In The Spotlight: Psychedelic Porn Crumpets
Jack McEwan discusses PPC’s latest album SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound, 90s metal, artificial intelligence and why you shouldn’t go see Bob Dylan live.
Jack McEwan, lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, is sitting at home as I join him for a zoom call. It’s a few days after the release of the band’s new album SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound, an album that went through many mutations, with one metamorphosis being a full-on metal record before the distanced final result. Now that it’s finally out in the world, Jack can take a sigh of relief. ‘It seems like it’s gone down okay, which is nice, but every time you release something, you’re just like “why did I do that?”’ Jack shares. There’s a sense of liberation in fan and press reactions alike ‘It’s actually gone down quite well because I think the tracks that I really liked, like “mango terrarium”, “The Tale of Gurney Gridman”, those tracks, I felt were the best on the record. So reading what people have said, they’ve agreed with it, which has been really nice.’
Learning more about the metal album concept and how it turned into SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound, I was surprised to discover its origins. Originally Jack envisioned a concept involving a greatest hits record of a fictional character named Norton Gavin. ‘He was supposed to be this guy that lived down south; he’s like this old, salty, sea dog, that is a folklore kind of tale. We were like, “let’s go through his discography from like the 70s through to the 90s, when he retired.” So I ended up writing all this 60s music, 70s music, 80s music and 90s music. The 80s is the worst era for music ever by the way,’ explains Jack.
It was the 90s Jack ended up getting fixated on the most, discovering a newfound love for Nine Inch Nails, Korn, and even Slipknot. ‘So I started writing in a lot of a drop B, trying to find guitar patterns in that kind of style and it eventually just morphed. I was like “I can’t release this altogether, it’s going to be so fucked.” So I was just going to go pick up ‘Pukebox’, ‘Mr. Prism’ and I think the other song we had was ‘Mundungus’, stick with those three as a really nice segue to go into an album and then wrote upon that, rather than trying to fit everything together,’ Jack explains.
SHYGA! took these three tracks and shoved them into a fuzzy psychedelic 70s blender to create a mix of sounds that work astoundingly well, resulting in an album that’s filled with a medley of personality and quality structure. At times the record has flairs of T.Rex, The Strokes and even, perhaps unintentionally, My Chemical Romance. There’s a certain sense of theatre on this record that wasn’t on Psychedelic Porn Crumpets’ previous releases. ‘I remember my friend explaining the concept of Infinite Jest, and I was just like, wow, that sounds insane — just all these stories kind of going together. That would be really nice if we could do that with a record, where it felt like it was this one hint of music, one uplifting kind of emotion, and maybe that theatrical sense came at the end of it.’
At times the album injects Nintendo-esque audio flourishes which found their way into the album due to the band’s love of playing games in arcades and playing pinball whilst touring America. ‘We were just playing loads of pinball through America. And I remember all these dings and clicks and really nice winning moments where you’re just like, fuck, yeah an extra pinball!’ Taking that concept and inserting it into the album, including that level-up feeling, became an exciting and personal touch on the record. ‘So from then, I was just like that felt like winning. I’m talking like Charlie Sheen now,’ Jack laments.
Surprisingly, this concept tied in with another formative idea for the album. ‘It was this idea of a supercomputer or an AI trying to predict what 70s music would sound like and it had all these glitch bits and pieces.’ Jack shares. With SHYGA! complete, Jack was wholly unsure what to even do with the remnants of a metal album and even 60s-era relics. ‘Now I’m back with all these metal songs and all these nice songs and i’m like “oh what do I do!” I don’t know, I might just release them. Rather than being like here’s an album, just here’s the rest of what the metal was.’ Hints Jack, teasing at a possible Psychedelic Porn Crumpets side-release fresh from the cutting room floor.
Not being able to tour bears a brunt of extra strength for PPC, with their live shows notoriously playing a large part in their appeal and Jack’s completely aware of the importance of a great live show.
“I mean, Bob Dylan’s a great example of this. It’s like if you want to see someone ruin their music live, go see Bob Dylan.”
“I feel like live music is now another way to sort of interact with your fans because listening is the only thing you have in contact with them. So when you do get to see them live it’s like: keep the good bits, keep the nice bits, and keep the bits that you feel are going to work well. But don’t be afraid to play around with it.’
Curiously, Jack’s recently been listening to Thundercat, Flying Lotus, and Kamasi Washington. ‘They seem like they’re pushing music in more of a way than a lot of other genres at the moment,’ he says. Musically, Australia is best known for their psychedelic artists but over the past few years, there’s been a shift. ‘Yussef Kamaal came out; it was like the rest of the world went “holy fuck”. And then you ended up with Hiatus Coyote in Australia. Like we used to have a really good psych scene in Perth and now it’s just jazz and hip-hop.’
Discussing future projects, Jack reveals that ‘Now I’ve gone back to the full In Rainbows kind of idea where every song needs to be different. It’s weird, I’m obviously just as newbie as everyone else is, but no one has the perfect idea of what an album is.’
‘Yeah, we’ve got two weeks of lockdown for this one guy,’ Jack explains of the latest lockdown situation in Australia. ‘He’s probably going to be the first man, like, pitchforked by a group of people. I feel so sorry for the guy as well. Hopefully, he’s doing all right.’ Discussing the pointlessness of living in a capital city these days with the lack of gigs and culture, with even bars and shops still closed after many months of lockdown, Jack encourages people to move to his home of Perth ‘I mean, Perth is such a brilliant place, Australia, I feel, has so much to offer and since I moved here when I was fifteen, I didn’t get to experience London properly. Every time I go back, I’m like, “how much do you pay for rent? Fuck.”’
‘But I think this is what covid has done: it’s basically gone like, why the fuck am I living in Slough when I can buy a house in New Zealand for like £200,000? You could work for whatever. You could literally live on the beach. You do what you want. It’s filled with amazing people,’ Tempts Jack, making some incredibly convincing points; I was even about ready to book flights out. Fortunately for my bank balance’s sake, it was around this time our call came to an end. There’s a genuine passion for music that comes with Jack and an almost obsessive desire to put out astonishing work. Similarly to their music, there’s a powerful ever-building energy around Jack’s creativity and positivity, one that seems more important than ever in 2021.
