Chromeo's Dave 1 on ZZ Top, New York City, Getting Nerdy, and Reading the Critics

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Big and oft-professed fan of Chromeo, who delivered one of their best records to date with this year's Adult Contemporary. The album's deluxe edition just dropped this past Friday, and in the midst of their ever-busy tour schedule Dave Macklovitch (who also just opened up alongside brother A-Trak for Vampire Weekend this past, uh, weekend) hopped on a call with me to talk about the band's history, unique artistic approach, and ever-underrated status. Check it out:

The gap between Adult Contemporary and Head Over Heels was the longest gap between Chromeo albums to date. Walk me through why that was:
What we ended up doing during the pandemic set it back a little bit. When the pando started, we'd already started working on this album, but then we were in L.A., quarantined in our studio. Our little quarantine-themed EP took a little bit of time, and then we put a little bit of energy in launching our record label and producing albums for Ian Isiah, Blu DeTiger, Omar Apollo, and Onyx Collective. We figured we could afford to take that time and hone in on what we wanted this new album to stand for, and by the time that the pandemic was over, we were like, "All right, let's take a year to finish this."

What was the pandemic like for you guys beyond these collaborations? Some artists found that it was a very creative time, while others questioned whether they'd continue making music altogether.
If anything, we made more music than ever. We also raised a ton of money for different causes. We raised almost $100,000 for COVID relief in minority communities, And we raised something in the high five figures after the Beirut blast. Then we put out a live album specifically to raise money for crew members and people who work in the touring industry so we did like three fundraising. It was a productive time. We could've fundraised for us, but we just went on this altruistic kick and it was really gratifying. The theme of the album—the humor of this album—crystallized once the world opened, for some reason. We won't wait that long moving forward.

Talk to me more about the the humor specifically behind this record—the different lyrical notes you were hitting this time around.
It's a very wordy album. That was the vibe we were on at the time. We were writing a lot and making the lyrics kind of dense, and a little nutty. I'd come off of doing a song called "Clorox Wipe," so I was already kind of in a funny mood, you know? It's always been our thing—even the really sincere, heartfelt stuff like "Momma's Boy," that's also funny. And it's always what's made the gravitas indie cognoscenti uncomfortable.

The striking example on this album was the bar about—I'm saying "bar," that's so cheesy—the line about late-stage capitalism. It's clearly a joke. Of course there would never be a Chromeo song where we talk about late-stage capitalism. It's mentioned, not used—it's in quotations, I'm basically making fun of a woke tweet. But people were like, "Oh my God, Chromeo's talking about late-stage capitalism. What the hell?" In a way, that makes us laugh even more, because it really cements our status as perpetually misunderstood.

I think it's also symptomatic of also a time where...I mean, maybe I could have read the room better, but people take things very, very seriously. People are very literal, and to be fair, that's maybe also symptomatic of a time where people are scarred, or hurting, or searching for meaning. So when you say something like that, some people see it as actual serious social commentary, when it's funny social commentary. With our music, we go through great pains to toe that line, and we always have.

The humor on this album was meant to be kind of dense—and, on songs like "Coda," maybe a little over the top. It's where we were at after Head Over Heels, which had simpler subject matter and way poppier songs. We wanted to go back to something a little more dense and and nerdy.

You talked about the notion of people not really "getting it" in terms of Chromeo's sense of humor, which is something I've always appreciated. It actually feels like solid joke writing. Talk to me about humor and music on a larger scale. Are there artists you've looked to in terms of expressing yourselves comedically?
The biggest influence on Chromeo—the Rosetta stone to understanding our band—is ZZ Top. The legs keyboard stand is taken from ZZ Top—the video for "Rough Boy," where, if you rewatch it, one of the greatest videos of all time, there's a bunch of tables on womens' legs. The tone of ZZ Top is what we've always admired the most. I mean, we love the Beastie Boys too—that's what we grew up on, and when we talk about mixing in humor, I'm not talking about License to Ill—I'm talking about Check Your Head, Paul's Boutique, Ill Communication. In those records, you've got humor, but also music, craft, and references that are irreproachable.

