First of all, no one can prove that I skipped a day of work just so I could see The Watchmen on opening day. And there’s no concrete evidence that I’ve seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy dozens upon dozens of times and/or can speak entire sentences in Elvish. Or that I know my Elven name is Fëanáro Pallanén.
It’s no secret, however, that I have certain tendencies, tendencies that make me go absolutely bat-poop crazy for things like wizards and spaceships and costumed crimefighters.
All of which explains why my head almost exploded when I heard about Shadow Hare, a real-life Watchman who made national news on CNN and TMZ in April after he broke up an attempted assault in Cincinnati. Dressed head-to-toe in a black and gray spandex suit, the 21-year-old Shadow Hare, with one brazen hop, put the word “superhero” right back into our daily lexicon.
I had no choice but to investigate. I started with what might be my new favorite website in the world, the World Superhero Registry (www.worldsuperheroregistry.com), which is run by a part-time hero from Phoenix named Kevlex. As its name suggests, the site serves as a catalog of the world’s active crimefighters, or at least those who satisfy the three superhero prerequisites: 1) they’ve got a costume, 2) they’ve performed documented heroic deeds and 3) they’re motivated by something other than money or fame.
“Partly due to the efforts of the World Superhero Registry,” Kevlex tells me, “the Real-Life Superhero community has grown from a few isolated idealists scattered across the globe in 2005 to today’s diverse and rapidly growing international community with hundreds of members.”
Hundreds of people running around in spandex suits and thwarting evildoers? I’d trade all of the mithril in the Mines of Moria to see that!
With Kevlex’s help, I was able to contact the two most visible Real-Life Superheroes – Master Legend (a 42-year-old crimefighter from Winter Park, Florida, who was featured in Rolling Stone last year) and Shadow Hare himself – to learn what makes a caped crusader tick.
Team Last Call: How did you start your crimefighting career?
Master Legend: I got tired of being a victim and fought back.
Shadow Hare: I started in a small town going against a small gang who called themselves the Warriors. I just got sick of knowing that rapists and drug dealers were running the streets. People shouldn’t be scared to walk past other people on the sidewalks.
TLC: Why wear a mask?
ML: I like to give fair warning of what I am.
SH: I don’t want credit as an individual for these actions. I don’t do what I do for publicity. I see myself more as an idea than a person.
TLC: It’s got to be a relatively thankless job. What’s your motivation?
ML: My brotherhood with all my superhero friends is the best reward I can ask for.
SH: My motivation is that in time I may be an example that we can all make a difference. To some, what I appear to do may be stupid. But if we all did our part, things would be so much better in this world.
TLC: Don’t you worry about getting hurt?
ML: My dad used to play Russian Roulette with my head. I have no fear, as I wanted that bullet to finally end my hell.
SH: If me getting hurt means that I take the pain from another, then I am not scared to face anything. I consider the pain I go through an occupational hazard. I have lost a job due to physical injury. It actually made me homeless for a while, but I persevered.
TLC: What’s been your worst injury?
ML: It’s a tossup between fractured skull or the internal bleeding.
SH: When I was attacked with a pipe. I had bruised ribs. Dislocated shoulder.
TLC: What do you feel has been your biggest accomplishment?
ML: Saving lives and helping the homeless. Also, putting away a few murderers and a child molester in prison. And yes, I kicked their rotten asses.
SH: That I have inspired hope.
TLC: How do you respond to criticism that you’re some sort of vigilante, or that this is a joke?
ML: I feel sorry for those who have inferiority complexes. Plus, I am not a vigilante with a targeted person in mind. I am ready to jump into action when needed with my ever-vigilant eyes.
SH: I don’t do this for publicity and can care less about personal criticism. I do this for the people as a whole.
TLC: Ultimately, what do you hope to accomplish?
ML: I already have accomplished it. That’s the forming of a worldwide team known as the Real-Life Superheroes. I cannot say I did it all. It was immense teamwork. It has been my vision since I can remember deciding to be a superhero.
SH: To show the world that no matter who you are, or what people see you as, we can change the world so much if we do our part.
Whether you’re sitting there snickering or sketching out the design for a costume of your own, you have to feel at least a twinge of appreciation for what these guys are doing. I mean, wearing spandex is an act of bravery in and of itself. Wearing it while engaging in hand-to-hand combat with criminals is nothing short of heroic. The fact is, these crimefighters serve an important function in society. Namely, they catch the bad guys so that the cops have more time to run around and not find out who hit my car. Who knows? Maybe someday a Real-Life Superhero will save your life. And maybe he’ll be dressed like an elf. And maybe his name will be Fëanáro Pallanén. We’ll see who’s snickering then.
