‘Am I just a dark shadow? I envisioned being something other than a silhouette on zoom.‘ Model/Actriz‘s Cole Haden and Loverboy are having video call complications. Yet somehow our first encounter being a looming shadow, backlit by the brilliant sunshine, feels totally correct for the music the group call ‘sexy industrial dance.’ We’d also like to add the words, ‘dark’, ‘joyous’ and ‘hot’ into the mix. Their debut album, Dogsbody, which dropped in February is an intense ride, filled with carnal imagery, explosive production and like every great album a nod to Lady Gaga – ‘Like Germanotta, Stefani, Pull the weight from under me.’

Currently on their first headline tour of the US, Model/Actriz kick off their debut European tour next month at London’s The Lexington on 25th May. To find out more about what we can expect from their live show, Loverboy caught up with lead singer Cole in between shows to discuss homosexual energy, misunderstood lyrics and working on something secret with Miley Cyrus.

So, tell us, Cole, what do you do between shows?
We watched Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd last night. It has the most beautiful expression of the music. There is some debate over Helena Bonham-Carter because people are obsessed with Angela Lansbury. But I think both are very different. Do I see a Björk poster on your wall? I can see that and from this low resolution computer screen someone who looks like Kim Petras.

Björk yes, but the other one is from Almodovar’s All About My Mother. Are you a Kim Petras fan?
I feel like this is a trap! You are setting me up for failure! I am but I don’t like ‘Unholy’. The subject matter is meant to be very sexy but the beat is a little Willy Wonka. That’s just my take on it.

And that’s a valid take. How is your first Model/Actriz headline tour going?
People have seen us by chance before supporting someone else, but now we are seeing them return to hang out with us. There is an intention. I feel like a host of a party instead of a guest. Europe is next. I’m excited to play Copenhagen. Obviously London too. The European tour’s a two week stint, just a little taste.

I know you’ve spoken of specific influences when you perform. Who were you thinking of?
Gaga or Grace Jones. I feel like Gaga channels Liza Minnelli. In the history of classical piano you can trace who taught concert piano back to the great composers like Mozart. It feels like me using those kinds of people as my teachers is tapping into the lineage of great performers, trying to be part of it.

How has your approach developed throughout this tour?
I think that as people become more familiar with our work it becomes more of a dialogue between the audience and myself. They become more available to becoming characters in the show with me. It’s like they have studied the script, they’ve learned their lines, they’ve come to the show and now I’m teaching them the blocking.

How are you dealing with fans filming it on their phone?
I try not to police people. As long as I am able to make eye contact with them. If they are holding a phone in front of their face then I just don’t interact with them. I criticise by omission.

Talk to me about the ensemblés. Judging by Insta, your looks have changed from more glam moments to more indie ones.
This was the dinner conversation last night. On tour it is inhibited by how much we can fit in the car. The feeling of the show is always feather boas and sequins, even if I am not wearing them. In LA I was wearing the shoes, the makeup, everything. Once we get to New York, I’m going to be doing something more like that.
I am a huge champion of the ‘spectacle’ but also sometimes a look makes the divide between me and the audience more obvious. There are times where it just feels more honest to wear street clothes, maybe just some glitter and my hat. 

We need to talk about this hat.
The bunny hat? There is a place called Alondra Records in Bushwick where a lady named Gladys single-handedly crochets knitwear goods for my friends and I. I went to the store with the boys, found this hat and it just felt right. It’s a prop. I use the ears to be a little demure, to hide my face or convey certain emotions…it’s an extension of my body.

I’m slowly watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills as they upload them to Netflix and only just saw S7. Your hat reminds me of the bunny Lisa Rinna gave Kim Richards…
And sometimes you’ll catch me onstage doing Rinna’s single tear moment.

Ahaha….although I have to say this season was really boring.
Yeah, like that season and the one where Dorit sends the…

Wait, no spoilers. I have boundaries!
Sorry! I appreciate your passion for watching it sequentially. For me time just does not exist. I am flipping timelines all over the place – watching spin offs out of order. It’s like a Murakami novel.

I know that before you wrote your lyrics you would improvise a lot when performing.
I still improvise a lot on tour but it’s more in an ad-libbing sense. Our songwriting process lives on through the stage show. The discipline and regularity is exhibited through my bandmates’ tightness, like a machine. The improvisational aspect is through my own personal language of sounds. Words are abstractions and will always come short of the exact emotions one is feeling. But the words that I found feel like the right ones.

Your lyrics have a great balance between power, passion, anger and violence, that could only come from a homosexual mind.
I agree, I literally have no choice as a gay person. It’s just going to come up in the words.

I love this lyric from ‘Pure Mode’. “I trace the marks, bite down on my lips. A throb bright red pours through my eyelids. My head sun-drenched, growing out of phase, but I’m lucid…”
That line to me is about the prelude to opening your eyes after coming to terms with your sexuality and liberating yourself from avoiding those feelings. I was thinking that when you close your eyes and look at the sun, it is red, shining through blood. ‘Pure Mode’ is about a cognitive dissonance of a person that I want to become.

