1.
2.
Can you tell me a little bit about the album title? Dear Miss Lonelyhearts sounds intriguing, is there a story behind it?
Yeah, there’s a book I read written by a guy named Nathanael West in the '30s called Miss Lonelyhearts. So for this album, I approached it from the perspective of that novel's protagonist. It’s a story about a guy who is a newspaper advice columnist getting all these letters about people talking about their pain, talking about their lives and asking what they should do. He’s kind of going through this crisis of his own, in how he can respond to these people with really genuine kinds of help and encouragement, and I thought that was really interesting. In some ways, inspiration comes from wanting to help yourself out of something and it also comes from wanting to help see stuff in other people’s lives that you want to help them out of and I think that resonated with that book.
Where do you see your sound on the spectrum of mainstream, pop, rock and underground indie rock? How do you think those varying influences effect what you do?
That’s a really interesting question. Varying influences and spectrums... I feel like that’s definitely the case for us. In some ways, it was the case for us in the very beginning. I think it’s a really cool thing that we have a fan base that is in a lot of different avenues. We’ve always done pretty okay on the radio, but by no means is our fan base a radio fan base. We've always had something more of an indie-kid following, but that’s definitely not the whole story either. It comes from a lot of places and I think that’s a really positive thing that we don’t have necessarily just one niche of people that identify with us. At the same time, you always want to grow as a band. I think on the last record, we were eager to grow our audience. For this record, we just kind of thought about it less and wanted to just do what we do the best way we do it. The degree to which you try to expand deliberately and consciously versus honing your craft is always kind of a funny thing to balance.
What we had from the internet buzz, there’s really nothing impure about it. Even after getting attention from something like the internet, as a band you’re still left to your own devices as far as 'Is the music any good?' and 'Is the live show any good?'
You were one of the cusp bands that became famous through internet attention. Now, that's something that the industry has trended toward in a big way. How do you feel about that?
Yeah, I think that one biggest pushes for us, getting attention, was having a lot of stuff happening on the internet. The fact that we got a lot of attention from that is just positive—there’s really almost no down side. If it had been a few years before and we had a song on The O.C. and that got us a lot of attention and lifted us up into the bigger world, I might be a little bummed on that. But even what we had from the internet buzz, there’s really nothing impure about it. Even after getting attention from something like the internet, as a band you’re still left to your own devices as far as 'Is the music any good?' and 'Is the live show any good?' I think that it was great timing for us because we just had been touring so much and had the benefit of people coming to see the band, liking it and becoming a fan from it. So it's been great for us.
What was the first thing on the internet that someone posted or someone said about you that had you really excited or that you thought was really important, if you can even remember at this point?
I remember, because blogs were not 'new' but they were new enough to where I didn’t know who was doing the best writing or which ones were cooler. I have a friend, Doug, who lives in New York and I remember this one time I hadn’t talked to him for a long time and he emailed me like, 'Hey! You guys are on this music blog, My Old Kentucky Blog.” That one and a couple more and he said, 'These guys reviewed something of yours.' We were like 'Whoa, what does that even mean? Is that like 20 people or 200 people?' I had idea what that meant. At that time, we actually decided we need to get in the know about this world, this culture. So we ended up sending a bunch of CDs of our first EP out to people and a lot of those people reviewed the EP and it was enormously helpful for us. Gorilla vs Bear was another one. We had very close ties with the band Tapes 'n Tapes, the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, a lot of these groups that were getting lot of attention so it was kind of a bizarre moment.
The reality is, we’ve probably been burned more by people we felt like were really, real. Like a lot of blog people or people that we would hang out with at shows early on—people that praised us and loved us— those people were just as quick to pretend like they never even knew us at different points.
If you could choose between the extremes of the spectrum, let’s say Best New Music on Pitchfork and buzzing on indie blogs or being #1 on the radio, which one of those would you rather be?
I guess in some ways we’ve experienced, not the extreme of either of those, but both sides of that. I think that early on, the radio is really fickle and with most of those fans, they’ll come to one show but will they stick with you forever? Will they be a part of the larger culture of what you want to do? Maybe not. The reality is, we’ve probably been burned more by people we felt like were really, real. Like a lot of blog people or people that we would hang out with at shows early on—people that praised us and loved us— those people were just as quick to pretend like they never even knew us at different points.
3.
What was your goal for the sound of this album?
