Freshly Pressed – Vogue Villains “Floatin’ Stone”

Known for their high energy live shows and genre-blurring alt rock sound, Vancouver Island-based Vogue Villains have just released their latest single, “Floatin’ Stone”. We caught up with the band to chat about the new music, their supervillain alter egos, and the full story of how they came up with their name.

From The Strait: Tell us about the new single, “Floatin’ Stone”. 

Vogue Villains: This song is essentially about having an identity crisis. Living life on autopilot and acting on impulse to fulfill needs that you think you have. You know, anything to distract from the hard work you may need to do on yourself to become centered again.

Before finishing, the song comes around to a point of gratefulness which is important to have with a message like this. Because even at your deepest depths and no matter how long the trail of hurt drags out behind you. There will always be opportunities to grow, and start showing up as who you want to be or maybe who you never thought you could
be.

From The Strait: What about the creative process for the song, what was that like?

Vogue Villains: Floatin’ Stone began with the riff you hear at the intro, and what the song returns to after each chorus. The idea was to create a song that had more of an upbeat feeling you could jump around and dance to, while still retaining that cheeky darkness that seems to come out naturally in our writing. We love all kinds of music that make you want to move so a big goal for us is to further incorporate more elements of that kind of energy into our new material. Even looking past our upcoming album. The chorus in this song was entirely different as well before going into the studio, so maybe one day we’ll make the original demo available to hear as well!

The lyrics didn’t come until quite some time after we had been sitting on a pile of riffs. But we love how it came together as the song stems from a pretty dismal place. So, that
being paired with a funky dance vibe is fun!

From The Strait: . What’s your favorite – and least favorite – thing about being a musician?

Vogue Villains: Performing our own music and delivering our message to a crowd we’ve connected with is obviously a huge part of what makes this life great. Having the opportunity to get on stage and exist in this shared “moment”, where all we can do is be present with each other and hope that people come along for the ride.

Our least favorite thing would be the mental gymnastics required to navigate the rat-race of social media and “the business”. It distracts from the real shit… all the comparison and the neurosis that comes along with feeling like you have to know it all and be perfect every step of the way, the thought can be quite heavy, let alone the actual work that comes along with it all.

From The Strait: What’s one album you can’t get enough of right now?

Vogue Villains: ‘In Times New Roman…’ by Queens Of The Stone Age. We’ve been waiting so long for it to come, and it absolutely blew our minds. We loved every song, how often does that happen?! QOTSA is one of our many strong influences and this record gives such positive inspiration to keep experimenting and pushing the boundaries of our
songwriting and recording.

From The Strait: If each member of Vogue Villain was a superhero, what would their name and superpower be?

Vogue Villains: Super villains perhaps?
Lucas “Bird Brain” Antoni, an evil super genius whose intelligence is only matched by his rage at what he does not know, like math and shit. Mind reading do anything for you? This guy can read yours 5 minutes after you already say what’s on it, he really makes it look effortless.

Rob “Rob & Tug” Johnston, if you could only hear the silence in his stare… you may never hear anything else again

Nate “Snakeskin” Cox, slithering his way into any auditory canal, this reptile imprints onto the souls of lovers and haters alike. What he leaves behind? Only you can say.

Andrew “Vampire Breath” Baskin, more like anti-vampire… I mean don’t get me wrong, this guy still sucks, but he also spits… far too much, like more than you want, seriously. Never (always) fear, this rattling machine gun of dark and snide energy will (un)fortunately always be around, snapping his sharp inky tongue in your general direction.

From The Strait: Last, but definitely not least – how did you come up with the band name?

Vogue Villains: During a time of rebirth, Lucas and I (Andrew) had begun making music together that was truly ours, no more caveats, no more bullshit. Or at least the no bullshit part was the intention, but no matter how hard they tried to shut it out, the shriveled up past just refused to blow away with the wind (not yet). So much so in fact that I began thinking that if everyone is the hero of their own story (even though ridiculous ones), then regardless of how I might feel, I might just be the bad guy in theirs. So if I am the scapegoat the past needs to feel better about itself? Then fuck it, I’ll be the villain, if that’s what’s needed I’m here for it. And so, one word was down.

After that it was a matter of taste, I really like alliteration so a second word that also started with a V was what I began hunting for. I think it took a couple days of plugging in any word that I could make sense of and feel like it sounded cool, so I enlisted Lucas in the hunt for V as well, and it didn’t take us long. While driving to pick up a used video game 15 minutes from my house I continue to search and bounce ideas off of Lucas. If I remember correctly, I exclaimed “Vogue! Vogue Villains!?” And Lucas said “Fuck yeah! What’s Vogue mean?” (I still don’t know if he really didn’t know ever or had just forgotten in the moment, either is entirely possible and regardless, we laughed at this). 

I proceeded to explain Vogue to him and what I thought the name meant to me in that moment. The just was this, Villains are in, it’s hot to be the bad guy, and it just so happens that people need us to be that for them anyway. So we decided that we might as well embrace it, and hell, we even get to do it in style. I think we sat parked in front of that poor person’s house for 15 minutes excitedly figuring this out, they probably thought we were insane, but they still sold us the game! By the time we drove out we were certain that was the name,and we never looked back.

Little did we know that for some reason both of those words seem to be the two most misspelled words in the English language, and that they are hard to say fast in a row! Ahh the simplicity of initials… vV.

Better than Crooked Crooks right!?

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Check out “Floatin” Stone”, the latest single from Vogue Villains!

Follow Vogue Villains on Facebook & Instagram!

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