The Morning Benders will storm Southern California to coincide with the release of their
debut LP "Talking Through Tin Cans" by stopping by the Echo this
Thursday May 8th. If you purchase the album through their website, you
can get a free ticket to their show as well as assorted b-sides and
goodies. I managed to sit down on a windy afternoon and ask Chris Chu
(Vocals/Guitars) and Joe Ferrell (Guitars) some questions about their
album and tour with The Kooks.
LR: Congratulations on the
upcoming release of the album. I was impressed that Chris is credited
for producing, engineering, and mixing the album. Was it difficult
wearing that many hats?
CC: It was a lot of running around.
Especially when I was working on my own parts. When I was tracking I
would move microphones around and play something and then run into the
control room. It was a busy experience.
LR: Is it something you would want to do again?
CC: I think I probably will always have some input. I would like to have
someone else do certain parts of it. A lot of the time I am trying to
find a sound. It is distracting when you are turning knobs and find
something that is interesting as well.
Angus Andrew from Liars phones in from the road before their stop at the El Rey theatre on 2/22 with No Age. I recommend you pick up tickets here as it could very well be a special tour ending show.
LR: How is it going Angus?
AA: It’s good mate. How are you?
LR: Not too bad. The proverbial first question for you..How is the back holding up?
AA: It’s fucked man. I got no other way of saying it. I don’t know if you
can print those words but its not a hundred percent. Its getting there
slowly you know the grease in the joints are loosening up. I am
certainly not the nimble guy I was a couple of years ago.
LR: I thought the tour would be sponsored by Icy Hot.
AA: (Laughs).. Mine would be Tiger Balm. I like that stuff.
The new album from The Presets Apocolypso is coming. You have been warned. I downloaded the album from itunes a few weeks ago and know it finish my top 5 albums of 2008.
LR: How does the songwriting process work in The Presets? Do you start with synths? Beats? or Lyrics?
KM: We start with some kind of idea that might be a chord progression or a
melody or a loop on the computer and then thrash it out till it feels
good. then we look for more sections and try to shape it according to
how it is making us feel. this process can take sometime as we are
going back and forth from working together to working solo on in until
it has a good decent shape. When it the song starts to present itself,
Jules will then start adding vocal ideas which later turn into the
lyrics.
LR: I have seen you five times in concert and love the
fact that you have two Korg MS-20's on stage. What drove this decision
to use vintage gear while on tour?
KM: It's been a nerdy passion
of ours for quite sometime now and apart from the great sound these
synths make they have such a distinctive look about them. We are very
familiar with these synths and can get around them quickly so it's just
the easiest option for us to use them live.
LR: When did you first meet and decide how to do the band?
Julie: We first met in High School but decided to do it when he was living in New York and I was still in L.A.
Maurice: There was a trial month in 2004.
LR: Did you share music over the Internet?
Julie:
No Mark came to L.A. for a month and I had this digital 8-track
recorder in my apartment. It was good and it worked out so he came back.
I
remember he came back and none of us had been in bands before so we
thought, "What is the first thing a band does?" So we got a practice
space, which was the first big order of the day. Then it was
like...what instruments should we play?
Maurice: She had never played drums before.
Julie:
I played keyboards but hadn’t played drums before, but I knew I wanted
to. Mark plays guitar and we wanted to have more than just guitar and
drums. I didn’t want to just add beats because I really love melodies
so that’s when the keyboard came in.
Tim Hoey from Cut Copy answers a few questions prior to their soon to be epic show at the Echo on March 10th. I already have friends asking me if I have extra tickets as the buzz continues to grow louder. I told my friends they better start lining up at the Echo now because it will be a packed house.Their new album "In Ghost Colours" drops on April 8th and I already have them down as a must see for their Coachella slot.
I was fortunate enough to get an interview with Jonathan Bates (Bass/Vocals) of Mellowdrone to talk about guitars, pedals, and live shows. I always suspected Mellowdrone was named after a Failure lyric from "Stuck On You" but had read that Jonathan created it in relation to Sparklehorse. My suspicions have been renewed by his answer to question #10. I will be at Spaceland on Valentine's Day to catch Mellowdrone in hopes of hearing some new tunes and digging deeper into the Failure mystery.
LR: How has the change to three band members affected your songwriting process?
JB: It hasn't really affected the songwriting process. Since each song starts off differently than before, our process by definition is constant change. How we play live and record now is drastically different. No more superfluous parts. Everything has to be succinct and have mass.
LR: "Box" was very cinematic and densely layered. How is the new album coming along?
JB: Luckily, i have no time limit this time around. So with this extra time, comes more life experiences to draw from. So i got into a bunch of trouble and figured my way out. Now its about finding sounds to represent those stories and references. Tony and I have spent months searching for the right tones and sounds. In other words, the album is coming along nicely, thank you for asking.
