Recorded with Grammy-nominated producer Frenchie Smith and Grammy-winning producer Eric Delegard, the album offers a blend of solid melodies and compositions through thought-provoking lyrics that dissect societal issues through the critical lens of metamodernism.
For singer and guitarist Scott Tucker, a writer and humanities graduate student at the University of Texas at Dallas, that critical lens is best defined in social theorist Nato Thompson’s summation: “Since 1991, contemporary life has become a kind of schizophrenic existence, where we are both on television as well as in the world. We are both being mediated by things as well as experiencing them."
To put it another way, a metamodernist sees the current world as moving in between modernist and postmodernist ideals, as in modernist sincerity and postmodernist irony. It’s the kind of ideological motion that makes something like the cottagecore aesthetic a thing — displaying something old in a way that is as sincere as it is ironic.
“I feel that when everything really went digital and in the internet age, so many positions are constantly oscillating and then changing, making everything really hard to pin down," Tucker says. "It's almost like we are responsible for the present, but we're responsible for the past because we also have so much information at our fingertips.”
With everything we know constantly moving and repositioning, it's difficult for a band to really capture the zeitgeist in music the way musicians have in the past. The rock gods of the modern movement sang songs that were stories or about specific feelings. Postmodern bands, namely grunge bands in the ‘90s, sang songs whose lyrics never said much but implied everything. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” may not be about anything in particular, but its lyrics and music suggest a specific and postmodern feeling.
Capturing the metamodernist moment in music is more difficult because, as in modernism, it does stand for something, but as in postmodernism, it’s uncertain what that thing is or how it should be represented.
“The record's called On Television,” Tucker says. “Nato Thompson said that everything is constantly recorded, so we're living our lives being constantly documented and recorded. So, we're living our lives, not only in the moment, but we're also living as things are being processed. How does that change the way you live your life if you know you're being recorded?”
Well, one way to figure that out would be to go to the recording studio with the intention of seeing how the recording process itself influences the music.
“As I was reading [Thompson], everything just kind of clicked for me,” Tucker says. “These songs are little parts, like paragraphs in an essay. I feel like the lyrical content of the record, especially the song ‘Milk,’ kind of moves through this landscape created by humans, but we really don't know what we've created.”
The song begins with a frenzied spoken-word track warning of the inherent dangers of a society overwhelmed by and under the spell of technology, and juxtaposes it with a droning lyrical track repeating, “This Aztec Milk, drink of the gods. Like pure red silk, it brings the sun.”
It's in that juxtaposition that the meaning found in metamodernist oscillation is revealed, or at the very least, where the meaning can be searched for.
“It’s about things like artificial intelligence,” Tucker says. “We create things and then we deal with the ramifications of those things. The car wreck wasn't invented before the car. I think that being a little bit more thoughtful about long-term ramifications of some of the things that we create is important, especially now, when it comes to AI and music.”
Surely, music created with AI does threaten to undermine the musical landscape as we know it, but does it have a soul? Is a soul necessary to enjoy music?
For Aztec Milk Temple, the answer is decidedly, yes.
“I saw an interview recently with Jimmy Chamberlain, the drummer of The Smashing Pumpkins,” guitarist Matt Miller adds. “He said, AI can mimic everything, but you can't fake the conviction or the soul or just the human element.”
Big Thinkin'
As the album reckons with the ramifications of an ever-growing technological presence in metamodern society, its emotional appeal strongly argues in favor of the human spirit and its ability to triumph over death.“'Jordyn's Song' is about the ascent from life to death to the afterlife,” Tucker says of the album's penultimate track. It's the longest song on the album, clocking in at over 7 minutes. “It was actually written about a friend that did pass, but then after my dad died, it took on another meaning. When we played it live, the music's almost like a journey, like a rocket ship for whatever the next song is."
The live show serves as the most modern element of this metamodern musical moment for Aztec Milk Temple. Big-name labels continue to push artists to keep up with the latest fads in their recordings, but the live stage stands as a sanctuary where humans can gather together to hear music played by other humans for the purpose of building a stronger human connection.
“We love to play shows,” Tucker says. “There's nothing better than getting hot and sweaty and sharing sound waves with people. We are signed to a label, but it's an independent label. It's not like we're on Sony Music or anything. Matt and I have both kind of been down that road and it's not necessarily a road we are interested in going down again.”
So, how does a musician reckon with metamodernism in music? There's no single answer, and there never could be, but the solution seems to be rigorous intentionality in seeking human connections
“You kind of have to go through the roller coaster,” Tucker says. “But I think if you go into it with the right intentions, and you get off the roller coaster and say, ‘Man, I still want play in a band,’ you find the right people you want to play with because you want to play music for the love of art, the love of creation, and the sense of community it gives you.”
