Alex Ebert On 'Killing Off' His Edward Sharpe "Facade"

"Ah, I get the chills just thinking about it. It was amazing," Alex Ebert rhapsodises on Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros' show at St Ann & The Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, New York the night before our chat. Fortunately, the band had the foresight to film this special show. "We're doing a documentary at the moment so, you know, it was really well-covered," Ebert reveals. "Yeah, I'm really excited about it."

"I got a lotta shit for it in the States... [People] thinking they had caught me and that I was not really Edward Sharpe..."

Since the release of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros' previous, self-titled third set (2013), Ebert has picked up a Golden Globe for Best Original Score (All Is Lost). Core member and co-vocalist Jade Castrinos left the outfit in 2014 and, for their latest PersonA record, the band's songwriting sessions were largely collaborative. Ebert points out that working in this way can be "tough, because with ten people that means sometimes nine people have to just sit there and be patient and supportive while one person works through something". On whether there were any heated discussions during these sessions, Ebert opines, "The reality is, when you're doing what a song wants - or a piece wants - usually when you actually hit it, there is no argument; everyone knows that's the right thing."

Stomping sounds close out album track Somewhere and we wonder how many pairs of feet were recorded to create this 'army'. Ebert laughs, "That was probably ten sets of feet doubled or tripled, so that's probably 30 sets of feet... you can close-mic things and then repeat them over and over and give the appearance of a lotta people, but there's nothing really like the sound of a room - and a bunch of people in a room - even if it doesn't have a lotta robustness."

The "Edward Sharpe &" part of Ebert's band's name is crossed out as part of the PersonA cover art and the band leader confirms he intends to 'kill off' "the facade". "The whole idea that Edward Sharpe was this persona that I was inhabiting was really sort of just a joke," Ebert elaborates. Bowie 'retiring' his Ziggy Stardust persona springs to mind. "Yeah, yeah, I mean Bowie was my hero back then," Ebert enthuses. "I wrote when he died: 'Before I had a voice, I used David Bowie's'." We discuss whether fans are more accepting of artists having multiple musical identities these days and Ebert posits, "I mean, I don't know; I got a lotta shit for it in the States... [People] thinking they had caught me and that I was not really Edward Sharpe, that actually I was from Ima Robot [another of Ebert's musical projects] and that it was a bad thing to have changed. And now: 'You can't trust this hippie thing, 'cause the hippie thing is all about truth and how could he be really truthful?' Now if I'd become a pop artist they wouldn't have said jack shit, because you expect [it], but because I've got a beard and I'm talking about love it's like, 'Fuck this guy, he's not - you can't trust him because he wasn't doing that before,' which is ironic, because - of course - most sort of, you know, spiritual aha moments are moments of change, where you advance from one form to another... But the idea is that the artist is not supposed to [evolve] - it's pretty prevalent; the artist is supposed to remain."