Phantogram Share New Single “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore”: Listen
Today, Phantogram released their new single, “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore.” The song, which premiered today on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 Radio, follows the band’s 2015 collaborative album with Big Boi as Big Grams. Listen to it below. It comes ahead of a recently announced tour and their new album, titled Three, Phantogram’s first since 2014’s Voices. “It’s a lot more fucking boombastic and heavy,” Sarah Barthel said over the phone. “I think the record, to us, is about heartbreak. We’ve kind of had a tough year, so a lot of inspiration and drive came from our own experiences.”
Last week, Pitchfork spoke with Barthel and her bandmate, Josh Carter, as they were shooting the video for the track at the Salton Sea, a drought-afflicted saline lake in Southern California. The smell of death, they said, was in the air. “This is a spot to vacation if you ever have some time,” Barthel deadpanned, as they took in a vista of abandoned dreams and rotting fish. Carter clarified that the lake’s condition was “really tragic,” adding, “It’s very pretty, it just smells like poop.” Directed by Grant Singer (the Weeknd, Future, Skrillex), the video for “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore” will be “pretty dark and abstract,” he said.
That all suits the context of the forthcoming album. Barthel and Carter revealed they worked with more collaborators, including hitmaking combo the-Dream and Tricky Stewart (Rihanna, Beyoncé) as well as Ricky Reed. But also looming large over their writing process was death: of David Bowie, of Prince, and of a loved one nearer to their lives.
Pitchfork: I remember you singing years ago on [2010 LP Eyelid Movies’] “Mouthful of Diamonds” that “you’re getting high on your own supply,” and now your new single is “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore.” What’s the inspiration for this song?
Josh Carter: “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore” is kind of about this feeling of everything being redundant and nothing being good enough. Metaphorically, it’s about addiction. It’s also about certain things that we see in culture, pop culture, and even music that we find redundant, that we’ve always kind of strayed away from as a group.
Sarah Barthel: Yeah, it also taps into this idea of wanting to feel something. Basically, wanting to feel something strong and doing whatever it takes to feel it again, because you know it feels good and you miss it.
Can you tell me a little bit more about what’s going on musically on the track?
Carter: Musically it’s a new progression of Phantogram, of what we do. It’s funky and it’s dark.
Barthel: It’s sample-heavy. The lyrics are dark. The melodies are emotional, and it just makes you wanna move. We started the idea—again, the way we always do is with one of Josh’s beats. I grabbed it from him and added some weird shit, and from there we moved it into the studio, where we decided to collaborate with some other people. It turned out to be a really awesome thing and we’re really proud of it and really pumped for everyone to hear it.
Who did you collaborate with in the studio?
Carter: Before, I think we were sort of indie—almost purist in a sense, or a little bit snobby in the day. But over time, working with people like the Flaming Lips and Big Boi and Miley and A-Trak and the Antlers and different friends got us really inspired—the notion that you can learn a lot from all those people and gain inspiration. So we went to Atlanta for a week and fucked around with the-Dream and Tricky Stewart, and Ricky Reed. It’s good to gain new perspective.
Wait, so were those guys all on this single?
Carter: No they weren’t, not on this single but—
Barthel: For the record in general. It was really cool: We found out that the-Dream and Tricky Stewart were huge fans of us. We were like, “No, really. Those guys? Really?” And they were like, “Come down and we’ll just fuck around for a week and we’ll see what happens.” Obviously I was nervous to meet them but they just wanted to—I don’t know—experience and experiment with us and see what we were all about. It was a really cool learning experience.
Josh, you were talking about how you used to be “snobby,” the indie mindset or whatever. But you’ve gotten to this point where you’re doing all this really big stuff. How do you feel about being fringe pop stars, for lack of a better term, and what do you think helped get you guys there?
Carter: I feel like we’ve really grown organically, in the right way as a band. We toured on Eyelid Movies for three years straight and we really tried to do everything the right way. I think that’s how we’ve gotten to where we are now as a band. We’ve just toured, we’ve honed our craft as performers and musicians, and we keep growing. Really, I think that’s the reason why we’re at where we’re at now, mentally and artistically.
Barthel: It kind of happened as natural as you could possibly want it. You can always keep that direction and stay indie, and stay snobby, and we totally were. We were like, “No one’s going to hear our songs until they are completely finished, done, like not even our manager.” It was like, ”No one has a say, it doesn’t matter, it comes from us completely, please leave.” We were like that for a really long time and we loved it because that’s a really incredible feeling, but I think that we just wanted to grow, and we wanted to get our music out to more people. And I think that was why we took the direction that we did after finally building yourself up as organically as possible until the next step.
Carter: Phantogram will always be Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter. We’ll always be the producers, the writers, the shot callers in what we do. But when you look at a lot of great music that’s put out over the years—Iggy Pop put out some great records that David Bowie produced. The Beatles arguably wouldn’t be the Beatles without George Martin, and we just learned that it’s okay to just gain insight from other people.
What more can you tell me about what to expect from Three?
Barthel: Well, it’s basically a natural progression from our last record, just like Voices was from Eyelid Movies. It’s a lot more fucking boombastic and heavy. I think the record, to us, is about heartbreak. We’ve kind of had a tough year, so a lot of inspiration and drive came from our own experiences.
Carter: There’s a lot of heavy subject matter on the album.
Not to ask you to relive this, but is there anything more specific you can say about some of the personal stuff that informs the album?
Barthel: My sister passed away during the process of the record, of suicide.
I’m sorry.
Barthel: And also Josh is best friends with her as well, so it hit very close to home, obviously, for the both of us. But that motivated us. We kind of wanted to put some stronger inspiration of Bowie in there and Prince, as well. Kind of a crazy fucking year for all of our heroes to pass. It’s a whirlwind, kind of crazy, but looking on the bright side, it made a great record, I guess.
Is there anything more you can say about how Bowie and Prince passing affected your psyche during the album writing process?
Carter: It was just very surreal and strange, when Bowie passed away. Becky, Sarah’s sister, passed away a couple days after. A lot of the recurring theme in the music is all of our heroes are passing away. The idea that all of our heroes are gone—of everyone and everything being destroyed around us and we’re still standing, and we’re still pushing on, and we’re still moving forward. That’s also a lot of motivation for us to keep going and going and going, and that’s I think the main theme behind the album.
Did you guys reach an answer? A way to make things fun the way that they used to be?
Barthel: Oh, yeah. Josh and I are luckily going through this together. So we get to kind of reminisce and make each other smile, but we can also cry on each other’s shoulders, too. It’s the best way to get through it all. And we have so much fun obviously—we’re goofin’ off all of the time. All of the songs are, as always Phantogram is—it’s kind of like our therapy. We release our experiences and sadness and happiness into our songs. So it’s been very cathartic as well.
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