Remember Election Day 2024?
Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe you've blocked it out. That's fair, but there was one pleasant surprise that day: a new EP from Wisconsin's Arms Aloft.
It took a while to claw out of the darkness in November, then Year End 2024 coverage took over the Scene Point Blank editorial calendar but now we caught up with Seth Gile of the band to get the story of how Red Lanterns came to be. Given that much of the conversation is about being particular, it seems fitting to run this interview six months later.
The EP is streaming now. Will it be released on vinyl? Keep reading for more cryptic answers.
Scene Point Blank: It's been a chunk of time since the last LP and I don't see you playing as many live shows locally either, though maybe that's just my own post-covid homebody lifestyle. How do you describe the band's approach or activity level these days?
Seth Gile: Oh, I’d say you’re absolutely right. We’ve slowed down, more than a little bit… but it’s also been 8 years or whatever since What A Time came out. We were super busy for a couple of years and then, yeah. COVID hit everybody who does anything pretty hard, and we were no exception. Then everybody gets increasingly busy with real life. Lauren moved out west a while back, Jack’s had some sick guest spots all over, tattooing… and so on! Cool stuff but makes it harder to schedule Punk Stuff. I would however defiantly state that we’re not dead yet!
Scene Point Blank: This EP came out somewhat suddenly late last yea and (I think) it's digital only. Maybe I'm reading into Red Scare's verbiage too much, but even Toby sounded surprised. Was it a spontaneous kind of thing, or just a subject of delays and unpredictable life elements?
Seth Gile: You know, the EP came out suddenly but it was an absurdly long time in the making. I think that’s part of why we ultimately opted for the Beyoncé drop. We’d recorded it in April 2023 and even that was after I’d over-nitpicked the demos with Alex, for like two to four years, depending on the song. Then when we had it done and mixed and ready to go and Landon had killed the art and so on -- for whatever reason, I just sat on it. We made some half-plans to do physical releases over that 18 months or so but those came and went.
Finally I think it became most important to us, and especially to the rest of the band, to just get it off my computer and out there. So when I brought up the surprise thing to them, they were like, “Fine! Yes! Just do something with it!” And that is totally fair. We’re still talking with Red Scare about how to get a physical version out, and hopefully that’ll happen soon but nothing is concrete yet.
I’ve gotten super into K-pop over the last few years. It’s essentially all I listen to.
Scene Point Blank: You've hinted at another EP on the way too. Why are you releasing EPs now, as compared to putting it all into an LP?
Seth Gile: Wow. Important to note at some point that I am pretty full of shit. Did I hint at another EP? I will say, sans any bullshit, that I have a couple of parts I’ve been kicking around forever, and a couple more that Alex has sent me over the years that I want to turn into something. But zero real plans or anything productive just yet, beyond lofty group messages and 30 second Logic snippets.
As far as EPs, I’m drawn to a couple things about them. I really love a complete musical thought. I’ll risk speaking for everyone in the band, and say that we’re all Album People, in that way. We just love a piece of music with an arc. Usually you think of an album as the way to do that, but I’ve always loved EPs that just get in and get out but manage to be standalone, finished ideas. It's an odd reference but one that’s stuck with me since I was like 15 is The Impossibles - 4 Song Brick Bomb. Even the title defines what I’m talking about.
The other half of my love for the EP is -- and I don’t think this is a surprise to anybody at this point, because I’m occasionally annoying online -- but I’ve gotten super into K-pop over the last few years. It’s essentially all I listen to. Now, let me turn my chair around and wear my hat backwards for a second, fellow teens: So K-pop artists, generally speaking, don’t release full-length LPs. It happens but that’s not the go-to model. They either do singles or they do, “mini-albums.” Now, these mini-albums are musically, yeah, just EPs. 4 or 5 songs. But they’re also usually fairly conceptual. They’ll do a long video for the whole thing. (Turnstile-style, I suppose?) Or the artist will take on a persona, for just that release. But again a standalone, complete thought, even if it’s happening over the course of 10 minutes of music. And I fucking love it. It’s such a potent format for getting music out to people.
