A transcript of our Instagram live interview with the GothBoiClique co-founder about his new Darcy Baylis-produced project
Wicca Phase Springs Eternal doesn’t miss a beat. After releasing the EDM sample-laden collaborative tape UltraClub4K with Døves earlier this year, the seminal emo-revivalist has already issued another project: This Moment I Miss, a 5-track EP executively produced by Berlin-via-Melbourne artist Darcy Baylis. We caught up with Wicca Phase on an Instagram live to speak about the EP, his new band Pay for Pain, comic books, and much more.
So you released your album Suffer On in January of 2019 and it instantly became a fan favorite. What was that experience like?
It was strange because the tours that I did off of that were scheduled after the album came out. I guess that’s typical of tours, but it was kind of stressful because if the songs didn’t land almost immediately and I’m touring off of them I was going to have a problem. But they seemed to go well. I think [my label] Run for Cover picked good singles for the album, like “Rest,” that song had been out for a few months before the record came out. Then I did a lot of touring, or at least what felt like a lot of touring, around that album. I guess what I’m getting at is that I didn’t know if it would be well-received. You have your fans on Instagram telling you that it’s good, but playing shows is the test of whether it’s going to work or not and I think it did.
I’m always curious if artists have anxiety about a new album because others seem so sure of their work.
I know. I’m skeptical of those people.
Self-doubt is a part of being an artist.
Yeah, I think you need a little bit of it.
You only released a few singles as Wicca Phase since Suffer On.When did you decide to work on a new project?
It was UltraClub4K. That album is kind of buried intentionally by me and Døves. [Because of] all the samples we knew we wouldn’t be able to release it on Spotify or anything, so why make a big thing about it? That was going on before we even started working on Suffer On. That was just whenever I got to go to L.A. or something, we’d work on that. When we started Suffer On, my trips to L.A. were Suffer On trips, largely. It wasn’t until all the touring was done and I had some down time that I would revisit that. But it was on the Suffer On tour that I first heard Darcy Baylis who produced This Moment I Miss. Fantasy Camp showed me him.I knew I wanted to do a song together, so we started talking and then I heard [the beat for] “Hardcore,” which ended up being the first single off of This Moment I Miss. Right after that I was like, “We should do more.” I thought it would be just five songs that sounded like “Hardcore.” Darcy was way smarter about it than I would have been and proposed five totally different sounding songs that worked as cohesive as they could.
What was it like working with Darcy Baylis? I’m assuming that you’ve never met in person for this?
We hadn’t met in person. Actually, now that I think about it, we met in person well into the project, like after three songs were already recorded. When I toured Europe, I met him in Berlin. My memory might be bad on this and I might not have actually decided to do [the EP] until November of last year. We’ve always talked about doing something, but I don’t think it got firmed up until after we met in person. I remember being in the airport about to fly home and he sent me the last beat for it, so it had to have been then. Then I finished it in January or something like that. Working with him is awesome. I don’t want to say that he’s good and he knows it—he’s very humble—but you also have to have some sort of self-confidence as an artist or else you’ll never release anything. Darcy is good at just figuring out what works and deciding if something is not going to work, so that was good. He offered suggestions. I would send him melodies and stuff like that and lyrics before I recorded them or before they were actually finished, which isn’t something I would normally do if it was just some random producer. I value his insight as a songwriter, a producer, and an all-around artist.
There are songs on the EP where you’re singing over a full band instrumental, and–correct me if I’m wrong–that’s not something you’ve done as Wicca Phase yet.
A couple of years ago I did a song over an instrumental from the band Brand New, but it’s not the same. I did an entrance song for a wrestler, Darby Allin, and that’s kind of similar, but that was also not quite what these [new songs] are. These are organic rock band songs with lyrics that I want released in the cannon of Wicca Phase releases.
What made you want to return to a live band format? It seems like you’re doing something similar with Pay for Pain as well.