For some bands, the worst thing that could happen is for things to go right.
Richmond, VA melodic hardcore band Strike Anywhere experienced that first-hand after November’s presidential election. After a decade spent railing against the administration as one of America’s most outspoken political punk bands, singer Thomas Barnett and company were left standing with a funny little feeling burning in their tummies: satisfaction.
It didn’t last long. Less than six months into post-George Bush America, Strike Anywhere is returning to the studio to record its next set of booksmart bombast, tackling everything from child soldiering in Africa to, as Barnett puts it, “the cost of the colonial legacy all over the world.” Fun! We talked to the dreadlocked vegan and activist in anticipation of the band’s June 13 set at the Champion Ship.
Team Last Call: When we talked last time, we had all kinds of juicy stuff to discuss in the middle of the Bush administration. Now in this different climate, with a bit of hope circulating, what subjects are in your crosshairs?
Thomas Barnett: There’s, of course, songs about the current economic meltdown and the bank bailout and all of that stuff. There’s even a song about the role of punk even when the environment changes into something less negative. I wouldn’t say positive.
We were in our town on election night in the heart of black Richmond, and it was the most stunning, breathtaking, wonderful thing. Spontaneous marches and people hugging each other in the streets by the hundreds – some crazy shit. It’s only going to happen once in our lives, and it happened when we were home at the capitol of the confederacy.
TLC: You almost sound optimistic about where society’s headed.
TB: I think there are slight windows opening up in the consciousness of everyday folks, people that don’t have a bunch of anarchist textbooks laying next to their bed, people who haven’t been 20 years deep in a punk scene or a radical scene or having had the privilege or luck to be in a university progressive community of ideas and debate. Those other millions of Americans who haven’t had any of those opportunities, there is a sense of, “Wow, we are supposed to be the government. We’re supposed to be helping ourselves and defending each other. There are things at stake beyond our particular survival.”
I think even the little bit of deliveries that have happened – Guantanamo being closed, discussions of torture – it’s going to be neat. I think it’s going to start something rising that no one’s going to be able to control, and that’s a very good thing.
TLC: When you’re up on the stage watching kids pummel each other in the pit, do you worry about the message getting across?
TB: Me and my bandmates are punk and hardcore kids, so we know that feeling. We can read people’s faces and understand that people are having their own moment. They’ve taken our songs and they’ve applied it to their lives in a way that surpasses anything that we were ambitiously or not writing about. The show is a fulfillment of that promise that starts with listening to the record in your car or at home or riding your bike somewhere when you really feel comfortable and open to the ideas. You figure out what you need from the song and then you bring that to the show.
TLC: On the other hand, since you guys are so message-oriented, do you think it’s possible for the music to get lost in the shuffle?
TB: It is so idea-based. We’re part of a counterculture that’s about ideas that are not your regular rock and roll song topics. But I think what my bandmates write is visionary and I’m honored to be with them. The whole thing is for us to keep growing and keep pushing it and staying true to what we love – not just playing music that is esoterically, artistically experimental that we’re not even sure we like, but to do things that move us. There’s a thing where hardcore is a dance form of music,too. There’s got to be something that’s not just cerebral and built on a self-reflection of a political righteousness. It’s got to be more about the humility of being a part of that moment. It’s definitely important for it not to become some weird academic, theoretical thing.
TLC: It can be a little intimidating.
TB: That’s the problem with a lot of super-political punk bands. There’s just that sense that they get kind of lost in a very exclusive world. Punk was also invented to stand against typical rock star bullshit and to be very critical and to look at the spectacular nature of commercial entertainment, and to make sure that it wasn’t just fooling us. This is about friendship and an extended global family of artists, radicals, dreamers, maniacs, teachers. There’s a dentist in Edmonton who works on our teeth and then gets in the mosh pit afterwards. It’s like that.
TLC: If you found another way of establishing that connectivity, another platform that lets you communicate better to the people you want to communicate with the most, would you quit the music?
TB: I can’t imagine that. I’m a real shy person. Having the music in this band is the reason why this whole part of my personality exists, I think. I think that it would be difficult for me to just speak like Henry Rollins or something. It’s also just wanting to be a part of something that everyone shares in.
