Interview: Nature & Strong Women Inspire slenderbodies’ Lucid New EP

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slenderbodies returned to Austin last weekend for their first ever ACL performance. The guitar playing duo, Max and Benji, shared their warm, lucid tunes Saturday afternoon on one of their biggest stages yet. Their airy vocals, intricate guitar riffs and chill electronic beats floated through the crowd, uplifting everyone after a bout of morning showers delayed the festival’s opening.

The slenderbodies duo met in college at UCSC but didn’t start crafting music until they were in separate cities, 380 miles apart. slenderbodies’ most popular track “anemone” has over 16 million streams on Spotify. Their signature woozy guitar licks and strong lyrical imagery recall Glass Animals.  slenderbodies released their second EP fabulist: extended earlier this year and finished a quick headlining European tour before heading to ACL, bringing their indie pop around the world for the first time.

Though the California-based duo is known for their smooth, sexy jams—their sound even being compared to light and warm equatorial air—Max and Benji are down to earth and a charmingly silly pair. At the end of their set, they thank the crowd and put down their electric guitars, as Max holds his arms open wide for Benji to jump into. They embrace, and Max carries him off stage, an improvised exit they later explain only worked because of how much Drake and Josh they watch. Hug me brotha!

We had a great time interviewing slenderbodies after their ACL weekend 1 show. Catch them this Saturday at 12pm on the HomeAway stage.  Scroll to read our Q&A and listen to a few of our favorite tracks.

Julia: ACL is huge. How do you guys feel playing here?

Max: It’s pretty surreal, I feel like it will hit me later, and I’ll be like wow I did that. And then I’ll freak out.

Benji: I feel like that’s gonna happen this week, and then we’ll be way more nervous for next weekend’s set.

J: Y’all were great. Max, I loved when you picked Benji up at the end and walked off stage holding him. It was the perfect ending.

Max: We watch a lot of Drake and Josh, so it works.

J: Are Drake and Josh your stage-presence inspiration?

B & M: Yes.

Benji: He’s definitely Drake, I’m definitely Josh. Sorry man.

Max: I’m fine with that actually.

J: I read in previous interview that you guys start songwriting in the forest, talking to each other on guitars. Can you talk a little about that?

Max: Yes, so for a lot of our new music, we went to this cabin in Mendocino, which is this little tiny town on the coast of California, just north of San Francisco. And we rented this Airbnb for like 14 days. We’d go out every morning and grab our acoustic guitars and just start jamming something in the woods, until we found something that we wanted to pursue for the day.

Benji: Usually we start with guitars, and then we’ll start mumbling things, and that kind of develops into words. And then we’ll sit down and talk about what we really wanna talk about, and that kind of develops into lyrics.

J: You studied jazz theory right?

Benji: Yeah I learned jazz theory when I was younger, so I do a lot of jazz improv. And I had a guitar tutor, and we’d play together all the time. But at this point I’ve taken it and tried to make it my own as much as possible.

J: Since the writing process starts outside with guitars, is nature the basis of your sound?

Benji: Nature’s a big influence in terms of an inspiration. We always say you have to have some sort of input before you can output anything. And I think tour is a good way to balance being able to bring in a lot of new experiences so that when we’re back home, we’re like let’s go out somewhere in nature, bask in our new experiences and put out new ideas.

J: A lot of your new music talks about different women… or the same woman?

B & M: Yeah we have one girlfriend together!

J: Wait, no, that’s not what I meant!

B & M: We don’t, we don’t! They’re gonna see this interview and freak out.

Benji: We were both raised by strong women, I was raised by a single mom. And his mom is a really strong woman. And we’ve had a lot of female friends and intimate partners who have pushed us to be more and to grow so we wanted to pay our respects to that.

Max: And it’s a lot about women in general and being able to appreciate the role of a woman as a man in a deeper way.

Benji: I think it’s great that there’s more push for equality now, but we want to just push that even more to the forefront, especially in regard to these women in our lives who have inspired us. I think it was a great place to start.

Photo by Anne-Marie Halovanic

J: Who would be your ideal artist to collaborate with?

Max: Radiohead. If we could just pick one, Radiohead. It would be a sick collaboration. I’d have a lot of fun with that.

J: What’s your favorite Radiohead song?

Max: Weird Fishes, House of Cards, anything off In Rainbows.

J: Who are y’all seeing this weekend?

Max: Paul McCartney, Hozier, Khalid, and a handful of other people.

Benji: I saw David Byrne, it was great. We both saw Manchester Orchestra. It was amazing, that band changed my life.

Listen to slenderbodies on Apple Music and Spotify. You can find upcoming tour dates on their website. 

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