For some bands momentum can make or break a career, but Marmozets were always powerful enough to survive without it. Just as the band was breaking big and playing massive festivals, their singer Becca Macintyre seriously injured her leg and the band quickly found themselves having to reset. Now with their new album Knowing What You Know Now the band is already pushing beyond their original energy to be even bigger than before. We caught up with singer Becca Macintyre ahead of the band’s Montreal show at Petit Campus on March 16 to talk about isolation and how they bounced back from a damaging injury.

Northern Transmissions: How did Gil Norton come on to produce your record, and what did they bring as a producer?

Becca Macintyre: It’s kind of crazy. With us, we’re definitely people that want to work with producers who like our music and are excited about our music. Gil got in touch with us before the first album and we’d already worked on it at that point. When we started out our manager had a bunch of emails with Gil, so the connection was there. We’d worked with quite a few producers and nothing was working, so our producer suggested him for this record since he’d been in touch. We arranged to meet him, and there was so much excitement that we felt his vibe right away. We love the guy so we’re planning to work more with him.

NT: How did the isolation of Monmouth help you on this record?

BM: It was amazing because so much had happened in our friends lives that it was nice to just spend time with people in one room. People were all eating around the table together, which I loved. It wasn’t isolating because we spent so much time together, and we made the album easily. It was strange at times but it was awesome.

NT: I understand you’d written almost 50 songs since 2015, so how did you focus things in to the few that made it onto your record?

BM: We were just in that mode where you write when you need to write. There’s a difference between writing and writing with all your cards out. It felt so real and not forced, we’d execute writing in this way until the point where we found where we wanted to go. It was actually the last 13 or 14 songs that made it onto the album. With Gil, we didn’t have this idea where wanted to sound like this and not that, but we’d show Gil bands like the Foo Fighters and tried to get that tone.

NT: What kept you driven to keep going after the injury setback in 2015, and how did it inspire your music?

BM: I got to a point where I was kind of done. As a performer I love to express myself through movement, and there was such a time away when it happened that Marmozets didn’t feel real for a bit. In the back of my head, we’d done ten years of this and there’s nothing else really, it’s what I wanted to do. I just pushed myself and found the right things that were important for me and moved forward. We were being very positive and then once we got there the music was easier to be excited about.

NT: On this note, how are you gearing your live show to be just as crazy without risk of injury?

BM: You have it or you don’t. You can go out and see bands but they’ll just stand there singing. People have always you can stand still and sing, but I don’t know this is just what I’m doing. It’s real energy, I’m sweating and pouring my heart out. There’s not one night where I can’t be asked, the moment you step out on the stage you’re on. We write music to get that energy and let loose.

NT: Noting how much you guys have bounced back, what’s next?

BM: We’re just going to keep writing and touring as much as we can to ride that energy. Things are really looking up after our years away, so we’re going to keep pushing Marmozets as far as we can!

Words by Owen Maxwell.