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Exploring Crash Love with AFI Guitarist Jade Puget
by Troy Rogers
 Three
years after AFI topped the Billboard charts at
#1 with the release of "Miss Murder" from Decemberunderground,
the guys of AFI - Davey Havok, Jade Puget, Adam
Carson, and Hunter Burgan - are back with Crash
Love, the eighth studio album from the popular
California rockers. Dating back to the early days
of AFI, fans have embraced the evolution of AFI
as the band chased its own progression as a maturing
collective. Now with Crash Love, which the guys
of AFI say is their favorite album to date, fans
get a more rock based AFI as the lead track, "Medicate,"
climbs its way to the top of the charts.
With Crash Love out to AFI fans everywhere, we caught up with AFI guitarist/keyboardist, Jade Puget to get the scoop on the band's approach to the new album, various themes and layers within Crash Love, the evolving sound of AFI, the crash of pop-culture, and the release of the new "Medicate" video.
THE DEADBOLT: Between Decemberunderground and Crash Love, musically, where did you guys feel you needed to go as a band?
JADE PUGET: I guess we needed to go somewhere different, because Decembeunderground had a lot of electronic layers on it and it had this certain sound that was covered on that record. So, for this new record, I didn't want to go back to the electronic thing, because in order to top that we just have to be more electronic and we would start sounding like an electro band sound. So we wanted this to be more like a rock record.
THE DEADBOLT: How tough was it to work on a rock record without losing the essence of AFI in the process?
 PUGET:
Well, it's pretty easy. At this point, working
on the eighth record, what we do is going to
sound like AFI because there's a certain [essence].
When Davey and I write songs together, there
are things that come out, that have been coming
out of us, we started together. So I think those
things are always going to be recognizable.
There's been rock elements in AFI's music for
years now. As far back as The Art of Drowning
there were some sort of rock elements entering
into our music. So it's not like we did a complete
180 like ska to hip-hop.
THE DEADBOLT: In some ways, for people who say you've lost some of your darker identity, those layers of the band are alive and well in the lyrics, like the pain in "Torch Song" or the look at the world in "Sacrilege". What do you think? Do you think you guys lost that darker identity?
PUGET: I don't know. I mean, darker identity is kind of a vague term. So it could mean anything. It could mean the lyrics. It could mean, "Are we playing less minor chords, or is it hardcore like screaming?" So obviously our music has changed. But I don't know. I don't ever think of it in those terms. When I'm writing a song, or when Davey and I are writing a song, I don't really think, "Let's write a dark song or this song's not dark enough or this song's too dark." So it's hard for me to have an objective perspective on it. But for me, this record and the record before it and the record before that, it's all been a natural progression of AFI and where we are as people and songwriters
THE DEADBOLT: There also seems to be a sense of isolation with "Medicate" and the lyrics , "So I've come to find everyone goes away. I'm destined to remain." Where does that isolation come from?
 PUGET:
I think a lot of the lyrics, and especially
that song in particular, has to do with people
that set themselves up in these destructive
relationships with other people, purposely set
themselves up in these situations so that the
things that they love can be taken away. That's
to sort of paraphrase Davey throughout the lyrics.
But I think a lot of the lyrics touch on themes
of isolation because there are themes that run
through other songs on the record about this
kind of pop-culture crash that we're experiencing
as far as culture crash, which is where the
title comes from, where everything is sort of
being degraded, whether it be art or literature
or music. So, for Davey and all of us, we feel
isolated from what's really going on in wider
culture right now. I think a lot of people do.
THE DEADBOLT: It's interesting that there's a big anthem chorus feel within the album that goes back to the 70s and 80s, yet it sounds really new because you guys are the only ones really doing it again with Crash Love.
PUGET: Well, that is one thing, like
we were talking about earlier, about recognizable
AFI that runs through our different musical
changes. That is something that I think I'll
never lose a love for is the anthemic chorus.