One of my concert highlights of 2006 was seeing Roger O'Donnell (former keyboardist of The Cure) at Spaceland. Armed with two Moog Voyagers and an Apple laptop, Roger recreated songs off of his solo album The Truth In Me with vocals from the talented Erin Lang.
I implore you to pick up The Truth In Me as well as his remix album Half Truths (featuring The Album Leaf and Dntel). I was very fortunate to get some time to chat with Roger and ask him a bunch of synthesizer related questions that went down like this.
I
first saw you on a show called London Live, and they had one of those
cool lights that shoots all over – I can’t think of what they’re called.
RH: A mirror ball?
Q: Yeah.
RH:
Mirror balls are great. We don’t always have them but if we do have a
mirror ball – no matter who you are, whether you’re a little old lady
or a hard-core punk it affects every one the same. It’s a nice light -
it seems to be a true light – it’s light reflecting off all shapes of
glass.
Q: You don’t use your natural accent while singing – do you ever think about singing with your accent?
RH:
I don’t deliberately do anything. It just comes out the way it is – I
don’t think I’ve got a particularly American accent. The songs are
based, a lot of them anyway – not all of them – in my hometown, with
geographical places as points of reference. But I never wanted that to
be exclusive to people so that it’s so colloquial that only people who
live at the end of my road can relate to it. That would be a waste of
time. I grew up listening to American music, so that when you open your
mouth to sing that’s what comes out. I’ve learnt from birth.
Before the Besnard Lakes melted the audience on Friday night I had a chance to talk with frontman Jace Lacek about their stunning second album, The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse (Jagjaguwar).
The performance? As epic and larger than life as you'd expect. The band
played some incredible versions of "Rides the Rails", immediately
sliding right into the pulverizing "Devastation". "And You Lied to Me"
was also massive as guitars soared beneath the vocal harmonies,
saturating the entire club in overdriven bliss. The encore was a nice
surprise as the quintet covered Fleetwood Mac's "You Make Loving Fun" with drummer Kevin channeling his best Christine McVie. I felt privileged to be there.
LR: On your new album Bolts of Melody what was the reasoning behind changing the name from Toshack Highway to Adam Franklin?
Adam:
People just kept saying “you know Adam Franklin’s more memorable” and
also Toshack was much more stripped down and electronic. I’ve been
going out playing shows with a full band recently as Adam Franklin so
it made more sense to have the album titled that way.
LR: Well it definitely sounds fuller and, for me, more like some of the Swervedriver material, I’m a huge fan of those records. There are a couple songs
like “Shining Somewhere” and “Seize the Day” that sound like they could
have ended up on those records.
Adam: Yeah, they both
started out as sort of quieter songs. Then we got in the studio and
started recording. And once we got a drumbeat on it we thought it’s got
to be more driving. The songs ended up going wherever they went really
and lead the way. I’m quite used to plugging in a Vox amp and cranking
up the volume a bit.
LR: When you were younger what made you want to pick up guitar?
Adam:
T. Rex really. A lot of the glam rock stuff in the early 70s in England
you know. I mean, that music was really exciting to me. That album
cover of Electric Warrior where he stood there with a les Paul by the
amplifier, I thought to myself that’s looks pretty cool.
Klaxons, with Myths of the New Future, have put out one of the best cds this decade. I’m stating that now. If they never put out another cd, while that would be a tragedy, their debut would be enough for me. There’s a ton of buzz about this band and it’s absolutely deserved. Their music is heavenly, their videos are bizarre, and the guys in the band, well, they are just smoking. I was massively blessed to see them play the Crocodile in April, and live they are sexy as hell. I talked with James Righton, keyboardist/bassist/singer before the show.
LR: How are things going?
Rohner:
Really good. Trying to keep a cool head...ya know...Not falling into
patterns of drugs, late nights and women. All the stuff that comes with
the big time.
LR: Hah! A regular day in the life for Division Day?
Rohner:
But really, we’re good. The album release is coming up and we’re all
excited. We just got the full artwork and copies of the record a few
days ago. Its nice to see it finally happening. Everyone’s just ready
to get rolling.
LR: Yeah it’s been a long time. When was the original release date with that other label?
Rohner: I think earlier…like March.
LR: But you guys self-released it too right? And what exactly happened with that label that fell apart.
Rohner:
Yeah, we originally put out a thousand copies and had signed a deal
with this other label that fell apart a few months later. They sent us
to CMJ on their dime which was really nice. And we got some stuff done
while they were paying for it.
Under that deal the album was
supposed to come out in March and that even got pushed back quite a bit
which was a bummer. But it ended up being a good thing because we’re so
much happier with Eenie Meenie, much more comfortable. It was worth the
wait.
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