Meet Being Dead, the Texas band who refuse to be taken too seriously

A word of warning to the wise or, for that matter, anyone gearing up to interview Being Dead in the future: take a sizeable pinch of salt before doing so.

In the time we spend in the company of Austin-based duo Falcon Bitch and Schmoofy, we’re met with wild yarns about having their faces replaced after being involved in a head-on collision, watching videos of unlikely animal pairings on the dark web and getting involved in dark magic.

Is it confusing? A little. But it’s the proof that this duo don’t take themselves too seriously – a theme that runs throughout their music too. Their 2023 debut When Horses Would Run allowed them to garner a captive audience who fell in love with their surreal word-play, surf-rock riffs and unrepentant silliness.

On the follow-up, the forthcoming EELS, things get even stranger. The lead single ‘Firefighters’, as Falcon explains, is told from “the perspective of a Dalmatian on a fire team”.

But at the same time, it’s a darker and more sonically varied proposition than that debut too. It’s a fun and surprising record, but just make sure you’ve still got that pinch of salt to hand…

Where do we find you guys right now?

Falcon: We’re in Austin right now. Cody [Falcon Bitch] is in my room right now and I’m at work. I just lock him in there with a couple of things, pots and pans and wooden spoons and stuff. He just has a time by himself in there and he just rummages around and sniffs things and he has his play life.

Sounds fun! Does living in Austin help to feed your creativity?

Falcon: Well, the community is thriving, that’s for sure. There’s definitely something to be said about being inspired by watching friends do crazy shit on stage and make beautiful things.

Cody: You know, it’s so hot here too that there’s not much else to do. You gotta lock yourself away and play music if you wanna not have to take a shower. It’s so hot that when you go outside that’s when you get stinky. I think that’s what it is.

EELS, your second album, arrives later this year. What’s the overarching story of it?

Cody: This one’s a little darker, a little more mysterious, I think. It’s like playtime is over and now it’s time to be bad.

Falcon: If we ever had a nightclub, this would be our deep cuts and house album. And by that I mean it sounds nothing like that, but it feels like that for us. It took so long to make When Horses Would Run and this one is just more representative of what we’re about interested in right now so it feels fun to put this out.

If it’s darker and more mysterious, how did you end up heading in that direction?

Cody: We just got really into clubbing and we were in taking the environment that we were in and bringing it home to the afters and we wanted to write something like what we were just dancing to for five hours.

Falcon: And it’s like, sweat is just pouring off you and you become delusional at a certain point when you’re clubbing that late into the night or, you know, you’re sleep deprived in a way and you’re really pushing your body to the limit and your mind kind of spirals with it.

But at the same time, we were also getting into some really freaky stuff on the dark web and I think we were just getting into magic, like darker magic stuff and Kriss Angel. So maybe that had an effect on our subconscious pysche.

The dark web? Was there any weird stuff in particular that you encountered?

Falcon: Well, there was deep cut of videos that showed being cute and animals being friends with each other when you wouldn’t expect them to be. There’s a horse and a cute dog that are best friends, a cow and a cat that are best friends, you know, weird web stuff.

Cody: It made us wonder if there’s a hidden background or another story going on. It made us think what is reality. Are we in a Matrix situation?

Falcon: Yeah, in particular Cody you lost your head with that stuff!

There’s a sense of mystery and silliness that’s followed you around. I saw in one interview you met as Cinnabon workers and in another you met at Yale. *What* is the actual story?

Cody: Well, in order to work at Cinnabon you have to have a college degree. That’s something they don’t tell you. And we thought because we were both aspiring to do that for so long you can’t just get in by going to MIT or any other college. So we decided to shoot for the stars and met at Yale. We had a connection of realising how crazy it is to go to this incredibly prestigious school to get a job at a cinema?

Of course, that makes sense.

Falcon: Well, the thing is we found out that we had had already met before Cinnabon. We had been in a motorcycle accident, head on collision and completely lost our faces. They were doing reconstructive surgery and put different faces on our heads, which is why we didn’t recognise each other.

Tell us about Firefighters, the first single from the new album.

Falcon: Well, it’s about a dalmatian on a fire team and it’s told from the perspective of a dalmatian that’s like part of this team. That’s why it’s so spunky and frisky, because dogs have that raw energy.

Will that raw energy translate into your live shows?

Cody: Yeah, for sure. We definitely want people gyrating and feeling their bodies close together for sure.

And finally, this is our Play Next series. What’s your elevator pitch?

I would say we’re supermodels turned chefs, turned musicians that happened to body build on stage too.