'It’s Kind Of Sad That We Keep Getting That Label'

Dropping remixes under the moniker of Miami Horror since 2007, Benjamin Plant is clearly the brains behind the Melbourne-born five-piece. On the road to the penultimate show of their North American tour in Nashville, he speaks about how it’s been, the new album, All Possible Futures, and what’s on the horizon for Miami Horror.

“We drove around instead of flying this time,” Plant says. “So, it made it a lot easier, a lot less stressful. We played some really interesting venues as well as cities we’ve never been to before and had better reactions than expected.”

With the release of All Possible Futures, live shows have been somewhat refreshing for the group, allowing them to explore new territory in front of a crowd after five years between albums.

“It was probably more like four and a bit, I mean, I like to round it down. We were just busy doing other things. We toured for a year after the album, we worked on some other projects for about two years which took a little longer than planned and then we wrapped up the album at around the start of this year. So it was probably only two-and-a-half-years on this album, but we were just doing a lot of other work as well.”

Being generally well received by fans and critics, Miami Horror’s second album has garnered significant attention following the success of their 2010 debut, Illumination. 

“I’m sure there’s a bad review out there, but I haven’t seen one. I’ve seen three-and-a-half stars, four stars and that’s more than I could ask for, really. I’ve also seen a lot people get what we were actually going for and our influences. I think that’s something that doesn’t happen that easily, so it’s amazing that people actually understand what we’re doing.”

No longer rookies in the studio, Plant and the group have found it much easier to emulate what they achieved on their first album whilst simultaneously building on their already unmistakable sound.

“I think that it’s a very natural progression from Illumination. It’s also much more advanced in terms of songwriting or what we’ve learnt in that time. We wrote it a whole different way. We jammed a lot more and got in the room together, whereas the first album was more where I would bring an idea to the table and then we would finish it off as a group. Also, when we were doing the first album I think that technology was just a lot worse and that really got in the way. This time, being able to write and being able to flow with the music a lot quicker has really helped us make all of our ideas come to life.”

Moving to Los Angeles before the release of All Possible Futures, Plant says that they’ve been able to soak themselves in the city’s rich cultural and musical heritage.

“We just wanted to try something different. We weren’t really going there to work with people in the industry, we weren’t really networking and didn’t really have shows to play. We just kind of wanted to try a different place and we found LA really interesting because it’s full of ‘freaks’ and everywhere looks like a movie, so general day-to-day life makes you feel like you’re in this imaginary world. Also, the weather has an impact on the sound because we’re a bit more chilled-out, a bit dreamy and we sound like a lot of bands from the ‘70s and ‘80s. All our favorite bands have produced an album there and so we kind of wanted to take the atmosphere that they had and have it just naturally seep into our record.”

LA aside, you shouldn’t be quick to dub Miami Horror as ‘summery’. Plant has somewhat of an aversion to the adjective, as it seems to pigeonhole the band by its vagueness and concurrent identifiability.

“It’s kind of sad that we keep getting that label. There’s a lot more depth to the albums in themselves, a lot of melancholy songs, and a lot of variety that isn’t necessarily ‘summery’. It usually just stems from journalists who hear one or two songs and then call the whole album ‘summery’. It would be my dream come true if people listen to the full album and feel the depth to it and dig a little deeper.”

Touring Australia over August, Miami Horror will follow up with festival dates over New Years, but not before a more extensive tour back in the States where the group now calls home. 

Originally published in X-Press Magazine