{"id":3318,"date":"2011-08-10T00:44:40","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T07:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3318"},"modified":"2011-08-10T00:45:08","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T07:45:08","slug":"ted-leo-the-pharmacists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/ted-leo-the-pharmacists\/","title":{"rendered":"TED LEO & THE PHARMACISTS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

TED LEO & THE PHARMACISTS<\/h1>\n

How a lack of inspiration helped at least one band avoid disaster<\/strong><\/h2>\n

If things had gone as planned,\u00a0Ted Leo & the Pharmacists would have released a new record last year just weeks before their label at the time folded\u2014which would likely have doomed the album to failure. Fortunately, things didn\u2019t go as planned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually started recording and wound up feeling like it just wasn\u2019t coming together,\u201d Leo says. \u201cWe had some songs that seemed done but something was not <\/em>clicking.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the New Jersey punk rocker and his band shelved the tunes they had been working on and spent the next year outside the oft-grueling record-release-tour cycle. That repetitive grind, Leo says, can \u201cimpede your writing process and diminish your love and appreciation for what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the Pharmacists finally hit the studio again they were recharged and emerged with The Brutalist Bricks<\/em>, 13 scorching new songs overflowing with their trademark blend of brains, heart and wit. \u201cI think falling out of that cycle helped us come together as a band,\u201d Leo says. \u201cWe came up with an album that felt like it could breathe a little bit more than what we were producing the previous year.\u201d<\/p>\n

All that down time also helped Leo to learn to trust his songwriting instincts. \u201cI\u2019m always conscious of wanting to nail that vibe, but sometimes it\u2019s hard for me to realize when I\u2019m there,\u201d he explains. \u201cI think it took me being so far out of the loop to be able to hear something that I\u2019d started and actually be satisfied.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that the songs he wrote turned out the way he thought they might when he started writing them. \u201cThere\u2019s a big gray area between personal songs, political songs and relationship songs,\u201d Leo says, laughing. \u201cEvery time I start out with an idea that\u2019s not political in nature, it winds up getting into politics along the way\u2014and vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\n

He cites as an example the new album\u2019s \u201cAtivan Eyes.\u201d \u201cThat is one of the most straight-up interpersonal relationship songs I\u2019ve attempted to write,\u201d Leo says. \u201cAt some point\u2014I don\u2019t know how it happened\u2014the whole first verse came to be about the music industry, using communist and narco-socialist language to describe how the means of production are in the hands of the workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just meant to be a relationship song, but I can\u2019t express it except in terms like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Eric R. Danton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TED LEO & THE PHARMACISTS How a lack of inspiration helped at least one band avoid disaster If things had gone as planned,\u00a0Ted Leo & the Pharmacists would have released a new record last year just weeks before their label at the time folded\u2014which would likely have doomed the album to failure. Fortunately, things didn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[49,10156,2371],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3321,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3318\/revisions\/3321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}