Naked Giants doesn’t like to take things too seriously.
They said it themselves, or at least, drummer Henry LaVallee did. We’re gathered in an upstairs classroom in Western Washington University’s Communications Facility, and in just a few short hours, the trio will headline the university’s annual spring event, Lawnstock. They’re prepared, but not really — after our interview, Naked Giants will spend the next few hours before their set screenprinting t-shirts last minute to sell at the merch booth downstairs. But the trio isn’t bothered by this eleventh-hour rush. Rather, “casual” is an integral part of their overall brand — even though I’m chatting with a group that has just about every homegrown band’s dream achievements under their belt (A KEXP session, several national tours, and an appearance on Jimmy Fallon as Car Seat Headrest’s backing musicians), bassist Gianni Aiello reminds me that we’re peers because we’re similar in age. It’s this exact do-it-yourself relatability that’s responsible for how the alt-rock outfit’s success has translated from grungy college crowds to mainstream audiences. After all, you can’t “sell out” if you never lost touch to begin with.
The story of Naked Giants begins as expected. Three Seattle high-school graduates needing something to do start jamming out with each other, catering to an audience mainly comprised of students from the University of Washington packed into backyards and basements. They play (and win) a few battles of the bands and as a result, begin building some hometown notoriety amongst their peers.
Something about the trio’s catchy blend of surfy alt-rock, or maybe their down-to-earth band-next-door energy, began to seize the attention of more mainstream audiences. A performance at SXSW in 2017 pushed Naked Giants onto the radar of New West Records, who signed the group to a three-album deal shortly thereafter. Within the next three years, fans would see the release of the trio’s full-length debut SLUFF, followed up by the more mature and fleshed-out The Shadow. Between the Fallon performance with Carseat Headrest and subsequently touring the U.S. alongside them, Naked Giants was seeing a quick rise to capital-S success, with no intentions of slowing down. They were no longer just a “college band,” but rather, a rising indie powerhouse turning the attention of not just the Seattle music blogosphere, but more established outlets like Under the Radar and Album of the Year.
But Naked Giants is not particularly interested in becoming out-of-touch, money-hungry rockstars, even if that’s the quickest route to the top. From homemade music videos to rocking out at a house venue just for the hell of it (their recent headlining string of shows saw venue capacities of around 500), Naked Giants likes to keep things relatable. Which ironically, is exactly why so many fans adore them. By trying to avoid feeling as though they’re being packaged up to be sold by some label, the trio has solidified a mainstream cult following anyways.
When I finally catch up with Naked Giants, they’re in the midst of some well-deserved downtime. I’m eager to hear more about what they’ve been up to, and how they manage to stay so down-to-earth in an era where “making it” often means forgoing relatability for fame. After all, a lot has changed since they last appeared in the press with The Shadow — learning how to navigate a post-pandemic world on top of New West ultimately deciding not to renew the trio for a third studio album resulted in a sudden (and arguably overwhelming) return of creative control. As Aiello explains to me, they’re just trying to figure out what’s next.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
A BREAKOUT INTERVIEW WITH NAKED GIANTS
BREAKOUT: Thanks for chatting with us! You’re back playing at a college, how do you feel about being here?
Grant Mullen (guitarist): It’s fun. We like Western.
Aiello: I feel like COVID really fucked with everybody’s sense of time. It’s strange being back on a college campus. We’re a little bit older now.
Mullen: We played at a college right before COVID and I think I was 24. But when you’re like, 22, 23, college is still like, right there.
Aiello: Still mingling, still have the bong on the coffee table, you know what I mean? Now I have coffee on the coffee table.
BREAKOUT: As far as I remember, you guys were [still] playing house shows up until pretty recently?
LaVallee: I’ll still play a house show any chance I get.
Aiello: It’s been a second since we’ve done that. It’s almost like our releases have been cataloging our trajectory. When we put out SLUFF, which was in 2018, it was like the album associated with our graduation from being a house show band to a touring band, you know what I mean? And then the last album, The Shadow, was more like our graduation from doing the touring thing to, like touring with Carseat Headrest and it’s like, we’re in these theaters and we’re playing in this band on Jimmy Fallon and it’s like, What the fuck is going on?
Mullen: It was weird. Just like, “I’m in the NBC building!”
Aiello: “I just shook Questlove’s hand!”
LaVallee: It was fun, but then you realize, like, oh, everyone is just a person.