Darcy was the one responsible for the ones on the EP, so that was him. He must have just been on that wave. I think that was all him and I was just very down because it wasn’t something I had done in a proper way without samples or anything like that. It’s a little bit different than Pay for Pain. There’s stuff that I would do for Wicca Phase that I wouldn’t do in Pay for Pain. I don’t really know how to say it. I think what I’m getting at is that Pay for Pain is more of a collaborative thing between me, Pat [Brier], Dennis [Mishko], and now Phil, who some people don’t know. There’s no real idea of what we’re trying to do or what we want to be. We don’t have to be as self-conscious just because there’s more freedom and it’s not as big of a thing at this point. It’s not really about success; if there is success it’s awesome, and we want to be successful, but that’s more of a project for us to do whatever. It’s an excuse for us to hang out and just make music.
That sounds fun. You must love doing that.
It is fun. They’re like my best friends ever, honestly. People might not know them if they’re just a Wicca Phase fan. Mainly, they’d know them from Tigers Jaw, but they’re as close as friends as I have in real life. That’s all that project is really about. So, when Darcy sent those instrumentals with a full band, it was a chance for Wicca Phase to do those types of songs. They’re not necessarily instrumentals I would write myself, which is why I would work with someone like Darcy who would push me to do something I wouldn’t normally do. I trust his sense of what’s cool, so there’s some reassurance there. I wouldn’t have the confidence to write those songs and release them for Pain for Pain.
Within the context of GothBoiClique, we’re seeing pretty much everyone in the group come full circle to full band instrumentals. I’m loving this trend because at first it was all samples and now it’s all live instruments. It’s really amazing to see.
Yeah, everyone abandoned what made us popular and now we’re going back and forcing people to listen to full band instrumentals [laughs]. But I think it’s good.
What was your lyric writing process like for this project?
Similar to Suffer On. Early on in Wicca Phase there were a lot of catch phrases and there was a lot of world building; stuff that wasn’t necessarily personal to me but created mood and helped shape the aesthetic of the project in a very direct way. You just talk about things and they become a part of your brand. That’s what I was doing then. With Suffer On, that was probably the first time where I was like I’m going to write as personal lyrics as I can. I did the same thing for This Moment I Miss. The process can go a few ways. There’s a song called “I Want To Go Out Tonight” on the new EP. I had the title first, which is rare. I knew what the subject matter of the song would be because I thought it was funny and catchy or something like that. With Suffer On, I just had a lot to say and I hadn’t really written really personal songs in a long time, like intentionally. That was kind of easy, but I didn’t really think about the consequence of having to sing those songs every night, which was a little bit depressing. Sometimes I was like maybe I don’t need to play this song tonight because it’s a little heavy and it’s not how I was feeling a few months ago. On This Moment I Miss I was a little more conscious about that. Maybe I can sing lyrics that are just as personal but aren’t necessarily depressing. Well, I don’t know if depressing is the right word, but it’s one of the words you can use.
That’s something that I hadn’t really considered all too much.
Yeah, I didn’t think about it either. There are times when I’m intentionally over dramatic, like Suffer On is kind of melodramatic. I try not to do that so much with This Moment I Miss. UltraClub4K was all catchphrases and stuff I would have written in 2015 if I had thought of it.
There are some really beautiful lyrics on this EP, but the one that stood out to me the most was, “I was raised by Polish Catholics/No one taught me how to sing, obviously.”
I don’t know how to sing. That’s true. I don’t know how to sing, and I don’t claim to.
You really think that?
I think I can sing better than some people say I can. I don’t really understand when people say I’m monotone. Monotone would suggest that I’m just singing one note all the time. I don’t understand that. There are melodies I’m singing that you can play on a piano. But I guess it’s a perceived thing.
I think I know the answer to this question but I’m going to ask it anyway: Is releasing an EP called This Moment I Miss a reference to quarantine, or was it totally coincidental?