P is a really big Steely Dan fan, so he's always pushing me to put in words that are out of context and in the wrong register for the song. Like for instance, on the song with Solange, when I said "tergiversate," why would anybody say that? But I thought that was funny, and that makes us laugh. P really likes Steely Dan, and I think they're hilarious—they're very funny and straight-faced—but I think ZZ Top is even more our spirit animal because of the presentation, the iconography, and the fact that they never, ever break character. They're the most consistently hilarious, too—I mean, they have a song called "Tush," a song called "Cheap Sunglasses," that song called "TV Dinner." It's hysterical, and they managed to not take themselves seriously—to be in on the joke, to have fun, to make people have fun, and to also be the most respected musicians ever. That's always what keeps us motivated—to attain a status like that.

As for other examples, I think a group like MGMT is really funny. I think Vampire Weekend are hilarious. I'm very close with Ezra, he's one of my best friends. I executive produced Father of the Bride, he's hysterical. Their new album is their least funny album, and that was also deliberate, but a lot of their other stuff is hilarious, and now their live show is hilarious. Lana Del Rey's hysterical. She's so funny, and she's straight-faced funny—and she's also the GOAT.

Let's talk more about yours and Patrick's relationship. You guys have known each other for so long at this point. How do you feel things have changed and matured for you guys over the years in terms of your relationship together?
Nothing's changed. We still make the same inside jokes from high school. We still speak in this kind of Quebecois French slang that nobody really understands outside of a Montreal gas station. We know each other's families. We talk every single day and we're just focused on working. The only difference is, to be honest with you, 20 years in we have to work more than ever. So, outside of making music, he's even more involved in touring stuff and the technology aspect of our show. He's basically Chromeo's production manager when we're on the road, and he oversees all things accounting. I'm basically part of the band's management and doing all the creative direction. We're working more than ever—but that's what happens, right? When you've been around for so long, in the world we live in, it's more work.

Have you guys ever had any moments over the years where you've been like, "I don't know if this project is going to kind of go on any longer?" Knock on wood, we never had a moment where—actually, the only moment we had where we didn't really know if this was going to be a thing or not was when our first album came out. Maybe at some point between the first album and Fancy Footwork—but we already had ideas for the songs we wanted to make, and we were a baby band with a record deal, so we were like, "Well, let's make our second album."

I remember when the first album came out, and it was hard when we played to rooms of, like, six people. But we still had fun with it somehow, and that thought never crossed our minds. The only other band where I see a relationship that's similar is Phoenix. They're besties that grew up and went to high school together. I don't know the other guys, but I know [Thomas Mars], and talking to him, it's the same thing: They work exclusively by committee, everyone has to be aligned, and they're just all together on the same mission all the time.They're one of my favorite bands, too. They have not made a bad record to date, which is kind of insane.

You mentioned Montreal before, and it's funny because I think of you guys as so New York City-coded in general. There's that line on "BTS" about taking the 6 to 28th, and I'm like, "Yeah, they live here."
And I still take the subway all the time.

Word. What other way is there to get around? Tell me more about your relationship with New York City, and how that's played into the music too.
Before Chromeo, when we were young, I was a hip-hop producer, and I was very close with the late '90s indie hip-hop scene. I had a little hip-hop record label in Montreal, and my records were distributed by Fat Beats. The whole musical scene around Fat Beats—Lyricist Lounge, Nuyorican Poets' Cafe, rap open-mic nights—was something I was really close to. There was another night called Table Turns, and my brother A-Trak was part of that scene, so we'd come to New York all the time. He and myself were part of that community—this is before I even moved to New York, from '97 to 2000. We were young, but there's actually one little deep-cut documentary on YouTube, and you see us in there. One of the best underground New York hip-hop groups of all time is Non Phixion, and I produced a song on their one mythical album.

So we used to run with those guys, and that's how I know El-P and Stretch and Bobbito. We go way back to those days, and we'd come to New York once a month anyway and just hang out—and I have family in New York, so I've been going my whole life. When I moved to New York in 2002, that's when I got accepted at Columbia, and Chromeo had just started. We had just played one show in Montreal, on the eve of my departure, literally the day before we drove the U-Hauls down to New York. Shortly after, we did a Vice Records showcase in New York, and that's when, Chromeo first appeared in the New York world.

We cut our teeth playing in New York during those years. We just had four or five demos, and we played Pianos and Cake Shop and at a club called Plaid. All of those early-2000s hipster clubs, we played and were involved with. So New York is really where we cut our teeth and played a bunch of shows. We opened for Scissor Sisters at the old Knitting Factory—we did that whole circuit. Three of our albums were made in New York—half of Fancy Footwork, all of Business Casual, all of White Women—because we have a small studio in New York and a big studio in L.A.

