They started the band at the start of the century only to go on hiatus a few years later. In 2023 The Burning Paris announced their comeback with a new album Everything is Broken & I Don't Feel a Thing and pronounced it even louder with Last Leaves last year. I had a pleasure to talk to Nate Shumaker, the vocals, the guitars and the heart of the project that was one of my first approaches to post-rock back in the days. We spoke about the breakup and the comeback, about the silver lining of sadness and melancholia in their music and about what they mean by saying that what The Burning Paris do is "quiet music played loudly".
But we started about this moments when something feels like...
...Meeting an Old Friend
ŁŚ: Do you know this feeling when you meet a person and you realize that you used to know them and you used to like them very much. And it's so nice when you discover that they didn't change that much. So basically that was what happened to me and The Burning Paris. When I realized that you are playing for this year's Post. festival, I realized that “Coral City Ruins” was an album that I used to listen to a lot! And I have to say that I probably pirated it back in the day. Sorry about that.
So you had a fan in Poland, which I guess is...
Nate Shumaker (The Burning Paris, Dry Bones, Eksi Ekso, Everdown, Lavinia, On Fire): That's a pretty big deal because the first album was like... We didn't know anybody in the scene we were in. At first we had no idea what we were doing. You know, a lot of us have come out of emo and hardcore bands that happened to break up around the same time. But me and Josh [Megyesy], the original guitar player, had always wanted to do something with no distortion. We just wrote all these songs like that but, we didn't even know if we were doing anything that anybody would like. We just kind of did it. We were into bands like Mogwai and Early Day Miners and Low. And that's just kind of how we found it, you know?
ŁŚ: Yeah, I can hear that. I have also other bands in mind, but it's probably because I'm a little bit younger. I hear Her Name Is Calla a little bit. Also, maybe Piano Magic?
NS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you said that in your review. And I love Piano Magic too. I was into all the old 4AD stuff a lot.
ŁŚ: I can’t actually imagine a type of music that is further away from emo and you're playing it right now. Probably not on the lyrics front but certainly with the form. So how did it happen?
NS: Yeah, well, I've always liked lyrics that are depressing, you know. We were loud in our old band and I sang in that band too, but I don't think I was really good at it, singing in a loud band. I mean, people liked it, but it just didn't feel comfortable to me.
I always wanted to do something that has more range than just always distorted, always loud rock. I just felt like there was something more we could do instrumentally and Josh is a really good guitar player so we decided to try that. And then Jenny [Townsend] had her band broken up, so we asked her to play cello with us. So it just kind of fell into this thing.
We didn't really know what we were doing, but we did well enough. We went on tour a couple times. And then, you know, it's like when we had finally kind of disbanded the first lineup. Josh, Jenny and I went on and did the band On Fire, which was also on Magic Bullet.
ŁŚ: What happened? Was it only like “let's go ahead and move with our own projects” or was there something else?
NS: Some of us were just not on the same page. Josh and Jenny and I decided we're going to go do what we wanted to do. And the other guys wanted to do something different. I don't really remember how it all went down. We still are friends. And so out of respect for them and what we were doing, we changed the band name. But all the songs that ended up on the On Fire record weren't going to be Burning Paris songs. In four years a lot of different lineups came through On Fire too. So by the end of it, it was just me as the only original member. So we changed the name to be a different band entirely. You know, that was called Eksi Ekso.
ŁŚ: Right, I know Eksi Ekso!
NS: I was only on the first album. Then I started a band with Phil [Jamieson] from Caspian and Josh from the Burning Paris that was called Lavinia. And we made a couple of records for The Mylene Sheath. That was cool. But then nothing was happening for a few years. I moved back up to the Northeast from Philadelphia during the pandemic, Jenny and I started playing together again. We just kind of naturally put it back together.
ŁŚ: You simply just came back together to play as The Burning Paris.
NS: It just kind of just fell back into place. We were going to name it something different, and then we just decided this is dumb. Let's just call it The Burning Paris.
ŁŚ: And good thing you did, because that’s how I could find you back!
NS: Yeah, exactly, because a lot of label people I was talking to were like “nobody wants to break a new band anymore!”. It's too hard, you know.
ŁŚ: So, the sound did not change that much, which is surprising, right? Because it's been 20 years!
NS: Yeah. And we all did different stuff. You know, not everybody kept playing in bands. We just kind of vibed off each other and went with it. felt good just to write a bunch of tunes, see where they fit, and just work it out. But we had no idea if anybody would care anymore. We just did it and apparently people still liked it.
