“It’s not for the locals,” says Michael C. Hall about a recent jaunt through Times Square in New York City. Not a part of the city typically frequented by the actor and singer, in the middle of the billboard-loaded box of dressed-up caricatures and sardine-packed streets is where his band Princess Goes filmed the video for their single “Come of Age.”
Initiated by Marcos Siega, who previously directed episodes of the former television drama Dexter with Hall, along with music videos for Blink-182, Weezer, and Papa Rock, the video for “Come of Age,” the title track of the band’s second album, wasn’t so far-fetched for the New York City trio. In 2014, drummer Peter Yanowitz and Hall first met while both were cast in the Broadway show Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Yanowitz later reconnected with Blondie keyboardist Matt Katz-Bohen during the touring version of the show.
In the video, the band is seen walking through the Times Square throngs, unbothered and more captivated by the ambiguous lyrics that seem to fit the exaggerated, Hollywood-blown surroundings: Godzilla goggles seeing nothing but King Kong / Makes it hard to get along / Flavors of phobia, tastes of disdain / Your pocket mirror now a proxy for your brain. “Come of Age” is a dramatic synth-pop exhibit of some psychological quandaries and disloyalties that often spread through synthetic environments: Did you really mean it, when you told me I was good? / Or were you just the devil spitting Hollywood? / I heard you talking, talking, yeah I was in the hall / Your confidante can’t keep a secret after all / I’m dying to forgive you, I’d be foolish to forget / All the trash you screamed in the ocean.
Driven to jump into more frenzied elements on occasion, the video for “Come of Age” set a similar tone to their visuals for Thanks for Coming single “Vicious,” which was filmed on New York City subways just before the onset of the pandemic in March of 2020. The more unperturbed manners of the city also led them around Times Square, unscathed.
“New Yorkers are just unfazed by the circus of Times Square,” says Hall. “We were just a little sideshow, among many sideshows—most of them bigger than us that night.”
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Siega first approached the band about the video during the recent writers’ strike when he needed a project to work on. “He had a camera operator and somebody feeding the sound to us and we just wandered through Times Square with somebody in front of us, walking backward, trying not to trip over curbsides and other people, and it was really fun.”
“Come of Age” initially came together from a melody Katz-Bohen played on an old Yamaha PF15 keyboard he found lying in the trash in Bushwick, Brooklyn. “It was a rare find,” says Katz-Bohen. “You don’t see these keyboards around. They’re not very good, and no one likes them very much, but it does have a very particular set of sounds. We were able to clean it up and make ‘Come of Age.’”
Hall adds “From highbrow international opera stars to trash … we welcome all help.”
He’s referencing opera singer Anthony Roth Costanzo, who used to reside in the building where they record, and appears on the darkened ballad “Saving Grace.” Throughout Come of Age are visitations by other artists and writers, who lived or worked in and around the band’s recording space in a residential building on Union Square in New York City, including Maria Peña Paris. The poet, who lives across the hall from the band’s recording space, recites the lyrics in the bridge of the penultimate “Whatever Whispers.”
Co-produced with Brandon Bost, Come of Age is less of a coming of age, and more of a second coming for the band, though the band did shorten its name before the second album from Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum—a name conjured by Katz-Bohen’s daughter when asked what she would name her band when she was older.
Searching for something bigger, sonically than before, Come of Age was a regeneration of sound waiting to transpire since the band’s self-titled EP in 2020 and debut a year later Thanks for Coming.
The resplendently popped “Let It Go” was the first song that helped set in motion what the band was striving for, musically, with Come of Age, says Yankowitz. “It had this big vision, this big sound, and something different for us,” he says. “It was definitely more anthemic, and pop, then a couple of other songs came after that, and they had this certain grandiosity, and it was hard to stop. That’s probably a dangerous loop to get into as songwriters, to chase those bigger songs, but he [Hall] got into that, and we were able to string together our version of those songs, thinking bigger than space, and Union Square, where we make music.”
In hindsight, some common matters did resurface throughout the 12 tracks of Come of Age, but Hall is reluctant to reveal too much about a song, aside from letting the lyrics speak for themselves. “I feel like it sort of reduces its potential to mean whatever it needs to mean to whoever listens to it, but there seems to be a common thread of the way the wider machine that we’re all interfacing with, in this modern world, how it might interact with and conspire against the personal,” says Hall. “And maybe there’s some sort of emerging appetite for a solution beyond whatever the machine might offer.
For Hall, who is the chief songwriter for the band, the formulation of a song isn’t always linear. “There are so many ways, every possible and potential permutation applies,” said Katz-Bohen. “Sometimes Mike will send a vocal melody, lyrical idea around, and we’ll build a song on that. Sometimes Peter and I will be jamming on some ideas, and then we’ll edit it in our individual studios and send it around to Mike.”’
Within the trio, there are rarely any qualms about lyrics. “I don’t think that the time where Matt or Peter have said, “You know what, I’m not cool with a band saying that, nor have we done that to any member,” shares Hall. “It’s difficult to talk about because there’s some sort of way in which our three differing sensibilities intersect that seems to bear fruit and cohere and be complimentary. We don’t really analyze it. We don’t talk about the rules, how it’s supposed to go, or who’s supposed to contribute.
Songs arrive more through a natural process and selection for the band. “We didn’t make a decision to be a band,” adds Hall. “It just sort of happened organically, and we all were there for it and have continued to show up for it. It’s kind of some sort of mysterious alchemy. I guess that’s ultimately the case. Anytime you collaborate on something that’s beyond your ability to describe.”
Yankowitz adds, “Thank God Mike is writing the lyrics because that has to be the hardest, most elusive part of songwriting and the one that keeps me from writing more songs.”
Recently returning from a series of shows in Europe, where the band played several cities for the first time, including Paris, France, along with some shows in Belgium and the Netherlands, Princess Goes is continuing with more shows in the U.S. throughout December 2023 and January of 2024 with more to come.
Extending themselves, sonically and lyrically, Come of Age highlights a band with very few boundaries. Hall predicts the band may stretch beyond their previous space and experiment with a different setting by recording somewhere new in the future, but there’s no definitive course. “There are so many things we’re always thinking about and gravitating towards, it’s hard to pin it,” says Hall. “We’re not limited to one musical concept.”
Come of Age was also never a declaration that the band had “grown up” or that the listener should as well, says Hall. They initially worked around the similar format of a title track with three works like their previous release Thanks for Coming, which was a subtle nod to anyone listening to their first album. The idea of a title track with three words seemed like a fitting format for their next message with Come of Age.
“I guess now we’re demanding that those listeners grow up,” jokes Hall of the title. “No, there was no master announcement about us or admonishment for anyone, but I guess we felt good enough about how we were evolving to let that be the title. Part of it could be that the band has grown.”
He laughs, “Maybe it’s in sync with my vague, rambling answers about anything thematically that the album might be about. Maybe ‘Come of Age’ is a way to encapsulate some sort of aspiration in terms of how to address all that. It’s reductive, even if I were to say what a song means, it might be out of sync with what it means to somebody else, and I think we all feel that once we make the music and release it, it doesn’t belong to us anymore.”
Photos: Joe Gall / Courtesy of Tell All Your Friends PR
