Misery Is A Butterfly will make some people ask, “Where’s the rock?”
Simone: The guitars are there.

But they’re certainly not front and center like they used to be. There’s much more keyboards.
Amedeo: If people say “Where are all the guitars?” they can go listen to some other band ... I think change is good.
Makino: We don’t have many aspects to us. It’s just us.
Amedeo: As far as guitars, they’re all over the record—on every song. Except [Kazu is] playing clavinet, which changes the mood of the record.

New York is full of loud guitar bands right now. From the outside, it looks like you’ve just gone to the other end of the field.
Makino: But we like all those bands! I don’t know if they like us. [Laughs]
Simone: This Italian journalist who interviewed us (recently) asked, “How do you feel about this scene of New York and how does it affect your playing?” I was afraid to answer. I feel like it has nothing to do with what we’re doing. We’re on our own. Besides being foreigners, we started doing this a while ago.
Makino: But we were outcasts when we started. When we started, the scene was like indie-rock explosion: Pavement, Nirvana, Sonic Youth and the greatest thing was to be a white person from out of nowhere. We didn’t have that quality, like people were really into white-trash culture. It was neverending. There was no way we could have belonged to that. It would be so wrong. Musically, once you’ve been playing for so long and you’ve established a relationship with other members and your instrument, you’re basically on an invisible track. Even if you see a great conceptual band like Liars or whatever, you can’t just get off track.
Simone: I went to see a couple of bands and I immediately felt insecure. Because I felt like things are changing all the time around me. People are growing up, kids are starting to play and doing different things. You want to take some of it in, but how much? You kind of have to contain yourself to some extent.

When I interviewed you a few years ago, I noticed the three of you had such a strong connection to each other. You even said then that all of you wanted to be the same person.
Simone: When you play together, you do feel like you’re the best and the worst of the people you’re playing with. So much reflects on you at that moment. If [Amedeo is] going to go out of tune on one song, I feel it. [Amedeo] said, “I have so much more pressure on me, because I have to sing and play (guitar) and I don’t want to go out of tune and look bad.” Well, I look bad, too.
Makino: When we opened up for the Chili Peppers, it was scary because we’d never played for 20,000 people. We played “Missile” (from 1998’s In An Expression Of The Inexpressible), and I went out of rhythm and played a different part. It was an extreme mistake. At that moment, I saw Simone in a cold sweat, with a pained expression I’ll never forget. It was the first show.

How was it playing with the Chili Peppers and the Foo Fighters?
Simone: It was a really positive experience. John (Frusciante) picked us.
Amedeo: We were basically playing for [the Red Hot Chili Peppers], because at that level there’s such a sea between us and the crowd.
Makino: Almost every night, they were there watching us from the stage. ... We sold like one (T-shirt) a day. It was like, “Wow, nobody likes us.”
Amedeo: We were laughing about it.

Misery Is A Butterfly is coming out on 4AD. Did you think about that label because of its more lush-sounding acts, like the Cocteau Twins and music like that?
Simone: No.
Amedeo: We recorded it ourselves and paid for it ourselves. We wanted to do strings and didn’t want to have any arguments about money or limitations.

So you recorded it by yourself first, then shopped it around to labels?
Makino: One of the goals was to own the master tape. That was a big issue. So whoever would let us get away with that we were open to. We made five records that we don’t own, and that’s actually sad. That’s the saga of musicians: Why don’t we get to own our own creation?
Simone: Remember when we tried to meet with Warner Bros. and the guy told us we were insane? [Laughs]