ŁŚ: So you are seeing this as a real continuation of The Burning Paris, right? Even though there have been changes in the lineup and you have had other experiences. But it still feels like the same band.
NS: It is in a lot of ways because we've known that newer guys, like Jon and Brad, we've known them from way back. It's not the same, but it's a continuation. I think we've all played a lot more, so I think we might be better players and know how to make records better than we did back then. At least I think they sound better because, you know, back then we had no money. There was no label support. There was nothing. It was just us. trying to make records with Matt Squire, who is now famous as a producer, and he was barely starting out, so we had no idea what we're doing.
The Things That Changed
ŁŚ: Except for the quality of the recording process, is there anything else that feels different?
NS: One thing is I really did not want to use distortion at all back then, period. I just wanted nothing to do with it. And now I think we're a little more open to that, as long as we're selective with it, you know? A song like “Arsonist” would never have been on an old record.
ŁŚ: So in a way, you're getting more post-rockey.
NS: I think so. Back then I thought you can be heavy without distortion. And now it's different. It adds a different dynamic. I think we're just a little bit more thoughtful about how we write stuff now, I mean, we still play a couple of the older tunes once in a while, but the newer stuff just feels more thought out.
ŁŚ: I noticed that Coral City Ruins and the following EP, it’s not possible to find them anywhere. The only thing is a compilation of the tracks on your streamings. So that's why I thought that maybe you don't want to take this heritage of The Burning Paris and make it your own right now. But you're saying that it's not the case.
NS: No, It's like actually after we'd broken up back in the day all the old The Burning Paris stuff was out of print and Magic Bullet had expressed interest in putting it back out again. But we didn't want to put out two different CDs for a band that didn't exist. So we just put it all in one thing. And I didn't have the art files anyway, so I just redid it. You know, files get old, computers change, you lose stuff. It wasn't like we were on some major label where they hold on to all that stuff. But it's fun that, you know, I never even looked up our stuff on Spotify or Apple Music or anything ever until like 8 years ago I noticed that it was on streaming. I had no idea because I hadn't been paying attention to it. And I saw that “In Ruins” has 30,000 plays or something. And I was kind of like, who are these people? Where were they?
The Paris That Is Burning
ŁŚ: I'm very nostalgic over this album, because I remember how I discovered it. It was still these times when I paid attention to the names of the projects. Is that weird? I think it's kind of weird, but I like the name of the project and that's why I wanted to get to know more about it. I mean, if I were to dig into this, you could possibly say that it's maybe like Paris as the symbol of art and it is burning. So there could be a statement in this, but I guess it’s not the case?
NS: There wasn't. We were trying to come up with names and it's really hard to name a band. It's not even fun. Somebody never likes it or none of you ever like it. Or in two years, nobody likes it. But then it just becomes a name. If you think of Radiohead, that's a really dumb band name. You just don't think about it anymore. I thought it was a play on the movie Paris is Burning, but, also, back then everybody was putting “The” in front of everything. I think it made it more like a moment versus an action: like a sentence versus an ongoing event. But right now it's just the name of the band.
ŁŚ: There is also a notion of a tragedy in this. It suits the themes in your songs, right?
NS: Our words aren't happy, but… There's always a little bit of hope, always a little bit of silver lining. I think it resonates with people in many ways because it's okay to be in a bad mood, but also know that it's not forever, you know?
ŁŚ: The comeback album's title is “Everything is Broken & I Don't Feel a Thing”. If that was an album by The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, it would be so perfect!
NS: For a period of time, I was hanging out with Phil from Caspian, and I had just spit it out one day. He was like, what would you name your next album? And I said this, and I just made it up. I thought it was funny and he wanted to steal it but I said no, you can't have it. I don't know. It was about a time in my life when things were really uncertain, just me and my cat and a bunch of stuff. It just fell right there. It’s maybe snarky or tongue in cheek, but it made me laugh and the rest of the band let me do it.
But it’s not a broader commentary on reality, nothing like that. It's more personal. It's about relationships, about how when something feels perfect, it doesn't mean that it really is. Like everything can feel broken, but you can feel numb to it at the same time. It felt like I'd just thrown all this stuff, energy into something, but it still didn’t work.
ŁŚ: So your lyrics are based on your experiences?
