Before Louis XIV singer and guitarist Brian Karscig can tell me about the band’s latest album, “Slick Dogs and Ponies,” there is a backstory I have to understand. To tell me about the songs he and childhood friend and fellow vocalist, Jason Hill, wrote for their newest effort, he needs to take me back to 2004 - before they became critical darlings – to when the freshly signed band, comprised of Karscig, Hill, drummer Mark Maigaard, and later bassist James Armbrust, were in their San Diego studio, banging out the chaotic, spontaneous tracks that would become their first label album, “The Best Little Secrets are Kept.”


Karscig needs me to know about this, not because he wants relate the formula for their success, but because, as he says, “The world kind of did a 180 from 2004 to 2007.”When Karscig says this, he is not just talking about the immediate world of him and his bandmates – although to be sure, the success of “Best Little Secrets” has certainly caused some shifts for Louis XIV – but the larger sphere that gives rise to their creativity.

“There were wars, there was everything. There were just a lot more things to get inspiration from than girls,” Karscig says with an ironic laugh that suggests he might have guessed my next question, because he knows as well as I do that when you talk about his band’s music, you’ve got to talk a little sex.

Sex is no small matter when discussing Louis XIV, who netted themselves a moderate helping of controversy thanks in part to the racy lyrics of the single “True Love is Blind” from their last album. But, explains Karscig, there is a very practical rationale for how women are described in their songs.“We wanted to make songs about women that were the way we talk to our own women and girlfriends. Nobody says, ‘Oh, cutie pie, I love being in love with you,’ it’s like, ‘C’mere, sugar, and give me a kiss.’” When we get into talking about specific lyrics, Karscig offers another take.

“It was just a certain place in time where we were having too much sex or not enough sex, so we decided to sing about it.”

Despite the criticism, Karscig insists that the move toward more varied subject matter has nothing to do with detractors and resulted from a fresh mindset born of three years away from the studio.“We didn’t shy away from it, there was just more that inspired us this time around.”

Whatever its root, this expanded consciousness is evident on the versatile “Slick Dogs and Ponies,” which showcases the depth, as well as the familiar fun-loving playfulness of the Californians. “Everything really has its own personality on the record, from the seriousness of “Air Traffic Control” and “Hopesick” to the, you can tell we lost our minds [feel] on “Free Won’t be What it Used to Be” and “Guilt by Association’,” says Karscig, who contrasts this record’s feel to the previous album, which he characterizes as sounding more like, “one big party.”


One thing that hasn’t changed is the impromptu manner in which some of the newest songs were created. Much of the material came about organically, as opposed to through the more regimented processes that Karscig said he had encountered as a member of other groups.“At this point in our career, there’s something that’s exciting and fun and kind of makes us still feel a new type of creativity by just kind of having a blank canvas and going in there and recording on it.” Karscig explains while noting that some songs, like the new album’s opener “Guilt by Association,” required more forethought.

The same anarchic atmosphere that spawned “Slick Dogs and Ponies” can be expected on Louis XIV’s current tour, Karscig assures. When asked to describe the upcoming shows, his excitement is evident. “Madness,” he says, and, following a pensive pause, “I’m biased, but I think people will be blown away.”

As Karscig and I end our meandering trip through the past – the ambivalent feelings he had about the break-up of his previous band (an event that provided the influence for “Air Traffic Control”), the longing felt by a bandmate over a love that never was (the basis for “Hopesick”), the momentary pressure felt by the band to create another exceptional album – to the present, where Karscig is trying to fix the more immediate problem of a broken shoe, it is apparent that for all the change, the fellows of Louis XIV are still very much aimed at being, as Karscig puts it, their “own favorite band again.”

“We do what we love, we’ve been doing it a long time; we’re still having fun; we’re still best friends; and we’re lucky enough to keep doing it. You can make fun of that all you want, but we’re stoked.”