It’s the collective catharsis about this that is bigger than just the ideas, and the song is the platform for debate and opinions and building a world within a world and giving people hope. All of that is intensely important to us. But I think it’s also just the emotional clarity, the communication, the dropping of pretense, the sense of intelligence and ferocity and the optimism that’s a part of a punk show – even with all of the contradictions in punk, all of the stupid violence and sociopathic personalities that are also drawn to it. That’s a huge part of why I’ve ever had the courage to write about the things that the songs are about and to express the ideas.
For me, it’s all about the music. It’s all one experience, and the effects it has on personality and on mentality are fairly transcendent. There’s no way to get to that state just planting a garden in your backyard. That’s not to say that we don’t carry the revolution with us in every mundane moment of our lives, waiting in line at the bank, all that shit. There’s a certain amount of fearlessness and hope that has to do with it being beyond the individual. The annihilation of the ego is what happens. That allows you to get past your fears or insecurities or arrogance. All of that stuff falls away, and that’s why the songs feel the way they do.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine
This month, Helsingborg, Sweden’s The Sounds return with Crossing the Rubicon, their third album of synth-accented glam-pop.
Awash in piss and vinegar, the record picks up right where 2006’s Dying To Say This To You left off, with the band plowing its way through athletic, menacing rock anthems with sweaty dexterity under the guidance of sassy siren Maja Ivarsson’s raspy yelps.
Team Last Call chatted up drummer Fredrik Nilsson about the new album and the Swedish cockiness curve.
Team Last Call: What were your goals musically with this album?
Fredrik Nilsson: We just wanted to make an album that was totally the band’s [idea] of what our music is, and not someone else’s. We did all the demos ourselves in our own studio in Sweden, and then we decided to not have any labels whatsoever involved in the process of making the album. The five members of the band, we financed everything, all the album costs. We got rid of pretty much all of our old labels in various territories. Right now we’re licensing the album here in the States to a record label, but The Sounds own the album.
TLC: Going into your third album, do you feel satisfied with where you are as a band?
FN: The only thing I really want now is for the album to be out. It’s much more fun to play the new songs when people actually know them. I’m sure by the end of the tour cycle I’ll be really sick of the songs and just want to write a new album, but that’s the way it goes.
TLC: You’ve always been plagued with comparisons to Blondie. I always thought it was unfair, until I heard “Beatbox” from the new album, which sounds exactly like “Rapture” …
FN: Blondie is a great band, but I don’t think any of us is a Blondie fan or has any Blondie records or anything like that. To me, that’s just a lazy thing that journalists do, is to compare a band to something else that already exists. I think that’s a really easy and cheap way. To me, that’s really boring. It has more to do with the look of the band than the sound of our band.
TLC: You also get grouped in with the whole ’80s revival scene.
FN: We all grew up in the ’80s, so it factors in somewhere, but we never set out to have an ’80s sound. It surprises me sometimes. As soon as there are keyboards on the tracks, they all refer to the ’80s, like that was the only decade that had keyboards.
TLC: You’ve got a reputation for being a really cocky band.
FN: I don’t think we ever considered ourselves to be a cocky band. We’re a self-confident band.
TLC: I meant cocky for Swedish people.
FN: They don’t like it in Sweden when you’re too self-confident. They have this saying – Jantelagen, it’s called in Swedish – that basically says you’re not better than anyone else. Everybody’s the same. Don’t think you’re better than anyone else, because you’re not. We don’t think we’re better than anyone else. We just think we’re really good.
TLC: People have accused you of not being Swedish enough. Is there such a thing as being too Swedish?
FN: Yeah, there is. I think you can only explain it to other Swedish people. But yeah, you can definitely be too Swedish. There’s a lot of people like that in Sweden. They’re very, I don’t want to say self-centered, but everything that happens in Sweden is really important and everything that happens outside of Sweden is not so important.
TLC: A lot of Americans know your music best from the GEICO caveman commercial. Is that good or bad?
FN: All ways of coming across our band to us is a good way. But if you see one song in a TV commercial and then you go and see the band, you might be in for a real surprise.
TLC: Maja is always making the Hottest Women in Rock lists. What’s it like for the rest of you to see stuff like that?
FN: All publicity like that is going to rub off on the band. It kind of makes me wonder where all the Hottest Drummers lists are, and why I’m not on them.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine
IKEA. ABBA. Fish. Meatballs. Sweden, you just give and give.
From The Cardigans to The Sounds to Refused to Peter Bjorn And John, Swedish musical exports have almost always been worth taking a chk-a-chance on (Ace of Base notwithstanding). That list expands in 2009 with the release of the self-titled EP from Love In October, a Chicago band led by brothers and Swedish expatriates Erik and Kent Widman.