When I first started writing music, that was
the first thing that I wrote, or tried to write
at least, was the anthemic chorus. For me, it's
just ingrained in my head. When I hear other
people's music and there's no chorus, or no
recognizable big chorus, it just seems strange
to me. It's like when you hit the chorus, it
has to be the big pay-off and be uplifting and
be big. So I think that is an element that is
this record in a different way than other AFI
records but will always be part of AFI.
THE DEADBOLT: As you progress, is it tough to deal with a certain expectation that you guys should sound like you did when you were younger?
PUGET: No. I mean, I've been in the
band for eleven years now and that was going
on twelve years ago [laughs]. I remember going
on when AFI released "Shut Your Mouth and Open
Your Eyes" and it was a straight-up hardcore,
probably the hardest record and people were
complaining about that one, complaining that
AFI sold out somehow. So the complaints of changing
and or selling out sometimes is the same thing
in people's minds. That has been around so long
and is really so silly that we stopped caring
about that many, many eons ago.
I kind of realized, every time you release
a record there are going to be tons of people
who love it and people who don't like it, people
who want you to sound like the last one or the
first one or the third one. It's like if you
tried to adjust your sound to fit what people
want, there's no way because everyone wants
something different. So the only real way to
go is follow your own instincts. If they follow
you, that's great. If not, then at least you
know you did something that's true to what you
believe in and not trying to please other people.
 THE
DEADBOLT: On Crash Love, "Darling I Want
to Destroy You" sounds different than a lot
of the other tracks. It kind of took me back
to the Seattle sound of the 90s. How did you
guys approach the diversity between straightforward
and more sophisticated tracks?
PUGET: I think one of the reasons that one sounds different from other songs on the record is that it was the only song, since I've been in the band, that was written from a jam. All of the songs have always been written by Davey and I and that one was we were just in practice one day and I started playing the riff and we just kind of jammed out the song real quick and it became that one. So I think that one is a product of a different style of song writing so it came out sounding - To me it sounds more like sort of like The Cure, but yeah.
THE DEADBOLT: Since you guys have been around through a number of changes in sounds on the scene, how do you make sense of the term "pop-punk" so easily thrown around these days? Doesn't it dilute what punk is all about?
PUGET: Not to me. But I started listening to punk in the 80s so my concept of punk is completely different than probably most people who weren't around at that time. To me, pop-punk was a totally valid, great thing and one of the things I grew up listening to. But to me it's stuff like Screeching Weasel and Descendents and just stuff like that. So whatever is being called pop-punk today, I don't even really know what it is or what is being called pop-punk. But it will never really conform to my definition of it, so I guess it isn't valid as far as this argument. But like I say, I love the pop-punk of the 80s and 90s.
THE DEADBOLT: How is Crash Love different than when you guys first sat down and really started to get into it at the beginning of the process?
 PUGET:
Well, over the course of eleven years, people
change a lot. I mean, think back to what you
were listening to eleven years ago and what
you were wearing and what you were into, it
changed drastically, and the same as for us.
Being songwriters, you don't stay the same either.
The first song I ever wrote with Davey was "Malleus
Maleficarum" on Black Sails in the Sunset. That's
where our heads were at eleven years ago. Some
fans out there might be psyched if we were still
writing the same stuff that we were writing
eleven years ago, but I'd be pretty disappointed
with myself if that's the best I could do, was
write the same record over and over. Whether
or not we succeed or whether we stumble, or
whatever happens with this band, we are on the
trajectory of trying different things and chasing
our sound and I know we'll have to change.
THE DEADBOLT: What are you guys planning
on doing for the next video?
PUGET: I don't know. We're in the process
of deciding what the next song will be, so ...
THE DEADBOLT: Whose decision was it to put the gold in the "Medicate" video, the band or Paul?
PUGET: That was us. We had the concept of just doing a classically shot live performance because the song is sort of a driving sort of rock song. When you get treatments from directors, it's always like this convoluted plot, which might make sense on paper but when you're watching the videos you can't tell what plot they're trying to convey. So we wanted to just do a rock video for a rock song and we had the idea of kind of doing the black and white with the gold accents and then Paul kind of helped us. He's really good on the visual side and just kind of realized that.
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