Scene Point Blank: You kind of answered this already in a sense. My own take on Red Lanterns is that the pacing fits as an EP. I've been listening digitally but I can practically hear when it's time to flip the vinyl. I think it would fit really well on a 7". But I'm also curious because media is quickly changing and albums seem less culturally relevant than they used to be. I think the question here is: does the medium matter to you when writing a song or releasing it to the world?
Seth Gile: I guess that’s good to hear, first and foremost. Like I was just rambling about, we all love a complete thought, and that’s always the plan. I also love to pretend I’m a producer so as soon as we have more than one feasible demo to work with, I’m thinking about tracklisting and transitions and whatever. So this record, especially, was written purposefully to be a 10ish minute… Listen? Experience? Fuckin' eww, but you know what I mean. The dynamic arc does reek of a 7”, I hear you there. But does anybody listen to 7”s? I kind of don’t (maybe light the punk torches). We’ve flirted with doing it as some kind of 1-sided 10” or 12” with art or some secret Maoist messages you have to play backward or whatever on the back. But that’s expensive and everybody’s broke now, so hard telling!
I 100% write for the recording. I love a fuckin' pop song and a well-produced record. So, honestly, I’m never thinking about how they’re going to go live. Maybe to a fault.
Scene Point Blank: How do you personally listen to music these days? Phone, headphones, car, hi-fi sound system, etc?
Seth Gile: I am, unfortunately, mostly a streaming girlie. I have earbuds in, about 18 hours a day, connected to my phone or computer or whatever and I’m streaming stuff basically all the time. Be that music, podcasts, books. Surely doing further permanent damage to my hearing and brain. I’ve also got a beloved record collection and a nice setup for those, when I want to listen to something more on-purpose. But I’m sure it measures out to about 99.98% streaming. Part of the problem, I’m with stupid, etc.
Scene Point Blank: I just mentioned the pacing of the EP. At some point in the past, off record, we talked about the irony of midtempo punk. I think you pull it off exceptionally well and many could not. Energy is kind of the defining trait of punk and it's really hard to put into words or a songsheet. Is this consciously something you think about when you write a slow(er) song? How will this "capture a room" or feel on records?
Seth Gile: I appreciate that. The slower tempos were definitely something new for us. Some old songs have organically slowed down live, over time. But these were written at 130bpm or whatever, from the get go. If not slower, if I remember right.
I 100% write for the recording. I love a fuckin' pop song and a well-produced record. So, honestly, I’m never thinking about how they’re going to go live. Maybe to a fault. But I’m doing multitrack demos from the start of an idea and always thinking about the production aspect of it, rather than like, “then there should be a singalong part!”, or whatever. We multi-track everything, much to everybody else’s chagrin, because I’m a perfectionist and a wuss. But it was super important to us that it sound like a band in a room, despite that. And I think Andy and Dan (shouts outs: Andy and Dan) helped us do that.
If you want to really get into the nitty-gritty, Song Exploder bullshit of it all, I did make some conscious musical calls to keep things feeling urgent, given it was going to be slower. Like, the shorter phrases in the second verse of "Bloomberg," or the ⅞ nonsense in "Claw Machine." Both literally shorten the length of that part of the song, and that was on purpose. Not genius by any means, but something that was front of mind. And this is as close as I’ll ever get to literally anyone noticing!
Scene Point Blank: Maybe building off that question: what do you aim for in a song? Mood, energy, connection...personal catharsis...or all of the above
Seth Gile: Musically, I just want it to be good and cool. Who knows what that means? Given most of our stuff starts with at least a skeleton of an idea on my phone or laptop, lots of ideas live and die by the reaction I get after sending something to Alex or the whole band. If they genuinely think it’s cool (and I can tell when they’re just being nice) I’ll believe I’m onto something.
