For over 20 years, Boston synth-pop band Freezepop has left quite the mark on the local scene and beyond. Over the course of four previous albums, a wealth of remix EPs, and appearances in video games and TV, the group has been considerably prolific in mixing infectious choruses with energetic synth melodies.
This week, Freezepop released their fifth studio album Fantasizer after a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2016. Coinciding with the album’s release are the visually inventive music videos for the silent-era-inspired “Anchor to the World Below” and the green screen antics of the title track, along with Maxi-Singles for each song that include remixes and B-sides.
We caught up with Freezepop’s Liz Enthusiasm (vocals), Sean Drinkwater (synthesizers/programming), and Bananas Foster (keytar/drums) via Zoom to discuss their new songs, music videos, and what fans can expect from Fantasizer.
Allston Pudding: “Anchor to the World Below” is the lead single from your first album in 10 years. How was that song developed and how did you choose that song as the first sample of Fantasizer?
Sean Drinkwater: We had a really large group of instrumental songs from 2014 that got whittled down to the ones that we thought would push us a little bit further. And “Anchor” was one of those songs. We hadn’t released a darker song in a really long time, probably since “Frontload” in 2007. It felt like it’d be an interesting start to have it be an emotionally different song. It just felt right, and it didn’t feel like it was giving too much of the album away.
Liz Enthusiasm: It’s almost a little misleading just because the “Fantasizer” video is a complete aesthetic 180 to it.
SD: For better or worse.
[both laugh]
AP: It’ll give people the full range before the album’s out.
LE: Exactly!
SD: The “Fantasizer” video’s ‘80s green screen look is very much the opposite of the “Anchor” video. We shot “Anchor” in December and we had planned to shoot again in the spring. But COVID was already with us, so we couldn’t really appear on screen together. But I’m happy that we seem to be more serious about making videos this time around for almost every song on the record.
LE: It helps that we’re the ones making them and don’t have to pay a director a bunch of money each time we release a video. And I would say a lot of the aesthetic is born out of those limitations, like the silent film look [with “Anchor”].
SD: Yep. “Let’s make it look like garbage from 1915!” [laughs] It was a hybrid of, like, “What can we do?” and, “What would we like to do?” And then we found the silent film idea in the middle of those two questions.
AP: The behind the scene pictures from the shoot in everyday spaces for the “Anchor” video are especially cool. In one of the pictures, there’s painted backdrops used in a garage, which is an impressive visual trick.
SD: That was part of the idea, that we could make simple backgrounds that look surreal, like those 1920s silent horror movies. It was all in keeping with the aesthetic, but it did work out rather well for the fact that we were shooting half of it in a garage.
LE: It was very collaborative in terms of the art direction and the backgrounds and the outfits and all that stuff.
SD: There’s quite a labor of love. Like Liz said, it’s a way of taking your limitations and making something interesting out of it. And Bananas lives adjacent to this crazy graveyard.
LE: We really lucked out in terms of the day. It was in December, but it was really unseasonably warm but also foggy and misty.
SD: Dragging [bandmate] Christmas [Disco-Marie Sagan] around on a dress made of paper essentially. It could have gone really poorly in December actually. [laughs]
AP: How did the tarot cards end up fitting into the visual aesthetic of the video for you?
SD: This record and its companion record coming down the line have a lot more metaphorical supernatural stuff. That’s where the title Fantasizer comes from. As soon as we decided on the initial singles, the fact that we were going to have tarot cards and dress up like weird ancient monsters, like Christmas with the antlers, just fell into place immediately. We were just like, “This is just going to be the weird fantasy version of this band for like a year.”
AP: The remixes for “Anchor” feel like a continuation of what you’ve done with alternate takes or mixes in the past. What drives your impulse to experiment with songs beyond their album configurations?
SD: This album is a very full, very lush, very dense record. When we first started talking about remixes, [we had] the idea of stripping things out, having them be more percussive and more angular and a little more like old Freezepop. [We wanted] some of the remixes to be a reprieve from the dense wall that is the actual album, which is quite cinematic in places. And we have three or four of these series of songs, like the early 2000s remix Night Fantasy versions. So, at the end of it, you’re going to have four or five different complete versions of the record. And you can say, “I’m going to listen to the whole thing acoustic today,” or, “I can just listen to the whole thing 8-bit today.” Or you can make your own special playlist that’s the ones you really like. Maybe we’ll have a poll where [fans] might get to pick from like the different versions to make their ultimate version of Fantasizer. I always think it’s good to give a different perspective on stuff like that.
AP: That feels especially true with the Daydream version of “Anchor,” which turns it into a piano ballad, an approach that’s not typically found on a Freezepop album.
SD: We’ve flirted with this in the past with acoustic versions of “Plastic Stars” and “Moons of Jupiter.” But this is the first time we’ve done a big chunk of them. “Anchor” was written on piano, so you’re hearing it at its most basic state with the piano version. For us, it’s nice to have all these toys or tools. But if you can sit down and play a song on the piano or acoustic guitar and it works and you still get some feeling out of it, then you know you have a real song. I think 10 or 11 songs on the record started as piano or guitar, just trying to suss out chords and melodies. “Fantasizer” has an acoustic guitar version, because that song was written on guitar. So wherever the song started, that seems to be where the acoustic versions are ending up.
AP: What were the origins of the B-sides on the “Anchor” Maxi-Single and their development?
SD: We’re going to do B-sides for every single and, maybe at the end, we’ll have a proper B-sides collection. We started working on a bunch of Italo Disco music two years ago and “Dance Ambition” was a leftover from that, but I just liked how the music felt with “Anchor.” Same thing with “Bubblebath,” which was a really early one whose backing track was going to be the opening song to the album [at one point]. We did the vocals on both these B-sides two weeks ago, days before the single came out. I work well on the clock, like, “We have to be done today.”
