Hiding in plain sight, the Figgs demand your attention
“Gimmicks,” a tune from the Figgs’ new On The Slide (Stomper)—the prolific trio’s 13th album—finds guitarist/songwriter Mike Gentwith rock ‘n’ roll poseurs in his caustic crosshairs: “Looking like a bunch of pricks/Another schmuck with a new shtick/Your tattoos are fading, your eyeliner’s running.”
But if the target is anyone specific, Gent’s not telling.
“Some of it’s probably aimed at myself,” he says from his Boston home. “Who’s not a sucker for a good gimmick?”
While never resorting to ploys or fakery, the Figgs have rightly been angling for greater acclaim since the band’s 1987 formation in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The group began as a trio with Gent, bassist/songwriter Pete Donnelly and drummer Guy Lyons; Lyons left in 1989 and was replaced by Pete Hayes, only to return as a guitarist in 1992 before permanently departing after 1997’s Couldn’t Get High.
Breaking up then was a possibility, but one not seriously entertained. “I think everyone was expecting us to, but I knew our best years were still ahead,” says Gent. Instead, the threesome soldiered on and has continued to craft an outstanding catalog full of pub-rock, power-pop and soul-inflected nuggets blemished only by the occasional sound of crickets greeting it.
“It’s frustrating when we’ve been doing this for almost three decades and certain magazines have completely ignored us from the start, and late-night TV has no interest in having us on,” says Gent. “You see a new band come out and get a ton of hype, then after a couple of years, or even months, they’re kaput. But it really doesn’t matter. We have a great, little fanbase that loves and supports the band. We make records and play shows for them. It would be fun to play on TV again, though.”
On The Slide arrives just more than a year after 2015’s Other Planes Of Here; the original plan was to follow it up even sooner—in six months, à la Elvis Costello’s 1986 Blood And Chocolate and King Of America. Much of Slide was cut during the same sessions, and an early version, dubbed Smartest Of The Dumb Ones, was mixed, but Gent and Donnelly decided to continue shaping the LP with additional tunes.
The duo doesn’t follow a strict “my song then yours” policy when sequencing records, unlike, say, Hüsker Dü (maybe because they don’t hate each other). But even when it turns out that way, the results are seamless thanks to how the pair now works together. (Hayes also writes, but not lately; his “Je T’Adore,” off 2004’s Palais, was featured in a ubiquitous 2013 Lexus commercial.)
“The last few records, there’s been a lot of writing and collaborating while in the studio,” says Gent. “On the earlier records, each member would come in with a group of their songs pretty much finished, and we would pick the ones that we liked the most, rehearse them and play them live for a bit, then record them.”
More new stuff has already been tracked— we did say they’re prolific—and another Figgs album will likely be released in 2017, the band’s 30th anniversary. There’ll be some nostalgic celebrating as well, followed by some well-earned rest.
“It’d be nice to do something special—maybe record and tour a little bit with Guy,” says Gent. “There are some really cool reissues and other archive releases being discussed. After that, I want to take a full year off and recharge. We deserve it.”
—Matt Hickey
