Zoe likes beeps.
Sophie likes strums.
They both like the Decemberists.
Two best friends on a mission to make the world a better place for music.

4.12.08

I don't believe in the new year anymore!

But I do believe in Top 10 lists, and to quote one of my favorite discoveries of the year.... it's business time.


To be honest, I am pretty disappointed with the selection of good albums this year. Maybe it's just because last year was so incredible; not only were there several albums that I have listened to enough for them to become part of the very fiber of my being (Hissing Fauna, The Stage Names and Night Falls Over Kortedala to name a few), I also listened for the first time to several artists that I now consider among my favorite. This is not to say there weren't albums that I enjoyed this year, there were many. However, when I was deciding on this list, it was only difficult to pick which albums made it because of my apathy to even most of the albums I like. To put it a different way, there aren't any albums this year that I feel vastly improved the quality of my life. I know that discussing what albums came out in the last 365 days as opposed to the 365 before that is largely irrelevant, and I am happy that there are albums that I am that attached to. But I feel compelled to complain about it anyway. What else are blogs for?

Though this year may not have been great for albums, it was AMAZING for concerts. In the last few months I've been able to attend some of my favorite concerts of my life, and more importantly got to see Kevin Barnes ride a white horse in only tiny gold shorts. That experience alone easily makes up for any deficiency in good new music. Seeing Okkervil River live was also an unforgettable experience, and has sparked an obsession that now rivals my devotion to The Decemberists or The Mountain Goats.

One more note... there seems to be a lot of confusion about Bon Iver and whether to count his record as a 2007 or 08 release... lets just say that if For Emma was released this year, it would be number one, no contest. But I'll leave it off my list.

In other news, some of these albums are really great, and they are all 100% worth checking out

1. Fleet Foxes - s/t and Sun Giant EP (Also wins the award for "album I most wish was preformed in one of my school's a capella groups")



2. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Lie Down In The Light


3. Born Ruffians - Red, Yellow and Blue ("I Need A Life" wins the "Hardest Song to Get Out of My Head Award")


4. Vampire Weekend - s/t (I know it's super overplayed and everywhere but I still love it.)


5. Shearwater - Rook ("Best Band I Discovered This Year")


6. The Dodos - Visiter ("Best Album with the Worst Cover Art")


7. Plant and Animals - Parc Avenue


8. Why? - Alopecia ("Other Best Band I Discovered This Year")


9. Dr. Dog - Fate


10. Ane Brun - Changing of the Seasons (why are all Swedish people so awesome?)


The last few on the list could be totally interchangeable with Department of Eagles, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, Okkervil River's The Stand Ins and several others (my newest obsession being a few songs by MGMT, yeah I know I'm super late on this).

Thanks for reading, stay tuned for more news from the Super Awesome Squad soon!

Back With A Vengeance!

Since we last spoke, I've moved across the country and am in college! If you were wondering, college is Super Awesome. But Sophie and I decided that it's finally time to start posting again, so if you haven't noticed, there are three more interviews up today! They're all for TMT and have taken place over the past couple months. Hope you enjoy them, and see you soon.

Love
Zoe

Interview: the Octopus Project (10.22.08)

The sheer number of bands coming out of Austin these days scares me sometimes, especially because I know that for every group that gets recognition outside of the city, there’s like 100 that do not. I wonder just how many great bands get passed over each year. Luckily, for those of us who like our beats eccentric and danceable, The Octopus Project is on the national circuit for keeps. Composed of husband and wife duo Yvonne and Josh Lambert, friend Toto Miranda, and beloved newcomer Ryan Figg, the band produces a unique blend of wordless electro-pop with crazy instrumentation and a whole lot of reckless abandon.

I sat down with all four of the band members in October at their show at the Black Cat in DC, discussing their history and their music. Though devoted to their music, they find time for quite a few silly things, including a love of Riverdance and a propensity for mask-making.

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Yvonne, how did you learn to play theremin? That’s a pretty rare instrument.

Yvonne: Josh and I saw a documentary on Leon Theremin in 1999, and we both found it very exciting and liked the instrument’s history. We bought one on the internet, and I just happened to be the one who took to it. When we started playing together, we brought it in just to make weird noises. It took me two or three years for me to become comfortable playing melodies. I spent a lot of time with a tape recorder and headphones trying to mimic classical pieces that I was familiar with.

Your live show involves a lot of switching instruments. Did you all come in playing your instruments, or did anyone learn a new instrument to make that switching possible?

