Long Island four-piece Macseal delve into classic 90s indie-rock and power pop for their second album, ‘Permanent Repeat’.
Words: Rob Mair.
Photos: Brooke Marsh.
“I do think, the way we operate as a band, we need to give ourselves a deadline, otherwise, it’ll never get done,” laughs Macseal drummer Frankie Impastato, as we discuss ‘Permanent Repeat’, the Long Island indie-punk/power pop champs astonishingly brilliant, five-years-in-the-making, new album.
In some way, this laid-back approach explains the gap between the album and the group’s full-length debut, ‘Super Enthusiast’, but it’s not the whole story. The pandemic undoubtedly played a part, largely preventing the band from touring the record, but it also halted any chance for the group to get the creative juices flowing. While many of their peers used the lockdowns to get creative, for life in Macseal, things pretty much ground to a halt. Frankie, for example, estimates that she didn’t play drums for nearly 200 consecutive due to being holed up in an apartment without a kit. Then, just to complicate matters further, for a period, the group found themselves living in different states for a hot minute.
“It feels like a lot of bands used that time to write,” says Frankie, “But we didn’t really have that luxury because I didn’t live near anyone. And even if I did, it’s hard to write when you don’t have a drum set in your apartment.”
In short, life has moved at a glacial pace for the group – completed by Cole Szilagyi, Ryan Bartlett and Justin Canavaciol.
But while that inertia was a curse, it also gave them what most bands crave: time. With no pressure on them to put out a follow-up to ‘Super Enthusiast’ – which had grown into a word-of-mouth smash by this point – they could really define where they wanted to go next with the band. The results speak for themselves on their second effort ‘Permanent Repeat’, which sees the group embracing classic 90s indie-rock and power pop in beautiful and clever ways.
The touchstones are pretty easy to spot – Nada Surf, Fountains of Wayne, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Goo Goo Dolls – essentially, bands who make timeless indie-pop/rock which is just as focused on making you feel something as it is about making you move your feet.
“Fountains of Wayne was a big one,” confirms Cole. “I feel like when Adam Schlesinger passed during COVID is when I got super obsessed, unfortunately. But they were a big inspiration.”
“I think it goes back to a lot of the pop-rock we grew up listening to,” continues Ryan. “Like, the Goo Goo Dolls or a bunch of other bands like that, which I’d hear on the radio in the minivan with my mom. I think we rediscovered how much we love that stuff and how much it meant to us to try and recreate what we listened to when we were growing up that made us feel excited and happy – but this time, we’re doing it and not just listening to it.
“During the recording process, I’d walk into the studio and turn on this bittersweet 2000s pop rock playlist,” concludes Justin. “It was just full of early Jimmy Eat World, Snow Patrol, Keane, Matchbox 20, and Michelle Branch. It was great,” he laughs.
“I’d walk into the studio and turn on this bittersweet 2000s pop rock playlist”
So, while the group mined the annals of alt-rock history, the essence of time also translated to the studio, meaning they could experiment and finesse songs to a greater degree than ever before. For example, ‘Beach Vacation’ – arguably the album’s standout track – was worked and reworked until it felt right – a sure sign of the group’s growing confidence and ability to put egos aside and work for the song’s benefit.
“We recorded ‘Super Enthusiast’ in about five days, which is no time at all,” says Cole. “There’s no time to mull things over, and we didn’t have enough time to creatively stretch out as we did this time.”
“I’m really sorry to say this,” interjects Frankie, “But there was one day when we were recording for this record, and Cole spent an entire day on guitar tones for one song, and I don’t even know if what was recorded made it into the record. We were all sitting there like, ‘This is crazy’, but it was really sick to have the time and the ability to do that.”
The tag ‘growing maturity’ is often a polite way of saying an album’s a little pedestrian. There’s no question Macseal have matured – Frankie jokes, “My dad made a funny comment when I showed him the record – he said, ‘I can tell you guys are growing up because you’re not screaming’” – but maturation has unquestionably been the making of Macseal. This appreciation of time and embrace of the classics has meant no moment is wasted on the album. It sounds divine, even if it remains rooted in their indie-punk/emo heritage.
Indeed, the danger facing most bands who emerge from that genre and have the luxury of a second album is that they either stick to the tried and trusted and end up pigeonholed or try too hard to break free and fall between two stools. It’s a fine line to tread.
“I think, although we definitely didn’t want to fully change our sound, we all knew it would happen,” says Ryan philosophically. “There’s a lot of things that can change, but I think, for all of us, our priorities shifted.
“Being closer to your family and friends, that alone kind of shifts your outlook on songs. Like, the song ‘Four Legs’ – I wrote that about my niece and nephew, and that’s the first song I wrote about being super happy about something, which is a cool change. But this all happened organically – I don’t think we tried to force anything, for the most part.”
“No matter how far away you get from the stuff we’ve done before, it’s still us four, so it ends up having that common thread. You can hear all our DNA,” adds Cole.
Lyrically, it’s still pulling from the same furtive well, however. Macseal are superb at writing songs that have a twinge of nostalgia, or are about a place to reminisce about (even so far as name-checking a Chinese restaurant in Champaign, Illinois in the song title ‘Golden Harbor’). For the band, such stories reflect the band’s psyche – four friends who love to tour, who perhaps don’t get as much time together and who are cognisant of what they leave behind when they hit the road.
As such, these feelings of loneliness, friendship, isolation or of being away from loved ones all seep into the record in various ways. Most starkly, they can be seen on ‘Hide Out’ and ‘Dinner for Two’, but they linger throughout.
“We kept talking about the idea of longing,” says Cole. “Until very recently I was in a long-distance relationship, and that found its way into a lot of songs.
“I think of ‘Golden Harbor’ and ‘Dinner for Two’ as opposite sides of the same coin. ‘Golden Harbor’ is about reminiscing about times when you’re away and being free and stuff like that, and ‘Dinner for Two’ is about that stability you have at home. I feel we flip between those two things all the time.
“‘Golden Harbour’ was written when we were all sitting at home during COVID, being miserable and isolated and missing our friends.”
And that’s the overwhelming feeling of sitting down for a chat with Macseal. It’s rare to get all four band members in the room simultaneously for an interview – it’s rarer still that they operate so openly and fully as a democracy.
They joke about doing mini golf and escape rooms together on tour – “We’ve escaped every one we’ve done together,” confirms Frankie – and talk about how this relates to their roles within Macseal. This probably sounds like the worst possible version of hell to some bands, but it shows how their friendship is integral to the group’s success. ‘Permanent Repeat’, and its ideas of friendship, longing, reminiscence and hope reflect that. And it might just be the finest indie-rock album of the year.
Macseal’s album ‘Permanent Repeat’ is out now.
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