A Perfect Circle (from left): Maynard James Keenan, Matt McJunkins, Billy Howerdel, James Iha and Jeff Friedl. Despite their popularity and success, A Perfect Circle don’t have the luxury of...
A Perfect Circle (from left): Maynard James Keenan, Matt McJunkins, Billy Howerdel, James Iha and Jeff Friedl.
Despite their popularity and success, A Perfect Circle don’t have the luxury of working like most other bands. Songwriter and guitarist Billy Howerdel spends years writing songs at his home studio, waiting for vocalist Maynard James Keenan (Tool, Puscifer) to find a window to write and record.
“Tool did an album in 2006, and I did one with my other band Ashes Divide in 2008, so I would have thought that three years after that—in 2011 or 2012—we would have put another record out,” Howerdel says. “But that didn’t happen.”
Finally, last winter, more than five years after A Perfect Circle’s seven-week reunion tour in 2011, Howerdel got the first solid signs that a follow-up to APC’s 2004’s Emotive could be on the way.
“Maynard came over in February and we threw down what I think was the beginning of ‘Doomed,’ ” Howerdel recalls. “That was the official start of the new album, Eat the Elephant, and the point when we were both determined to do this again.”
When the band toured in the spring, Howerdel brought a traveling recording studio with him so he could work on songs in the band’s dressing room. There, he finished the ominous and melancholy “Disillusioned,” which sounds like a cross between a more surreal Smashing Pumpkins and a less electronic Radiohead.
Whether being back on the road inspired A Perfect Circle to commit to their latest batch of textural, dark and innovative songs, or whether it was just the right political and cultural climate for Maynard to want to rant about politics and the environment, one thing’s certain: Eat the Elephant is a welcome continuation of the band’s creative arc, which began