB: What is your mindset when you’re writing poems and do you personally see an overarching theme in your work?

MF: Yeah, definitely. I don’t really walk in with a theme in mind. I usually write about twenty poems in a week. They all usually have the same feeling and vibe to them. I never noticed, until we started recording them that they all have the same sort of thing going on. I’m usually depressed out of my mind when I’m writing and I usually feel a lot better when it’s over. It’s pretty cathartic for me. It’s just me trying to make sense of what’s going on around me.

AB: Listening to your newest release, Bastard, I definitely got the sense that there was a certain lightness to it. Could you tell me the mindset behind that . . .

MF: How Bastard came to be?

AB: In some senses, it does seem like a departure, not in terms of instrumentation, but just the pervasive sense of lightness.

MF: Yeah, leaving the vocals behind, the darkness? Bastard, we had that album done before Without End was through. I think the first song that we had done was “Mountain Lion,” it’s track two on that album. I couldn’t write anything for it. I love the song and I told Randy, “we can’t throw away the songs we have.” So he went back and reworked some of the guitar, stuff like “Lins” and “Chicago.” I didn’t want to throw those away. We had a remix by Cylon, “Dismix.” We also had a song with Yawning and we didn’t know what to do with them. We were supposed to have an E.P. with Ian from Heat Death, but it’s been postponed so many times I don’t know if it’s ever gonna be released. We just decided to get in touch with Cylon because he runs an internet label called Dot Contemporary. We asked him “do you want to put [Bastard] out? Just have a listen and see if you like it,” and he loved it. They were all demo songs and we just went back and touched some things up. But the lightness of it, I think we were just trying to do something different. The first two albums are so dark and bleak. We didn’t want to run that into the ground.

AB: If you had to tell someone to listen to one song that you think is most indicative of the band as a whole and your musical message, what song would you pick?

MF: Oh God, I think probably “Honeymoon at the Holocaust Museum.” That’s a favorite of both of ours. It’s probably our favorite song that we’ve done together because it came together so random. The song was done in like a day. It still holds up I think. Most people like it. We’ve gotten complaints about the annoying intro, but usually people like it.

AB: When I was first listening to the albums, my favorite, out of the gate, was Gather & Sing. Could you tell me a little about what went into the making of that album?

MF: That album came about very rapidly. A couple of the songs are on Randy’s solo album Glada under his alias Moosejaw. We released it through TSS. There wasn’t really a theme going with the record. I just picked some random poems I thought would sound cool with music to them. I think we were just trying to sound cool, I don’t know [laughs]. It was a debut album, we didn’t want to sound lame. We still like it. I think my vocals could be a lot better. My vocals are a lot better on Without End I think. I’m not a big fan of my vocals at all. But Randy digs ‘em, so . . .

AB: I have to ask, what was the impetus behind the Gather & Sing artwork?

MF: I have no idea [laughs]. Randy did the artwork for Gather & Sing and Without End and he does most of the artwork now. The cover for Bastard is actually a picture of my brother that I drew on a shipping package. I think we just wanted something weird. A striking image.

AB: If you could open for any band, who would you pick?

MF: Probably Mogwai. [laughs] They just seem like really cool dudes. They just seem like really down to earth people. Either that or the Pixies. Though they’d probably blow us out of the water. Nobody would pay any attention to us.

AB: Are there any projects that the two of you are working on presently?

MF: Yeah, we’re actually getting ready to record a split with Cylon. We’re pretty excited about it. We’re gonna mess around with more electronic stuff. Some of the harsher electronic stuff that was on Without End. Randy’s actually gonna try some singing on this one. And I guess after that, we’re going to record another album.