Mullen: You get older and you start doing more stuff and you’re like, okay, people have had enough money to make a big building, fill it with people. And all these people are just people. There’s no magic going on somewhere. Cause when you’re young, I feel like you imagine there’s some, like, special sauce. There isn’t.
BREAKOUT: Tell me about how you got signed to New West. What was that like?
Aiello: It was a very organic thing, as has been a lot of our kind of more industry relationship type stuff. [In 2017] we went back to South by Southwest, our triumphant return. And there, I believe it was Joel, it was the guy who did radio for New West Records. He saw us at one of the showcases at South by Southwest. And then they reached out to us and we were kind of trying to find our way, see what we could do as a band. And they just seemed like a good option. They are run by the heir to the Coca-Cola empire.
BREAKOUT: This is what he does instead?
Aiello: I mean, you know, out of all the things you could do with Coca-Cola money. And so I don’t know why that’s relevant. But it’s true.
Mullen: But we’re not on New West anymore, actually.
BREAKOUT: You’re not?
Mullen: No, we had a three-album contract, but each one is renewed after each album. They can renew or not. So they did not renew for our third one.
Aiello: I’ve been calling it “soft-dropped.”
Mullen: And we’re kind of happy because, well, it would have been nice to finish out the three albums like we were preparing. But we also were kind of dreaming of not being stuck in that label contract. You know, just to release our solo material and also maybe to have a little more creative freedom to release more, record more. But now we’re still trying to find out how to do that and also put things out so that people hear them. So it’s a good learning experience, though, and I think it gives us a fresh start to look at what the Naked Giants of the future will look like.
BREAKOUT: Are you now trying to find another label or kind of not really rushing into that?
Aiello: I’d say the latter. We’re firmly in between right now and I think we’re going to try to put out some singles over the next year and just like, you know, float by on our own, see what happens. But yeah, I don’t think we’re in a rush.
BREAKOUT: That kind of segues into my next subject, which is just that your last single “Regular Guy”…
Aiello: That’s our last single? Oh, wow. Time flies.
BREAKOUT: Not too long ago. Do you have plans to put some stuff out soon? Are you working on a new record?
Mullen: We have some singles in the works, one’s done. So that’s how we’re going to go about it for now. But we’ve had a few album ideas brewing.
Aiello: Yeah, it’s tough. The timing of the record label soft-dropping us was weird because, again, like Grant said, we were mentally prepared to have this next album be the third of the trilogy of New West Records Naked Giants albums. And so we had a vague idea of where it was going to go. And now that we’re like in the sea of like, we can do whatever we want, it’s kind of like, Oh, maybe we can rethink that. But yeah, we should have some singles coming out, I think, starting end of summer and then through next year. But it’s just funny, that “Regular Guy” is our last thing because that song is like one, it’s really old. And two, we recorded it for our last album and then it just didn’t really make the cut. And then I can’t remember how we decided or why we decided to put it out.
LaVallee: We were sitting on the music video, which we filmed in the March of 2020.
BREAKOUT: You filmed “Regular Guy” in 2020? I have to say, I love how quirky your music videos are. It’s so characteristic. I think it’s really kind of fun.
Mullen: We’re pretty weird.
LaVallee: Once again, not trying to take anything too seriously.
Aiello: It’s a fun thing to do, you know. I feel like that’s part of why we started making music in the first place is like the fun stuff that you get to do, like making music videos.
BREAKOUT: Have you done most of your music videos [yourself]?
LaVallee: All The Shadow ones.
Aiello: The other ones are collaborations with Seattle directors that we know. Our first music video was with a person named Anissa [Amalia] who no longer lives here. And then we had a couple of music videos with this guy named Sean Downey, who is in a band called The Fabulous Downey Brothers. And he’s got a really zany sense of personality. That was all the music videos for the SLUFF album. And they all have that like big teeth, big eyes. And then we’ve done a few videos with my partner Celestine, who is going into her own narrative film work now, which is great.
BREAKOUT: What’s coming next?
Mullen: Summer gigs. We’ve been in a period of growth. I think we’re trying to figure out where the road is leading.
LaVallee: I like thinking about what stories we’re trying to tell, what stories we’re going to continue to tell through each song and each record.
Mullen: Where we’re going and what we want to put out and how we want to move forward because it’s just weird. It’s an industry we’re in and that’s never how we thought about it, right? But you know, you got to be a part of it if you want to succeed. And also how we can be true to ourselves and just make music that makes us each three as a band and individuals feel excited, proud and inspired.
You can stream Naked Giants wherever you listen to your music.