People start feeling as though they’re entitled to give their opinion on something and that they should be heard. There may be some validity to that, but when it starts distorting the purity of what we feel like we’re trying to do as a band it needs to be corrected. So, accessibility is fine to a degree, but it’s a slippery slope. – Paul Meany

Of all the occupational hazards faced by rock musicians, the threat of the sophomore slump is the great equalizer. Regardless of musical style, off-stage behavior, or sales numbers, it’s an unavoidable fact that if you’ve done well on your first go-round, the stakes are going to be higher when you role out album number two. The expectations of fans and management can be crushing, particularly in a day and age when consumers are pushing for more and more access to artists, handlers have expectations around social media and fan engagement, and no one seems able to guarantee that a finished record will even make it to its release date without getting leaked. All of which is to say nothing of the self-imposed stress any artist faces when trying to live up to their own past successes.

Paul Meany knows all about the fear of the sophomore slump. He should. He lived through one. Following the release of their critically acclaimed debut, Meany and his band mates, who together make up Mutemath, a percussion-driven, jazz-inflected New Orleans rock quartet known for impossibly energetic live performances, were faced with the challenge of building on the measurable success of their first record while remaining faithful to their own personal vision.

After an agonizing journey through a creative desert, during which they shelved an entire album of material and brought in a second producer, Meany and company finally unveiled Armistice. For all the pains the band had taken to account for the opinions of others during the gestative process, their second album received a tepid response from both critics and fans. While Meany stands by the record, the process of making it clearly wore him out. So, when it came time to get to work on album three, Meany, along with drummer Darren King and bassist Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas, decided to hole up in the singer’s New Orleans home where they could be free from the chatter of the outside world. The fruit of their labors, Odd Soul, was released last fall. I reached Meany during an afternoon break ahead of a Valentine’s Day show in Salt Lake City.