I think there’s a lot of different things kind of in the mix. We have our new guitar player, Dann [Gallucci], who’s an old friend. I think the sensibility he brought was very refreshing—adding electro, dancy parts here or there or stripping away other things—we were always asking ourselves, “does it sound like us?” But he has a wider background, and helped us see how certain arrangements and instrumentation choices aren't going to make the song not sound like us. We can expand beyond what we’re doing and still have it very much be us, be our sound still. With the last record (Mine is Yours, 2011), the context was very much wanting to make ourselves uncomfortable, to do something that was outside of the range of what we do with the first two records. In some ways, we were maybe a little too self-conscious about that I think, or maybe didn’t go all the way with it. With this record though, we still have a lot of sides of ourselves to explore and took an approach like 'let’s not worry so much about how it’s going to be perceived as it’s happening.' We just kind of let it go.
What was the recording experience like? Especially with a brand new producer, Lars Stalfors and the addition of Dann on the guitar?
I think it was cool in so many ways— just because those guys are both young—and working with our peers felt good. Working with our peers versus other producers that we’ve worked with in the past, who maybe have more experience, but there was just so much peace that came into play with Lars and being on the same page. Also from a technical approach, our studio in San Pedro has no analog, no tape machines, mostly just the new gear that we've bought. We were trying to basically make our sound similar to the analog and rock sound, but doing it all digitally, and it was a really different approach for us. We got to rethink how certain things about recording that we've always done—using tape machines and maintaining a certain devotion to doing it live—we realized that a lot of that stuff we don't need. We don't need to stick to these rules.
That is interesting because I feel like a lot of people are kind of turning back to that instead of away from it. A lot of bands say 'We’re doing it all analog” or 'We’re doing it the old-school way' as some sort of attempt to regain the past, so you totally left that behind?
Yeah. I think that it’s not the same now as it was even a couple of years ago just as far as the actual, quality difference. There’s maybe a couple people in the world who can hear the quality of digital recordings that have all the same replicas of all the old analog machines and I think it’s getting more and more much like film and photography and everything. It’s getting harder to justify paying a lot of money for studios—there’s so much history there, and it’s exciting to be a part of making a record that way, but you can do so much more work this way.
We all had a common dislike of the kind of music we grew up listening to, which I think turned us more towards New York music or UK music or bands like The Velvet Underground or The Smiths. Bands with a very dark contrast to the sunnier and undressed stuff that we grew up with.
You're from the suburbs of California, influenced by whole LA/West Coast sound. Do you feel like the internet allowed you to supersede regional influences?
Yeah I do, I think kind of even in the way that we first came together. I was a little older even when we first started the band. I was, I think, 24 or something. We all grew up in the world of bands like No Doubt and the Sublime, and so much punk and hardcore music and all that stuff. We all had a common dislike of the kind of music we grew up listening to, which I think turned us more towards New York music or UK music or bands like The Velvet Underground or The Smiths. Bands with a very dark contrast to the sunnier and undressed stuff that we grew up with.
It seems like a lot of bands are trying to do crazy stunts and get outside of their genre, for instance Mumford and Sons saying that they were going to collaborate with Jay-Z. Do you ever see your and doing something like that? Do you think that indie rock needs to bring in outside influences?
I didn't even know that about Mumford and Sons! Back to the idea of our band as one at an in-between stage—as far as not being one of the biggest indie rock bands, but not being a small one either, we've definitely desired more collaboration, or a community really. I think that community is really the thing that I wish we had more of, but it’s really hard because bands are weird like that. Like a lot of the bands we toured with early on Dr. Dog and Delta Spirit, in some ways we had early characteristics that were similar but I think that we needed to find a way to separate ourselves and find out what’s kind of weird about us and really amplify that. I think it’s important to work with people and make choices that make you unique. I guess it’s not so much does indie rock needs to 'spread its wings' but that every artist needs to find out how to surprise themselves. The only way Mumford and Sons can go up is through Jay-Z I guess [laughs].
As you're heading out on international tour, is there one city that has stuck with you as a favorite to perform in?
Hands down, Paris shows have always been a fun and the most sophisticated audience in terms of the little things. Knowing when to act specific ways. Like there’s so much respect to the show and to the music and knowing when to be rowdy and crazy and knowing when to really be restrained and watchful. I'm sure it's not just our shows that they act like that. It’s the vibe. It’s a really savvy, aware audience. It’s always been so fun.
Dear Miss Lonelyhearts will be out on Downtown Records on April 2, 2013.
