MuteMath finally in ‘Spotlight’

• By JOHN WIRT
• Music writer
• Published: Oct 30, 2009

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From Eminem to Kiss to Lenny Kravitz, big music names are visiting New Orleans this weekend for the 11th annual Voodoo Experience. The touring MuteMath, whose song, “Spotlight,” appeared on the hit Twilight soundtrack last year, is traveling down river, too, but once it gets there, it’ll be home.

Formed in 2001, MuteMath features New Orleans area native Paul Meany plus Missouri transplants Darren King and Greg Hill and Texan Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas.

MuteMath singer Meany recruited Hill to New Orleans following a long-distance collaboration.

“I didn’t have to twist his arm,” Meany said last week from Grand Rapids, Mich., where MuteMath performed at the Orbit Room. “It was kind of a coming-of-age time for him. He’s from a town of like 5,000 people, so New Orleans was bright lights, big city.”

In retrospect, the leap Hill and MuteMath’s other two non-Louisianans made to New Orleans was a fortuitous move. MuteMath released its well-received major label album debut in 2006, contributed “Spotlight” to the Twilight soundtrack in 2008 and issued its second major-label album, Armistice, July 3.

But Armistice was the album that almost never was. Debilitating creative differences struck the band when it gathered at a rented house in Uptown New Orleans to prepare for its career-hinging second album.

Meany didn’t see the troubles coming.

“I was thinking this record would be a picture painted far more harmoniously, but it did not turn out that way,” he said. “We beat our heads against the walls more than we should have. I’m not sure why, but all of us brought a certain degree of ambition to the table, all of us had different perspectives on how to move forward.”

The members of MuteMath planned to record songs they’d written on the road and produce the album themselves. But six weeks passed and the band had nothing but a depleted budget and looming deadlines.

“Half of us loved a certain song, the other half hated it,” Meany said. “We couldn’t find healthy compromises.”

Realizing it needed a pair of outside ears, MuteMath contacted Oxford, Miss.-based producer Dennis Herring (Modest Mouse, Elvis Costello, The Hives). At first, it was an informal relationship.

“He was the one producer we met with who supported the idea of shelving everything we’d worked on,” Meany said. “Tough pill as that was to swallow, we knew it was our only choice, the only way we were gonna probably find a record that we all liked. So we did it. The album took us a lot longer than we’d planned, but we’re definitely much happier with the end result.”

Future Twilight song “Spotlight” was the first completed music to emerge from MuteMath’s new writing sessions.