Post-hardcore band SeeYouSpaceCowboy are preparing to drop their highly anticipated new album Coup De Grâce on April 19. The album is a complex and imaginative new project that invites listeners into a neo-noir world of the band’s creation over 12 songs they have funneled through the lives of fictional characters.
With the countdown on, HEAVY caught up with vocalist Connie Sgarbossa to find out what things – musically or otherwise – influenced SeeYouSpaceCowboy on Coup De Grâce.
FILMS
“Visually, when we approached Coup de Grâce, we wanted to match the sound to a look, and the movie Moulin Rouge was a huge one for that. Neo-noir films were also a huge part of it too.”
PANIC! AT THE DISCO
“A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out by Panic! At The Disco was also a huge inspiration for us in approaching that whimsical fun-but-sultry-and-sexy kind of feel of it. And it also inspired pulling in more of post-hardcore stuff, we had played around post-hardcore on The Romance of Affliction, and we proved that we could do melodic. For Coup de Grâce we wanted to push more into that, and A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out played a big part of it.”
SIN CITY & GRAPHIC NOVELS
“In the way that lyrics were written and inspired, stuff like Sin City by Frank Miller, the graphic novels, were a huge thing for me, this idea of “I’m going to create a little city in my head and there’s going to be a bunch of little characters in that city and each song is going to be a different tale of the city” kind of thing. I think that Sin City is one of the greatest series ever in the way that some of them tied together. That was a huge influence when it came to writing lyrics.”
FOOTLOOSE
“There were even silly influences for this record, particularly things like Footloose with Kevin Bacon. That whole idea of dancing – that’s the way that we as people let our energy out and get our catharsis. I never feel better than when I’m front flipping off stage with a band I love.”
STORYTELLING
“For Coup de Grâce, we also focused on creating a story and a place instead of writing a really confessional album. We usually do really focus more on tragic love and promiscuity and sex and these things that we’ve touched on in the past. But I was like, “I don’t want to write another album about drug addiction because I don’t do drugs anymore”. I’ve been clean for long enough where it’s not a thing. I’m just focused on other things, focusing on something more creative that’s a bigger scope than just declaring, “This is my fucking diary of the album”. I think ultimately all of this feeds into the fact that this album was a visual idea first and foremost, and everything else plays into that. And Coup de Grâce is ultimately cohesive because of that, even though its millions of different sounds being put into each song.”
Pre-order Coup de Grâce here
