Interview with Asa Taccone from Electric Guest

By artistically fusing both vintage and contemporary aesthetics, Los Angeles indie soul act Electric Guest brings a unique groove. Frontman Asa Taccone has a velvety and soulful voice that reaches different levels of vocal range while Matthew “Cornbread” Compton creates electronically fueled beats and rhythms. It’s a melding of Motown swagger with modern pop and an abundance of substance. While a lot of their contemporaries seem to lack something, Taccone and Compton convey sounds that come complete in full force. It’s what makes this duo one of the top up-and-coming music groups of the 2010s.

With Brooklyn indie pop wonders Chaos Chaos opening things up, Electric Guest will take the upstairs stage at the Columbus Theatre in Providence’s west end on March 4. Before the show I had a chat with Taccone about the band’s latest album, Plural, the songwriting partnership he has with Compton, growing tired of hip-hop, being a former writer for “Saturday Night Live” and what we can expect from Electric Guest for the rest of the year.

Rob Duguay: Electric Guest are Plural on February 17. It’s the follow-up to the band’s critically acclaimed debut, Mondo, that came out in 2012. Did you feel any pressure while making the new album in the studio and what did you do differently with Plural versus what you did with Mondo?

Asa Taccone: There was definitely pressure. It was part of the reason why it took so damn long for Plural to come out. I think the pressure came from having “This Head I Hold” that did pretty well on an indie level, and whenever you have a hit song like that there’s a pressure to somehow re-do it. At the same time you know that it’s redundant to try to emulate what you’ve already done. Danger Mouse produced Mondo with me, and he’s been amazing as a mentor. He kind of oversaw the making of Plural; I would pick his brain on certain things and he would give his opinion.

For the new album, I did a lot of it by myself. It’s mostly self-produced and I think that the whole thing is pretty different, I feel like it’s a left turn for us. For a band, the first couple of albums are usually about finding out who you are and what your sound is. This album still has that nostalgic throwback feel because we recorded a lot of it on old analog equipment, the same way that we did with the first one, but it has much more of a modern meaning. That’s because we were interested in the stuff that we were listening to, we were listening to the gamete of music. Sonically, the album feels a lot different from the last record.

RD: The majority of Electric Guest’s music comes from the songwriting partnership you have with Matthew “Cornbread” Compton. Matthew comes from an indie rock background while you grew up listening to hip-hop and soul. When you started writing music together, how long did it take for the both of you to find a common ground artistically?

AT: It clicked immediately and it still does. It’s one of those rare partnerships where we’ve only put out one record, but we’re hitting on all cylinders like we’ve been writing songs for years. I’ve only been writing music with Matthew for a short time, but I’ve known him for a while. I’ll send him a song that has this R&B thing going on and he won’t play to it like it’s an R&B song. He’ll play in a way of what his background comes from and he’ll add different things to it.

We both really like to do things that are unique, and so many people do impressions of genres. The ‘60s were done pretty well and the ‘70s were done pretty well, too. So were the ‘80s. I think the goal for us is to do something for the moment that feels a little different. That juxtaposition definitely helps.

RD: It’s been said that you grew tired of the hip-hop world before you started writing your own music. Are you content with being part of the indie and alternative rock realm or do you think that you’ll eventually move on to something else?

AT: That’s a good question. I got tired of a lot of bullshit that I encountered in hip-hop for a lot of years, and so I stepped out of it after a while. The new album actually, to me, is much more going back to some of those things. Some of the songs off of it hark back to where I came from in a much more apparent way. With indie rock, perhaps the first album leans toward that, but the new one is definitely something different. Maybe one day I’ll do something completely apart from this, but everything for me artistically is through this band and through this project.

RD: Now other than being a musician, you’ve also been part of a few digital shorts for “Saturday Night Live” from behind the scenes. A lot of people also know your brother Jorma from being part of the comedy trio The Lonely Island. The show has been in the headlines a lot lately due to their presentation of President Donald Trump and his administration. Have you been watching “SNL” lately? If so, what’s your opinion of their recent skits?

AT: I haven’t. A lot of that Lonely Island stuff was a long time ago. I was actually thinking the other day that I thought the discrepancy between an artist and an entertainer is that an artist isn’t afraid to be political while an entertainer won’t due to fear of losing fans. It’s a polarizing time and there’s a rift between both sides. With that being said, this is a time where it’s important to speak up.

We’ve posted a few things against Trump and we’ve gotten a lot of flack. People unfollowed us and we got a lot of shit for some of the posts that we’ve done. I think it’s super important, I think it’s part of what it is to be an artist.

RD: After the show at the Columbus Theatre, what does the rest of the year have in store for Electric Guest?

AT: We definitely would like to do another release soon after this batch of shows that we’re in the middle of. We’re pretty much going to be doing a few tours of Europe and the United States. Things are going to be piling up so we’ll see how the rest of the year goes with all of this happening. We’ll probably put out another Electric Guest album fairly soon after this bunch of touring.

Like the Columbus Theatre on Facebook: facebook.com/ColumbusTheatre; Electric Guest’s Website: electricguestmusic.com