TEAM LAST CALL

Brooklyn by-way-of Colorado band Chairlift caught America’s ear in late 2008, when iPod graciously decided to use its quirk-pop single, “Bruises,” in the ad campaign for the new Nano-Chromatic. (“I tried to do handstands for you …”)

That indelibly catchy single is one of maybe two exceptions on Chairlift’s otherwise thoroughly dark and creepy album, Does You Inspire You (re-released by Columbia Records on April 21), a surrealist take on ’80s electro-pop. It’s hardly a mass-appeal album, but with “Bruises” luring hapless pop fans in like a siren, it’s able to sink its teeth in long enough to infect.
Team Last Call caught up with guitarist, co-vocalist and super-weirdo Aaron Pfenning during the band's spring tour with The Killers.

Team Last Call: What’s the experience been like for you over the past year or so?
Aaron Pfenning: The experience has been so Technicolor. It’s gone from plaid to denim.

TLC: It’s denim?
AP: Yeah. That’s the fastest and easiest way to explain the last couple years.

TLC: Has it been difficult adjusting to all of the media attention?
AP: It doesn’t bother me. Media like YouTube comments?

TLC: Media like the 36-page press kit of interviews your publicist sent me.
AP: [Our publicist is] on top of everything. I guess we have surrounded ourselves with people that we really like to work with and that we trust. Essentially, we can kind of stay focused on staying free spirits. So I think that the attention, since that was your question, hasn’t really affected us much. We’ve still been in our own world.

TLC: Career-wise, have things gone like you’d hoped since the commercial started airing?
AP: I think so. I think the commercial was a huge baseball bat in the face, in a good way. The iPod commercial was like, wham. It just kind of all came together at once.

TLC: I don’t think I want a baseball bat to the face, even in a good way.
AP: Yeah, that’s probably the wrong way to explain it. Maybe a baseball bat to a baseball.

TLC: Do you remember seeing the commercial for the first time?
AP: I was actually in an Apple store picking up my computer. My computer was getting repaired. I walked in and one of the employees was playing it behind the desk.

TLC: Did you tell the person it
was you?
AP: I think I mumbled something about it and they just thought I was crazy. So I just paid for my computer and left.

TLC: There is a creepy, sinister thing going with your music. Where does that come from?
AP: I think dark music is far more interesting. Caroline [Polachek, singer] and I started writing music basically as a soundtrack for haunted houses. When we were in Colorado, I had a big shed in my backyard and she and I would just drink a bunch of yerba maté tea and just stay up all night coming up with really frightening music.

TLC: You’re portrayed as a bunch of weirdos.
AP: Uh-huh.

TLC: Do you think you’re, um, atypical?
AP: We’re not super-strange. We’re just a little bit off. Oddballs. I’ll go into a meeting with Columbia and five minutes into it I’ll realize that, “Oh, shit. I just said something that really freaked people out.” I totally have to catch myself. It’s not how most people talk or how most people think of things. Columbia, I have to give them a lot of credit, because they took a really big risk on a band that’s pretty far out there. Patrick [Wimberly], our drummer, he’s pretty responsible. He’s like the Great Gatsby of Nashville. He’s such a ladies man, and so on top of everything, whereas Caroline and I, we’ll just wander off, like we did today, and no one knows where we are and we lost track of time.

TLC: You’ve described your music as an antidote to living in New York.
AP: In the course of making the album, we realized how over-stimulated we’ve become living in New York. Constant going out to clubs and noise everywhere. You go from ice cream trucks and busses to cars and people yelling on the street, and then you go into a club and there are people yelling at the bar, all these wizards and techno magicians everywhere blasting things at you. There’s visual imagery everywhere. It kind of never stops. So we figured out how to make music that was a little more calming. It’s affective in the most minimal and haunting and memorable way.