King Falcon talks Bloom, the band's evolution as songwriters, experimenting with their sound, life on tour, and what's next

BY SASHA BASANT

There's a clear shift at the center of King Falcon's upcoming EP, Bloom out September 18. Known for their explosive energy and hook driven sound, the New York rock band has turned their focus inward. Using their latest tracks to explore the moments, memories, and emotions that linger long after they’ve passed. 

Led by frontman Michael Rubin, King Falcon’s newest material reflects both a creative and personal evolution. From writing more vulnerably to becoming increasingly more involved in the creative process “Bloom” serves as a bridge between King Falcon's self-titled debut album and the more expansive sophomore album already taking shape. Whether it's the reflective grief of “Hourglass” or the political edge of unreleased tracks like “Hungry Dog Run”, the EP showcases a band growing more confident in both their sound and their storytelling. 

Michael Rubin sat down with Televised Magazine to discuss the inspiration behind “Bloom”, embracing more personal songwriting, the creative lessons learned since their debut, and what fans can expect from the band's next era. 

Sasha: You all just released your latest single “Hourglass” which will be featured on your upcoming EP “Bloom” what was the inspiration behind that song? 

Mike: Wow that's a tough one. We were at a hotel once and when we move around as a band people sort of recognize us as a band, not that they know that we’re King Falcon but you know we walk in with guitars and everybody’s got long hair people generally ask whether or not we're a band. And somebody had asked what band we were and she worked at the hotel. She was the concierge, and the next morning she told us that she loved the music, but would love to hear something more personal in the music. 

The first record that we put out is very, here are the hooks, it's rock and roll, it's your face, it's energetic and there’s less of a spot for something deeply personal in a lot of that. Plus I was 19 when I wrote a lot of that stuff and you just have a lot less experience. When she said it stuck with me and everything on this EP is a result of that. Every song is kind of something that happened and then I made it in a way that other people could find themselves in it.

“Hourglass” is this song about reflecting on all the people that I have lost in my life. It's one of those things where some of them were good even though they were painful and some of them maybe we’re not good, but the song as a whole is a reflection on the time that has gone by and when you take that moment to stop and be like “man person was an everyday part of my life and now they are not”. 

Sasha: Almost like a reflection of grief, in a way.

Mike: Yeah, kind of. I’ve said grief is not this big emotion that you feel at the moment. Grief is like the empty chair six months later, that's kind of how it feels and “Hourglass” it’s a song about grief, even though it’s a banger, rock ‘n’ roll song and it’s upbeat, but lyrically it's kinda not. All of the songs on this EP are not very upbeat lyrically. 

Sasha: That's the best way to go about dealing with heavy emotions, turning it into something that can be fun, but still helps you process it.

Mike: Yeah, for me in particular working on this EP and now I’m about 65% done with the second record that’s gonna be coming out next year, this is the first time I’m mentioning it by the way, exclusive! It is kind of the same thing you really have to dig deep into personal experiences and I feel like I can justify every single lyric that I’ve written and also have an awareness writing about how it can affect other people you know? If I just write a song about being in a band and specific things that have happened to me, if you’ve never had that experience you’re not gonna find yourself in it. But grief is a thing we all experience, loss is a thing we all experience, chasing after something that you believe in is the thing that we all experience be it like stamp collecting or trying to be the best painter or trying to start a restaurant. Everybody has something that they believe in that might not make sense to anybody else but makes sense to you and that I think is the theme. On our first record the song “Everybody’s Down" is about that and then that sort of became the baseline for my thought process with writing going forward either. You either have to find something personal about yourself in it or the audience has to find something about you in it.

Sasha: You mentioned your self-titled debut album which was released in 2023, with that album was there anything, either in this EP or the album coming out next year, that you were determined to do differently? 