Lyrically, it depends on the subject, I guess. I think I’ve mostly knocked-off the personal catharsis shit, at this point. There are some pretty obvious examples of that on our older records, but those aren’t as fun to sing, for equally obvious reasons. And that’s not to say that this one doesn’t have some lines for the emo-inclined. It’s just not as personally direct, in general.
I do think I was concerned with mood, now that you mention it, moreso on this record than in the past. I’m not sure I’ve thought about it, really… so let me say something potentially stupid, off the cuff. I think I let myself get one degree further separated from literalism, this time. As a treat. So there’s a lot more A-to-C stuff in the lyrics, which either comes-off more vague or more poetic, depending on the charity of the listener. I know what I was talking about in these songs but I wasn’t as worried about a listener knowing, or connecting to them personally, as long as it made them get the vibe
Kojima was right: it’s a fuckin' nightmare of overstimulation and too much information...Go outside? Go to the bar if you do that? Go to a show? Start a band?
Scene Point Blank: As a very politically minded band that doesn't write directly about politics/policy (aka you're a little more personal in style than, say, Propagandhi or Dead Kennedys), how do you balance mental health, the need for protest, and the need to let loose and have fun sometimes?
Seth Gile: I’m not sure I do? Or at least, not sure I’d have anything very prescriptive to offer. Especially lately, I think you just have to take everything one day at a time. Every day you’re hearing the craziest six things you’ve ever heard on the news… and then the next day, those get their asses whooped out of your brain by the new craziest six things you’ve ever heard. Kojima was right: it’s a fuckin' nightmare of overstimulation and too much information.
I think...go outside? Go to the bar if you do that? Go to a show? Start a band?
It’s cliche but you can’t take care of anybody else if you don’t take care of yourself. So don’t let the weight of the world fall on your shoulders, if you can avoid it. Love the folks you’re lucky enough to love and be nice to service workers, right? And if you’re a straight white guy, like me, maybe keep a special eye out, for literally everybody else. Viva la revolución. Hard times.
Scene Point Blank: What is a way that Eau Claire, Wisconsin (or even the Twin Cities) has influenced "the Arms Aloft sound," whether on purpose or inadvertently?Seth Gile: I’m not sure. I mean, it must, right? I love Eau Claire. Everybody else has been over in Minneapolis for years, and they love their city. So both feel like “home” to our band. The obvious answers would be that we’re pulling from Replacements or Huskers or D4 but to whatever extent we’ve tried to do any of that, I’d say we’ve failed. I don’t think we sound much like any of those bands but maybe I’m wrong!Scene Point Blank: Most of the Red Scare anniversary shows in 2024 were in major US cities -- and one was at an all ages venue in Eau Claire, a small-ish town about 100 miles from Minneapolis and 180 miles from Madison. Tell us about the venue and how this show happened? (And how it went, of course.)
Seth Gile: My god, is that Toby Jeg’s music?? Fully a Toby Red Scare idea.
We were already booked to do one of the Chicago nights of the anniversary gigs. The Saturday, I guess it would’ve been. So Toby suggested having Brendan from Slapstick and Deaner the Sincere Engineener come up to Eau Claire the next day (yes, a fuckin 'Sunday) and we figured. "Hey, we have to get home either way! Your funeral.: But we hit up our buddy Cullen (shouts out: Cullen) who books a ton of comedy and music at a pizza place downtown and he was down to take a shot on it.
And it was sick! Seemed like people came over from MSP and from around Wisconsin. Adam from Good Friend was tagging along, hanging at the Red Scare gigs and stuff, so we got him up to do a surprise set too. We’re always happy when we can have cool bands come to Eau Claire. Our friends and the folks in town who like our band are at every gig anyway because they’re sweeties. So it’s nice to give them something new and fun to watch instead of our rusty asses for the 600th time.