Josh: Everyone came in with their instrument, but Yvonne learned how to play guitar.

Yvonne: Still working on that one!

Toto: It’s also a product of our songwriting process. When we play a new song, it could be one person with a little snippet of music and an idea about where to go with it, or it could be a lot of people playing a lot of instruments. When we tour, the four of us, we have to work out the logistics of reproducing that sound. The switching really grows out of necessity — if in a song we want two guitars in the beginning, but a bass at the end, one of us has to run over to the other corner of the stage so we can do it.

Did you all grow up together or did you meet because of the music?

Josh: We’ve known each other since high school. I met Yvonne on my 18th birthday.

Yvonne: Toto and I grew up in the same neighborhood. We went to church together. Actually, we went to Sunday school together.

Toto: Well, we were both present when Sunday school was occurring. I wouldn’t really call it “going” or anything like that.

Yvonne: We weren’t particularly close then. I suppose we were as close as any 11-year-old boy and girl can be. Toto’s like my brother. But we all grew up in Houston. Ryan’s been with us for about a year now, and he’s the only true Austinite.

Toto: He gives us cred. That’s how we get into all the cool places in Austin.

Austin can be, for lack of a better word, sort of a clusterfuck of music. How did you break out of that bubble and into the national circuit?

Toto: For me, it really came from wanting to tour. When Peek-A-Boo decided to put out our first record, our producer was like “We’d love to put it out, but you guys would have to tour” and we were like “Have to? Golly gee, let’s go! Sounds like fun!” It’s something that we’re motivated to do for its own sake. It’s a boundary-expanding kind of adventure. Touring nationally did a lot for us as a band and helped us to focus our sound. All those different environments night after night really force you to figure out what’s going on specifically in your music.

So, touring is a highlight for everyone.

Josh: Definitely. It’s really cool to meet all these different people. When people come to shows and like it, we feel really good.

Your collaboration with Black Moth Super Rainbow came somewhat soon before your latest album. Do you think it had any influence on the record?

Toto: Maybe, just in the sense that we were part of it. We did those songs in a very similar way to how we do our songs. We take a bunch of different elements and layer them together, so in the case of the Black Moth stuff, it might be some of their music rather than one of our members playing something. Black Moth sent us a bunch of bits of their songs and we sent a bunch of our bits. When it came to actually doing the songs, instead of reaching for a guitar or drums, we would reach for a piece from Black Moth and stick that in the song. It was neat to use that to expand the palette of songs. I think in that way it certainly whetted our appetite to experiment with some new sounds.

So the entire project was over the internet; you never sat down together to make songs?

Yvonne: Completely. We didn’t even meet them until after the record was done. Technology is amazing.

As both an isolated phrase and a song title, I think “Copying Soup Onto Sexy Birdy” is one of the best combinations of words I’ve heard. How did that name come into being?”

Toto: It’s really a boring story. You would be disappointed if I told you. It’s better if you imagine it as being mysterious or something.

Josh: It’s not that bad! It’s pretty funny, I think.

Toto: Okay. There was a computer with a hard drive named Sexy Birdy. There was a song called Soup. When we dragged the song onto the hard drive, the little status window popped up and it said “Copying ‘Soup’ onto ‘Sexy Birdy’.” So that’s the story.

What do you think the absence of words in your songs adds to the music?

Josh: It challenges us to make things that are interesting to people who like songs with singing. And at the same time it makes things very easy. None of us have ever been the singer of a band. Well, except Ryan.

Ryan: It was in high school. It didn’t count.

Josh: It’s nice not to have the dynamic of one of us being the frontman, that not-really-collaborative arrangement where it’s supposed to be equal but the singer ends up being in charge anyways. It was never a decision to leave out lyrics; we just never felt the need to put them in.

Why did you start using masks in your videos and shows?”

Toto: We just went through a mask phase. The first one came from a Perez Prado record that Josh and Yvonne had. The cover was just this picture of his face sort of like [strikes school portrait pose]. We thought it was pretty funny, so we made masks out of it. The next one was Josh Xeroxing electrical outlets and blowing them up to face size. Those were the most successful.

Yvonne: That one stuck with people the most, and people gravitated towards it. After all, it is like a little face, so people could relate to it. Last night, someone came to our show with a homemade sparkplug mask around his neck. It was nice.

Josh: Sometimes a whole group of people will show up with masks. It’s pretty amazing that people are paying any attention at all in the first place, let alone enough to take the time to do something like that. To see someone wanting to show that not only are they paying attention, but they really like our stuff and know all the details is pretty impressive.

