Far Out Meets: Your new favourite punk band The Paranoyds look forward to a Third Man future
In my mind, signing to a major label still plays out like a teenage dream. You get the nod from a big wig. They put you in a private jet. Jack White slumbers on a chaise longue in a far corner of the office looking out at the cityscape while a fat cat called Mick Muff slaps down a contract in front of you. You sign up next to the hefty fee and enjoy the first day of the rest of your life with champagne and canapes.
“It was kind of like that,” Alexis Funston of your new favourite punk band The Paranoyds explains with giggling enthusiasm. “We played in Los Angeles, and we weren’t sure if we were going to meet him or anything. Then, right after we played, we got word from someone saying, ‘Jack [White] wants to meet you!’ So, he zoomed in and was like, ‘Let’s take a picture!’ And he was all jacked up. He lived to that rock star hype. We were like, ‘This guy has tapped into some pre-game fire’. We’ve seen athletes get to it, but this was a musician. We were like, ‘Wow we’re sleepy, we need to step our game up’.”
The thing is, The Paranoyds are not sleepy. They are an adrenalised balm for sleepy times. Somehow cognizant yet carefree, they make disdain a barrel of laughs with tracks that probe at the whys and wherefores of this crooked world with a wry eye and wonderfully jagged pop punk. And most of all, they’re buzzed up—especially after signing to Third Man Records. “We were excited about the potential of signing to his label,” Funston continues.
“We thought, yeah, that is going to be awesome because he has such a far reach. Then to see it already taking shape in really cool ways like supporting him on tour makes you very excited as an artist. It’s like what else can we ride his coattails on? Where else will he take us.” It’s this jokey enthusiasm that gives their sound a sporting lift. They are determined to keep pushing in every which way they can.
“There are a lot of LA local bands at the moment. And especially when we first started,” Funston says of the DIY origins of the band and how they derived inspiration. “ I would just go up and see them and think, ‘Okay, what do they do? Why are they on that stage and I’m not on that stage? What can we do? And aside from that sometimes I find inspiration from athletes. The kids that won the US Open are really inspiring and I think about how I can take that sort of determination and put it into our live shows. I draw from everything. I try not to see inspiration from one narrow lens, it’s all around us, man.”
This swirl of inspiration has always been apparent in their sound, and that comes down to the unique constitution of its formation. The friendship among the band is palpable, and friends are never really that much alike. “It’s very different for everybody in the band,” Laila Hashemi says of the music tastes that everybody brings to the table. “I grew up listening to a lot of what my parents listened to. Just the classics like The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. That was what really inspired me. Then in middle school, I started listening to Radiohead and that really inspired me.”
With that in mind, The Paranoyds are unafraid to forage out a niche of their own weird making. “It’s also for better or for worse we want to play stuff that is fun. What is fun to us – how we found our group – is not playing song after song that sounds like similar,” Funston adds. “It’s not something we talk about strictly like ‘this song needs to sound different to that last song’. It’s just something that naturally happens.”
Explaining: “I think that is due in part to the way David likes jazz and hip hop and metal music, and I like stoner metal and pop punk and pop music, and Staz likes country music. There’s no limits. Everybody likes what they like, and they bring the best of that to the band. Then, it’s a lot of fun. It’s like being a mad scientist putting it together.”
This has always been part of their sound. The elements swirl into something that makes comparisons nearly redundant. You might mumble a few things about a heavier Blondie or a B-52s and Pavement lovechild as you recommend them, but ultimately, you’ll just say, ‘Ah, you’ve just got to give them a listen’. That’s even more apparent with their latest album, Talk Talk Talk. “What sets this record apart is we were able to be more melodic,” Funston confirms. “For me, it sounds like were we very 70s proto-punk and now we’ve moved into this 80s new wave punk which is very exciting.”
This music is pitched on the pointed edge of modern living explored with absurdity. They don’t want to get dragged into the dismal, but some things you can’t avoid which is why fun and deliberation coincide. “I think the pandemic forced you to look within. It caused a lot of time for inner reflection. For me, ‘Single Origin Experience’ came from a time just being really embarrassed of being American.”
“Sometimes it’s so cool, we’re in LA and we get all these cool opportunities, and we’re so lucky, but sometimes it’s a bit embarrassing being from America. I guess Trump was still president too so that obviously played into it and we were just thinking, ‘God, how is this happening’. I do think that we were able to reflect a little bit more which made for an interesting record,” Funston says.
However, there is also an effort to move away from the politics of being a political band in the perfunctory sense. They are here for fun—good clean fun at that. And there is no cause to get nebbish within that. A trend that Funston spoke about when she explained: “I think hopefully we’ve moved away from it. I think a lot of the politics and bands in the US was sort of routing for bands to fail and get cancelled a couple of years ago. I really hope that phase is over because it just seems very nasty to route for someone to get cancelled. Not to get into choppy waters but being on that hyperdrive of going through the archives to try and take down this band needed to stop.”
This liberated sense of occupying their own space as brethren who are now buoyed by the bold platform that Jack White and his Third Man Records label provides is a palpable boom within the band, and it’s a boon to listen to. Free from the studio-bound sound that has often plagued a few bands in the modern era, The Paranoyds are here to put on a show. And they can’t wait to take that show on the road.
“We’re coming to the UK which we’ve never been to,” Hashemi adds. “We’re also playing festivals coming up. We’re on at Desert Daze on the same day as Tame Impala so we’re basically saying we’re opening up for Tame Impala. Then the US tour. Then the UK and Europe… So come see us, because our personality shines through! And we’re coming during the world cup too,” on that front, we can only hope they’re not too punk when it comes to rooting against the local opposition for their own joyous sakes.
You can check out their tour dates and latest Talk Talk Talk record below.
