TLOBF Interview :: Cymbals Eat Guitars

When Charles Bissell of The Wrens declared that Cymbals Eat Guitars would “end up indie famous within the year”, it’s difficult to know whether this was a genuine prediction or a clever marketing ploy. Either way, the glowing reviews of their debut album, Why There Are Mountains are still coming in and, with the title of ‘Best New Music’ from Pitchfork under their belt, the band are surely on their way to fulfilling Bissell’s prophecy. And all this without a label in the U.S.A. They took some time during their five show stint in London to talk to Leah Pritchard about going it alone, excessive sweating and brothels in Indiana.

So this is your grand European tour of London?
Neil: Yeah. Five shows, five days.

How are you finding it?
Neil: Wonderful. Everybody has been so nice, and the venues have been really cool. Good turnouts.
Joe: We love it. Great turnouts, actually. Last night at The Barfly was really, really fun.

The audience at the ICA on Tuesday weren’t so… I mean, they were pretty static.
Joe: Yeah. Well, no, I didn’t notice… Last night I think they were a little more enthusiastic. It was smaller, more intimate. People were right up next to the stage.
Neil: And the ICA show, we also landed that morning…
Joe: We were jetlagged.
Neil: …so we sorted out all the gear and just drove straight to the club. Actually, I took a shower at the club because I had no time to do so anywhere else.

Did you have any idea about the supports? They seemed pretty…
Joe: …different.

The second one, especially, was pretty interesting. I’m not sure I would have put them with you guys.
Joe: Yeah, hahaha. I don’t know, it was… let’s call it an eclectic bill. How about that? It was Rough Trade curated, so yeah, it’s eclectic.

Are there big differences between the shows you’ve played in the U.S. and over here?
Matt: I should say surprisingly similar. Yeah, I mean, it’s rock venues, it’s fun. It’s, you know, dives like this.

Have you been on any big tours in America? It seems like your shows are pretty sporadic.
Neil: None. We just did a couple of dates out to Iowa and that was probably about the closest thing we’ve done to a tour.
Joe: In other words, there were three shows. We did a show in Indianapolis, in Indiana, and then we did a Daytrotter session in Illinois and then we did 80/35 Festival in Iowa, which was the biggest show we’ve played.
Neil: There was also the My Old Kentucky Blog. Oh, was that…?
Joe: That was a taping, but then I guess you wouldn’t really consider the Daytrotter thing- it was a recording.
Neil: Right. Yeah, we had some recordings and some tapings.
Joe: It was fun. It was a good time.

Is the Daytrotter session up yet?
Joe: I don’t think so, but it should be up soon. There wasn’t much to mess with. It was all just…
Neil: It’s straight to tape, there’s no mixing involved.
Joe: And they have really nice equipment. We didn’t have to lug all of our crap up three flights of stairs, it was great.

Have you found that your audiences have grown significantly since the Pitchfork review (Why There Are Mountains was named Best New Music in March) or since you released your CD on Insound?
Neil: Absolutely.
Joe: Yeah, it went from no one to people being there. And the venues too, I mean we weren’t playing the Bowery or the…
Brian: Music Hall of Williamsburg.

Do your parents come out to see you a lot?
Joe: Every time we’re in New York, they’ll come out and see us. They live on Staten Island.
Neil: Yeah, they’re super supportive.
Matt: Without them, this wouldn’t be here.
Joe: Oh yeah, definitely.

Am I right in thinking you still don’t have a label in the States?
Neil: That is correct.
Joe: We’re not having a label.
Neil: We’re working on a distribution deal.
Joe: Well, it’s not like we’re chasing after something. We have something.
Neil: It’s in the works.
Joe: Yeah, the record is going to be released nationally, in America, on the 22nd of September. We’re all good for that. Vinyl, CD, digital. All that stuff. And a new cover.
Neil: And some bonus footage. Or bonus content, I guess it would be called.
Joe: Yeah, we’re hoping to get some live video. We seem to be getting some decent live videos so we’ll just include that with the release.

Yeah, there’s a really good one. It was sort of a montage….
Matt: Oh, that one. The Cake Shop one. That’s actually from a really long time ago.
Joe: Yeah, that looks really good, but the sound isn’t amazing. Yeah, the best video we have so far, I think, is a recording for KEXP on the Morning Show. They videoed us throughout the entire session and it turned out totally pristine.
Neil: It was amazing. They did such a great job.
Joe: Perfect. The sound is so good. We’ll try and include that sort of thing.

http://www.vimeo.com/4153358

What do you think of the fact you can Google almost any band name and you’ll get a thousand images, hundreds of interviews… does it ruin the magic of music?/*
Matt: I personally think it’s really awesome and I go to Google and type in CYM and our name pops up.
Joe: What do you mean, like, people asking us questions ruins the mystique of the band? I don’t think we’re trying to cultivate a veil of mystery. Except Brian.
Matt: It’s fun. It gives us the opportunity to make interviews more interesting. The more we do it, the more fun we get to have.
Joe: Yeah, we actually agreed if people kept asking us the same questions, we’d have to start lying. Everybody asks us about Staten Island, “Oh, Staten Island, what’s that like?”
Neil: And that was your next question, right?

