Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
It was just last week that at least a handful of stop-offs on the Internet found some comments that Richard Edwards of Indiana-based band Margot and the Nuclear So & So’s made about the misguided comparisons of his band to the Arcade Fire as newsworthy. Edwards called out the bullshitters (and rightly so) for using the same faulty angles (lots of members and a menagerie of instruments employed at the band’s behest) that the others before them used, piggybacking a poor and inappropriate analysis in the way that happens with lazy journalism (this may be overstating the true definition of journalism since any numb nuts with an iBook can pound out 400 words on the unreleased Frank Black record and be given some common courtesy as someone worth a damn). There isn’t one second of the eight-membered group’s debut record, “The Dust of Retreat,” that sounds like an Arcade Fire song. Not one second. To say that there is would be similar to saying that new Christina Aguilera’s new song, “Ain’t No Other Man,” is an updated version of the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A” or the film score to Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange,” for Pete’s sake. It’s like calling a lumberjack a dentist or saying graham crackers have the same consistency as vanilla frosting or a jelly doughnut. Edwards, Andy Fry and the rest of the Margots all live in the same house together and apparently have a spoken rule that things need to embrace the purity of a pop song and then grind it up a cement mix of supple collisions and dynamic bursts of life that juggle all-natural intentions. They do drink cheap red wine—by the barrel—and they strive to make the pop songs that the Carpenters, Carole King and James Taylor made way back when – the kind that leave you shaking your head thinking, “That’s how you do it. That’s how it’s done.” What sums up the band, the real imperfection of it all (the goal of reaching the idyllic pop song with human hands) and the feeling that’s struck into you upon the first listen comes in from a line in the song “Jen Is Bringin’ The Drugs” – “Love is an inkless pen/It’s a tavern/It’s sin/It’s a horrible way to begin.” Or a great way to begin. Then after the line’s delivered, with silence hanging around the words like humidity, you hear Edwards say, “Fuck” as he bumps a microphone. Imperfection as art and imperfection as quest because there is no perfect pop song, but it won’t stop Edwards from continuing to try.

The Daytrotter interview
What was the appeal of naming the band after or partially after Margot Tenenbaum? Will you admit that Pagoda has all the best lines at least?

Andy Fry: That was our favorite Margot at that time. I think we gave her that credit after the name came into existence. So we sort of chose her as a mascot after we named the band, which really was named after nothing specifically. Pagoda has the best lines by far. What a plum role.
Richard Edwards: I think Alec Baldwin has the best lines, but Pagoda is close. It’s only a rumor that we named it after Margot T., it’s actually a Margot Kidder reference.

It seems like you guys have been extremely busy for the last two years getting to this point. Has it felt like a really long process? Are you happy with the progress?

AF: It hasn’t really seemed like that long… in a general sense, it’s gone by really quickly for me. Although if I think about specific things from late 2004, that seems like forever ago. I’m happy about a lot of things, but of course there are other things that have been messed up that I’d rather not have happened. And I would like our album to be in more stores, especially the ones that we tell people to go to. But it seems to be spreading around the world at its own pace. That makes me happy. I certainly don’t feel like we’ve been shoved down anyone’s throat, which appeals to the modest hoosier in me.
RE: I don’t really know what progress we’ve made. It has seemed long though. I’m just excited to make more records. I enjoy that a lot.

Have you all lived in Indiana for a while? What have your experiences with the Midwest Music Summit been? Did you get some serious outsider looks for the first time at that fest? That’s just a hunch.

AF: We have all lived in Indiana most of our lives, though Casey and Hubert seem to have lived in almost every city we play in. The MMS has always been surprisingly cool. It is, more than anything else, amazing to get to see all of your friends and their bands within a couple of days. I think at this point, it has the sort of spirit that SXSW had so long ago. It’s a big production, but still informal enough to have real moments. The ratio of musicians to industry people is comfy. Apparently the Summit last year was instrumental in us getting signed to a label. I think with anything like that, it is a complex web of many things that led us to that point. But the MMS helped different companies and people that may have been interested in our band to see each other seeing us. So that probably solidified some things in a way.
RE: The Summit is great. It’s a fun chance to get to see good bands and get drunk with friends. We might have gotten some outsider looks at the festival, but I don’t really remember.

