Max Collins knows exactly what you think of him. “Yeah, hyper relevant,” he deadpans, before the first question even lands. Two decades after “Inside Out” put Eve 6 on the Top 40 (back when guitars could still sneak in between Britney Spears singles), Collins is leaning into the absurdity of it all—both on Twitter and on Grim Value, the band’s scrappy EP that sounds more like the Olympia compilations he used to worship than the radio-polished alt-rock that made his name.
“We were record dorks,” he says. “Ordering from K Records, listening to the Mises, hiding the fact we were also listening to pop radio.” That contradiction carried into their career. First record, they were outliers among Lilith Fair soft rock and techno. Second record, they were a Duran Duran-ish pop act trying to open for Kid Rock. “We’ve always felt misunderstood,” he admits.
On Grim Value, Collins lets his wordplay and gallows humor off the leash. “I start making noises with my mouth,” he explains of his songwriting process. “Plug in words later. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m talking about until it’s done.” He thrives in that sweet spot of humor and sadness. “The Smiths, Fountains of Wayne, Belle & Sebastian… that’s the stuff. You can’t have one without the other.”
And then there’s Chevy Mustang, the parody project Collins started drunk on a half-empty tour with Congos that somehow roped in Evan Rachel Wood and Kevin Federline as collaborators. “It pulled me out of myself. When you’re not encumbered by your own ego, you discover new ways of singing. Everyone hates Chevy Mustang, but it prepared me for this moment.”
That “moment” includes embracing Eve 6’s meme-ified past. He started calling “Inside Out” the “heart in a blender song” because, well, his mom did. “Most hits are novelty songs,” he says. “That doesn’t mean they’re bad. But I don’t identify with the song at all, which lets me have fun with it the same way the audience does.”
He’s still taking swings though. A Twitter feud with Bass Drum of Death turned into a 72-hour collaboration. “I thought, ‘My hater’s really good—shit.’ Then he DM’d apologizing for being wasted in a snowstorm. Next thing, we wrote and released a song in three days.”
And while Grim Value dabbles in punk (“Angel of the Supermarket,” which he describes as “a cute little love song where she shoplifts a potato”), it also carries the sarcasm and nihilism that’s made him a strange kind of folk hero online. “Rock and roll isn’t for being self-serious,” he says. “It’s supposed to toy with you a little bit. Give you a feeling of freedom.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
