Interview: Brent Martone of Head North
Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
After five years, it was easy to think Head North was done. The last song the New York indie rockers put out was 2019’s “Rhodora,” and while they intimated more was on the way, they were awfully quiet. Then this January they sneakily dropped “evaporated,” along with the B-side “never found my voice,” and things started to take shape. WINNER! would be out at the end of the month, half a decade in the making. A tighter, earthier, and more expansive effort than any of the band’s previous work, the record feels like both a clean break and a continuation at once.
A clean break–because WINNER! has a rangier palette than anything they’d done before, pulling liberally from folk rock and country traditions on cuts like “life” or “twelve hrs to tx”; because there’s more space and texture to these songs than ever before, more keys and fewer obvious hooks as evidenced in a lead single like “evaporated” or in a deep cut like “if i could see”; because the years have sharpened Brent Martone’s rasp into a rafter-shaking, self-assured roar.
A continuation–because there’s still that some of that hunger, that youthful energy in songs like “morning breaks” or “is this all there is”; because there are still those vestiges of the scrappy pop-punk world where the band cut their teeth, refracted through the kaleidoscope of hindsight; because, at heart, WINNER! tackles the same feelings Head North’s always been hung up on.
The chorus of the album’s elegiac, six-minute opener “threads” conjures images of human splendor and decadence reclaimed by the natural world, a question of what remains once we’re gone (“there used to be a city here“). All over WINNER! Martone asks these sorts of questions, crawling through a life marked less by violent cataclysm than by the realization that loss tends to be a gradual process, both a clean break and a continuation at once. There’s only one solution he’s come to after the 50-minute journey: “Find a feeling and hold on screaming.” Head North sounds like they will never let go.
The last time they released a full-length album, I’d just finished my first year of college; sometimes I wonder if I can still connect with new music the way that I did in college, in high school, when every album I heard felt like it could change my life. In its best moments, WINNER! makes me feel like I’m there again. I had the pleasure of speaking with Martone about how the time away has affected Head North’s process, about the influence of The Weakerthans on his songwriting, and about the pleasures of making a stranger a nice cup of coffee.
What made you guys come back now? Why was this the right time for Head North to return?
A lot of these songs we’ve been working on for a long time. It’s not so much that the stars align–I don’t know that they ever do–but we never broke up. We never said we weren’t going to make music together anymore. We all just went on our own journeys. Ben [Lieber] moved to Brooklyn and took on a multitude of careers–he’s a force of nature! I went on my journey in food service, just trying to be a human being in my hometown of Buffalo and figure out what that means. It came together in a way that felt organic, which was something we were looking for. We had this batch of songs we liked, and we liked what we were working towards, and a year and a half ago we just decided to work towards something. If we hadn’t taken some time to figure it out, we couldn’t have done this.
The last time you released something was “Rhodora” in 2019. Was that a product of a similar process? Was that from the same timeframe?
We recorded the first demo for “threads” and “if i could see,” which was one of my solo tunes, and for “Rhodora” all in the same weekend. They just sat around for a couple years. When we did “Rhodora,” there was an idea that we’d put an album out around that time, but we were still on that journey.
So then these songs weren’t all necessarily written to be one cohesive piece, but they were just your favorites of the batch you had written at the time you recorded them?
The wonderful thing about it is we all write songs all the time. I’m a person that listens to records as a whole, and I like throwing Spotify on shuffle or whatever, but when it started to take shape this collection of songs felt like they were about loss. We didn’t use that word at the time, but they were all about the way that things just slip away as you go through life. That’s why, as a joke, I said we should call it WINNER! Isn’t it funny? Life’s hard–harder than you can imagine–but there’s so much joy, and I think all those songs center around that in their own ways.
I know the last album was more conceptual, lyrically, but that definitely does feel like a connective tissue here, the idea of loss. In particular, I think, “threads” and “twelve hrs to tx” make a lot of sense as bookends in that context.
“threads” was a big open statement. It was stream-of-consciousness, just playing guitar and discussing the disparity between what’s real, what’s concrete, and what’s not. All those lyrics were first round for me. It feels like a thesis statement for the rest of the record, and “twelve hrs to tx” is just a hyper-specific look at a day in my life.
“threads” is a great thesis statement for WINNER! for sure, but lyrically and musically. I think it works really nicely as a bridge from The Last Living Man to this album.
The closing lyrics on “threads”–it’s lyrics from “Fallow.” I just picture these big open fields of nothingness.
