Heavily influenced by untimely passing of dear friend,
Adam Schlesinger, “Godmuffin” reveals a “renowned pop auteur” who is a master of
his craft.
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Mike Viola as photographed by Silvia Grav
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Mike Viola | “That Seems
Impossible Now”
Godmuffin
Out Now
(Good Morning Monkey / Grand Phony)
STREAM FULL LP
Track Listing:
01. USA Up All Night
02. Creeper (STREAM)
03. Drug Rug (STREAM | VIDEO | LYRIC VIDEO | MAKING OF)
04. We May Never Be This Young Again (VIDEO | LYRIC VIDEO | MAKING OF)
05. All You Can Eat (MAKING OF)
06. The Littles
07. Superkid 2, Trying To Do The Thing I Was Born To Do
08. Honorable Mention With Jam Show
09. People Pleaser, You’re The Man Of The House Now
10. Ordinary Girl (STREAM | VIDEO | LYRIC VIDEO)
11. That Seems Impossible Now (VIDEO)
“I’m a huge fan
of ‘The Twilight Zone,’ especially
the episodes where Rod Serling
addresses some nuanced existential dilemma hidden inside a gimmicky science
fiction idea,” says Mike Viola of the video for his single
“We May Never Be This Young Again.”
Hear it now at Brooklyn
Vegan and see the video via The
Big Takeover.
“For this video, the director, Silvia Grav, envisioned me running, just vaguely running through
Los Angeles at night. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be running from, but
she had this vision while listening to the song over and over.
“There are a handful of ‘Twilight Zone’ episodes about Air Force pilots who are distressed
and disoriented by something or other. I bought a blue jumpsuit online and put
together a little crew and we drove around filming me running in downtown Los
Angeles late at night, which during COVID, was empty.
“We knew we wanted to have vignettes of a couple not
getting along great, Like, normal stuff we all go through in our relationships,
nothing too dramatic. Just that kind of subtly that can slowly tear apart a
marriage. Something always saves us in these moments of subtle destruction. You
guessed it, love.”
[MUSIC VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I51HAhtVsXs Mike Viola | “Ordinary
Girl”
“It’s a girl power song,” Mike Viola tells
American Songwriter in its premiere
coverage of his single “Ordinary
Girl.” “We all have superpowers. For me, the scariest thing out there in
the world is blending in, disappearing into the status quo. This is like a John Hughes version of that concept.”
An obsessive monster movie fan, Viola continues the series he started
with the video (see
below) for “Drug Rug” (which
co-stars Mandy Moore (and her
swimming pool) alongside a hilarious turn as a vampire by Viola himself) with the video for “Ordinary Girl.”
With a team comprised of all women
creators, including sisters and co-directors Kelsey
and Rémy Bennett, alongside
acclaimed 26-year-old photographer turned cinematographer, Silvia Grav, “Ordinary Girl” redefines power as we
know it through the perspective of a horror obsessed suburban girl.
The video, shot like a short film,
bears witness to the main character as she harnesses her transgressive creative
gifts in a manifestation of self-reflection, exploration, and an otherworldly
growth of inner strength that will break your heart just to see what it’s made
of.
The lyric video for the song
finds Viola in a real moment with
his “monster thumb,” following his young daughter around the sidewalks of Los
Angeles as he teaches her to roller skate.
Stereo Embers says, “While Springsteen’s songbook is filled with
tracks told from the perspective of a guy who wants to get out of town, ‘Ordinary Girl’ might very well be the
first song written from the point of view of a parent wishing the same for his
children.”
[MUSIC VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBQYXSlgeFM
[LYRIC VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQXY_HlkEOw
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Mike Viola | About
Music lives in Mike
Viola. Shit, it’s his last name, right?
Godmuffin
(Good Morning Monkey / Grand Phony) even opens with strings
and man, do they tug.
Hard.
“Don’t be afraid, no don’t be afraid / We still have
time, we still have time / There’s so much I wanna do”
“I wrote ’Creeper’ the
morning I got the news my close friend died,” Viola says. “He
was my age. Now he can’t make music. I still can. I can still spend my time
looking for the secret cause, the next new song, even when it feels too late, ‘cause
I still have time.”
Viola’s friend is the artistically immortal, Adam Schlesinger, to whom Viola will forever be publicly tied as
the voice of his friend’s perfect, Oscar®-nominated pop song “That Thing You Do!”
At any other time, this association would be a fun
fact. A bullet point in a career full of them. But right now it’s painful to
listen to with Viola’s real-life
tragedy in mind. Somehow, he makes
it sound beautiful.
Godmuffin
follows-up Viola’s 2018 album The
American Egypt, and is his first return in over a decade to the more
conventional rock and pop sound that he first broke through with as front man
of Candy Butchers during that band’s
string of major label records in the late-90s to mid-2000s.
Godmuffin
was written and recorded alone in Viola’s
home studio. He describes it as “11 songs about transformation” and Viola isn’t afraid to let you see.
“It’s youthful in the chances it takes,” he says. “It
doesn’t give a fuck.”
In the face of fine-tuning everything into oblivion, Godmuffin
is the least experimental-sounding experimental record you’ll hear this year. Viola records on half-inch tape and
mixes on a vintage Auditronics console without the advantage of digital
editing.
“The
recording is linear, ‘cause I can’t punch and fix things very easily,
especially when I’m playing drums. On the computer, you
can repair all of your mistakes ‘til you sound perfect. Or even
worse, tune or beat detective the life out of it. I prefer rock music that’s
beautifully flawed.”
“It’s
human,” he says.
“Only the dead get to heaven / Here on earth we just
get lost”
Human it is.
Viola sings the chorus of the album’s first single “Drug Rug,” and it’s as if you’re
listening to recently re-discovered dedications from a high school yearbook.
It’s not nostalgia, it’s time traveling written from
the point of view of the graduated Viola,
“who’s spent a lifetime doing windmills on Big
Star guitars, slick with Todd
Rundgren syrup hand-drawn from the tree.”
Elsewhere on Godmuffin, Viola sings about being a teenager (“USA Up All Night”), about being the father of teenagers (“The Littles,” “Ordinary Girl”), and even offers up a sequel (“Superkid 2, Trying To Do The Thing I Was Born To Do”) to a
previously released song (“Superkid”)
about being a teenager.
Youthful. Not giving a fuck.
Is there a time in our lives when we feel more
invincible? Godmuffin is the sound of fearlessness.
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Mike Viola | Links
ASSETS : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : INSTAGRAM : SPOTIFY : APPLE
: GRAND
PHONY
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic
Promotion | Contact
WEBSITE
: FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : INSTAGRAM : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL
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