Mike: Honestly, my whole life around the band and the music looks different. When we did the first record there were two other guys who are no longer in the band. So there was influence other than just me. I’m proud of it, I’m proud of everything we did, but between my inexperience of how to deal with things at 19 and also sort of a lot of cooks in the kitchen. I think it was really important for me that this EP and then the second record be entirely from my head. I’ve also found myself far more involved with every aspect of it because I have developed a vocabulary for things. For instance, the mix when we did the first record I didn't know anything about EQ, I didn’t know anything about effects, about compression – nothing I didn’t know anything about anything. It’s been sometime and I know a lot more now, I find myself being more deeply involved in every aspect of it and I think that that nets a better outcome. I mean better is subjective, it sounds more like it does in my head.

Sasha: Yeah, you're able to apply what you’ve learned onto this EP and second album.

Mike: I think that's the hardest part as an artist. In your head you know exactly the world that the thing you created is supposed to. But to create it for other people is a lot tougher because you have to take yourself out of it and constantly reapproach the art like it’s the first time you’ve seen it but it’s actually never the first time you’ve seen it because it’s always been living in your head so that’s very very hard to do that. I think the most valuable thing that I’ve done, and I know people do, is you park it for three weeks and then you come back to it three weeks later. After having written five other songs, you completely forgot how that goes and if it’s still good, it’s still good. 

Sasha: A follow up question, with this new EP were there any specific songs on it that were like “this is the direction I want the band to head in”?

Mike: Yes I think it's sort of two songs “Holding Out” – I’m really proud of the song, we recorded an acoustic version of that song which we’re going to put out on the new EP, really excited about that. That song has a lot of the indie alt sonic richness that I didn’t know how to find on the first record. There's so many layers to that, there’s a lot of what I like to call ear candy – things that really build that world. And then also “Hungry Dog Run” which is the song that we haven’t released but we’ve been playing it at all the shows, it’s a more bluesy sort of in the vein of “Hourglass”, but lyrically that’s my first song that I wrote that really on the nose politically, “Plastic Crown”  is too but not quite as much. 

I think that song (“Hungry Dog Run”) took on a life of being about being anti-establishment and the overall oppression that we kind of have been accepting and asks the question of how far do we need to be pushed before somebody does something about it. I like to think about defenestration in France, we used to go in and throw politicians out of windows, now they're setting up flock cameras in our backyard and watching people take showers and whatever in their own home. How far we’ve fallen as a people who allow shit, you know, we can’t do. 

Sonically, I think somewhere between blues rock and indie rock is where King Falcon lives most. But lyrically I think those two songs “Holding Out“ is a very personal song to me about stuff that I went through and relationships but “Hungry Dog Run” is about us. 

Sasha: I imagine living in New York plays a big part in writing about politics.

Mike: Yeah, and I think I tried to avoid it for the longest time but it's sort of unavoidable now. People used to say “You just play guitar, why are you writing about politics?”. Because it's actually starting to affect me now, maybe that's just because I’m 27 now and it doesn’t seem to affect you when you’re 19 the same way. Nothing really affects you. Everybody's got something to say about it, everybody's got an opinion about it, it's inescapable. With the administration we have now, and I don't wanna get too political, but you can't ignore it. Politics are the best when we all sort of hate the politicians, but aren’t really paying too much attention to what they’re doing. Politics really sucks when only some of us hate the politicians, other ones really really love them and you can’t look away. That’s not homeostasis, homeostasis is when everybody’s a little disappointed because that's the nature of a good compromise. You can’t look away, everyone is so affected by it.

Sasha: Especially when you're talking about music and art, any form of art really. It affects everything like you said. Speaking of art, all different forms of art can influence other forms of art. Were there any films or books or other media that influenced your new EP?

Mike: The EP not so much, I think the EP is a little bit explorative of what we're trying to find for the next record. We went from not being on a record label to just being allowed to do whatever we want. But in terms of the second full length record, I’m a huge Quentin Tarantino fan. I love the way that all of his movies are paced and sort of a twist to them somewhere in the movie and I think when you’re thinking about an album as a whole it’s important that you consider the pace. And that you consider there be a twist. I don’t want something to just be 45 minutes you put it on and you know exactly what we’re gonna get. There's gotta be some amount of intrigue there and I think that also comes in the form of something sour sometimes. 

