When Nicole Barille and Sam Meister got hitched in 2005, they honeymooned in an unusual fashion. Instead of sightseeing or relaxing on a beach, the couple cooked up Mr. Gnome’s debut EP, and the two have dedicated themselves to the foreboding post-punk act ever since. Empyreal guitar lines swing and gnash against looming drums, with Barille’s breathy voice alternating between croons and screams. Equal parts delicate and deranged, the Cleveland duo’s creature-populated stories have the creepy, fantastical aura of an early, lost Tim Burton flick. Having just recorded a third full-length, Mr. Gnome is hitting the road, stopping by the Hi-Dive on Tuesday. Before Mr. Gnome’s show with Il Cattivo and The Firebird 4000 Project, guitarist-vocalist Barille spoke to The A.V. Club about porn, drug metaphors, and kids’ shows gone wrong.
The A.V. Club: The band just finished a short film/music video for “Vampires” from 2009’s Heave Yer Skeleton, but you also have a new record coming out. Why devote that effort to what’s now an older song?
Nicole Barille: We thought up the idea about a year ago when we released the record. We wanted to do it last winter and didn’t find the time, so we got a nice little cast and crew together in August. It’s a big beast of a project. The premise is [that] a children’s public access show goes terribly wrong because some part of the cast gets infected. [The clip is] going to clock in at 10 minutes. It’s pretty ridiculous. We’re going to release an edited version, too, that cuts straight to the song.
AVC: What inspired you to turn that track into an extended clip?
NB: It was one of the happier songs we have written, and we always joked how funny it would be if we were playing on a kids’ show because it’s super-happy and ends up as a huge bloody mess. We named the song “Vampires” because Vampire Weekend blew up at the time we wrote this poppy song. Right after that was the vampire explosion, where every TV show was [about] vampires. We were like, “Aw, shit!”
AVC: There's a definite divide between Mr. Gnome’s public persona versus the one on record. You and Sam are lighthearted in interviews, and your blog’s header image involves “a horseman shitting a rainbow,” but your work is grim and sober. Why does that dichotomy exist?
NB: We try to put ourselves out there with the blog, if people want to start reading on the more personal side of things. We’re just going to be who we are. We have senses of humor and definitely love comedy—I think you have to—but at the same time, the world’s pretty screwed up, and how we’re affected by that goes into a different art form. We express that through music.
AVC: It often happens that when Mr. Gnome is mentioned somewhere, porn is a subject that follows. Among other examples, you have a “Mr. Gnome Is Better Than Porn” shirt, and you’ve mentioned in an interview that you like porn. Any story behind that connection?