You might feel a little out of place attending your first Murder by Death show. The atmosphere is reminiscent of an evil cult frat party (and believe me, I’ve got plenty of those about which to reminisce). It’s just the kind of crowd you might see in a horror movie, hypnotized by singer Adam Turla’s gruff vocals, howling every word along with him. Indeed, Murder by Death’s dark melodies would make a perfect soundtrack to a horror movie (or, SPOILER ALERT, a sci-fi, noire thriller novel). “The old gods have all failed/And their successors too/My king, my king will wipe the slate clean/Houses become tombs/My king, my king will take what grows in every creature’s tomb,” sings Turla of a quickly approaching apocalypse in “The Day” off their latest album Good Morning, Magpie. I caught up with Turla at the Bowery Ballroom during their recent US tour to talk about the album, and a whole lot more. Check it out below…
Interview: James Passarelli
Inflatable Ferret: You’re from Bloomington?
Adam Turla: We’re all from Bloomington, but we came from different places originally. Texas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Indiana. I’m from Michigan.
IF: And you and Matt are the only two original members?
AT: [cellist] Sarah [Balliet], [bassist] Matt [Armstrong], and me.
IF: Okay, and how did you meet [drummer] Dagan [Thogerson]?
AT: He’s from Indiana, and he knew a lot of the guys we knew in Bloomington. And we needed a new drummer, and he was the guy that was on the list. He was more of an acquaintance than a friend, but he’s played with us for over three and a half years now and, like, 600 shows. He’s a great drummer.
IF: The new album came out April 6th. How’s the feedback been?
AT: I think it’s good. I’ve seen a lot of complimentary statements. Every record we do has a different mood, and this one is more moody, I guess kind of a beautiful sadness. I don’t know how to put it – there’s more beauty to it than aggression. Our last album was a lot more aggressive, and that’s what we were going for. And I’ve seen two reviews where the guy’s just like, “I want to like this, but I just don’t like it.” And I knew there were going to be people that wanted something a little more like our last album. The last album was about a rugged asshole who’s young and trying to find his way. And over the course of the album he kind of figures himself out. It’s like a narrative about this one guy who’s tough as nails. And some people just responded to that. And this album is more reflective, so there’s a different spirit to it. But most of the stuff I’ve seen is really positive…Are you from Iowa? [referring to Iowa State shirt]
IF: I’m from Nebraska, so close. Some friends went to Iowa State.
AT: I love Iowa. We’ve got a lot of friends there.
IF: I assume you’ve been to Omaha.
AT: We’ve been everywhere. We’ve been to Omaha twenty times.
IF: Cool. Are you going there on this tour?
AT: Already went.
IF: Oh, where?
AT: The Waiting Room. Good show.
IF: That’s probably my favorite venue there.
AT: They changed it a lot. They opened up the ceiling.
IF: Yeah, I heard they took out that little window area on the left.
AT: Yeah, it’s now just like a big, tall room. They’re going to have to figure out the sound for now. But it’s still a cool place.
IF: I feel like there are a lot of literary references in your music. Like, In Bocco Al Lupo is a Dante reference. I was just wondering if there are any specific references in this album that we should be aware of.
AT: Well, I don’t really listen to much music. So, when I’m writing songs I’m thinking about it visually as much as I am melodically. When I write lyrics I like there to be a story element in them. So, when people say that it’s influenced by film and movies, it really just means that I like film and books. I think it’s just a way to approach songwriting. 
“What is the story? What am I trying to say?” – it’s more that than just writing a hook. I write the lyrics and the melody at the same time, and to me, the story is the most important part. For this record, I’m trying to think if there are any specific instances – there are a lot of songs that have a cinematic approach. “On the Dark Streets Below” is about three girls who end up in this crappy town, and they each have a different personality, and they end up in this shitty situation. When I wrote that song, I liked the idea of having each verse be a vignette, where it’s a short story crammed into a 10-second verse. And you can picture a little scene about each of them, as if it was a short story or a film. That’s just the way I think about songwriting – can people visualize the story, to have images that accompany the songs?