Like when you’re eating a food and there’s a strange taste in there that you didn’t think you would like but now you do and you didn’t think these could go well. I find that in a lot of his movies and thinking about the record like a film I think has really helped me so I’m not sure if it's any one in particular. 

The last book I read was Rick Rubin‘s book. I can't remember the title but it’s discussing the writing process and I found 50% of the time I was thinking to myself “all right Rick relax” and 50% of the time I was like you’re actually on to something there. I don’t know for whatever that’s worth I’m sure it has some effect on me.

Sasha: Either about the new album or the new EP, was there any track of either that surprised even you once it was finished?

Mike: Yeah, “Nothing Feels Amazing”, kinda interesting so I recorded that song and it sat in its final recorded stage for a year and it was missing something for me. Turns out it just needed to be mixed. Dan Korneff, the guy who mixed it, he’s gonna be doing our next record as well, he did Holding Out for us. He is an incredible mixer and when I got the song back from him it sounded like it was supposed to sound in my head. I’m not a super technical person like I don’t engineer the record, I don’t actually mix it myself, even though I have learned a lot about it. So how you actually get it to sound like it is in your head sometimes escapes you. Having somebody that is as talented as Dan is very helpful because he can actually figure that out for you and I think that’s the one that surprised me the most.

I think I was also surprised with the reactions from people. That song is about a relationship I was in for a long time and we broke up and it wasn’t good. It wasn’t pretty, very messy, a lot of emotions and then there’s a sort of intrinsic numbness that happens after that. You meet people and you’re like “what am I gonna do this whole thing again?”. You build up a callous emotionally to it and that’s what the song was about for me. 

That’s why in the music video where I’m holding an ice cream cone it’s supposed to be something great and I don’t give a shit about it and then we’re at the carousel which is like a beautiful spot and it’s kind of just like bittersweet. We have this one fan and he's ex military. He told me that that song feels like PTSD, he came back from fighting at war like everything was less saturated in life and it was interesting to me to hear that perspective on it. I’ve never ever gone to war, I’ve never shot a gun, anything like that. I love hearing other peoples takes on songs, that was the one that really stuck with me.

Sasha:  Was there a moment during the writing process where you realized these songs belonged together as an EP rather than a full album?

Mike: Yeah, I think it was pretty early because I think I just had so many songs that I liked that were different. If you listen to this EP, the songs are pretty different from each other because they weren’t sat down in one room and they’re all recorded in different studios at different points in my life.

I think it’s important to kind of bridge the gap between record on and record two with these songs. These songs were my favorites from the experimental phase from one to the other and I think that if you’re doing a record, it’s sort of important to me that you do the whole thing in one shot like the first record. We recorded in five days in one room and nobody left the room. That’s how we did it. That's how I'd like to do it this time. For the EP we stayed in the room until each song was done but it wasn't finished as a whole. That's why it's an EP and not a record. I believe in the songs and I think they are really good, but it’s more about the experimentation of us as a band than it is about ‘here’s one single body of work’.

Sasha: Were there any artists that heavily influenced this EP or even the second album? 

Mike: Yeah definitely, around the time I wrote Holding Out was around the time I really got into Tame Impala. That led me into a whole bunch of other bands like Mile High Club and Melody's Echo Chamber, just a bunch of bands in this alt space. The thing I liked about them was that you had the guitar sound and you had the drum sound but you also had so much ear candy, all this glitter stuff that creates that when you put the headphones on and it really sounds thick and three dimensional. 

To me it was cool because when you go back and listen to the old Beatles stuff they were doing that with the technology they had at the time. It gives it that space and I feel like these alt bands were doing that. Our first record is very literal, that's what we sound like as a band, it was rock and roll we went in and we recorded everything live. That's what we sound like.“Holding Out”  was the first song where I took a little bit of liberty production wise to do things that aren't just possible with guitar and your voice, there's a lot of digital sounds we just made. The piano sound in the beginning, I wanted the tone of that to sound like when you turn on a Playstation 2. 