You mentioned the nerdiness aspect of it. I really liked the videos you guys posted breaking down the songwriting and production aspects of your music. How much have you spent on gear at this point?
I have no idea—that's more of a P question. But keep in mind, we were early on the synth stuff. We bought it when it was still cheap. Nowadays, a Jupiter-8 is $20,000—we paid five or six for ours. We bought a lot of that stuff before 2010, so it was never that crazy. A lot of the keyboards, we got them before they got expensive. We bought them in Montreal from people who didn't even know what they were.

When it comes to songwriting and how that interacts with gear, what leads the other?
We were lucky at the beginning of Chromeo to not have that much gear. When we did Fancy Footwork, we probably had four synths. Coming from hip-hop, we were still doing drums on the MPC, and we still do. That's why, at the beginning of those production tutorials, we always write programmed drums—no loops. We still program drums the way Lord Finesse would, or Mr. Oizo. So the sound that we developed on Fancy Footwork and Business Casual, because of the limited means that we had, and also the fact that we're not classically trained and we come from this weird immigrant family raised in Montreal—a French-speaking thing—there were a lot of idiosyncrasies in our sound.

We work a lot so that the songs, for those who really listen deeply, don't sound like literal '80s songs. There's always something that's a little bit more modern or inauthentic. On "BTS," you've got this disco thing with orchestral strings, but the drums are straight-up MPC banging hip-hop drums. On "Bonafide Loving," you've got these almost metal guitar harmonies mixed with really cheapo drums and lush boogie synths.

A lot of people can make boogie records, but that's boring to us. You'll never make a better record than the ones that came out in the late '70s and '80s anyway, so why try? It's better to put a modern twist on it and and create something that's a little bit idiosyncratic, and when we produce and write lyrics, there's always that tension that we try to achieve between good taste and bad taste—between serious and funny, earnest and self-aware, modern and retro. Every decision we make, down to the high-hats, is guided by those principles.

Let's talk about misconceptions you've faced over the years.
I'm not mad if our music gets lost in translation, or annoys certain people. Truly, if I wanted to make lo-fi synthwave beats, I could. It's easy. I'd rather make unsettling, funny weirdo shit that nerds understand, or that poses hermeneutic challenges. On the new album, there's a two-minute soundscape moment at the end of "Replacements"—soundtrack shit—and that stuff's so easy to make it's like a joke. What's hard is writing something that lands—and I don't think I do it every time. There's a lot of songs where I failed at it—like "Frequent Flyer," off of White Women. That one's no good. The joke is too gimmicky, and the hook doesn't work. When I listen back, that's a fail—but "Momma's Boy" is a win. "Momma's Boy" works. And I think there's a few on the new album that work. I'm able to look back and see when it lands or not, and it's fun to do that.

P doesn't care about [misconceptions]—he loves it. The more people hate us, the more happy he is. If we get a shitty review and he sees it—first of all, he doesn't see it, because he doesn't go online and doesn't care—but if we get a review that's shitty, a couple of times he's googled the writer and was like, "Look at this person. I want this person to hate us. Look at his face." I also had a career as a music journalist, working for VICE, and I love the craft of music journalism, so stuff gets under my skin—but I always end up getting something from it, for some reason. I don't know why. For instance, the "late-stage capitalism" line from the latest album—it baffled me that nobody got that it was a joke, but maybe I didn't read the room, or the room is really taking things seriously nowadays. That means people are looking for answers because so much stuff is fucked up.

Sometimes [criticism] is a little harsh, and sometimes it's not, and it's just who we are. But I pay attention to it, but I'm never really mad, because I really like it. I like music journalists, fundamentally. There's something about the the craft, especially now that there's less and less of it, that I really like and find romantic about it. Even if a journalist is a little harsh on my record and says a couple of things where I'm like, "Fuck, bro, you didn't get it," I know that what they do is the craft of music journalism. It's such a dying thing that, especially when it's done by a seasoned writer, I forgive everything. I don't forget it, but I'm cool with it.

Also, I'm thankful that they still listen to us, which is unlikely. We've been around for 20 years, and a lot of our bands from the same generation are no longer around. We only had one top-40 record in that span. We're still here because we work our asses off and try to advance a proposition that's singular, so if it's singular enough to write about and you don't want to praise it, that's cool. I'm honored—and that is me being genuine, really.