IF: For this particular record, you went out into the woods by yourself, right?
AT: Yeah.
IF: And was that for the purpose of writing?
AT: Yeah. Basically, we had just been so busy, and I didn’t want to have songwriting suffer from that business. So, I just decided to take two weeks to myself to go out into the backcountry of the Smoky Mountains and went camping. And I didn’t see or talk to anyone – I just wrote and wrote and wrote. You know, I went fishing and hiking. I had a little book with me, so I learned how to make a bear-killing spear. I learned how to make snares, which I had never really done. But it was just fun. It wasn’t like a survival trip, like Into the Wild or something. The idea was just to go somewhere where there were really no distractions to take away from the experience and the writing. So, I had plenty of time. I would just wake up in the morning it was like, “Okay…Well, I’ve got about fourteen hours of daylight to kill.” And I’d spend about half of that writing, often while I was walking.
IF: And, I’m sure you’ve had to tell this story about a million times, but “The Day”, the last song on the record, came from a crazy experience you had on the trip?
AT: The storm, yeah. That song definitely came out of that. It just rained the whole time I was there, and it was just fucking depressing – it just kept coming down. And I was on a fifteen-mile hike at the farthest point from my camp, and a horrible storm broke out. And the trail turned to a stream of mud, and I was out there totally by myself. And these branches were just crashing down all around me. And I kept waiting like, “This is it.” Because these branches were, like,…[motions with his hands] I was waiting for one to just clock me in the head and take me out, but I got lucky, and all I got out of that was a sprained ankle from trying to ford a river. It was really fun. There was just a moment where I was like, “Oh, fuck. Am I seriously going to die out here?” So, I ended up working on that song, which is kind of complicated. It’s about a follower of a new ruler of the earth, and he’s so happy that his big boss is going to take over and just wipe the earth clean. And he’s crying as he sees the earth being raised, because he’s so happy. I just loved the idea of the sort of horror combined with the jubilation. It’s like a celebration of doom. I just thought that was a cool, fun idea to write about, and I really love playing it live. We’re going to play it tonight actually.
IF: You said you don’t listen to a lot of music. Am I completely jumping to conclusions when I hear a lot of Tom Waits in the music?
AT: I get that, and when I hear him he’s great. But once again, I don’t put in CDs ever. I hear music around me, because my band mates are always listening to music. But, like, if I’m driving…silence. It’s just such a huge part of my life, and I’m writing a lot. And you can’t write when there’s other people’s stuff around, for two reasons: one – you’re thinking about their music, and two – you don’t want to copy it. But, that being said, Tom Waits is great. I feel like that most of the time, and then every once in a while I hear a Tom Waits song, and I’m like, “Come on, dude. You’re just fucking with us.” [impersonates Waits] Like, every once in a while, I feel like he’s just playing a joke on us. But most of the time he’s great, and his lyrics are exceptional.
IF: You have a really distinctive voice, kind of like him. Was that something you had to find?
AT: Oh. God yeah. Well, basically, I took voice lessons 2004, and I had been trying to sing all high, because I didn’t know how to sing. We started this band when we were like, eighteen, nineteen years old. And part of it was, I didn’t think your voice really changed from eighteen to twenty-eight. But it does, and I’ve noticed how it’s changed. 
I listen to my voice on past recordings, and I wonder, “How did I even do that?” And I can’t even sing the higher notes that I could sing back then. So, when I took voice lessons, they were like, “Why are you trying to sing high? You’re supposed to sing low.” Part of it was that when we first started, we were always playing basement shows, and you can’t hear the low vocals over the band, so it would get lost. I remember specifically writing songs where I san higher. But now that we’re able to play at nice clubs the low stuff sounds so much better. I hated singing back then. Now I love it. It’s my favorite part of the day.
IF: You’ve been with a few different labels. How did you come to sign with Vagrant?
