Q&A: Smirk uses Punk to Make Peace with His Past on ‘Speculative Fiction’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY ALEAH ANTONIO ☆
Photo by Emily Vicario
NICK VICARIO IS LIVING A WHOLE NEW LIFE—His punk band Smirk isn’t his first project, but it’s one where he’s frontmanning for the first time. After decades of playing in hardcore, indie and power pop bands since he was 12, Vicario is in a new home, a new city, with a wife and newborn to look out for.
Vicario spent most of his life in the Bay Area and Portland before moving to Los Angeles when he turned 30. He was finally going to network, make moves, do the music industry thing. Until his anxiety got the best of him, and going out and meeting people meant leaning on substances for support. “I was crashing cars, doing drugs,” Vicario says in his album bio. “I was doing horrible things and destroying my life.”
Vicario and I chatted on a Saturday, where he just finished working on new songs for Smirk in his Connecticut home. “It was three or four of those rock bottom events that led up to my mind needing to get out of there. Really, one. But it was a slow, gradual build,” he says.
Smirk’s new record Speculative Fiction, out today via Smoking Room, processes his past indiscretions while cursing the state of the world around him. It’s half personal, half political, unfurled in a fantastical despair. The dissonance of living in a world that treats you like trash, making decisions that you don’t agree with, feels too bizarre to talk about plainly.
Vicario calls on various friends to round out the record: Ceremony’s Ross Farrar, Advertisement’s Ryan Mangione-Smith, Chatterbox’s Andy Place. He also pulled more intentional inspirations for this record, leaning on metal and classic punk to refine his work.
Keep reading for Luna’s conversation with Smirk on being a new father and a musician, and how leaving LA sparked the start of Speculative Fiction.
LUNA: Where are you calling from right now?
SMIRK: Fairfield, Connecticut. That’s where I live, but we’re moving soon to Florida.
LUNA: What’s bringing you to Florida?
SMIRK: My wife’s parents live there, and we just had a kid. We want him to be close to them. We moved to Connecticut on a whim and we just don’t really know anyone, or love it here necessarily.
LUNA: What brought you to Connecticut?
SMIRK: I was living in LA and I reconnected with my ex-girlfriend from college. She was living in Charleston, South Carolina, and she was like, “Come on out and let’s reconnect.” So I did, and then we ended up getting married. I couldn’t handle Charleston; no disrespect to the place, but it just wasn’t for me and she was feeling the same way. I definitely wanted to be near or in a music city, so we picked Connecticut because of its proximity to New York City.
We actually drove up the whole East Coast looking for a little town that we might find interesting to live in.
LUNA: That’s a whole story in itself, how you guys got reconnected! I was curious about that, and I wanted to start with, where you’ve lived. You’ve moved a couple times, from growing up in Portland and spending time in California. Could you walk me through where you’ve lived?
SMIRK: So, I was born in Santa Rosa, California. My parents split when I was two, so my dad stayed in Santa Rosa and my mom moved us to San Francisco. I was there until I was seven, then she moved us to Portland. So I grew up in Portland but I was always back and forth seeing my dad down in California, so I kind of grew up in both places. Then when I turned 30, I moved down to LA to try and do the music thing. And it kind of worked, kind of didn’t.
LUNA: How many years were you in LA for?
SMIRK: Probably three and a half. I couldn’t really hack it.
LUNA: What was it about LA you felt like you couldn’t hack?
SMIRK: For some reason—like, I had a really great friend group, everyone was very supportive and everything—but I have pretty bad social anxiety. And you got to go out, you got to go to bars or shows, you know? I definitely used substances to help me with that, and that went a little too far.
That’s another catalyst for me leaving there. I was like, I gotta get my shit together. And this isn’t the place to do it for me at this moment in my life.
LUNA: When you moved to Connecticut, what was the difference like in different states?
SMIRK: Pretty drastically different. When I got here, I felt pretty isolated. I had deleted my personal Instagram account before I moved, so I just felt out of the loop. I don’t have a scene here like I did in Los Angeles. I kind of just put my head down and worked on writing these new songs. But there’s nowhere to play locally here, as far as a punk scene. I don’t really have a band here either. Here it’s just the ‘burbs. It’s very different. It’s a quiet lifestyle, but I enjoy it.
LUNA: You mentioned that you just had a kid, when did that happen?
SMIRK: He was born six months ago in New Haven, Connecticut. He’s started to laugh and he’s definitely talking his own language.
LUNA: That’s so sweet. You’ve been a musician for so long, but with being a father and starting a family and music being your career, how has that been?
SMIRK: It’s been pretty chill so far. Smirk took a couple years off because I got married and we got pregnant. It’s been working, but now that I’m booking tours and stuff, it’s gonna be tough to be away from them. My wife is very supportive. She understands that this is what I have to do, and I’ve been doing it for so long so she’s used to it. But I’m gonna miss both of them a lot when I come out on the road.
LUNA: You started Smirk as a project to put out songs that you were writing for another band, and to battle the boredom of the pandemic. Is that accurate?
SMIRK: Yeah, my old band Public Eye was kind of breaking up and I had all these songs for that. I decided to do a couple cassette releases and never planned on playing a show or touring or anything. But the response was pretty good, so I decided to run with it.
LUNA: This album feels very much like a before and after. It’s very refined. When I’m listening to it, I’m listening to the lyrics specifically. How has the songwriting process changed for you?
SMIRK: On those early records, it was more of a side project/recording project type-thing. It was definitely sillier in a lot of ways, especially the lyrics. Now, it does feel like a before and after thing. It’s more heavy lyrically, and musically sometimes. I’m glad you noticed that. It was my goal with this new one, not to make a drastic change, but definitely move forward with the project.
LUNA: How did you come up with the title?
SMIRK: Speculative Fiction is the album [that] obviously reflects parts of my life and things that I’ve been through, but lyrically on the record, I made it a little fantastical. I say really dark shit that obviously didn’t happen to me, but I don’t know… The lyrics are some kind of release of those emotions. Because it’s not totally my reality and situation, it feels like speculative fiction.
LUNA: Sometimes when you exacerbate a story or you make it a little out-of-reality, it feels more accurate, in a way.
SMIRK: Yes, totally. You’re so right. And because of that, it helps you process these things a bit more.
LUNA: What’s the difference between talking about your life experiences in a song versus telling others about it outside of music? Are you open with sharing your experiences with other people or are you more private about it?
SMIRK: Definitely private about it. I struggle with reaching out and asking for support from people. I feel like music is a way for me to get that out. Not that anyone’s listening to it for that reason, but at least for me it’s a release, you know?
LUNA: Is it easy for you to put your experiences into songs?
SMIRK: It’s kind of the only way I know how to write lyrics. I’m new to that. I find myself either writing about me and my shit that’s going on, or more outward-facing stuff, like the terrible state of the country and the world. That’s a big part of the record, too.
LUNA: The cover art for Speculative Fiction is tight. It’s also kind of dark. Can you tell me about the album cover?
SMIRK: My friend Dan Stanton, he lives in Portland. He’s an amazing photographer and he goes on these road trips just to take photos all around Oregon, Idaho, and everywhere, really. He took that photo… I think it’s in Astoria, Oregon. It’s a facade of an old bar that maybe is abandoned. I just saw that image and I was like, this is so cool.
LUNA: Is there anything else you want to mention about the record?
SMIRK: I’m just really excited for it to come out. It’s been three years since the last LP. I put a lot of time and effort into this one. I feel like every record I always say, “this is the best thing I’ve ever done,” but this one I really do feel that way about. I hope other people feel that way too.