That one’s coincidental. “I Want To Go Out Tonight” was also coincidental. It was written in January. I don’t know what happened there.
I can already tell that every critic is going to be like, ‘This is the perfect EP for quarantine.’
[Laughs] I know, it makes me cringe.
Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while is comic books. I’ve heard you’re really into them — what are some of your favorites?
Yeah, I’m into them. I don’t read too many new comics. I read maybe four books a month from writers I like. I probably like all the popular ones. I like Tom King, who’s been writing Batman for the past year. He’s off of it now, but that was really good. He has a 12-issue limited series starring Adam Strange, which is being rolled out right now. He’s very good. Grant Morrison is one of my favorites of all time – Animal Man, his Batman run, Sebastian O. He’s like my favorite writer. These are probably boring answers for people who love comics because they’re really standard answers, but for a while I was so into underground comics. This was like 10 years ago when I had a different Tumblr and was still in Tigers Jaw and stuff. I was so into underground comics and artists and stuff. That was like the height of my love for all types of comics. For whatever reason—maybe I don’t have the time to invest in them anymore—I just stick to mainstream stuff or classics that I’ve never read. I re-read Watchmen for the first time in 15 years. That’s not like an exciting thing, but it was awesome. There are a lot of comics like that that I haven’t read. I also help out part-time at a comic books store, which is kind of funny. I used to work there in college and for whatever reason they needed help again, so I started doing that today.
The only comics I’ve read are The Walking Dead. I also love Watchmen. I need to check out that Batman series. Comics are cool. They’re very underrated.
They’re cool. I’m trying to unload all of my stuff. I have so much stuff on eBay. That’s another thing I do that I don’t talk about. I sell comics on eBay. I’ll send you stuff so that I can clear them out.
Another hobby you have is wrestling — you wrote the entrance song for Darby Allin of AEW (All Elite Wrestling). How did you get involved in that world?
Wrestling is something I was into as a kid. I was into WCW. I got out of it when WCW got bad. They got really bad towards the end of their run in ’99, 2000. Then I got back into it through video games in 2004. From that I got really into independent wrestling, a company called Ring of Honor. It was the athleticism of it that I like and just the commitment to the character. There’s a lot. Wrestling on the independent circuit is a lot like touring as an artist but way harder because there’s an element of physical danger to it and physical conditioning that you need to be able to pull off. I don’t have that so I’m attracted to and fascinated by that lifestyle. So that’s what I was into for years, and I still very much am.
So you can relate to these guys?
Yeah, and it’s not something I thought about. Like I didn’t understand the touring aspect when I was a kid. I think I just liked the personality and the athletics of it. I always like hard hitting wrestlers because it’s a dangerous passion to have. You have to commit so fully to it. I would never have the commitment to put myself in that position; to drive out to Indianapolis on a Friday and wrestle and potentially die and then book myself the next day in New York City and do the same thing and have that be my living. That’s insane to me. There’s an art to it as well in the sense that you have to have charisma, you have to have a character. You have to understand how to draw people in and entertain them. That is just amazing.
Lastly, is there anything else about the This Moment I Miss that you’d like to add?
Just that it was written months ago and that I have multiple projects that I’ve finished since then. I’ve noticed that it’s kind of frustrating to have to wait to put stuff out, but I understand why I have to do it. When Run for Cover puts something out, they do it properly. There’s the PR element of it. They want to give people two months with it before it comes out, so that adds to it. Stuff like that. I think that’s probably the big thing. Had I just released it when it was done, it would have been out in like February.
What can you tell us about these other projects?
I don’t know if I should say anything. I have two collaborative ones that are done. I’ll give very vague details. One is a five-song release with one producer and one singer for the whole thing. Then there’s a 10-song project that also has another singer on the whole thing and is produced by the same person. I think that’s it, but I’m also working on my next album, like a proper album. There’s a lot because I’ve just been writing and recording for a few months because of quarantine.
This Moment I Miss is out now on all streaming platforms