“Yeah, He’s Easy on the Eyes”: Liam Benzvi
Being from New York, have you experienced the music community change?
It’s funny, I feel like I’ve been on the periphery of it. I have a lot of friends in different cliques, but I never felt like I belonged to any specific group, even though I have an incredible support system that I’m really inspired by. I always felt like the way I wrote songs and presented myself was a little different. A lot has changed since I first started music.
The project has interesting collaborations on it, like Dev Hynes, Aaron Maine, and Ren G. In that way, it’s really New York. How have the people around you influenced the project?
I’m so inspired by the people around me and their work. Most of the songs were all written first, and I wanted to find ways to give them more life with features. With Dev, I wanted to collaborate with him since we worked together in the past. I previously sang on his most recent EP, and I was basically in Blood Orange during the Harry Styles shows at MSG. I knew our voices sounded good together, so I wanted both of us on a song. It honestly took me a year to build up the courage to ask him if he wanted to be on the song, and he was totally down. The song Aaron and I produced had been a work in progress on and off for two years, and we finally finished it earlier this year. Ren is one of my closest friends and brings a kind of levity to everything she touches.
I love her. You guys have such different styles. I’m so excited to hear the song you have together.
Oh yeah totally. Ren has the best music taste of anyone I’ve ever met in my life. We immediately clicked on that first. We have such kindred music tastes. She’s like an encyclopedia of music knowledge. Dev and Aaron are too! I love people like that, total nerds in a way.
What are you listening to right now?
Oh gosh. I’m listening back to everything that I was influenced by while I was recording. I want to see if I can spot my references. I was listening to a lot of George Michael, The Dandy Warhols, and Jimmy Eat World, honestly. I love the idea of this early 2000s singer-songwriter, borderline gay guy in music. Kind of like an Enrique Iglesias type of figure.
Enrique Iglesias? Like a metrosexual guy?
Yeah you know what I mean? Like metrosexual or metropolitan, loungey, emo-dance music in conjunction with guitar music and the snottiness of britpop. I was really inspired by the attitude of Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. They were kind of doing Britpop in a Portland, Pacific Northwest way. There’s this song “Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth '' by the Dandy Warhols that I listened to constantly for the last year and a half. David Lachapelle did the video for it, and the band hated it even though it’s such an iconic video of these dancing girls dressed in syringes. It was so inspirational for me because it was how much humor I wanted to put in my project. I found the presentation to be so engaging.
Yeah I love how much humor is in your project. I love the line in “Dust” when you sing, “When I think of you / All I think of is your dirty room” What’s the dirtiest room you’ve ever been in?
It was probably my freshman dorm. I had a crazy roommate who would trash it. He was a dancer, so he would exercise in 5 hoodies and sweatpants with the heat on. It was like a garbage dump / sauna. I would have to interfere with his situation.
Was that around the time you opened for Azealia Banks? Tell me about that tour.
Yeah she was my good friend in high school and we were in musicals together at LaGuardia. My old band, Strange Names, opened for her on the Broke with Expensive Taste tour through North America. It was so fun with such a crazy rowdy audience, but some of the coolest people ever. She’s great, and we continued writing together afterward. We did something together in 2019 that we abandoned that sounded like a show tune.
When I was listening to your music, it brought me out of my body. It taps into this dreamlike world. What are you typically thinking about when you’re creating and writing about this kind of atmosphere?
This record is borderline testimonial, and I typically write first through gibberish and fit in the words afterwards. I write a lot while I’m walking and daydreaming. I tend to write about myself in the third person based on how I think people are perceiving me.
What kind of objects do you have that inspire you while you’re creating music?
I’ve only had this home studio for a few months. When I was writing this record, I demoed a lot of these songs on my friend's equipment because I was moving around a lot. It was kind of a crust punk-y in a way, but I would probably say my dog is a really grounding presence in my world.
This upcoming project is different because it includes your band also. How did you all come together?
I knew I wanted them to be in my band before I knew they played instruments. My initial thought was that they were going to be miming everything like total theater. They were meant to look cute and stylish like a TV program, (The Monkees or S Club 7). We got into the rehearsal room, and it became apparent that it would just be easier for them to learn the songs. I was really inspired by these 70s, European one-hit-wonder boy bands who were industry plants, so “Splash Band” was super in that world. We all created lore for our characters in the band.
What is it?
There’s Dalgo, who’s a semi-retired hustler; Tony Jet is a Balkan bodybuilder who just arrived from a war in the Balkan Sea; and Silas, who is obsessed with how he was abducted by aliens. We all ended up in New York and created the band to get by.
What about yourself?
I’m just Liam, but I wanted people to know that something-something wrong side of the tracks, been through something-something tormented. As today is the day I released a song, I’m typically insufferably on my phone with a grass is greener mentality. I’m usually a total terror to be around when I release music.
Watch the video for "Other Guys" feat. Blood Orange below.
