There’s such a fervor running through the Coup’s genre-fighting new LP, Sorry to Bother You, it’s no surprise to find the band’s architect, Boots Riley, in an amped-up mood. He’s on the phone in Germany, on tour behind his band’s best album, as his fellow Americans are winding down from another ugly, divisive presidential election. For his part though, Riley is pointedly distant from the traditional process, with its talk of “hope” and moving “forward.”
“Since the '60s, there’s been a push to change what is thought of as ‘progressive’ or ‘radical’ movements to a tactic of electing officials to get the things done that we need to do and, scientifically we’ve looked at it, and it doesn’t work,” he explains. “For instance, Obama’s thought of by the right as very liberal, almost a socialist and even progressives on the left might argue that. If he was in Germany, his same political platform would be the right wing."
“We have so little political choice because people have been focusing on what happens every four years, as opposed to building a movement,” he adds. “In other times people could [have] said, ‘Well, that kind of movement will never happen so what I’m gonna do is vote every four years and that’s that.’ In reality though, we see things changing.”
From an objective point of view, Riley makes a compelling argument. He cites the recent "wildcat walk-off" by Walmart employees in 50 locations across the U.S. and the widely covered teacher’s strike in Chicago.
“On May Day in the United States, trade unions struck or walked off,” he continues. “This is because of the Occupy Wall Street movement but also outside of it. In Canada, you guys had the eight-month student strike. Things are going on, where you can’t deny that it is very possible to have an effective mass movement and it’s not something pie in the sky — it can be created right now.”
Inspired and empowered by whatever’s in the air these days, Riley pushed the Coup to make their most dynamic and musically daring record yet with Sorry to Bother You.
“It definitely is my favourite album,” he says. “Earlier on, I’d edit out a lot of my influences because I had an idea of what the genre I was in was supposed to sound like. Then after a while, you realize, if you do something and you feel it, people are gonna feel it too.”
Drawing from hardcore hip-hop, punk, funk and other supercharged sounds, Sorry to Bother You is a danceable, agitating wallop against musical complacency that Riley co-produced with Damion Gallegos in Gallegos’s well equipped studio. His collection of amps, instruments and other tools enabled Riley to execute ideas he’s longed to bring to the Coup.
“This album is definitely something that I knew that a lot of people would be like, ‘Oh, this is weird,’” he chuckles. “I know there are things that I like that many people might not like but part of me being passionate about it is, I just have to do it and hopefully people will feel it aesthetically.”
Anyone familiar with the Coup’s righteous political proselytizing would know the album’s title is sarcastic, but Riley reveals it’s significant for a whole other reason.
“The thing is, it’s a title to a film I wrote and this is the soundtrack,” he explains. “The movie is a dark comedy with magical realism inspired by my time as a telemarketer. Often you’re saying, ‘This is Raymond Riley, sorry to bother you but….’ As you can see, I made it with some of the feeling of the movie but you don’t have to know anything about the movie to enjoy the album. Only in one song do I reference something from the movie, which is ‘We’ve Got a Lot to Teach You, Cassius Green.’ Cassius Green is a character in the movie.”
During much of the film, Riley’s voice will be overdubbed by comedic actor David Cross and it will also feature Patton Oswalt in a role. It’s due to be produced by Ted Hope (21 Grams, The Ice Storm) and the director is Alex Rivera (Sleep Dealer). Ambitiously, Riley says the movie will be filmed in the spring of 2013 and out that summer.
“It’s not ambitious, it’s that you don’t get paid shit so you have to work a lot more to make a living,” he counters. “If I’m gonna be an artist, I’ve gotta produce, produce, produce. I’m obviously bad at it because I come out with an album every five or six years. We’ll be touring all year though. I dunno what the soundscan is but I don’t think we went platinum this week, so we’ll be working it and getting it out there.”
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See the Coup live in Victoria, B.C., at Club 9one9 on Nov. 18.
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