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Track By Track: Masked Intruder, 'Masked Intruder'

Pumping out pop-punk jams in between robbing liquor stores, Masked Intruder are criminals by day and musicians by night. With their self-titled debut coming out today (order here, AP caught up with frontman Intruder Blue to get the specifics on each song, which range from girls, cops, booze, lonliness and everything in between—including a Kirsten Dunst shout-out.

“25 To Life”
People are scared to fall in love because they don’t want to be tied down. I think that sucks because love is worth a shot. I guess I’m a sap, but I believe in love. I wrote this song as a fantasy of what I would say to the right girl if I ever had the chance. I would probably choke and say something dumb in real life. Maybe I could just be like, “Girl, I wrote this song about you even though I don't know you and you don’t know who I am and you probably think I’m creepy or whatever, but I will love you forever.  Want to make out?” Anyway, I think this song gets the record started really well. We knew pretty much right away that this was going to be the first song, and we built the record around that.

“How Do I Get To You”
This song is about how much it sucks to go after a girl when she doesn’t respond. Like, when you lay it all on the line and the person still doesn’t like you back, what are you going to do?  You just want to be like, “Hey–what the fuck?!” We don’t have the best luck with the ladies—probably because girls aren’t that into dudes that are, like, criminals or whatever. That’s discrimination if you ask me.  I think people just have to try and have open minds about stuff.  Who cares what I do for a living, you know?  It’s like, let me handle me and you handle you.  And, also, maybe you could let me handle you, if you know what I mean.  I mean, like, sex. Just because I may or may not have allegedly stolen most of the things I own doesn’t mean I don’t got love to give.

“I Don’t Wanna Be Alone Tonight”
Sometimes you just really don’t want to be all by yourself.  Being lonely is one of the saddest things.  When I get real lonely, I start thinking about whether or not there is some girl out there, somewhere, who is lonely, too.  And maybe, if we could just be together, we wouldn’t be lonely anymore.  I sometimes look up at the stars and wonder if there really is a girl out there for me.  And, if there is, I wonder if she is maybe looking up at the same stars.  And then I think, yeah, probably, because I’m pretty sure that everybody sees the same stars at night, because of how space works. This song is a personal favorite of mine. It’s simple and straight to the point. If I’m lonely, and you’re lonely, and you’re a pretty girl, why shouldn’t we be together? Why make it complicated?

“Unrequited Love”
I think this song is very relatable to people. Especially the kind of people that like pop-punk because we are all romantics and most of us are pretty insecure. I’m pretty sure that people who aren’t insecure listen to weird shit like Norah Jones or Dave Matthews.  That feeling of being all alone and unloved is easy to relate to. This song is about realizing that you might be one of those people in unrequited love. When I wrote this song, I was in a phase where I was eating a lot of ice cream, which is why I wrote the line about eating banana splits alone. The truth is that it isn’t always that terrible to eat a banana split alone. Sometimes it’s really cool, cause you get to eat way more.

“Breakin’”
The word “break” can mean a lot of things.  You can break a promise, or you can break a window.  You can tell somebody that you wanna “take a break” and really mean that you just want to break up.  You can have such a broken heart that you break a restraining order.  Then the cops show up. You make a break for it, but they nab you.  You can break out of prison, though that’s really hard to pull off.  Even though it’s one of the more up-tempo jams on the record, I think it really gets across the sadness of heartbreak.

“Heart Shaped Guitar”
It can be really hard to show somebody how you feel. Sometimes you try to win somebody's affection, but they just think you seem creepy and desperate. Two dudes can do the same exact shit and chicks will react totally differently based on how they look. If A.C. Slater walks up to a chick shirtless in a grocery store and asks her if she wants a backrub, she is going to be stoked. Intruder Green has tried that many times and nobody was stoked. This song is a centerpiece for the record because it’s in the middle and it's a good example of the kind of shit the songs are about. The female vocals are sung by Maura from Mixtapes.

“Am I Only Dreaming”
I’m pretty sure that this song is a favorite of the whole band. We wrote this one early on when we started writing for the record. After we put all the parts together and played it a few times, we fell in love with it and started really looking forward to recording it.  We were listening to a lot of '60s pop at the time, and the influence of that stuff is pretty obvious on this tune. The song is about wondering if maybe a girl could get into you. When I wrote it, I was picturing a girl in a second story window while I’m on the sidewalk and she sees me and I see her. She is like a princess in a castle, and I’m a dude on the other side of the moat.

“Stick 'Em Up”
This song is about robbery. People say it’s wrong, but I think people are too judgmental. Why does somebody deserve their money more than I deserve their money? It’s actually pretty selfish for people to act like they are the only ones that deserve their money. Plus, Robin Hood is, like, a hero, so what the fuck?

“Why Don’t You Love Me In Real Life”
Did you ever have a dream about somebody and you woke up feeling different about them? It happens to me for sure. It’s like you get to spend time with somebody in your dreams, and then when you wake up you feel closer to them. Except, the shitty thing is, that they didn’t have the same dream, so they still don’t give a shit about you. If they did have the same dream, that would be cool, but it would also be like some freaky X-files shit—especially if the dream was about aliens.  Yellow thinks he was abducted by aliens once, but I think he was eating weird berries in the woods, passed out and maybe got molested a little bit by a bear—it’s hard to tell.  Anyway, the point is, when you fall in love in your dreams, real life takes a turn for the worse.  The sweeter the dream, the harsher the buzz kill when your alarm goes off.

“Hello Beautiful”
This song is about that awkward moment when somebody comes home when you are trying to steal their TV or something and you’re like, “Uh-oh!” and then the person turns out to be a beautiful woman, so you are really intimidated and run away even though you wish you could stay and hang out. Usually people don’t respond very well to finding you in their house, so it’s a bad time to ask somebody out.

“Wish You Were Mine”
We always close with this song live, because it seems to make a good finale for the show. This is one of the most fun songs to sing because we get to really pour our hearts out. It’s about having a huge crush on somebody. It isn’t based on any girl in particular, but more like a combination of girls. The line about the girl locking herself in her castle is like a metaphor. It’s saying people try to protect themselves from the world, but then they miss out. It may be weird to kiss a dude with a mask on, but I could always hang upside down and you could kiss me like Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man.

“Crazy”
It’s funny how wacked-out you can get when you really fall for somebody. It’s like you can’t see or think straight sometimes and everything is just about them and you would do anything for them.  Sometimes things might go too far, stuff gets out of hand and you make some mistakes. Next thing you know, you’re being stuffed into a cop car and read your rights.  Don’t you tell me my rights, officer. I’ll tell you my rights: I have the right to remain free, to rob a liquor store here and there, and anything I steal can and will be used to get me drunk. Most of all, I have a right to be in love and make mistakes like any other human being.