Are we ever that person we aspire to be?
I guess that as a gay person, time subverts the way we’ve been led to believe in the milestones we should be reaching, by certain ages. Straight person time is very linear. To get to here, you have to pass through all of these things. Being a gay person you don’t have that comfort. There’s always a sense of precariousness and danger. Maybe that comes with each person getting to decide their own adventure for themselves. That feeling is just really overwhelming. ‘Pure Mode’ is realising the ways that I might have been trying to fit myself into that timeline, without realising it was not for me. Then learning how to step outside of it.

I also really love ‘Maria’. A gay love song with a female’s name. Tell me about it.
In my mind, in ‘Maria’, I am singing to a man, my romantic interest, who would be taking the pose of Maria in Michaelangelo’s Pieta and I would be laying in his arms. There is a very specific person that I am singing to in ‘Maria’. It is about the dream of a relationship and realising in that dream, the impossibility of it all. Have I ruined the song for you?!

You could never! I will still live in my fantasy world of it being a real romance. Which was the hardest songt to write?
‘Sleepless’ differs so much from how all of our songs came to be. We don’t demo. The songs only exist when we play them to each other live, up until the point of recording. That song was like missing a limb until we got to the studio and explored what that missing appendage was. It’s also the highest note on the album to sing and we recorded it late in the recording process so it was difficult to hit. The improvisation at the end was maybe like the most viscerally painful. We were being surprised by the song, in the moment, and that’s what the recording is.

Do you have a favourite at the moment?
I am really proud of ‘Sun-In’. Lyrically, it was the first one that I finished. I had been disappointed in the words I was writing before that. After it felt like I had unlocked where the album was going. I felt like I had never truly come out with this band before this album. Writing ‘Sun-In’ felt like my foot was out of the closet.

                                                 
Do you think there are people who listen to your music and miss all this gay energy?
What an awkward question to answer. Ummm…I think the answer to that is that I don’t believe, and cannot rely on everybody getting it all the time. However what is in my control is understanding and being responsible for getting it myself. I think we have a lot of straight people at our shows that sing the Gaga shout out too. So if they don’t get it at that point I don’t know if they’ll ever get it. Although maybe they don’t even know what her real name is. But you know I’ll take their hand and lead them through the Wizard of Oz thing. I want to be that person for someone who might be struggling with their sexuality, or needing a person in this artistic space to help set them free. I try to hold myself accountable for the way I can be, maybe in my own small way, a leader. I don’t know everything about everything but I feel like there is a lack of LGBT representation in music.

Especially in the type of music you are producing. I wanted the album for myself and thought none of my friends would like it, but annoyingly they all do!
Well, you know, I made this album for the gays so if they are gay they can come to the party too.

They are! Haha…
Some people begrudgingly show us to their friends because they want us to be their own hidden gem music that they can have to themselves. But I say spread the love!

I actually played the album to my Mum last week and she came up with a comparison that I was like, ‘Whaaat?’ But then I saw someone on Reddit say the same thing! So it must be a thing.
Wait, what comparison was it?

Right Said Fred.
Oh. My. God. The ‘I’m too sexy for my shirt’ guys?! Someone said I sound like the guy from Potter Puppet Pals, a guy impersonating Alan Rickman. But I’ll take Right Said Fred. I never thought I would be in a band that sounded like this. So luckily my bandmates give me free rein. I find it really fun to subvert the cannon of macho dudes being angry in really predictable ways. Just by the nature of juxtaposing a gay point of view in a musical space that is overrun with straight angst. I have a lot of fun flipping the script. My bandmates also have a flair for the theatrics. We think of it like a cabaret. We think of the pacing of our setlists like that of a theatre show.

How did this concept for the album cover come to you?
The band had no choice but to make a very gay album so I was not going to make them put a dildo on the cover. But this was Jack’s idea, to have that be the centrepiece. So much of the album is about travelling to places, chasing something, running from something, it’s not still. I think it’s kind of funny that although the album itself is not still, the cover is an impact of a cock on a car, like a comet from outer space.

Now I have been up on your socials and see that Miley Cyrus is following you guys on Instagram. Have there been interactions?
Yes, there have and there might be more in the future related to the band. She is a fan of ours and she has been very kind to us.

I also saw you RTing Lisa Vanderpump too which is amazing.
You saw me retweeting Lisa Vanderpumpo?! What was I thinking when I drunkenly retweeted Lisa Vanderpump?! She is fucking amazing. She needs to come back to that franchise because it’s a little boring without her. But you don’t know she left yet because in your timeline she is still on the show.

No spoilers! Finally we are named after the biggest selling single of 2001 and always ask what is your favourite Mariah track?
My favourite Mariah Carey album is Rainbow. I love ‘Touch My Body’. Can I give you three songs?! ‘Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’s Theme)’ is my favourite of all time. I really loved her collaboration with Skrillex and Ty Dollar Sign,’The Distance’. She also has a live song with Patti Labelle. I am a Mariah stan. I am in the lambily…

Model/Actriz start their European tour on 25th May at The Lexington in London.
Tickets onsale now at www.modelactriz.com
The album Dogsbody is out now.

Both images: Lily Frances