In the same way, a lot of this album’s lyrics do feel like they’re in conversation with that record.
Yeah, for all the changes, I’m still the same person and write the same way. It’s always pictures with me, trying to use as few words as I can to paint as specific pictures as possible.
I love the lyrics to “chosen ones,” and I think it’s a song that’s obviously very personal, but I think it’s evocative enough to feel universal.
Are you familiar with The Weakerthans?
Oh, yeah.
“chosen ones” is “Virtute the Cat.” Two years ago my dog passed. Ben and I lived together, and we got this dog–I was like 21, maybe 20. He just became my whole world. Ben was so good to him. He was the sweetest fucking dog in the world, and he ushered my through my 20s. I was inconsolable, catatonic when he passed. Some of my favorite songs of all time are the John K. Samson “Virtute” songs. I wrote “chosen ones” from his perspective as an exercise. What I found was–I think in those songs, John’s speaking with his cat, but really it’s about his shame. The first is about being a ne’er-do-well, and then the cat runs away, and in the final song he’s gotten sober after Virtute’s passed. That was the exercise. Eli wrote the music, and it’s a fun pop tune.
Is that him on the cover?
Yeah, that’s him. Eli took that picture. That’s my guy! Really beautiful picture. He’s a good boy. He was there for me through a lot, a tremendous source of love.
The album’s much lower key than I anticipated, and already the last album was quite different from the previous material. This feels like another step away from that world, maybe into a more pastoral, earthier sound. Was there a particular sound you guys were going for, or is this just the sort of music you guys gravitate toward? I guess that’d make sense, since WINNER! feels relatively close to what Ben’s doing with Marigold these days.
Ben and I are on similar music journeys, and I think that’s why we work so well. The early stuff I have lots of love for, but I’d never sang in a band before. I’d tried to do these exercises to, like, sing as high as I can. We were playing these basement shows, trying to be as loud as possible. We were emulating our peers in a lot of ways. I can find joy in it, but on The Last Living Man we’d taken a lot of time to write. That’s just what came out. It’s how we wanted to speak to people, and on this record in particular I did focus a little bit on trying not to seek out those big moments. I wanted to understand the songs for what they were without imposing these big bombastic choruses or bridges.
“evaporated” makes a lot of sense as a single in that context, especially with “never found my voice” as the b-side. Why did you choose those two as pre-release tunes?
“evaporated,” I think, is maybe a hybrid of “threads” and “twelve hrs to tx.” It’s a specific retelling of events but I think–I hope–it’s open to interpretation. I wanted that to represent the album first lyrically. It doesn’t get to that big chorus either like you expect a single to do. Being afraid to fail, maybe I was too not afraid to fail! Maybe I should’ve put out a song with a chorus as a single, but I thought it conveyed the tone of the record, and it was one of my favorites to produce. I love the soundscape. I think it’s one that people could put on independently of the record and get the full experience–that song with “never found my voice” together.
This is the first time you’ve produced a Head North album, right?
Absolutely. The last one we did with Gary Cioni and Brett Romnes and another guy, the one who did a With the Punches album. I remember, as a kid, meeting him thinking he was famous. I can’t remember his name. He was a cool guy who put up with all our crazy ideas.
What was it like doing this one yourself?
The joy I get out of music is the process of making it. I’ll sit there for hundreds of hours obsessing–I don’t have the technical ability to know how much to change the snare–but I’ll obsess over how it makes me feel. It’s such a joy to find, at the bottom of it, what you’re trying to say, not even just lyrically. I also wouldn’t wish self-producing your record on anybody! Holy shit, what a fucking nightmare. I did it all in my bedroom, and I think you can hear it. My ego’s always going to look at this and ask what would happen if we had the budget to pay someone else to do this, but at the end of the day I’m still proud of it. I’ll never stop hearing the limitations of my abilities, though.
Going from releasing music in the 2010s to taking a bit of a break to coming back now in 2025, what’s changed? How different is the landscape now from how it was during, say, the time you were working on The Last Living Man?
