{"id":153,"date":"2013-09-12T21:55:50","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T21:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joeuchill.org\/?p=153"},"modified":"2013-09-16T20:18:36","modified_gmt":"2013-09-16T20:18:36","slug":"the-gleefully-consistent-world-of-matt-and-kim-milwaukee-shepherd-express-june-25-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/?p=153","title":{"rendered":"The Gleefully Consistent World of Matt and Kim \/ Milwaukee Shepherd-Express, June 25, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Matt Johnson has never had milk in his cereal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not vegan or lactose intolerant or anything, and cereal is pretty much my favorite food\u2014or has been for many years,\u201d says Johnson, the Matt half of indie-dance outfit Matt and Kim. \u201cBut at one point I realized I had never tried the two together, and I was like, \u2018Well, it\u2019s no time to start that now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite being a film major, he has never seen Star Wars.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow did I make it this long?\u201d he wonders. \u201cHow did I make it through my childhood? Shouldn\u2019t my parents have made me watch it?\u201d<\/p>\n

And Johnson has never written a funeral dirge. For all of the acclaim garnered by Matt and Kim\u2019s adolescent, hip-hop-tinged, joyous wares, the one thing the band has been chided for is a general stagnancy of sound. Johnson has always produced goofball synthesizer sounds, Kim Schifino has always drummed with surprising ability for a band designed to sound flimsy and the duo has never reached too far away from a style entirely of their own. They\u2019ve cornered the market on Matt and Kim music. But talk to Johnson, and he seems to be on the cusp of trying something new.<\/p>\n

Trying something new doesn\u2019t seem to be a real strong point for Johnson, whether it\u2019s changing a song structure, adding milk to cereal or finally putting the Star Wars tape into his VCR. He\u2019s found a good sound and a good breakfast strategy and has ridden it out for better or worse. It works so well for the band it\u2019s become impossible to escape.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you get surprises out of trying something different,\u201d says Johnson. \u201cThat\u2019s why I want to get into a discomfort zone. We love our music but feel like there are certain things I find I do consistently. Chords I go to, stuff like that. It would be nice to just stir that pot.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I try to be, like, mega \u2018song-in-a-minor-key\u2019 or try to ignore a key altogether and be more tonal, it always comes back to Matt and Kim,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

The compulsive Matt and Kim-ness goes beyond the band\u2019s music. The duo has produced three albums, each with a one-word name and an exactly 10-song roster. Some of the habits are unconscious. Johnson has no idea why a second word hasn\u2019t slipped into a title. Some of it is wholly intentional. When Johnson was in sixth grade, he bought Weezer\u2019s 10-track Blue Album.<\/p>\n

It was perfect.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was always important to me with an album that you could listen to it from start to end without having to stop it,\u201d he said, \u201cand I remember, that was the one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band wrote 25 songs to trim into 10 for their latest, 2012\u2019s Lightning. And, while it\u2019s an album you can listen to in one sitting, it\u2019s also an album you can listen to seamlessly after 2009\u2019s Grand or 2010\u2019s Sidewalks. To call the constancy stale would be to put a limit on Matt and Kim\u2019s ever-welcome, ever-infectious, youthful glee\u2014something akin to killing a Care Bear or telling Peter Pan you didn\u2019t believe in fairies. Still, there are undeniable similarities between the melodies and pacing of the chorus from Grand\u2019s breakthrough hit, \u201cDaylight,\u201d and the hook from Lightning\u2019s infectious first single, \u201cLet\u2019s Go.\u201d<\/p>\n

So is there a way for someone routine-driven enough to never know the joys of Luke, Leia, Wookies or dampened cereal to break out of a rut? Well, he\u2019s done it once before.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had never had root beer until I was say 17,\u201d he says, \u201cand then a friend asked \u2018Oh, you want a sip of my soda?\u2019 I thought it was Coke or something. But when I tried it, I was like \u2018What is this strange taste that I’m experiencing now?\u2019 \u2018Oh, it\u2019s root beer.\u2019 And I said \u2018Noooooo!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And now: \u201cRoot beer\u2019s great. Now I’m really into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The antidote to Johnson\u2019s inertia is when someone else pulls him out of a rut. That\u2019s why he hopes collaborations between Matt and Kim and other musicians will \u201cstir things up.\u201d They recorded an extremely party-able track for Converse with the unlikely duo of Andrew W.K. and Soulja Boy. They worked on a track with Rivers Cuomo from Weezer (\u201cI should have told him about the 10-song thing,\u201d he says).<\/p>\n

Johnson is tight-lipped about upcoming partnerships between Matt and Kim and someone new. He doesn\u2019t want to jinx something that may fall through. But he\u2019s looking forward to stirring things up, a phrase he uses over and over again.<\/p>\n

For now he\u2019ll just have to except that sometimes consistency means consistently producing his Matt and Kim-genre indie-dance earworms. Expected, but pretty great nonetheless.<\/p>\n

(Milwaukee Shepherd Express)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt Johnson has never had milk in his cereal. \u201cI\u2019m not vegan or lactose intolerant or anything, and cereal is pretty much my favorite food\u2014or has been for many years,\u201d says Johnson, the Matt half of indie-dance outfit Matt and Kim. \u201cBut at one point I realized I had never tried the two together, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeuchill.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}