No… no, not at all…
Joe: Haha, it’s ok if you ask, I’m just going to make something up.

So how did you guys come together? Were you playing in other bands?
Matt: We’re the only people we’ve ever played with, Joe and I.
Joe: I’ve never played with another drummer.

But, Joe, you have an EP right?
Joe: You’ve heard of it?

Cherry something…?
All: OH!
Joe: Oh no!
Neil: That’s out.
Joe: We made that when we were in High School. I have like 15 copies in my room. I’ve bogarted them.
Matt: Forget you ever heard of it.
Neil: It’s gonna come out.
Joe: The genetic strands of some of the songs are from even as far as back then. In fact, I think all of ‘Living North’.
Matt: ‘Living North’, ‘Wind Phoenix’, ‘Indiana’…
Joe: ‘Wind Phoenix’ isn’t on Cherry Spy, but I mean there are certain songs we’ve been playing for a long time.

Yeah, there are some YouTube videos of you playing and I recognised some of the lyrics and I was like, “This isn’t the song I know.”
Matt: Actually, the name of that one, ‘Cherry Spy’, that song actually morphed into ‘Indiana’ on our new record. At least some of the hooks here and there.
Joe: Yeah, I mean it’s just the same Beatles progression.
Neil: It’s evolution! Can we call it that?

So Cymbals Eat Guitars is what you’ve been working towards?
Joe: Yeah, I’d say so.
Brian: It’s a positive evolution, though, that’s what’s important.

Has there been a particular moment where you’ve said, “I’m doing the right thing. This is what I want to do with my life”?
Joe: Oh yeah!
Matt: The second I got to walk out of school and it was OK.
Joe: When we played Music Hall of Williamsburg, that was huge for me. I’ve seen a lot of shows there. Bowery too, but it was such a good experience. The sound was so great. That was when it seemed legit, you know? We all knew before then that we wanted to play music, if that’s what you’re asking.
Matt: I was supposed to declare a major two years ago and I still have no idea, so… I’m in the right place.

Is there any band you’d like to be like in terms of both critical and commercial success?
Joe: Yeah. We’d like to be like The Wrens and release a record every nine years, haha.

They helped you with the recording, right?
Joe: Oh yeah. Yes. Well, our demos. The demos for the record.

So how did that come about?
Joe: I was taking guitar lessons from one of the members and he offered to help us out.

Have you been back in the studio since you recorded the album?
Joe: Yeah, we recorded a double A-side, ‘Tunguska’ at Headgear Studios in Brooklyn. Our engineer was really great.

In terms of writing, there seem to be a lot of historical and geographical references used as metaphors. Is that something you’ve always been interested in or is it a case of seeking out methods of expression?
Joe: No, I mean, to be honest, it’s hard for me to… well, nobody’s really asked about lyrics. The geographical thing, like, name-dropping states or something, it’s all legit. It’s all things that have happened to me. It’s not like I’m a travel poser.

Travel poser? Are there lots of people who write about going to other places when they haven’t actually been there?
Joe: I don’t know if those people exist, but I’m not one of them.

Do you take inspiration mostly from lyric-writers or books or…?
Joe: I like poetry. I like John Ashbery and Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop. I like to read, I guess that just makes it easy to write things.

So do you have quite a broad taste because the only thing really on your Myspace is a quote from (Nas’s) ‘Halftime’?
Joe: Well I really like hip hop, but I don’t think that figures much into the lyric-writing.
Matt: I love having that quote up there.

Back to the lyrics- there seem to be a lot of quotable phrases, for example, “Antiphonal stridency that slept for half a century”, does that sort of thing tend to come to you all at once?
Joe: What I was going to say before is it’s hard for me to remember how it happened.
Matt: Some of them are so old.
Joe: Not even, it’s just that in the notebook there’s two pages open and there’s something here and something here…

So you do a lot of piecing together?
Joe: Yeah, things come in little spurts and then I just rearrange them and then they take on different meanings that are sometimes better. That’s why it’s hard for me to speak to you about exactly what it’s like, but it all means a lot to me. Like I couldn’t go around singing the songs if I didn’t still feel something. I’m sure it’ll be beaten out of me though, haha. I’m sure I won’t care after a while.
Brian: Maybe you’ll stop sweating when that happens.
Joe: I sweat profusely. Is that a signifier of performance anxiety? Because I hear that David Berman from Silver Jews…

Does he sweat a lot?
Joe: Ohhh…

Well, maybe it’s a sign of genius.
Joe: Maybe for Berman. That’s another thing, if you want to talk about poets. David Berman. I think the first book of poetry that I really got into was Actual Air.

