Christo Bowman of Bad Suns

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This past month I was able to connect with lead vocalist/guitarist, Christo Bowman, of the indie rock band, Bad Suns, to discuss what went into the band’s excellent fifth studio album, called Accelerator. In this interview, I asked Christo about his new foray into fatherhood and the affect it may influence in his future songwriting, plus Christo provided a detailed walkthrough of Bad Suns’ discography, and we also dove deep into the personal lyrical material found on Bad Suns’ latest album. Accelerator releases this Friday, August 8th via Epitaph Records and you can purchase the record here.

First of all, congrats on your new arrival, Christo! And, welcome to the “father club”! How do you think being a first-time father, and with a growing family, may positively change your outlook on life, music and potentially beyond?

That’s the big question, right? I’m still at the beginning of the journey. It’s almost like I’m able to perceive a new dimension within reality, as I’ve always seen it. It’s not completely different, and it’s not exactly the same. It’s a really exciting time in my life. I’m walking on fertile ground, creatively. So I look forward to digging up and discovering all that I can along the way.

That’s awesome. And congrats again! Accelerator, which is the new record, takes a very personal look into your life on songs like the second track of “Ready To Take Flight.” And also, “Madeline.” Can you walk me through your creative process on these songs?

“Madeline” was one of the earliest songs that was written for this album. At the beginning, I was asking myself, “Where am I going to go lyrically with this album?” And then we wrote the song, “Communicating.” I was able to get that first song out of the way and go, “Okay, this doesn’t need to be so hard.” I’m just doing wha I always have, when I’ve done my best work, which is exploring within myself and expressing the way that I see the world.

“Madeline” is an ode to my wife, essentially. The first lyric on the song is, “Is there a t-shirt of yours I can wear?” And that came as I was sitting in bed one night, trying to find the opening line for this song. She walked into the room, and she said those exact words. I had the melody in my head, and it worked perfectly syllabically and phonetically. I went, “Oh, that’s it!” in this like, the apple falling from the tree, type of moment where it hit me on the head.

“Madeline” and “Just Like Magic,” arrived as a pair. Two days, two songs in a row. I think of those two songs as representing opposite sides of the spectrum, which is why “Madeline” is placed at the very end of side one, and “Just Like Magic” is at the very beginning of side two. There’s a different tone to each side of the album.

That was inspired in part by a director called Wong Kar Wai whom I was becoming obsessed with, while we began making this album. I took a bit of conceptual inspiration from a pair of his movies which comprise one long story arc: Chung King Express, and Fallen Angels… Chung King Express feels a bit more naive and romantic, whereas Fallen Angels is quite a bit darker and more isolated in its perspective. I was really drawn to that idea.

When it came time to sequence the album, I wanted to do something similar. Side one feels very optimistic, bright and colorful. Side B becomes a bit more introspective, isolated and bordering on hopeless at times. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel to be found.

That’s so awesome, and I appreciate your very in-depth answer. I always love conversing with you, because you go into so much depth with your songwriting process. I appreciate you walking me through that.

Sometimes, it’s to a fault! <Laughter>

So what does the album title of Accelerator mean to you today? And has its meaning changed for you since you came up with it?

Yes and no. It really becomes clear to me what a song is about, or what an album is about, once I’m quite a ways removed from it. It might be a year or two from now when I’m really able to understand what it is that any of these songs are about, even if I think that I know what they are now. The title Accelerator… ultimately, what drew me to it was it just simply felt right. That word just sounds right, it feels right. At the same time, it represents this driving force in my life, which this band has been, forever, really. I think this album is largely about what it is like to be me in this band. Some songs go specifically into that, like “Ready To Take Flight.” Making this album was such an intensive and exhilarating creative process. I was so focused, so committed and so…frankly, disciplined in my practices on a day to day basis while making this album, because of how in love with the process I was and how much belief I had in it. So it made perfect sense for it to be called Accelerator, at the end of the day, because that’s kind of what this album was doing that whole time. It was accelerating me through my life, essentially.

That’s awesome, and I think Accelerator is your band’s best work to date. Honestly, I’ve been through the Bad Suns journey, from the beginning to now, and I truly think it’s your best, most personal record.

Thank you! I actually agree with that, and it’s awesome to hear you say it. I appreciate it, of course.

So, I caught your set in Silver Spring with Finneas, and I loved when your band took a moment to connect with fans, literally, on their phones. Do you remember this, when you asked them to pull out their phones and play the single, “Communicating” on Spotify?

I absolutely do. Yeah. Kind of became a bit of a fun moment of levity that we could insert in the set. There’s a polarity to our band where, on the one hand, we take what we do so seriously, and we’re all about the art and high performance. At the other end of that, you have the fact that we just want to make sure everyone’s having a good time, and we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously.

Yeah, because 10 years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to do that. Not everyone would have a smartphone in their pockets yet. Now, everyone surely does. So I thought it was a really cool way of connecting with the fans, and also getting them to put it on their Bluetooth speakers when they get back in the car too…

There’s so much complaining about everyone having their phones out at concerts nowadays. So I figured, there has to be a way that we can play into that and actually make it a communal experience, versus an isolating experience for everybody. Like how do we kind of turn this around on itself? And that’s what it became.

And I thought that was kind of fun and really neat. Also, FYI, I’ve also given that same concert tip to some of the up-and-coming bands who are trying to boost up their Spotify numbers. I was like, “Bad Suns made it work, so you can make it work, too!” <Laughter> So yeah, what do you have up your sleeves then for the headlining tour this fall?

