0202

“My 22-year-old self would be disgusted,” Elliott Margin says of The Rubens’ turn toward the electronic production and synths used throughout 0202 (a play on 2020, the year that was). “Back when we started, pop to us was kind of a dirty word and there's a million reasons why, but there's excellent pop being written right now. We've slowly become more and more open to different sounds in the same way that fans have become more open to hearing them.” The Aussie band’s self-produced fourth album signifies a huge shift toward bright, warm pop production, but that doesn’t mean they’ve discarded the guitars that made them alt-rock favorites. “It’s funny,” says the keyboardist and backing vocalist. “Someone messaged me on Instagram the other day, saying, ‘Boys, love the new stuff. Just a little bit of advice. Bring the guitars back.’ But there's probably more guitars on this record than ever. They just don't all sound like guitars anymore.” “I don't think we'd still be a band,” says Sam, lead vocalist and Elliott’s brother, about what might have happened had their sound remained the same. “We’d be bored with each other and bored with our own music. It'd be a drag.” Below, the pair talk through each track on 0202.
Masterpiece Elliott: “I remember the making of the big stacked harmonies on the chorus, because that's something we haven't really explored very much in our music up until now. Not because we had anything against it, but honestly, because I do the backing vocals, I just don't know how to harmonize. I can't do it naturally. So I spent a long time figuring it out and mapping it out and then when I listened to it, it was a super satisfying thing. It’s like, ‘Ah, now it feels like a warm bath of sound.’ It was a very nice feeling.”
Heavy Weather Elliott: “The main hook idea that I had for a long time was the horn sound. And it was something that I just had in a project on my laptop for ages. And I think I was probably in denial, the fact that it had to be a horn sound, because I would try so many different sounds, like layer guitars or synths or pianos. I just didn't want it to be horns. So when I eventually embraced the sound, it became okay. And it made sense. Sometimes you’ve just got to go with what you're hearing in the first place.”
Live in Life Sam: “We really weren’t expecting its success, but it freed us up creatively. A lot of the songs [Elliott] had been writing had this more modern sound, experimenting with electronic music. We loved it, but it never felt like it was going to be what you would call a classic hit. I remember the first time we played it live, I think it went off more than any other song in the set. That was kind of the ultimate feeling—suddenly seeing it becoming popular and alive.”
Time of My Life Sam: “The lyrics are about that feeling of when something’s meant to be the time of your life, but it doesn't feel like it. And why does everyone tell you that it should be? Whether it's finishing high school or whatever, you’re like, ‘Is this meant to be it?’”
Thank You Sam: “It was just one of those songs that it didn't ever feel confusing or a burden. We weren't sure what we were going to do with it, because we really loved it. I think the only thing that we really did to it was get Scotty [Baldwin] to play drums. And it made a massive difference. He really nailed that song.”
Muddy Evil Pain Elliott: “This was really just from a bad dream that I had where something terrible happens and you're trying to help someone and you wake up feeling very glad that it wasn't actually real. But I didn’t then try and write a song about it—it’s more that I remembered the dream when I was writing it a few weeks later. It's not a specific story. It's more just that terrible aching feeling.”
Holiday Sam: “It's about addiction and drug taking. Obviously, it's a metaphor. ‘It must be nice to take a trip, fly away.’ About escapism through not very healthy means. I wanted it to be kind of trippy, as well. It doesn't necessarily mean it has to be about someone with a crack addiction. It could be about someone who's just had some LSD. I want it to sound kind of like a holiday, and be dreamy, and a little bit dark, but not be too heavy.”
Explosions Sam: “We had the vocals and most of our parts, but we didn’t know if the rhythm section was going to be really sparse and electronic or something else. We tried to make it raucous but still using electronic stuff, and we realized it had to sound like you were in the room with us. And there’s an acoustic guitar in there too, which we haven't used much in the past. But we've stopped being snobs, we grew up. Stopped being little brats.”
State of My Mind Sam: “It was also written in LA. It started with Zaac [Margin]’s guitar, which you hear at the beginning, which kind of doesn't sound like a guitar. It's Zaac going through crazy pedals and making it sound like a synth, which is something he's done more and more. It sounds more like some kind of crazy organ or something.” Elliott: “All of our ears pricked up, and we got onto it. I think we probably wrote this in four or five hours, and then got to the end of it and were like, ‘Sweet, awesome,’ and then got out of there.”
Apple Sam: “I remember Elliott came over to my house and we were sitting in my studio. I think the record was already pretty much done. I was like, ‘Have you got any ideas you've started on?’ And he's like, ‘I've got a song that's pretty much finished.’ And that was ‘Apple.’ I was like, ‘Damn!’ Just immediately really into that song.”
Back to Back Elliott: “It wrote itself very quickly, just after Lo La Ru came out. I'm surprised it did make it on the record in the end, because I feel like a lot of the time when we write songs after a record, those songs are kind of just tests. A lot of them are duds and don't actually make the next record. It's nice that this one was an old one that stuck it out and made it on.”
Party Sam: "I wrote this one during COVID. I was just up late, I'd had a couple of beers in my studio and was just playing piano. At some point I started to impersonate Chris Martin, just singing bullshit songs in Coldplay style. And then I started playing around with chord progressions and it just came out. I feel like just knowing that it was that one take, that one moment where I wrote and recorded it and then it made it onto an album was just the vibe. So to just break down to something super lo-fi with just the piano was kinda cool.”