Stuck somewhere in the quirk-rock spectrum between Dinosaur Jr. and Modest Mouse, the band flip-flops between blissfully fuzzed-out rockers and mellow dance tunes, anxious yelps and hushed croons, biting off Built to Spill’s manic guitar heroics one minute and the Get-Up Kids’ keys-accented power pop the next. (GUK drummer Rob Pope co-produced the band’s 2008 full-length.) Depending on the song, Love In October’s music comes across as either playfully dramatic or dramatically playful; either way, it’s Swedish through and through.
“I would say 75 percent of our sound comes from Swedish influences,” says Erik, the band’s singer, guitarist and pianist, who emigrated from Sweden to Michigan in 2000 for college. “I also had the privilege to have a really good music teacher who taught me a lot of Swedish folk music theory. Now I’m trying to take what I learned a long time ago and recall that, but then put it into a rock and roll context.”
The Love In October EP (released May 26) is the band’s third release since the brothers Widman reunited in Minneapolis in 2006. It’s the first, however, since the band stumbled upon its current sound. Previous records were more pedestrian in their approach, with a more obvious, swing-for-the-fences appeal that earned LiO dubious comparisons to Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and bands of that ilk.
“I don’t even know why we were doing it,” Erik shrugs. “We didn’t enjoy listening to our own music, so it was kind of like, ‘What the fuck are we doing? Let’s actually write something that A) we want to play, and B) we want to listen to.’ I think we kind of found our own path to go down.”
The move towards a more natural and raw sound has benefited Love In October in more ways than one. Aside from churning out a praiseworthy EP that nestles nicely on your iPod between Lou Reed and Lovedrug, the band has made major strides into the mainstream market with the placement of its song “Like Nothing Ever Happened” in national TV and radio advertisements for Shoe Carnival. With one catchy, quirky pop song, Love In October has more or less eliminated the necessity for the record deal it was chasing so earnestly in its first few years. The irony is almost too big to swallow.
“Now we write music to please ourselves,” Erik says, “and if anybody likes it, that’s good.”
Try less, get more. Sweden, I don’t know how you do it.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine
Morrissey was once quoted as saying – presumably in between sobbing fits – that “we all need rain and good old depression.”
If that’s the case, then bring on the Cowboy Junkies, whose “gothic Americana” hymns have been ushering college students through breakups and breakdowns for over two decades.
Not that the Junkies are all doom and gloom. Oftentimes, what is mistaken for darkness is just the music’s sloth-like pacing; on their breakthrough album, 1988’s The Trinity Session, the Junkies managed to take both “Blue Moon” and the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” and turn them into drowsy, gorgeous mopers that creep along with all the ferocity of a sedated snail. It can come across as a real rainy-day downer; but, like Schindler’s List, it can also be edifying and ultimately just the slightest bit uplifting.
“It’s certainly dark, what we write about, but I think there are also glimmers of hope in all our stuff,” says chief songwriter Michael Timmins. “When people say that music’s depressing, I find that very inaccurate. I think that’s a misuse of the term ‘depressed.’ ‘Depressed’ to me is something that’s lacking any emotion at all. To me, a mindless pop song is more depressing than anything we ever did.”
For the band’s newest album, At The End of Paths Taken, Timmins spent some time pondering family life and the inevitable changeover that takes place as children are born and grandparents pass away. Family is a natural subject for Timmins, considering that two of his three bandmates – Margo and Peter – are his siblings.
“Everybody in this band’s got young kids and aging parents,” Michael says. “I just wanted to write about those relationships – up to your father and down to your kids – and how those affect one another.”
The album – the 11th in the band’s 20-plus-year history – has enough molasses-y ballads and folky meanderings to satisfy longtime fans, but is also characterized by some newfound tension. Songs like the swinging “Cutting Board Blues” represent the Junkies at their most rocking, while the spooky “Mountain” features the unsettling juxtaposition of Margo’s soft vocals and the spoken-word droning of the Timmins’ father reading an excerpt from his autobiography. “My Little Basquiat” seems to be the album’s centerpiece; the song creeps ominously along, with Margo singing achingly about her children, until Michael breaks down the door with bursts of buzzsaw guitar that voice the morbid fear that comes with loving someone that deeply.
As bands like Oasis so ably demonstrate, siblings don’t always make for the best work partners. But Michael maintains that the Timmins’ relationship is not only workable, but might be the very reason why the Junkies have persevered for so long.