Have you bought his cartoon book?
Joe: I haven’t. Not yet. I’m still a little disappointed they’re not making music any more, so I don’t want to see his cartoons yet.

Maybe they’ll just play some clubs in Nashville.
Joe: That would be really cool. For some reason we’re not playing Nashville, I don’t know why, on our tour that we’re doing in September and October.

How many shows are you playing?
Neil: It’s 27 shows in 30 days.

Are you scared about that?
Neil: Excited. I mean, the drives that we did on our way out to Iowa were…
Brian: …so much worse than we’re gonna have to do.
Neil: Yeah, I mean, talk about having stamina to just sit behind a wheel.
Joe: Just driving across Pennsylania, like…
Brian: The day before we got on the plane to come to London, we drove somewhere between 14 to 16 hours.
Joe: We had to rush back from Iowa.
Brian: We drove 1200 miles the day before we got on a plane. We got home at like 2 in the morning and then had a few hours to do things we needed to do and sleep a little, and then got on a plane, flew here, drove right to the club.

You guys must have no idea what time it is!
Neil: I don’t know what day it is. I have no idea what day it is. I stopped knowing a few days ago.
Matt: It’s kinda nice not knowing. Wait for Eddie (tour manager) to call us and be like, “Dudes, get down here.”
Joe: “Dudes, get down to the club.” “Alright, Eddie.”

So how did you guys meet?
Matt: Joe and I had been going to High School together and I eventually transferred, I was originally in Pennsylvania for school, and then moved to the city and been doing this since.
Neil: I had actually come to see Cymbals Eat Guitars with Kyle Johnson, who engineered the album. We were there to see our friend’s band and we saw Cymbals Eat Guitars and it was like, wow, you know? These guys are awesome. Kyle started talking to them and shortly found out that they were looking for a bass player and he said, “I know the perfect person,” and so he made the introduction. I learned a bunch of songs, showed up. I did my first show after like two weeks.
Joe: Yeah, not even.
Neil: Uh huh.
Joe: That was at Arlene’s Grocery.
Neil: Yeah, it was amazing how things sort of just fell into place.
Matt: That’s the story of this band: everything just happening to fall into place.
Joe: Serious luck.

Do you guys (Neil, Matt, Brian) have a lot of influence on the sound of the record? How far gone are the songs before you get to hear them?
Joe: It’s not really like that any more. It was, for the record, when we made it, I kinda knew what I wanted a lot of the songs to sound like. But then you have wonderful surprises and they end up sounding better. Slightly different, here and there. Everybody exerts a bit of influence over it. Kyle, as the producer, and our former keyboardist was a big force behind it too. But now, with the new songs, I just sort of bring in the guitar part and the vocal part and everybody else kinda fills it in. I like it a lot better.
Matt: It’s nice writing to the live show rather than writing to the record, because then when we get to the record the next one, who knows how far we can expand it?
Joe: I’ve said it over and over, we’re really poised to do something good for our second record just because we’re not working backwards to try and figure out how we’re going to bring something live. It’s already there live and we’re just augmenting it in the studio, as opposed to adding overdub after overdub.
Matt: Trying to make four people sound like twenty.

So with the brass and strings on the record, were you playing the songs as a four piece before hand?
Joe: Yeah, that was brought in after the fact.
Matt: As I saw it, you wrote to what you heard in your head, not to instrumentation. You had a vision of what it needed. You heard several guitar parts, you heard horns. We didn’t necessarily have it or need it but we knew that was going to be in there.
Joe: Yeah, and the strings on ‘Cold Spring’, we knew that needed to be there.

You’ve got a really unique style of writing. People are always making comparisons with your band but it really reminded me of Stephen Malkmus. The way there are so many lines coming at you from all over the place. They seem to have so much resonance, for no truly apparent reason- I mean I’d find it hard to say what each song was specifically about- although you can tell they mean a lot.
Joe: That’s pretty much exactly the effect that I would want to create.

Well I’m going to edit that and say that you said it.
Joe: Hahaha, oh no. Please don’t. I think what helps also, what I said before about piecing stuff together, is that a lot of the time the writing and the music and the lyrics, at least for this, were independent processes. I think Dan said this first, it’s like the lyrical peaks don’t match up with… I mean, if some lyric is particularly direct and emotional, it’s not necessarily matched up with the big swell of strings. That helps too, in what you’re talking about.

It means it kind of hits you in a less expected way.
Joe: Yeah, you feel it later. Yeah, I think that’s the best kind of record to make, is a grower. Something that reveals layers and layers and layers each time you listen. Those are my favourite records.

Cymbals Eat Guitars on MySpace