NS: Some are based on moments of time, you know, like little bits of things. There's rarely a whole narrative of something. It's the little moments that you can remember, something like, walking in the woods or with somebody or, you know, waking up next to somebody. Or even the moment of going on a walk by yourself and thinking of the notion of what's bigger in the universe, what else is there outside of us, things like that. But that's not all sad. Some of it sounds more sad than it is, but it's not all just depressing to be depressing.
ŁŚ: Yeah, it's the silver lining, right? This is a phrase that you use a lot.
NS: Yeah, exactly. Silver lining is a great word for that. Heartfelt things can be emotionally heavy, and I think they don't have to be either positive or negative. Sometimes you can feel both at once, you know.
Sometimes I feel like the best songs out in the world are ones that you can feel really happy listening to. But also, if you're really sad, they work too.
I think that's a tough song to write. I don't know if I've ever done it, A song that can make somebody feel good but also relatable when it's bad too.
ŁŚ: The fact that people can relate to a song, it should help them, right? It should tell them that other people also feel like this.
NS: I hope so. I mean, we played on Friday night and there was a nice girl who was talking to us and saying that she had heard one of our songs on a playlist somewhere and she felt something about it. And now she comes on our shows. She just found it on some playlist, this is very inspiring to me. I don't want to be the guy that makes people cry all the time, but if you can relate to it, if it makes you feel good, that's great.
I think our songs will always have some feelings to them, it's not like we're going to sing about cars or mowing the lawn or something like that.
We like to bring a mood to it, and I think it works. We're all pretty fun people. We're not moping around sad all the time, but this is where we put feelings, where we put ourselves into. We take it seriously, but we can joke about it too.
I don't really know what the songs are going to be about until I start writing things down and then they kind of just take shape. But sometimes, if I can have one line to grab onto and use, then I can move, make it a thing. I'm not really concerned if anybody else makes sense out of it too, I like to just leave the lyrics a little bit abstract. I think that nobody cares about my individual moment in time specifically, they might want the idea of it but that’s it. It's like painting, you know, everybody can interpret it however they want.
Sounds and Colours
ŁŚ: Oh, I wanted to ask about this too! Because I understand that you're also a visual artist. I've seen that you work for Caspian on their cover arts.
NS: I have in the past, yeah. I designed a bunch of stuff. I did a lot of album covers, for other bands and labels too: Caspian, some reissues for Warner Brothers records. And then Type-O Negative’s “Bloody Kisses” issue. Random stuff like that. I also do our stuff.
ŁŚ: I love “The Last Leaves” album cover! Is it a painting or a photo?
NS: Thank you so much, that really means a lot. It's a digital collage. I took a photo of that bush out somewhere. And then I just turned it black and white and layered all these weird things on it and mixed it together. And the front layout is actually an accident. When I was laying out the spread, I accidentally moved the whole piece so there was that space on the right side, and I didn't realize it. And then I was like, actually, I kind of dig that. Then I put the type there, and then I let the cover bleed over the back.
ŁŚ: It looks like some kind of very old photography technique.
NS: Yeah, no, it's not actually. It's a lot of digital layers. It's just a photo from my iPhone. It wasn't that exciting.
ŁŚ: Do you think creating visual art and music is similar in any way? I don't create any music, so I have no idea how it translates, but I’m sure there must be some common ground.
NS: I think there's definitely similarities because in music, there's layers, there's nuance, there's different things that have to all work together. Layering a song together is like layering art together, but I guess it depends on where you're starting with it. Some songs come together really easily and other ones don't. It's just it depends what you're creating it for.
ŁŚ: I was thinking about your description of creating this artwork for “Last Leaves”. Creating something very easy and simple at first and then screwing around it. Is it also the case in creating music?
NS: Yeah, I think so, especially that we have six people in the band. There's a lot of that. One of us, Chris or Jon or I or Jesse, can bring in an idea and it can start out one way and end up totally somewhere else. “Arsonists” is a prime example of that. When I wrote that, it was just myself and a guitar and it ended up being heavy and loud, like a shoegaze song. That's not how I wrote it. But it works and it’s because we all did it together.
ŁŚ: So do you always have to collectively agree that something works?
NS: Yeah, we do now. Back in the day, it was less of a collaborative thing, I had to push a little harder to make it what I wanted to be. But now, we all know what we want it to be and we're okay with pushing the envelope a little bit further out here and there, which is cool. Plus we're a lot older and we're not as grumpy as we were.
ŁŚ: You're becoming less grumpy when you get older? That's the other way than it should be.
