Kill Gosling rediscovers its joy on the way to ‘Super Plume’

Coming off of 2024 EP Waster, Kill Gosling singer and guitarist Chandler Maguire became disenchanted with music, his disconnect fueled in part by the emotional distance he began to feel from the record.

“When I wrote the songs for that album, I was living by myself for the first time in a while, and I was depressed and drinking really, really heavily,” said Maguire, who recalled how he spent hundreds of hours in solitude playing the RPG video game series “Persona” in those lost months. “And the songs were an honest reflection of that six-month period of my life, but then I got sober, and I moved in with my girlfriend, and a lot about my life changed in a way that I think was really positive.”

This detachment intensified in the months following the EP’s release, with Maguire recalling how the band did a couple short tours, both of which left him feeling dissatisfied. At the same time, he said he began to put more pressure on the band, prioritizing outside voices that tried to tell him what he needed to do to find success, which further sapped the joy he’d once gotten from the music.

“And those were complicated feelings,” Maguire said. “This has been my passion my whole life. How the fuck do I make sense out of that?”

And so, Maguire stepped away, focusing his attention on building what he described as “a normal life,” buying a house, spending time with his partner, and hosting biweekly family game nights. For a brief stretch, he even considered that he might be done playing in bands, though a conversation with an older friend and veteran of the local scene softened the soil for an eventual return.

“He was like, ‘There’s no reason to make a crazy jump to quitting music. You’re just burned out. Take some time off and just chill for a bit.’ And I really appreciated that advice,” said Maguire, who gradually found space where his creative streak could fit comfortably within this new existence. “It was very natural, like, ‘Oh, well, I’m just living a normal life and doing stuff for fun. Music’s fun. I can kind of just slot that back into my life.’  … It helped me get back to a place where I’m not doing it because I feel obligated. I’m doing it because it’s something I’m passionate about.”

Much of new Kill Gosling album Super Plume recalls these internally tumultuous months when this remained more of an open question, Maguire grappling with his place both in the band and within the larger Columbus scene. “It’s a very meta, self-referential album in hindsight,” said Maguire, who will join bandmates Violet Eadie (guitars/vocals), Walter Maguire (bass), and Christian Gehring (drums) in celebrating the release of their new album at Cafe Bourbon Street on Saturday, Sept. 26, supported by Abel, BTS, and Sour Fiction. “It’s about being part of a music scene and being disappointed by your peers, and in a very selfish way being disappointed by your own work, and then trying to hash out those feelings.”

It’s also a hell of a great rock record, built on churning seas of melodic guitar that reflect the confusion (“Lost,” complete with Maguire’s admissions of falling apart), anger (“Fuck the World,” both slower and prettier than one might anticipate), and eventual catharsis (the album-closing “Crayon”) that the players navigated in bringing Super Plume to life. 

At times, only snippets of lyrics worm their way to the surface. Then there are others when the words disappear completely, vocals giving way to an immersive guitar churn that can hit like an intense, rhythmic nor’easter, such as the extended coda that closes out “Crayon.” “I was having so many weird feelings about music, and I was specifically  having a hard time getting it out in words,” Maguire said. “And so, yeah, I do think I was more so trying to speak through the composition and guitars and all of the stuff.”

Aspects of this were influenced by a shift in how the band approached the writing process, with the players first hashing out the music and Maguire then grafting on the lyrics rather than building everything around the words as they had in the past. “I just got tired of the really lyric-driven, very punky songs,” Maguire said. “I wanted to jam out a little bit more, play a little bit slower, play stuff that felt a little bit bigger. I wanted to focus less on fast and energetic and more on big and impactful. And so, it just made sense to focus on getting the instrumental side of it right first, because that was a place I hadn’t really gone yet. I think I want to switch it up every time I do a new project. … And if we do another Kill Gosling record, it’d be fun to go the opposite direction and be like, we’ve got pianos, we’ve got strings. Just make it a complete studio album.”