I find that your style of pop songwriting kind of covers the gamut and varies drastically from song-to-song. What do you owe this to? Does it help immensely that there are so many people to bounce things off of? How do you manage with so many people to make happy?

AF: I think everyone in the band is good at keeping a broad perspective on whatever they are interested in. So in the end, we say, it’ll be a Margot song because Margot made it. You carry your sensibilities to and from whatever you are working on. We were trying a lot of different stuff on this album, but I think we wanted to avoid in this work at least repeating ourselves before we had seen what we could do. It certainly helps to be able to bounce stuff off of people. Everyone is capable of coming up with off-the-wall shit, stuff that makes us laugh and enhances the song. And everyone, thank God, puts the good of the song first. Everyone is a songwriter on their own, which helps. In the end, however, we manage by everyone just agreeing to be miserable. We have an enormous capacity for suffering.
RE: We gave up on making ourselves, or others, happy a long time ago. The style change thing is just because we like a lot of music, and listen to a lot of music. Production is something we’re all interested, so some of it has to do with that.””

Are most women vampires?

AF: Most? I am tempted to say most people are vampires, ready to drain all my chi. But it’s hard to know what the percentages are. It certainly feels that way sometimes. Most men are idiots though, so choose your poison.
Who are your heroes? Do they vary greatly from the others in the band?

AF: My musical heroes are people like Lindsey Buckingham and Jon Brion, who have these tremendous pop sensibilities but understand the value of a little kink or weirdness. Of being human and actually communicating ideas. I think everyone has different heroes. Richard appreciates the rogues, for instance, which I appreciate about him. I like people that get weird with the formula and he likes the people who ignore it.
RE: Paul Simon, Woody Allen, Kurt Vonnegut. We might have Vonnegut in common, but everyone is very different.

What have been some topics of conversation in the van lately?

AF: Oh, God. The only ones that come to mind are the gross ones. We talk about getting the AC fixed a lot.
RE: STD’s, and the documentary “Beef.”

Have you found yourself most drawn to the classic pop sound throughout your life or did some of that come later on?

AF: Definitely, my whole life. I have always loved classic pop, even Tin Pan Alley stuff, Holland-Dozier-Holland, you know, the whole deal. The good stuff. I can hardly appreciate any form of music that isn’t couched in some sensibility gleaned from classic pop songwriting formulas. And I’m OK with that. I think there is more creativity in constriction. I need structure in that way.
RE: Yeah, early on. That and folk music were the first kinds of records I was interested in consuming.

Are you surprised that the comments Richard made about Arcade Fire were spread so widely on the Internet? I thought it was hilarious because I don’t understand why anyone would dare compare you to the Fire. The similarities aren’t there.

AF: Well, I agree. Probably because none of us have ever listened to Arcade Fire in a serious way. See, look what I just did! I bet that would annoy the shit out of them. We do play some of the same instruments they do, it’s true. But I think, especially in the approach to songwriting that Richard takes, we could not be more different, and I think that is what frustrates him. Basically it is like saying two cars are the same because they are both red. Or two cakes are the same because they have chocolate icing. The things that are similar between our bands are superficial compared to what is different.
But, again, I will say we like that band a lot. It is not unflattering to be mentioned in the same sentence. But there are just other points of reference that we think are more appropriate.
RE: I wasn’t even aware that they had spread until this question was asked. I don’t read the Internet, with the exception of The Onion, and my e-mail. I went back and read the interview though, and I didn’t say anything negative about them. As I said there, I really like the Arcade Fire. I guess if someone printed one sentence out of the whole thing I said, it could cause some sort of uproar, although that surprises me as well—that it’s newsworthy. People like getting their ire up, myself included, so if that does it for them then that’s OK. I’m probably naive in the sense that I don’t feel like anyone has anything to gain by misquoting me to cause a stir among the indie masses. I’m nobody. The interview was correct though, I don’t think he tried to blow it out of proportion. It must be them dern bloggers. I’ve never trusted ‘em, I tell ya. I still think the comparison is off base.

Same here. Them dern bloggers.