Oh, man. I think that if I was trying to make it as simple as possible I’d say, “Well, we had to learn how to make TikToks.” That’s a part of it. The audience for pop-punk and emo, it’s only grown. I’ve had so many talented friends who’ve continued to succeed both by virtue of their talent and their willingness to keep making music. I’m learning that the simple truth is the same as ever–if you want to succeed, make a career, explore yourself, or anything, I do believe at the bottom of all of it you’ve got to just do the work and understand that you just need to give something to the world over and over. We won’t get a Grammy for WINNER! or go gold. But we can hope for having a community who hears the record and connects with it, and in that way it’s the same as it’s ever been. What’s different is hard to say–once we get on tour I’ll have more to say. What’s driving me is that we’re confident enough in ourselves right now that our goal is to make the live experience is the same as the record. That’s just to share that human experience. Right now, we aren’t relying on touring propelling us to the next step.
If I can go back to your question from earlier about taking time off, I was so disgruntled! As a young man I was so invested in this idea that we put this time and energy and care into the product and then no one bought the product. By extension, it’s like no one’s interested in me! What I learned through all this is that the work of making music–or doing journalism or anything–is that you’re just putting it into the world. The meaningful part is doing the thing. I think we said what we needed to say and I adore it. I hope people can hear what they need to hear in it.
Something I’ve noticed on this record that I didn’t pick up on with your previous stuff is that you talk a lot about color here. There’s the song “red, red blood,” obviously, but there’s also the lyrics about blue dresses, red balloons, green grass. There’s more in here that aren’t coming to mind right now, but what significance do these colors hold for you in the world of these songs?
There’s no grand narrative to it–but “twelve hrs to tx” looks purple to me. Red is love, green is the world–to answer your question, when I write songs I see pictures. Lyrics are just a part of that, and when you put it together I see these pictures moving in front of me. I think colors help get people there. They aren’t instructions, but it helps ground me when I’m writing in the picture. Red, to me, it’s love, and the red balloon in “if i could see,” that’s just love–how many times have you had to let that balloon go? In “red, red blood,” it’s coursing in you. You just need to understand that. It’s in all of us, and it’s so simple, and it’s what every song ever has been about.
The blue dress–you see another person and they can make you feel peace twirling through the sunlight. I picture an ex-girlfriend, but really now I think it’s just something that gave me peace in the moment. Life can pass by but it won’t matter. And the “green, green, green grass” in “is this all there is” was stream of consciousness, and I felt pretty self-conscious about it. Ben liked it, but I was second guessing it. You get so in your head. Three greens? But in that song, the bombastic part is on this mountaintop, we’re looking out at the white–I don’t say that in the song–but below that is the green and the blue and all that, and you know what? This is all there is!
Did you guys know, when the album was coming together, that “is this all there is” would lead into “twelve hrs to tx” to close the album?
We didn’t know that from the start. Eli [Ritter], our guitarist, he came in with his jam, and I just couldn’t stop singing, “is this all there is?” That one, I love it, and putting it at track eleven hurt. I didn’t know if people would hear it, but that one felt like the conclusion, and “twelve hrs to tx” was an afterword. I love that song, but it’s a very specific afterword for the journey.
Yeah, I like those two paired together a lot because “twelve hrs to tx” feels like an answer to the question of “is this all there is,” that yes, it is, but that’s okay. It feels like a hopeful cap to the album after the uncertainty of that song.
It’s looking out at everything, saying, “This is all there is,” and looking at one day and all the beautiful and awful things that can happen.
It reminds me of another John K. Samson lyric, if I may. On the song “Winter Wheat,” from the album Winter Wheat, there’s that line “we know this world is good enough because it has to be.” That’s the same feeling those two songs together give me at the end of the record.
That’s my favorite, that album, dude. If I can nerd out for a second, Ben got married in September, and I was asked to play a couple songs at their wedding. He got me that record on vinyl back when we lived together, and one of the songs I played at their wedding was “Winter Wheat.” I love that lyric–but when I was learning the song I found out the lyric goes on. He says, “allow the hope that we will meet again / out in the winter wheat.” It’s a whole thing. It’s beautiful. It’s totally majestic! He catches it all, man.
I wanted to ask you about “morning breaks,” and I was wondering to what extent that song’s autobiographical and recounts the trajectory you guys were on after the last record.
We recorded that one because it’s just an outpouring of angst and turmoil, and we just wanted to get to play it in the studio. It’s situated in the tracklist so that it’s the first song on side two on vinyl. Lyrically, it’s specifically about one of the last gigs we’d played. The van got stuck in the mud, all this stuff. I approached this thought with “Head North Is a Business,” too, trying to break the fourth wall too. It’s like I said, “wrote a record and fucked the whole company” because when we wrote The Last Living Man it fucked the whole company! It’s very direct. Let’s just keep trucking. I don’t think that song’s any great statement about the world, but all you can do is keep making things. None of the bullshit matters if you can just keep making shit.