Well, we’re deep in the trenches right now, getting a lot of the visual components together for what the production is going to look like for this tour. There’s a world that we’re creating with this album, and we feel there’s a really clear, cohesive visual representation of how we want it to come across. We have a lot of new songs, we have a lot of older songs, which people are going to come to these shows expecting to hear. Luckily, we love playing those songs. So it’s a matter of, how do we juggle all these different things, and give the fans a fresh and exciting experience? We’re working all that stuff out, which is a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work. That’s where I’m at.

I can only imagine! I mean, with five albums worth of material, how are you going to balance the setlist?

How exactly remains to be seen. It’s always multi-layered process. Okay, here’s a potential set list. We dive into it, and then we end up finding out what’s working, and what’s not working. And so two or three, or four revisions later, it becomes clear of what needs to happen. We always allow room for some surprises along the way, of course.

And I think you threw in a cover when I was in Silver Spring for “Lovefool” too, and that I thought you guys really pulled that off too. That was a nice way of connecting to the fans too, right?

Thanks!

And “Slow Karma” opens Accelerator, and you mentioned several times in the lyrics, “I’m still searching for some higher ground…” Do you feel like you found that in any way since you wrote those lyrics?

That’s a great question. I mean, on the one hand, to some degree, yeah. Making this album felt like climbing a mountain. I could see the peak from the bottom, and I wasn’t sure exactly how to get there. We were the first people to climb this particular mountain. So there wasn’t a trail laid out for me. It didn’t have a map or anything, but I knew that if we just kept climbing we could reach it. Maybe that’s representative of my outlook on life. That song is about perseverance in the face of adversity. We got there in the end.

Being in this band, like life, is an endurance sport. Sometimes it feels like, oh my god, I can’t keep running. But we’re capable of more than we give ourselves credit for, oftentimes. And when you do push yourself past what you thought might be your breaking point, and you prove to yourself that, oh, I am capable of this! I can go further than I thought was possible… there is something magical in that.

So, yeah, have I found that higher ground? I think so. But you reach one peak only to discover that there’s an even higher one just over there. And so the journey begins again.

That’s awesome. And I’m glad you did find at least part of that piece of the puzzle kind of, so to speak. So can you dive in a little bit about the connection that you have with your fans when an album gets released? We’re coming up on the August 8th release date, and some people say that once you release the music, it’s not “yours” anymore. But this record is so personal, so I’m curious what your thoughts are on that?

Release days are tough for me. I’m carrying around all these complicated, mixed emotions, knowing that it’s now being listened to, observed and dissected by so many different people, each with their own opinions. It feels like I’m the one under the knife. I do think fans of this band will be really pleased with the album. The response we’ve gotten so far based on the singles has been overwhelmingly positive. I think it’s our best work on record yet. We certainly didn’t create something specifically to cater to any kind of nostalgia, but we definitely did have the fans of our band in mind while we were making it. It has the hallmarks of what makes us great, and it’s also a document of us breaking new ground as a group. I think we did well. I’m excited!

Yeah, I think you guys did too! And I just got two more questions and I’ll let you get back to your wonderful family. How would you describe the personality of your five albums? And you can use my little visual cues here behind me…

Language & Perspective is a precocious album. I wrote all those songs between the ages of 16 and 19. For whatever reason, at that time, I really felt like I had something to prove. I also had all these big questions I wanted to ask the world. It starts off with “Hungry for a meaning, this all seems unclear / I’ve come to the conclusion we’re all clueless here.” It’s the world seen through a young man’s eyes. You can’t recreate that. That’s our debut album, that’s who we were, who I was at the time, and I think it’s perfectly representative of that. So, I love that record and always will.

Disappear Here… Whereas album one is like the beginning of a blossoming romance: You know, here’s my good side, here’s what I’m into, the clothes I like… You’re kind of putting on a show. There are no slow-burners on that record… Album two is more like when the relationship gets serious. How am I going to be received by this person, shortcomings and all? Getting vulnerable and being accepted for who you really are: The feeling which comes from that is very powerful. Maybe it isn’t a significantly more grown-up album, but it is an album about growing up, and the pain that comes with it.

Mystic Truth. That one was… I felt quite lost, artistically. I was enjoying my twenties, traveling, and my personal life a lot more than I was enjoying the creative process at that moment in time.

Apocalypse, Whenever. That was maybe the most trying album-making process for the band, for so many reasons. The world was one way when we started making it in December of 2019, and it was another way when we finished it at the end of the summer of 2021. I felt like we had some explaining to do for the previous album. It was a course correction to some degree. It resulted in some really good songs.

Whereas with this album, Accelerator, the group mentality was like, “Okay, we know exactly who we are and we know exactly where we want to go.” This is our most confident album, I would say.

I would agree with that sentiment.

This album feels like, “Okay, I’m still the same person. I have done the self-examination. I’m aware of my flaws as well as my strengths, and that’s all great. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. Just because I’m not perfect doesn’t mean that something’s wrong with me.”

That’s awesome. That was really cool to hear you walk through that. So the last question is very easy, and very open-ended. Any last words for your fans?

Yeah, thank you for listening to the music. There’s a line at the end of the record, on a song called “Do the Twist of Fate,” : “The world is how I see it / Good or bad depends on my week.” There’s a joke in there, but at the end of the day, there is some power in the realization of the control we have over our own outlook. I can choose to see the world as an ugly place or a beautiful place. It really depends where I’m looking. I think finding what it is that you’re passionate about, the people in your life who are important to you, being in service to those people, being in service to the world, and being an advocate for what you believe in and what makes you happy… trying to be a source of brightness in this world… That’s where you find happiness.

That’s great, Christo has a plan! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me.

Appreciate it, Adam!

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