An Interview With Meat Wave
I talk about the punk trio's 2021 EP Volcano Park with lead guitarist and vocalist Chris Sutter.
Upon first listen, Chicago’s Meat Wave is ostensibly a punk band, but they’d quickly dodge that label if you tried to stick it on them. Lead guitarist and vocalist Chris Sutter has described their sound as “punk band trying not to be a punk band.” That about covers it. Meat Wave’s songs weave together melancholic lyrics, catchy melodies, and ear-ringing, drawn-out bridges that all sound as natural as a jam session between the three friends.
The trio released Volcano Park last June, an impressive six-song EP bursting with fervent noise. There’s not a single wasted second on such a lean release–”Tugboat” is as strong of an opening track you’ll ever hear, Sutter’s ringing guitar and half-shouted vocals immediately pulls the listener into a whirlwind while drummer Ryan Wizniak’s drums relentlessly pound away. Bassist Joe Gac’s sludgy tones make for an uneasy, shambling melody on slower tracks in “Truth Died” and “Nursing.”
More recently, the band has released a new single, “Honest Living,” ahead of their album dropping later this year. Their tour opening for supergroup Plosives kicks off tonight at Saint Vitus. I spoke with Sutter last month over zoom about Volcano Park.
Strumming on Empty: You’ve said that you treat each album as soundtracking feelings, did you feel that happening as you worked on Volcano Park?
Chris Sutter: A bit. With the pandemic and being stressed out from the Trump era, I think in retrospect a lot of it had to do with dissatisfaction and mistrust. I hate to even give him any attention but I think a lot of it had to do with that. Looking back, the project happened so quickly. We usually take a year, two years to write something and we did [Volcano Park] in like, a month. Very off the cuff, “first idea is best idea.” I had no planning, it just kind of came out but thinking back to it, it’s about mistrust of everything.
SoE: I remember right after Trump got elected people tried to cope by saying “Well, at least we’ll get some good punk music out of this era.” Did you feel that happening with this?
CS: I don’t know. It gets people riled up, the protests and uprising a summer or so ago, I would say that has a positive effect on art.
SoE: I heard you guys like pulling songs apart, and that’s definitely evident on this record–”Tugboat, “the opening track, has a part in the middle that sounds like a noise jam for a while that suddenly snaps back into the opening riff. Did that feel risky when doing a shorter release?
CS: Well, we originally wanted to just do a single, that was the plan. I feel like we had a lot of freedom to try whatever we wanted. I think this got a bit more experimental, time to make some kind of suite of songs, do something we never really did. Keeping things interesting is big for us, so you gotta keep pushing, seeing what the bounds of the band are.
SoE: What do you mean by suite?
CS: The last three songs kind of flow, kind of like three songs in one, or you can look at it as one long song. Basically we had “Truth Died” and the song “Fire Dreams” at the end, but I wanted to build a bridge between those songs, so that’s where “Nursing” came in. I found it very fun and a bit out there for us.
SoE: I love that. I feel like songs are put in order for a reason, you can always get more out of it by not listening to everything on shuffle.
CS: Oh, absolutely. The sequencing for this release was really fun, we put a lot of synth on stuff. I think it is intentional, the track order.
SoE: I wanted to talk about the second track, “For Sale.” It feels like a good summary of trying to be creative in 2022. The chorus of “put it all up for sale” seems to be about monetizing everything, carving everything up into bite sized pieces of content.
It started one way and it ended another. It started as this concept of valiantly giving up everything you own, selling everything on eBay and getting out of town. Narratively, at the end of the song, the character becomes addicted to selling and realizes there “I actually love things, I love my stuff.” I don’t even know where that came from. Capitalism is always rearing its head in my face. [Laughs]
SoE: Do you see that song as being about the concept of selling out?
CS: I don’t necessarily subscribe to selling out, I think you have to have your morals. In a way, For Sale is about selling out, I guess. I don’t know, you’ve got to do what’s good for you. It’s impossible to make a living doing this as a band of our scale. You have to keep your wits about you and not be a full fucking shill.
SoE: The real connective tissue of the record seems to be the line, “you wanted it new, you’re used to it now.” It’s in the chorus of the opening song, “Tugboat,” and gets repeated in a much more sinister tone later on. What did you mean by that lyric?
It unfortunately goes back to the Trumpian thing. “Tugboat” is basically about the people who followed Trump. You’re used to this thing, so you want something new, you don’t know what it is, they worship this fucking guy. It’s tied to their identity in a way.
SoE: Exactly–they got everything they wanted and still want something new.
And they’ll never stop. Put the flags down, we know!
SoE: The title of this EP comes from Matthew Thurber’s graphic novel, “1-800 Mice,” what can you tell me about that?
I don’t know much about Matthew Thurbur, Brian gifted me that book years ago. It’s set in this really surreal parallel universe, and the city they live in is called Volcano Park. It’s really hard to explain, it’s mostly just surreal, bizarre insanity. It’s really enjoyable and fun and I highly recommend it. In the book you have mice conversing with humans, it’s pretty much anything goes. We just really love the book. We used to have this really long playlist that we would all share and contribute to when we started the band. Every day we would all put in a song, and that we called Volcano Park. It’s just a little fun thing for us.
SoE: What was on that playlist?
It’s quite varied. We would kind of follow what the other person did, somebody put on Mission of Burma, Stevie Wonder, AC/DC, it was like 500 songs.
SoE: Is that how you three compose music together?
A bit. I’ll come in with an idea, and at this point I kind of know what they’re going to do. I know what Ryan’s going to play before he plays it, so we do follow each other in a way. Or let someone take the lead, it’s a nice working relationship.
SoE: You’ve said that Meat Wave “is a punk band trying not to be a punk band.” What makes you say that?
I tend to find punk, and this is not a knock on anybody, very redundant and boring. You know what you’re getting a lot of the time. I like not limiting the band to what we think punk necessarily is.
SoE: That’s punk as fuck.
Laughs. I like giving us freedom to do anything we want. I guess that’s what I meant, trying to keep things interesting.
SoE: How has Chicago contributed to your sound?
I think it’s helped us immensely. The scene is incredibly supportive, and there’s so many little pockets you can get into. I know the Chicago punk rock DNA is in us. I feel like there’s a lineage there that we’re kind of a part of. I couldn’t imagine the band existing anywhere else, really. There’s so many good bands here, so many good people, that’s what makes it worth being here and living here, cuz it’s so fucking cold here, it’s terrible.
SoE: What Chicago bands should readers be checking out?
Stuck, they’re great. Floatie is great, Melkbelly is a great band. There’s too many, we’re just so lucky to be in their orbit. There’s nothing better, really. I can’t stop being in bands. Makes it worth living, I’m blessed.
Catch Meat Wave on tour now and check out the video for “Honest Living” to get ready for their new album.