INTERVIEW: New album from Monsieur Herr

California-based Monsieur Herr is a project that exists somewhere between band, persona and satirical art experiment, brought to life by Riley Maiden. Monsieur Herr is less a traditional music act and more a “fake band” designed to blur the line between sincerity and irony, threading anxious energy and dry humour through every release. Since launching in 2018, Monsieur Herr has amassed a prolific catalogue bending pop conventions into something closer to avant-garde theatre than radio-focused songwriting.

Through Monsieur Herr, Riley crafts music that deliberately toys with musical traditions and genre boxes, packaging sharp lyricism and eccentric soundscapes into structures that feel at once abstract and accessible. His records operate like puzzles, pieces of sincerity disguised as comedy and moments of irony that somehow deliver emotional impact, resulting in an output that’s playful, unpredictable and fragmented yet still manages to land with charm.

This approach came into sharper focus with 2022’s Music for People Who Hate Music; the title alone signalled the tongue-in-cheek defiance at the heart of Monsieur Herr, a refusal to cater to convention that instead seeks to reimagine what a record can be. The album was a showcase of intentional eccentricity, shaping sound into forms that resembled performance art as much as music. In 2023, he doubled down with Bombarded by Vibes from All Sides, an equally playful yet emotionally compelling effort where irony and abstraction again collided with meaning, producing a listening experience that swung from chaotic humour to reflective stillness.

Now he brings us his latest release with his new full-length record titled Buying Into the Hype, a twelve track outing that sees the artist frame a power pop sound where poignant and subtly sardonic lyricism sits side by side. Following the brief intro piece “Buying Into The Hype #0,” the album progresses with “Irony Poisoning” which rolls with bright instrumentation and uptempo shuffling drums to form a jangly power pop jam capped by Monsieur Herr’s expressive vocals carrying instantly catchy melodic leads.

“Pop Song 25” surges with building energy before jumping into a bouncy rhythm peppered with intricate guitar notes, grooving bass lines and overlapping layers of lively vocals. With metaphoric lyrics that veer into surreal historic analogies, it’s a delightful rock-tinged pop experience unlike any other.

Other highlights on the record include songs like “Buying Into the Hype #2” with its psych-tinged intro flowing into a superb sound of dusty drum splashes, punchy energy and colourful blend of guitars and synths cut with memorable melodic vocal leads. “History Repeating Itself” sees Monsieur Herr distil a retro pop rock sound through his highly unique musical lens to present an engaging slice of weird and wonderful pop music.

Closing the album with “I’ll Be Resting on My Laurels Soon Enough,” the steady stomp of drums and crunch of twanging guitars glides into an upbeat soundscape of slick rhythmic arrangement and smooth vocal lines floating over the funk-inflected energy of the instrumentation. Building with surf rock vibes and rising energy in the crescendo, the song simmers down to a tumbling experimental finale to deliver an epic conclusion to Monsieur Herr’s new LP.

We caught up with Monsieur Herr to find out more about his musical journey so far, his new album Buying Into the Hype and what he’s got lined up for the future. Check out our interview with Monsieur Herr below.

Hey Monsieur Herr, how’s things?

Fairly well, all things considered. Living in the United States does dampen my resolve a little, but I do my best.

What’s your earliest memory of making music?

I’ve always had a latent passion for it. I was a lifelong Beatle Freak basically from the jump, for example (I thought a “rubber soul” was a literal soul made of literal rubber, until I realized that wasn’t what it was). It wasn’t until high school that music began to subsume my entire being, and not until my junior year when I found the drive and the means to do it.

Which artists do you draw most inspiration from?

Starting early on it was a lot of late 70s art-rock Bowie, Peter Gabriel’s third and fourth albums in particular, a lot of prog rock, and a lot of David Lynch. I started getting into more new wave-y and post-punk stuff a bit later on — “Urgh! A Music War” type stuff. And I still harbor a deep love for melodic pop music. My favorites tend to be very singular and difficult to pigeonhole, and I could name names all day, but Sparks, They Might Be Giants, Scott Miller of Game Theory and the Loud Family, Robyn Hitchcock, Todd Rundgren, Prefab Sprout, and plenty more remain continuous inspirations.

How else do you find inspiration for your music?

My brain very rarely shuts off, and is always thinking about something or another. Multiple things at once, a lot of the time. I get plenty of ideas when I’m showering or trying to get to sleep and largely failing, and not just for music. I’ve often woken up in the middle of the night so I could get some basic idea down, just to get it out of me, like a rudimentary chord progression or an interesting turn of phrase or the like. I also happen to have eyes and ears and live on this planet, so that alone provides plenty of fodder for grievance-bearing.

What’s been your highlight for the year so far?

I flew out to New England in late April/early May to visit my girlfriend for a week. That was a great time. Later on in the summer I went to Los Angeles to convene with some like-minded musician friends. Shot a couple videos with them, including the one for “Learning to Ignore the Problem” at the Sepulveda Dam. Shortly afterwards, my girlfriend returned the favor and flew in to visit me for a bit. I’ve had a pretty eventful year.

