One of the most anticipated albums of 2014 is the return of Foster The People and their new Paul Epworth produced long player, ‘Supermodel’. Ahead of it’s release Gigslutz caught up with front man Mark Foster to find out more…

You guys have been away for a while, is that because you’ve been focusing on the new album or did you take some time out beforehand?

We took a little bit of time. After touring ‘Torches’ I did some travelling on my own, just to unwind. There were a lot of ideas that I was trying to tackle that ‘Torches’ had kind of provoked. From seeing different cultures and from seeing the world there were a lot things that were floating around in my head, so I travelled to some remote places, like India and Africa and spent some time alone doing some soul searching and then went into the studio with Paul Epworth our producer in Morroco and started writing some ideas down. That was the intial writing session for the next record and that was the end of 2012.

Following the massive success of ‘Torches’ did you feel any pressure of expectation when recording Supermodel? Did that effect the writing process at all?

Yeah, I’ve been afriad of the Sophomore slump since before our first record came out. I tried writing songs for the second record whilst we were still touring the first. I was trying to get a jump start on it, just because, as they say ‘you have your whole life to write your first record, but you’ve got nine months to write your next’. It’s a totally different headspace to be in to write all these songs in a short period of time. But for me the best thing that I did was take that fear and that pressure and just try to leave it outside the studio doors. It wasn’t easy, there are a lot of different things that I tried phychologically to leave that stuff out of the creation process. Once that was outside of the writing room though, the ideas started to flow more easily.

You recently scored the music for the film ‘Little Boy’, how was that? Did it influence the development of the new album at all?

After I was in Morocco with Paul (Epworth) and came up with the identity of what the record was going to sound like, I went back to LA and thought I was going to have some time to take a break and finish the songs for ‘Supermodel’, but ended up getting a call from a friend and he asked me if I wanted to score a film with him. I watched the film and I really liked it, so I took a slight detour from the record and went into the studio to score the film for five months. Every musical project I have ever worked on collectively have taught me multiple things that I have taken with me onto the next project. I’m sure there are a lot of things from the movie score that ended up going into ‘Supermodel’, but there’s nothing obvious I can tell you that I took from it, it was a separate thing.

How do you expect people to react to the new record? Following Torches it’s not what I expected, do you feel there’s been an evolution musically?

I really wrote the record for myself. There’s some songs on there that are good bridges from out last record like ‘Best Friend’, I think fans of Torches are going to immediately connect to that song, as well as the single ‘Coming of Age’. There’s a lot on this record that is going to surprise our fans as well. For us, its fun to continue to grow, I can’t write the same song twice, I don’t even try. Stylistically it’s really fun for me to musically explore. The exploration of song writing is more fun than the finished product of the song itself. I think you can always expect us as a band to explore into different sounds and to play with different genres and to keep changing, because musically I get bored really easily doing the same thing.

‘Pumped Up Kicks’ was a massive song, with a Grammy nomination and huge radio play. Did you ever feel like you had to almost re-write that for the new record?

When I wrote Pumped Up Kicks that came out of an authentic place. That song came out of the freedom of not thinking about it, but out of pure expression. I didn’t know it would become what it became, so i’m not going to then try to change the way that I write songs to try to recreate that. That’s still how I write. I try to write in a creatively free, non-pressure environment, that’s when the most authentic stuff comes out.

‘Coming of age’ is a great song and for me a perfect introduction to the new record. How did that song come about? Did you know straight away it was going to be a single?

After we finished we looked at the record as a whole, but Coming of Age felt like the first single, it’s a natural bridge from ‘Torches’ to the new record. It was between that and Best Friend.

In the UK you finished the ‘Torches’ campaign with three big shows at ‘Brixton Academy’. Are you looking to continue towards the path of Arena shows here or are you stoked to be where you are and take it as it comes?

I’ve never had a problem playing big shows. Some artists like to keep it small and intimate, but there’s a different energy about playing in front of a festival audience. Whatever happens is going to happen naturally. I write music to communicate to people and to me it’s a communal thing, so the more people the merrier.

What have you guys got planned for the rest of the year? Any UK shows or festivals?

We’re talking about coming back in March. I know that there’s some stuff getting worked out now for the summer, so we’ll be back in and out throughout the year, but I don’t have any dates for you just yet.