Another one, one of my favorite bands Steely Dan, one of the things about them that influenced me was their strive for perfection. Which is a stressful thing because art is naturally imperfect unless you're pushing yourself to make things as perfect as possible. I have to say my favorite band and the collective favorite band of King Falcon is Delta Sleep. What I like about them is that the albums are cohesive. They’re one of the bands where I don't ever listen to one song at a time I just put on the whole record, it's a journey from beginning to end with emotional points and it's all very cohesive. Also lyrically you can tell that guy has been through some shit and he's writing about it and you listen to it and you think that sounds a lot like the shit I'm going through. That was a huge influence lyrically. It's not rocket science, you just gotta put a little bit of yourself into the art. But it's so scary because there's people that know you personally and know what you're writing about and it's a scary thing to do but you gotta. 

Sasha: Jumping back to “Hourglass” you guys filmed the music video for hourglass while on tour, What was that experience like? 

Mike: It was a little hectic, I also was pretty sick, I always get sick on tour my immune system is just a suggestion. So we had just finished 12 shows in a row and we had three days off. The first day I was just in bed with a fever, the next day we filmed the video and then the next day was a driving day so it was just right in the middle of all this stuff. But I have to say I have to give all the credit to Niko, who's the guy who filmed it for us. He just had a clear vision for it and he was editing it in the van and we all watched him do it. It was awesome! We walked in, it was just kind of a white room with lightning and we were not really sure how the video was gonna look. I think he nailed it. Oh! And as we were loading the gear it was raining torrentially and in true fashion it started as soon as we got there and as soon as we finished it stopped. We also all got our outfits the night before at a thrift store.

Sasha: You guys are playing a hometown show in New York very soon in August. After spending so much time on tour does a hometown show carry extra pressure or excitement?

Mike: I don't know how much I actually wanna admit, I kinda hate doing hometown shows not because I don't love New York, I love New York. There's just so many people I know and before a show ideally I like to take an hour to get my voice right, get my head right, go over everything and when you're on tour it's very easy. You get into a rhythm of doing the same thing every night you get time in the van, usually you get there early. 

But New York first of all there's no parking. Ever. 

No matter where you are it's much farther to carry stuff and then everybody knows you, they wanna hang out the whole night and for them it's a night off, we're hanging out at the bar, we're hanging out and the venue – for me I’m working. It’s much more difficult when people know you because they wanna hang out the whole time. I'm not 19 anymore, my knees hurt. I gotta preserve my energy. Usually when we play New York it's not in the middle of a tour, they’re stand alone shows cause we all live here so the rhythm is different. I love when we play 10 shows in a row when it's one and I go there and know everybody, it's different. That being said, New York is home and the energy is great. 

Sasha: Last question so I don’t hold you too long, Are there any cities that you have been to that you're looking forward to going back to on future tours? 

Mike: Yeah, most of them honestly. We're looking at the west coast in October,  I really liked Washington. It was beautiful, we were in Seattle but the whole state is phenomenal. California was cool and we'll be back to California at some point. I really liked playing in New Mexico because the crowd was great but I did not like the altitude, that was not fun. We’ve never been to Florida, at some point we'll make our way down there. And honestly Canada, we have so many Canadian fans, everyone's so nice in Canada. 

I don’t think there's very many places I'm not excited to go back to; it's about the people, not the place. And all of our fans have been so good to us. I am really excited about next year, another announcement, we're going to Europe, in spring of next year we'll be on tour in Europe. It'll probably be Switzerland, Germany, maybe a couple other countries as well. That I'm really excited for, I honestly just love traveling, I hate being at home. I like the momentum of being on the road and being in a different place everyday. It kind of feels like you know, like, 500 years ago when they were venturing out into the unknown just exploring. I feel like we're doing that but there's gas stations along the way, which is great because I'm not Lewis and Clarke. I’m not that hardcore I do like an ice cold Dr.Pepper and in door plumbing is great.