What do you love about your local music scene?

I’m from Redlands, which is about an hour or so east of Los Angeles, but I don’t really get out much locally. I feel like whatever might be going on here wouldn’t particularly interest me, but I might be wrong. I feel a much closer affinity for LA as far as musical lineage in California goes. The Beach Boys, obviously, and certainly Sparks for me. Maybe to an extent the Laurel Canyon stuff, but mainly Neil Young, who doesn’t really count. I’m also a big appreciator of what they call the “Paisley Underground” scene, as someone who owns a lot of paisley and floral shirts and loves jangly guitars — folks like the Three O’Clock and the Bangles. I used to like Frank Zappa a lot, but then I stopped being a teenager. I’m team Captain Beefheart for life now.

What would you say is the perfect setting for listeners to enjoy your sound?

Good headphones to appreciate all the hard-panning. You don’t need to be scared of stereophonic sound. Stereo is your friend.

How has your own style and sound evolved since you started out?

I tend to think of it as sort of just gradually growing in confidence and slowly building up my capabilities as a musician and producer, even if I do everything completely contrary to good reason. Anyone who has met me and talked about music production for any length of time has quickly learned and can attest to the fact that I am insane. But I think the results speak for themselves. It took me years to find the hubris to be able to say that!

Who would be your dream artist to collaborate with?

I’m a big fan of the Lemon Twigs, so maybe them. But probably even more so Paul D. Millar, who records under the name Slugbug and has created and supervised over some of the best-sounding records I’ve ever heard, the two most recent Lemon Twigs releases included. He’s basically Steely Dan.

How did you find making your new album ‘Buying Into The Hype’?

I did very consciously want to make a “power pop” record — saying that tongue partially in cheek, since it’s far more ambitious and pretentious than just the average bit of “power pop” — but more broadly and maybe more accurately I wanted a collection of songs I could have total confidence in. I made sure to employ a very strict quality control, and equally to take my time putting it together. I’m happy to report that, by my standards at least, it was a smashing success. Some people will disagree, but there’s no accounting for taste.

What message did you want to get across with this release?

I was sort of straddling the precipice between artifice and heart-on-the-sleeve sincerity. I’m always completely sincere about what I do, rest assured, but there certainly is a part of me that’s allergic to outright soul-bearing and takes refuge in obfuscation and indirectness. Much of that, I’ve come to realize, is just self-consciousness. Apart from that, I suppose there isn’t any real “message,” other than to just convince people that pop music can be cool. I love pop music, truly and thoroughly, and to paraphrase Ron Mael, it’s a disservice to the form to come out with stuff that isn’t cool.

What artist have you been listening to most recently?

Within the past year or so I’ve become a devoted disciple of the work of Scott Miller, of the bands Game Theory and the Loud Family. The sensibility of his work speaks to me immensely. You could call it influence, and the word definitely applies, but much of it was just seeing a lot of the way my own brain functions and a lot of the things I tend to like in music in someone else’s work and just completely getting it on an instinctual level. The man was staunchly allied with the kind of postBeatles, post-Big Star guitar pop that I’m automatically drawn towards, but was more than ready and willing to rip up the rulebook and put out something really avant-garde and challenging when it suited his aims. Apart from that, I’ve been listening to a lot of Pere Ubu and the Beach Boys — both David Thomas and Brian Wilson passed recently, after all. And I love all the new Tchotchke stuff.

What’s the main thing you want people to get out of listening to your music?

I can only hope that the people who enjoy it will really, really enjoy it, and the people who dislike it will have the decency to think of it as annoying and detestable. Mediocrity is not an option.

What’s been your favourite live performance so far?

I mentioned Sparks and They Might Be Giants before, two of my favorite bands, and I saw their show at the Hollywood Bowl in 2023 where the former headlined and the latter opened for them. I think they’re a lot more similarly-aligned than a lot of people realize. I knew if I didn’t go to that show, I would die, which is why I’m still alive.

Who would be 3 artists to headline your dream festival? And where would it be?

I mean, seeing Sparks and TMBG at the same venue on the same day was already a dream come true. Plus, I’m not sure I would necessarily want to go to a festival.

Do you have any advice for a new artist wanting to follow your footsteps?

Hopefully in some small way my work can serve as a bit of inspiration for others to make the art they want without fear, although I’m not so full of myself as to think that might actually happen. Confidence is half the battle, and the way I see it, the people who will like your work will find it, and you probably won’t get along with the people who will hate it anyway.

Finally, what do you have lined up for the rest of the year?

My next album is coming together scarily quickly. I already have over 30 minutes worth of music in the pipeline and more on the way. I’d like for it to have a duality between things that are relatively accessible and things that are completely left-field and unacceptable. If I never documented my more out-there ideas and put them out, after all, it would give the false impression that I was not in the habit of doing that sort of thing, and we can’t have that.

Listen to Buying Into the Hype below