“I think it’s helped us,” he says matter-of-factly. “A lot of brothers and sisters don’t, but we know how to communicate. We know each other’s personalities and we know each other’s moods, and we know generally when to back off.
“There are very few bands who last this long, especially with the original lineup. You can probably count five. There’s U2 and there’s … mmm …,” Timmins laughs. “But we still enjoy working with each other and performing and recording. As long as it’s fun, we’ll continue to do it.”
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine
By the time you read this, we will be just five months away from welcoming the next generation of Team Last Call into the world.
I have been doing my best over the past few months to prepare for the arrival of the baby – fixing up its room, learning to say “poop” without laughing, buying adorable Eagles onesies. You can question a lot of things in life, but my baby’s team spirit won’t be one of them.
Mostly, though, I’ve been eating. I’ve been putting on weight at an alarming pace over the past several weeks, which is what you can expect when you go donut for donut with a pregnant lady. My wife, for her part, has become an unstoppable cosmic snacking machine. A beautiful, glowing snacking machine, but a snacking machine nonetheless. Cookies, sticky buns, muffins, cakes, small woodland animals – if it crosses her path, it’s lunch. I haven’t seen our cat in days, and it’s starting to get a little awkward.
When not eating, we’ve been devoting our time to brainstorming names for our baby, which isn’t nearly as easy as I had assumed. Our first choice for a name, Zazel, was cast aside once we Googled it and found out it was the name of a very hardcore porn movie. For similar reasons, we also had to cross Rambone, Pocahiney and E-Three the Extra Testicle off the list.
After that first round of cuts, we were left with just a handful of names on our list of favorites. Then we found out that Michael Jackson had already taken Blanket, Prince Michael and Prince Michael II, and things started going downhill. A few minutes of research later, our list was left in tatters. Moon Unit and Diva Muffin? Taken by Frank Zappa. Daisy Boo and Poppy Honey? Taken by the Naked Chef. Moxie CrimeFighter? Taken. Pilot Inspektor? Taken. Jermajesty, Little Pixie and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily? Taken, taken, taken.
My wife and I agreed early on that we’d each have a certain number of vetoes when it came to our baby’s name, and I’ve already had to use a few already, like when my wife suggested Bumpy. I’m pretty sure Balloon was on her list, too. Likewise, my wife has overruled some of my personal favorites, including Bean and Awesome. And something about Conan The Dest Royer just didn’t hit her the right way.
True story: I once tried picking a name by flipping through a dictionary with my eyes closed, randomly stopping on a page and jabbing my index finger into the book. I landed on Presto-Chango, which I personally think is the best name we’ve come up with yet. My wife fails to see the attraction.
It’s not like we’ll take just any weird name, but I do want something with some character. Giving the world another Ashley, Madison or Jordan doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I don’t want the poor thing to bore itself to sleep every night.
There are some drawbacks to giving a child an unusual name, though. There’s always the danger that he or she might get picked on or made fun of at school, and I would never want that for my child, unless it became the president of Young Republicans or something and really deserved it. There’s also the risk that the baby’s distinguished name could give it an inflated ego and a heightened sense of superiority, which is how things like Rush Limbaugh happen. Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, Oxycontin is another really good baby name.
But there are a lot of pluses to having an unusual name, too. All an ordinary name can get you is second place. The Joe Biden to someone else’s Barack Obama. The Sam to someone else’s Frodo. The (insert name of professional golfer here) to Tiger Woods. The George Bush to ... well, anyone, really.
But when you have a unique name, everyone wants you to succeed. Nobody cares about someone named Lou Phillips. But Lou Diamond Phillips? Put that guy in the movies!
That’s why famous people are always changing their names. Engelbert Humperdinck was born Arnold George Dorsey. Queen Latifah’s birth name is Dana Owens. Sigourney Weaver’s real first name is Susan. And Rush Limbaugh is a talentless turd.
“Everyone I know with an unusual name loves it,” said Penn Jillette, proud father of Moxie CrimeFighter and Zolten, in an interview with the New York Times about his children’s names. “It’s only the losers named Dave that think having an unusual name is bad, and who cares what they think? They’re named Dave.”
Of course, having a good name doesn’t necessarily solve all of your problems. Despite the inherent advantages, many people with unusual names somehow still manage to be unsuccessful, whether it’s due to a lack of morals (Scooter Libby), lack of talent (Keanu Reeves) or lack of tusks when you’re clearly supposed to be a wooly mammoth (Snuffleupagus). So clearly there are no guarantees. But it certainly gives you a running start in life, and frankly, I think that’s something we owe little Presto-Chango.
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.