Can you think of a band that you’d be willing to do that sort of thing for?

Josh: Lord of the Dance, definitely.

Yvonne: That white shirt!

Josh: I’ve actually never seen them. But I’d still do it.

Does this mean we can look forward to another collaboration? The Octopus Project scores Riverdance or something along those lines?

Yvonne: That would be so much fun! We could get some dancers for our shows.

Josh: I guess we could make it happen. We’d need Riverdance though; there’s that little problem.

Toto: Yeah, it takes two for that tango to happen.

Interview: Los Campesinos!

A lot of people here on this lovely planet of ours are simply mediocre. These are the sort of people who do the same thing every day, who never jump up and down with abandon, and who worry about embarrassing themselves in public. Gareth Campesinos!, the lead singer of Welsh band Los Campesinos! is not one of these people. It’s hard to be when you’re at the forefront of the so-called twee revival.

Los Campesinos! are unique in that they are music fans first and musicians second. They proudly flaunt their influences, and Gareth in particular takes pride in his unpredictable taste. We talked about the band’s formation, the necessity for fun, and why the world shouldn’t write them off as “the band with the glockenspiel.” Gareth was in fact so eager to talk about music that he started the conversation before I could ask him anything.

---

Is that an Architecture in Helsinki shirt you’re wearing?

Yeah, it is! Good catch, I don’t think anyone’s figured it out before. I noticed during sound check that Tom is wearing a Deerhoof shirt. And last time the band was here, you wore a Xiu Xiu shirt. Do you purposefully wear band shirts from San Francisco when you play here?

No, it’s just because all the shirts I own are band t-shirts. I think I have over 100, and at least ten of them are Xiu Xiu shirts. It’s a weakness and a little bit of trying to be more interesting by wearing interesting bands’ t-shirts. It cuts out need for conversation and just moves right to a mutual recognition of a shared interest. Not that it’s ever really worked for me, though.

You’re still a relatively new band, so would you tell me about how the group formed and started playing?

The seven of us came together about two years ago. Initially, it was Neil, Harriet, and Ellen just jamming together. I lived with Neil, and when he started the band, I didn’t expect much to come of it. He met Tom at a pub in Cardiff and overheard Tom talking about The Decemberists. They didn’t know each other but started talking about being fans of that band. Tom started coming to practices, and he’s a very talented songwriter. I heard the demos and changed my mind about the band not going anywhere. So I told Neil that I was going to go to a practice, and all we had were these post-rock songs, which needed something else. Harriet plays the violin, and we thought that, although it’s a bit cliché, it would be a nice addition. Ellen and Aleks were friends, and she joined the band even before we heard her sing. We got to seven and called it quits there.

What do you like about having seven as opposed to the more traditional three or four?

Songwriting is a lot easier, and it gives us so much more scope to work with. When you’re just guitar, bass, and drums, you can’t go much of anywhere. But adding the keyboards, glockenspiel, and violin gives us such a broader capacity. There’s also more sound to hide behind if you mess up, which is nice. And more people to talk to if you fall out with somebody. More is more.

Other than the scope you said they provide, is there anything else about the specific instruments the band uses that you think adds to the overall effect?

I’ve actually come to resent the glockenspiel quite a bit. To a lot of people, it seems that we’ve become “that band with the glockenspiel.” We went in to a radio program once to do an acoustic session, and the host goes (assumes cheesy radio voice) “I want to see the guy with the glockenspiel!” And I’m just like “Oh, god, not again.” I think the violin is key. When Harriet plays solos or leads on the violin, it’s a lot more interesting, rather than on the guitar.

We’re working on new stuff at the moment with more instruments. When we tour again in October, we’re going to have a second drum kit and proper keyboards. We’re excited about that.

Where did the band name come from?

Neil used to be fluent in Spanish, but when he got to Uni and started drinking more, he kind of forgot. It’s sort of a hangover from that, I guess. It’s phonetically nice and aesthetically pleasing, but the literal meaning is insignificant to the band. I wasn’t even in the band when they came up with the name, but don’t think we thought we’d get anywhere or that anyone would care about us. If we’d expected to get anywhere close to where we are now, we probably would have tried to come up with a better band name. But it does the trick.

Are you planning on legally changing your names, Ramones-style?