AT: We’re a band at a weird time. When the band started we were on this small Jersey label, Eyeball Records. We didn’t even sign – we just put out two records randomly. And then we signed this deal where we had our own label through Warner Brothers. We called the shots, but they had people in place that would do the marketing. We just didn’t want to sacrifice creativity for moneymaking or popularity. And we didn’t want to get sucked into some indie world or some pop kind of thing, which are now basically the same thing, as far as I can tell. Indie is the new pop music.
But Vagrant had been interested for a while. Like I said, it’s a weird time to be in a band, because record sales are just going down and down and down. I’ve heard the last ten years, sales have gone down 10-20 percent a year, and that’s compounded, of course. But it’s like Vagrant five or ten years ago was a different label because of selling power. I mean, they still have a great team, but it’s very different. They basically just put the record out and go from there. It’s cool though – they’re nice people.
IF: I think my favorite song you guys did was that split 7-inch you guys did with William Elliot Whitmore, where you each covered a song of the other. How did that come about?
AT: He’s been our best musical friend since the beginning. We’ve known each other about eight years, and we’ve toured together probably seven or eight times.
IF: And he’s been featured in one of your songs?
AT: I just called him up and I was like, “Hey, dude. You should sing over the phone for this backup vocal part.” And he’s a fan of our band, and we’re big fans of his, and we had talked about doing it for years, and we finally got around to covering each other’s songs, which was really fun. We chose to do his as a samba. It’s so fun to reinvent songs that you already like, or songs that you think aren’t produced the right way. We’ve got a bunch more of those in the works, but they’ve been kind of delayed due to other projects.
IF: And who put that 7-inch out?
AT: I just put them out. We have our own label for all our vinyl. We’re doing all this 7-inch stuff. We did an instrumental soundtrack to a science fiction book last year called Finch. It’s like, a sci-fi, noire thriller.
IF: Speaking of that, one of your songs was used in a trailer for Inglorious Basterds. Did you just get a call randomly?
AT: Email, yeah. I remember when I got the email I was driving, and I was stopped at a construction stop, and I was just like, “Holy shit!” Because I was already excited about seeing the movie.
IF: It was a sweet movie.
AT: Yeah, it was my favorite movie I had seen in years, which was a nice coincidence. I went into the movie thinking it was going to be the one Tarantino movie I wouldn’t like, just because we’re involved in some way. And then it was my favorite.
IF: I know you said you don’t listen to a lot of music, but can you name one favorite record, maybe from a while back?
AT: Sure, sure. 
When I listen to music I can know after thirty seconds whether or not I like something – it doesn’t matter how many times I listen to it. That said, there are a few things that the first time I hear them I think it’s funny because it’s so off-the-wall. And at first I’ll start to listen to it as a joke, but then I’ll realize that I love it. I felt that way when I first heard David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust when I was in sixth or seventh grade. And I was like, “What do these lyrics mean? ‘I’m an alligator’? ‘I’m a mama papa comin’ for you’? What is he talking about?” And then by eighth grade I realized that I fucking loved that album.
I feel the same way about Iron Maiden. I was like, “All these songs are about prophecies and wizards and shit. Come on.” And then I realized that this is probably one of the best bands to ever exist. I went and saw them last summer with Sarah and her little brother – it was so awesome. I realized I knew like, every word. So, let’s go with Iron Maiden and David Bowie.
IF: So, what are your general plans for the future?
AT: Wrapping up this US tour in about 10 days, which kind of flew by for a seven-week tour. And then go home for a few days and then Europe for five weeks. This fall we’re going to try to go to Australia – I’d love to do that. I’d like to do some unique shows. We’re trying to book this weird world tour, which is the idea that it wouldn’t like one trip, but we’re trying to play a bunch of unique places. We’re asking promoters from all over the world to reach out and make an offer. Like, “Okay, can you pay for the flights? Okay, we’ll do it.” Hopefully that will work out.
Listen to the album on the band’s myspace page, and then pick up a copy here.
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