The talking head interview is a fairly common trope in music docs. And Everytime You Lose Your Mind: A Film About Failure is no exception, featuring plenty of talking heads speaking on the music of its subjects, ’90s alternative rockers Failure, from the band themselves and their musical contemporaries (Butch Vig, Steve Albini, Tool’s Maynard James Keenan) to those who took inspiration from Failure’s sound (Hayley Williams of Paramore, Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups) to a few more unexpected appearances (Margaret Cho? Sure, why not?) and even the inevitable appearance of Rick Beato, who manages to throw out a hilariously self-important sounding soundbite that begins with the line, “As a listener with a master’s degree in music …”
Also making appearances are Jason Schwartzman, David Dastmalchian and Melissa Auf Der Mar, among several others. And while that’s a wide ranging cast of characters, all of them speak in general of a common theme – the impressiveness of the band’s sound, both from a compositional and a production standpoint. As someone who never really delved too deeply into Failure’s discography beyond 1996’s Fantastic Planet, it was a bit of an eye opener to hear some of these details, particularly the moments when the members of the band themselves speak on the influence of The Cure on some of their earliest work. I hadn’t thought of it before, but strip away some of the other window dressing and yeah, The Cure influence is definitely apparent.
While the film exists primarily to celebrate Failure, it does go a bit deeper than just being a puff piece on the band, shining a spotlight on some of the turmoil that led to their 1997 breakup before their eventual reunion years later. Chief among these is Greg Edwards’ struggle with drug abuse and addiction that was a key reason for them breaking up in the first place. To its credit, the film doesn’t shy away from examining these darker parts of Failure’s story, especially notable since director Ken Andrews is actually in the band.
If I’m being honest, for the longest time I thought of Failure as nothing more than a footnote in rock history. Sure, I’d heard “Stuck On You” back in the day, and a few of their other songs, but at the time, I kind of wrote them off as a band I didn’t really need to look into much deeper – after all, Hum pretty much filled my needs as far as heavy, distorted shoegaze and metal-adjacent alt-rock sounds went. I’ve since come around a bit on Failure and can see the obvious inspiration they’ve had on the next generation of musicians, with the band’s legacy now firmly established as cult heroes for a certain segment of music fans. Everytime You Lose Your Mind delves into that legacy and while it is, true to its title, a film about Failure, it’s also a success story of sorts.
