Casey Spooner confides that he doesn’t know what day it
is, where he is, or what’s going on as he’s talking on
the phone. On his first major set of dates with the performance art
duo Fischerspooner, the singer is reveling in the adrenaline rush
of a wild and successful tour.
“With every show on the tour it starts to turn more and
more into a Black Flag concert,” he said from his phone in
Detroit. “I’m having a blast, though. I just need my
tequila and a hot mic and I’m ready.”
For any other group of music makers, this added crowd energy is
typical of increased success. But for Fischerspooner, whose live
show includes dancers, backup singers, feathers and lots of makeup,
the punk rock angle just means more weirdness. Fischerspooner takes
its elaborate live production to Coachella on Sunday, where it will
headline the main tent. But before they get to Indio, the duo will
have played sold-out shows at the Metro in Chicago and the Fillmore
in San Francisco. And if last week’s Atlanta date was any
indication, they’ll see a lot more people crowd surfing and
stage diving to the duo’s pristinely produced and retro brand
of electro-clash.
The group has garnered attention last year after signing a $2
million record deal with Ministry in the United Kingdom, and its
dance floor smash “Emerge” is also a certified classic
in the club circuit, so success has never been an elusive prospect
for the group.
“Our goal was always to push this idea as far as possible
and to not be afraid of making something that was popular and about
being popular,” he said. “We wanted to make something
that, in order for it to be meaningful, didn’t have to be
relegated to an indie underground audience.”
Never interested in thinking small, Casey Spooner and Warren
Fischer went to school and worked on projects together, some of
which had nothing at all to do with music. Both were a part of the
trendy arts and culture scene in New York, causing some to believe
that their entire act is a tongue-in-cheek practice in
retro-revivalism.
“For me it’s a little frustrating because the urge
to dress up and make this music and to dance and to make something
this wild and decadent came out of this turn of the millennium
paranoia,” Spooner said. “It came out of a very real
impulsive feeling about the present. So it wasn’t about
trying to recreate some sort of lost past or romanticize an era
that seems better than the present. I’m a big advocate in
now.”
Fischerspooner’s debut album #1, which mixes the stylish,
if dated, electronic beats of the ’80s with Brian Eno-esque
ambient tapestries, is so consciously up-front with its embracing
of kitsch that it’s hard to take anything they do seriously.
But that’s the point: Irreverence isn’t something they
offer on the side, it’s what they sell.
“The thing that I don’t adhere to is those cliches
of indie rebellion,” Spooner said. “I went to South by
Southwest and saw all these guitar rockers. It’s just so
conformist and just so oppressive and standardized and not
rebellious in any way. I think it’s important for ideas of
rebellion in music and image and spectacle, that they evolve and
change in a way.”