NS: Well, I think we're grumpier about different things now. Back then we were really a lot pickier, but now it's like we kind of feel lucky that we can still do this and have fun with it.
| The Burning Paris at Sinclair, photo by Kim Maroon |
The World Is a Beautiful Place?
ŁŚ: Talking about things that changed, the world has changed since the first album of The Burning Paris came out. Does it feel different?
NS: Sure. I mean, the world itself, definitely. We barely had cell phones when we were down the first time. It's like, now everybody's got it. There was no streaming music. Vinyls were around, but they weren’t as popular. CDs were everything. Attention spans are a lot shorter everywhere, social media made that happen. Streaming music made it easier to just skip around, it's like you really have to earn it to get somebody to not just find you, but actually want to commit to listening to it, you know?
ŁŚ: You do write long songs, but not that long.
NS: We had a few in the back in the day that were a lot longer, but not that many. We like the five or six minute mark. That's a good spot.There's sounds that I've heard other people make and I'm like, dude, this is 13-minutes long. Stop it. What, are you a doom metal band?
ŁŚ: I was thinking more like Godspeed You!Black Emperor.
NS: Yeah, OK, that's different. They're doing more like an orchestral piece. And we're kind of like mixing that with more of a pop sensibility, not really pop, but mixing a halfway point. We don't make them shorter collectively or consciously. We kind of learned that it isn't always cool to have a long song, just to have a long song. If you've said all you have to say in 3 1/2 minutes, be done with it. That's fine. Move on.
ŁŚ: The world’s changed also in another way. The whole situation in the world right now is kind of getting more, I'll say, depressing. When you follow the news and everything. Do you feel like the themes you are writing about in The Burning Paris, are they more fitting to this world right now, or is it the other way around? Because maybe we are not focusing on emotions possibly as much as before. Rather just observing what's in the world.
NS: I mean, as far as our music goes, I don't think the world outside affects it much, because the stuff that I'm writing about or that we're doing as a band is personal. We don't write songs about politics or the state of the world or wars or anything like that. We just don't do it. I mean, we have our views and we're all on the same page, as you can imagine, we're not super pumped on what our country is doing right now. Godspeed is political. They're out there, they're liberal, they're anarchists. We have those emotions in places, but I'm not gonna get up on a stage and tell somebody how to live their damn life either, you know?
ŁŚ: Yeah, I understand. I was more thinking about the listeners perspective. If they’re still interested in those more personal feelings or are they more focused on what's going on around them. Are they maybe too distracted and worried for self-reflection?
NS: Yeah, I see what you're saying. I don't know, I just try to keep it about what I can write about. I guess it could be reflective of something happening in the world, but I'm not going to let it be known for that. I like to keep it vague, you know.
ŁŚ: And you mentioned that you met someone recently, right, who said that your songs resonated with her.
NS: I didn't ask her why it resonated with her. I just let her think about it. She didn't ask me what it meant either. I think that's important. The lyrics are a little bit vague, you can apply that to anything you want to.
Quiet Music Played Loudly
ŁŚ: I really, really like the description of your music that you put somewhere online: that it is quiet music played loudly. What exactly do you mean by that?
NS: Well, I think back in the day, when we first started, the songs sounded a lot quieter, you know, mellower than anything we'd ever done. We always played it at a loud volume, always. I wanted people to feel it. When I saw Mogwai for the first time, I remember it was one of the loudest things on earth. You could feel it in your chest.
ŁŚ: I know. I've been to my Bloody Valentine concert and it's a physical, you know, it's a physical experience.
NS: Yeah, you get it. And Mogwai is like that too. I mean, it's the only time I've ever gone to see a show. where I had earplugs in and my ears were still ringing the next day. But it's so good because you're just in it, it's like you're in the sound. We're not as loud. Our music might put you to sleep at night if you're listening to the old stuff. But when you come to see it live, we're going to make you listen a little bit harder.
ŁŚ: Have you ever been to Europe touring?
NS: Not with the band, no. I hope we can get over there at some point. It's hard for us, we all have jobs and lives. We have to get a pretty good deal to go over there.
ŁŚ: I understand. But you're playing Post. festival this year!
NS: Yeah. And maybe someday Dunk! will have us over too. 🦢
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You can find The Burning Paris records at:
The Burning Paris will play Post. Festival in Indianapolis, Indiana on July 24.
The cover art included a picture of the band performing live at Trinity Beer Garden, pic by Diana Caetano.