AP: Yeah, I feel that same impulse. I did want to mention the Kickstarter campaign for the album, which was super heartening to see get funded so quickly and hit its stretch goals. Now that it’s four years later, what sort of things did you take from that experience, especially given royalty payments with major streaming services are still at the same place, if not exacerbated?
LE: The response was amazing. Initially, we were freaking out, like, “Oh, my God, is this going to be totally embarrassing? 10 people are going to pledge money.” But it was really heartwarming. Our fanbase has always been incredibly loyal and supportive, and people really turned out for it.
Bananas Foster: It’s not like Freezepop was putting out an album every six months. So when we were like, “Hey, we’re doing a Kickstarter for the next one,” it was just… [imitates explosion sound]
LE: It was just a matter of telling people, this shift in psychology of saying, “Hey, we actually need your help. If you pre-buy this album, it’ll help us make it.” And our fans were exceedingly patient with us, as long as we kept posting updates. I think maybe now, especially with COVID and Bandcamp Fridays, more people are like, “We need to support artists.” But an average music listener [at the time] didn’t necessarily know you’re getting a check for $3. At the time, we had a bunch of demos from 2014 and we thought we were much further along. And we ended up scrapping the whole thing. [laughs] So I would say, next time around, we would have to have the album basically done before we attempted anything similar.
SD: Looking back at 2014, I can see why we were so confident about those demos. There’s so much cool music there. But we just couldn’t turn them into any real songs. It was a real bummer after a year of work to be like, “This is just not happening. Nothing’s landing.”
LE: It just wasn’t jelling. Individually, things were good, but then it just wasn’t coming together.
SD: Ultimately, I feel bad that we took so long, but I’m really glad that we took so long. If we had put this thing out even a year and a half ago, it would have been pretty rough. We kept having to be like, “Oh, it’s late, sorry.” But you can’t force it. If we had been paying for everything ourselves, we couldn’t have spent a year on something and then thrown it out because it was bad. So in a way, the backers of the Kickstarter really afforded us the opportunity to spend time on it, to get it exactly how we wanted it. Which is an amazing luxury in this decade. The Kickstarter hugely enabled us to function almost like a band from the ‘80s or ‘90s in an old-fashioned A&R way, where you’d have a really long time to craft something great.
AP: There was an interview around the time of the Kickstarter where you mentioned bringing in bigger sounds to albums and live shows with the expanded lineup. How has that affected the particular arrangements on Fantasizer compared to previous albums?
SD: Future Future Future Perfect was a really tough record to tour, because it was just the three of us: Liz, Bananas, and I. The band had just started to get cult-popular in America and, suddenly, we had bigger shows. When [ex-member] Kasson [Crooker] crafted a lot of the backing tracks, it was all about making interesting polyrhythms and syncopation, which all sounds really cool to listen to walking down the street. But playing the songs live was pretty challenging and felt quite jerky. When Kasson left and we went to go make Imaginary Friends, we had a different eye on how to produce those songs so they would work on stage. And I think that’s definitely carried over to this album.
AP: As I imagine is common, my first entry point into Freezepop was your appearances in Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Beyond the added exposure, how have those games affected your fanbase now that people who discovered you that way when younger are now adults?
LE: It’s pretty weird. [laughs] We did a mini-tour two summers ago, and it was weird because people would come up to me after the show and go, “Oh my god, I loved you when I was 13!” And they’d be grown-ups, and I’d be like, “Oh my god, I feel ancient!” [laughs] But it’s really cute and heartwarming, because I think of the bands I loved when I was 13, like Duran Duran, and it really sticks with you. So, yeah, let’s ride MySpace nostalgia.
SD: We were a little bit on the old side when we started too, so it definitely is strange. There was a time where I thought the video game thing was a double-edged sword, because we were signed in Europe and hip for a minute and adjacent to the electroclash scene. And as soon as we started being in games, I was worried we lost something, even though we gained a lot of fans. Now, I don’t think of it that way at all. I just think, “Thank God that happened and we got some fans.” [laughs] It was just after the ‘90s and it seemed like selling out, but oh my God, if I could imagine the music industry in 2020.
BF: It’s also good that we were part of a movement that wasn’t a weird fad. You may be leery to get involved with disco or Britpop, because then there’s a backlash to it. But video games are bigger than that. It didn’t group us in with any sort of musical act that would make us seem dated. Video games are going to be around for a long time.
SD: The video games really gave us a career in America, and we couldn’t be more grateful, really.
AP: To close things up, what would you say listeners — either new or longtime fans — should expect from Fantasizer?
SD: I think we tried to make something that was really at the top of our game as a band. If we can’t make a record that stands up with the records that we love in our genre, then we’re doing something wrong. I want to be able to put a playlist together with Violator and Upstairs at Eric’s and Dare and New Order’s Substance [1987], and be able to throw one of our albums in there and feel like it could live with that other music.
LE: It’s a continuation. But you’re always trying to push yourself a little bit each album.
BF: It’s not a retread.
LE: Yeah, there are elements there for new listeners and old school fans. You want to bring along everybody for the ride.
SD: I feel like this could be a conversation we could have in a year and it would be a lot easier to define what the album is. When you’re really high on having a new thing, it just seems like the best thing you’ve ever done, and it’s really hard to detach yourself from the momentum of the moment and really analyze it. Certainly, it was a labor of love and I think when people hear it, they’re going to be like, “Oh, that’s why this took so long.” The response so far has been so incredible, and I couldn’t be happier.
Freezepop’s new album Fantasizer is out now and can be streamed via Bandcamp below.