Interview with Scott Masson (OFFICE)

When you look at the current state of Metro Detroit indie-pop rock, you can be overwhelming by the shear scope and amount of viable, stalwart pop bands that call Southeast Michigan home (Pas/Cal, Mason Proper, Tally Hall, Silent Years, Pop Project, Prussia, Lighting Love, Word Play, Friendly Foes, Javelins… the list goes on and on).  So you can image my total surprise when I found out that Chicago indie pop rock standouts OFFICE had packed up their bag(s) and relocated to Michigan.  That’s why we recently tracked down the band’s mastermind Scott Masson and made sure this was not some kind of a sick joke being played on us. Here’s what we found out:

So you recently relocated the band from Chicago to Metro Detroit?
It’s been amazing.  I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit (Milford), and moved to Chicago after college in 2002.  Mostly, I moved back to the Detroit area to be with my family.  The other reason was that I had exhausted my potential (and welcome!) in the Chicago market.  Not to sound like a weirdo, but OFFICE pretty much dominated that entire city for awhile in terms of young song-oriented music.  The project made quite an impact in Chicago.  After a few years of that kind of hype and exposure, it’s important to shake things up a bit, find some peace and quiet, evolve the music, try out some visual ideas, and wipe the slate clean.  I just signed a deal with Quack!Media, so I’m very excited about releasing music with a label that is in-tune with new ways of thinking and making music available to the public.  You can say I’m ecstatic about the relocation.  Chicago is a beautiful place, but it was just time to move on and think outside the box.

Quack!Media has been signing some great local talent like the Hard Lessons, Great Lakes Myth Society and all the Suburban Sprawl bands. What made you go with them, what’s it like?
They’re super nice people, and I love the fact that they let their artists be ARTISTIC.  That’s huge!  I’ve already had the major label experience, and it almost drove me over the edge.  Quack!Media offered a deal that was believable, fresh, and down-to-Earth.  What I like about them is that they don’t feel the need to get in the way of how I make music or visual art, or who I decide to work with.  It’s a relationship where the artist can just focus on the work at hand, and the label makes the product available to the public in a tasteful, creative way.  I feel they are paving their own way, and developing a new philosophy that other labels should follow.

Have you played much locally yet? What bands on the local see have you played or worked with?
Well, I used to play in Detroit, Hamtramk, and Ann Arbor a lot back in the 90s when I lived here.  My old band (with Jeremy Freer) would open up for people like Swervedriver, Polvo, and random bands from DC or wherever.  I’m friends with members of 800beloved, Pas/Cal, The Juliets, Lightning Love, The Great Lakes Myth Society, Computer Perfection, The Questions, Von Bondies, Pop Project, Silverghost, Deastro, and many more.  I’m just now getting to know The Hard Lessons.  The Sights were my label mates for a minute there on Scratchie, but I never really knew Eddie apart from a couple drunken conversations.  Lots of these people I either know on a personal level, or have worked with at some point.  Very talented people here in Michigan.  OFFICE has played quite a few places in Detroit over the years, but it was always as if I was “visiting” my home town on a vacation or tour.  Now, I kinda feel like I’m involved with the atmosphere again, full-time.  Glad to be here.

So tell us about the new record?
The new record is called “Mecca”, and it was my goal to make something with my friends that would end up being the opposite of what people would expect from OFFICE.  I’ve always felt that you “please the audience” by continuously challenging them…..not by re-hashing the same ideas over and over again.  It had gotten to a point where everybody was calling us a “fun, sunny, happy fun-time, sing-songy, hand-clapping new wave” band.  I guess you can say I got very good at hiding my dismal sarcasm behind catchy melodies, so I opted to just push the discomfort to the front of the mix this time, and dirty up the mix a lil’ bit.  ”Mecca” proved to myself that a good pop song doesn’t need to sound “clean” or “happy”.  It’s a much more organic production, and the stereo field has been pushed to the absolute limit.

FEATURED TRACK:
OFFICE – “Dr. Darko”

When I type OFFICE in Google I get the show Office Space.  That makes it hard to find you guys, how did you come up with the name.
Haha.  Yeah….when I came up with the name in London (1999-2000), nobody had an iPod, and it was very rare that you knew anybody who spent more than 10 minutes on the internet ever day (just enough to reply to an email or two).  Most of the time when I create, I’m not thinking about user-friendliness, easy access, or marketability.  Maybe this was a mistake, however, if I called the project “Penis” or “Water”, I guarantee you the Google process would be just as difficult.  One word names can require a lil’ effort on the part of the public.  I recommend typing in “OFFICE + music”, or “OFFICE + Scott Masson” since I have become synonymous with the word in the music biz.  That seems to bring up a lot of information for folks.  :)

The name came to me one day when I was walking around the streets of London, taking pictures of people for a class.  I saw a shoe boutique called “Office Shoes”, and it just looked perfect in my eyes.  The giant “O” could’ve been a “zero”…..for nothing.  The starkness of the word was blinding.  I had been digesting a lot of cosmopolitan themes in my artwork and lyrics around this time anyway.  It conjured up so many ideas in everyone’s head:  money, work, squares, life, adultery, escape, status, purpose, white, black, gray, pain, prison, love, windows, walls, and dreams.  Any artist growing up has always had older folks ask them if they had “another career to fall back on?”.  American culture tends to treat artists as “extras”, or expendable lil’ slaves to entertain the working man.  If it’s not that, then the artist is held up on a pedestal, with flashing lights, piles of money, smoke machines, and flat screen TVs.  There’s no balance.  You’re either famous, or a piece of shit.  It was my attempt to show people that the artist walks amongst the working man.  The artist is the business man, the nurse, and the mirror.  The artist is equal, and their work is just as important as a CEO’s.  My studio is my office.  People quit, get fired, talk shit, get things done, make money, and sometimes steal money.  Since I’m the boss, I can’t seem to fire myself.

Did you play Lollapalooza last year?  How was that?  Will you be touring this year?
Yeah.  This year was our second time playing Lollapalooza.  It was a great time, of course.  The organizers of that festival really treat the artists like royalty for the entire weekend.  You get a lot of free food and drink, and you get carted around wherever you need to go at anytime.  The crowd in 2006 for our set was a few hundred people, but this year it was a few thousand.  That was nice to see that many people singing along.