Even before I heard the full album, when I looked at the tracklist the title “it is easy you can be me” really jumped out at me. In the context of the song, it’s a really fascinating lyric, too–what does that idea mean to you, that it’s so easy just to be you?
I don’t know if the song’s about anything, but the opening line and the chorus were just all stream of consciousness. It’s the same truth about every song. We’re all the same people going through the same challenges on and on. One of my biggest inhibitions as an artist is believing that my experiences will be understood. I’m not super old, and the farther I get through life I realize that if you just take a second to see people, and hear them, and ask questions, we’re all going through the same thing. I was thinking about talking to my parents, and they’ll ask what I’m doing, how the lattes are coming–and I think to myself, asking if we can talk to each other as human beings.
That makes sense, and especially with that verse about being forgiven, about pathos on the radio, it feels like a bit of a mission statement.
You know, we got this review on our split with Microwave, and there was a quote about “drooling pathos with no reward” or something. I think about that from time to time–they might’ve been right! I don’t know.
What relationship do you have with the earlier Head North stuff then? Earlier you said you appreciate it for what it was–is that about the extent of it, just a time and place thing and you’re not there anymore?
I love playing that stuff live. Even sometimes when I listen to it again, listening with that critical ear, I get it, whatever, but there’s a tremendous part of me that just wishes I had found what I wanted to say. The only way I can hear the music I make is hearing what it’s not. The moments I find the most joy in it is the moments when I remember how I felt in that time. I can appreciate that, I appreciate the journey, but I think what drives me to create is knowing what I want to say and believing I gave to the best of my ability. I listen to that stuff, and I feel like we were so close to finding it.
As a corollary to that, then, what do you think the Brent of Bloodlines and Scrapbook Minds would say about WINNER! if he could hear it, if we knew this was where the band would be in a decade?
Oh, man. Oh, man–I hope he’d love it, but I imagine he’d actually say it would never sell! I don’t know. God–that’s a fun exercise. I love this record so much, and I am so happy to share it with people, and I hope anyone takes the time to sit with it.
Something I like about your songwriting is that you’ll repeat a lyric a lot throughout a song and change it subtly each time. There’s a line that recurs a couple times on WINNER! that I specifically wanted to ask about, the line in “it is easy you can be me” and the end of “chosen ones,” that “you’re going to miss it all.” I assume it’s got a different meaning in each of those songs, but what is it about that phrase that it felt so important to repeat in different contexts?
I’ve been trying to write that lyric forever–it’s the essence of how I see the world in so many ways. There’s that Modern Baseball record! I’m a fan, and I don’t think it’s a lyric from them, and I felt self-conscious using that lyric because of it. I think that captures the whole thing, the essence of the record, these pictures walking away. All we can do is just be there to see them for a fucking moment. I don’t think it does mean something different in each one. In “it is easy you can be me” I’m not talking about my dog like in “chosen ones,” but it’s the same thing–it’s right there and it’s walking away, but you’ve got the opportunity, even for a fucking second, to see it and hold on. It’s beautiful. It all keeps moving, and you will miss it–but if you don’t see it for a second, you miss it forever. Life keeps going, dude, and the only opportunity you have is to be there and see it. It’s a fact. You are going to miss it all, and there’s no way to prevent it. You just have to be there while you can. You have to hold it.
What’s your favorite beverage to make at the coffee shop?
I actually come from a line cooking background, and we make egg sandwiches. I love making coffee, and I’m a trained third-wave barista. I love making food, personally, and coffee’s a part of that, certainly. Any time I can be part of the experience that makes someone’s day better, that’s it. What other job do you have where you show up every day and you can host a little party where everyone’s invited? It’s centered around the coffee, the food that you make. My favorite thing to make, to answer your question, is cold brew.
It’s nice to hear an optimistic perspective on food service.
You ever work in food?
Only fast food, and I’m not sure it counts.
It does! You’re making something for somebody.
It’s like John K. Samson said, I guess, in that line at the end of “Utilities”: “make me something somebody can use.”
Yeah, man, that’s it! Work’s a part of life, and it gives me fulfillment and joy–but only when I can make something tangible for someone else to be a part of. We can do it through music and we can do it through coffee and eggs, but that’s what we’re doing. I’ve done construction, done IT, but what it’s really about is making something that, yes, somebody can use.
WINNER! is out now. Catch Head North on tour.
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Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
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