Actually, the night we recorded our demos we were really happy with them and we were a bit drunk, and we went to a pub and the DJ played our songs. People actually liked them, and so we got really happy and said “If we ever play a gig in America, we’ll all legally change our names to Campesinos!” We didn’t expect anything to actually happen, but lo and behold, it has happened, but we’ve not [officially] changed our surnames. Nor do we intend to. We overshot our aims, which is a really good feeling.

Bimbo’s is a bigger venue than Great American Music Hall [where LC! Played in San Francisco on their last tour.] Have you been playing to bigger crowds across the board?

Definitely. On the East Coast, we sold out both our shows at the Bowery Ballroom, which was really nice, and tickets have sold really well for tonight as well. I also think we’ve been getting bigger crowds because we’re playing more all-ages venues, which I really like. Younger people have no inhibitions, so they’re a much more enthusiastic crowd to play to.

Are there differences between fans at home and here in the U.S.?

I think we definitely like the U.S. better. People who like us in this country and in Canada have heard about us through college radio or the internet. Whereas in the UK, it’s more of an enemy type thing where you have different sorts of music fans who like one thing and they’re very antagonistic toward those who like other things. In the NME, we get lumped in with a lot of other bands, and we get lads coming into our shows heckling us and trying to start trouble. It’s because the base of our music is upbeat and danceable and they like the more intense stuff, so they feel sort of angry toward us and like they need to defend their music. But I’m the biggest snob in the band, so if you talked to someone else I’m sure they’d say something different.

Though as much as I like touring the U.S., I do get incredibly homesick sometimes. I live with my sisters and my mum, and I miss them a lot. There’s also something ever-so-slightly soul-destroying about the monotony of the days. It’s intense and you don’t get to see anything other than the bus.

Both the band’s music and lyrics make your influences very clear, a good example being the similarity in title of your song “Knee-Deep at ATP” with [Camera Obscura’s song] “Knee-Deep at the NPL.” Why is that — sort of name-checking the older twee culture — so important?

First of all, you’re the only person to have caught that reference to Camera Obscura. But I guess it’s kind of inevitable for the band, because I write the lyrics, and most of what I do with my time and what I care about is listening to music, so I can only write about what I know and I only want to write about what I know. It’s inevitable that these reference points are going to come up in the songs. The whole movement with C86 and Riot Grrrl and K records is something I really wish I could have experienced properly, so I guess I’m trying to appropriate it for myself. It’s inevitable, but I think that some people don’t like it and think it’s a bit unnecessary. But it’s all I know, so it’s inevitable that it come up in the songs.

And in terms of the music, you really do like following them, as opposed to say Xiu Xiu, who I know you are a big fan of. I don’t hear that as much as, say, Tullycraft in your music.

That’s really the band as a whole having their say. I don’t have the ability to write music, and Tom [the band’s songwriter] isn’t as big a Xiu Xiu fan as I am. And we do certainly sound like those more twee bands, but the lyrics I write are often a lot darker than the songs might suggest. That’s certainly something that I’d like to develop more. A lot of the time we’re pigeonholed as being this ridiculously happy, upbeat, carefree band, which isn’t really the case. Hopefully the juxtaposition between the music and the lyrics is going to become more extreme. We’ll see how people react to it.

How do you hope people react to the music, or to seeing your live show?

Live, I think we make it a lot about enjoying ourselves. I guess we’re a bit selfish in that respect. We played a gig in Eugene a couple days ago, and although we didn’t play particularly well, we had such a good time. There were only about 40 people there, and Parenthetical Girls were in the audience crowd-surfing and moshing and fighting each other. I was really quite drunk, but I do remember being heckled to take my shirt off and I did. The set ended with me being led onto the dancefloor and Parenthetical Girls holding my legs and spinning me around and around. I have burns on my back. We really just want to have fun. If we were overly sincere, I don’t think it would work.

I don’t really know what reactions I’d like people to have to our music. I guess I’d like people to “get” it. If people that like the same bands that we like enjoy our music, it’s extremely flattering because it means we’re doing something right. There was a kid in a Xiu Xiu t-shirt in the front row in Eugene, and so I got really excited about that.

It really sounds like you all are friends and enjoy being around each other. How does that help the band’s dynamic?

Well, we’re touring the world, and it’s a massive holiday, and it’s nice to be doing it with people you love and have fun with. It’s incredibly cheesy, but it makes it a lot more enjoyable.

Interview: Los Campesinos! (6.6.08)

A lot of people here on this lovely planet of ours are simply mediocre. These are the sort of people who do the same thing every day, who never jump up and down with abandon, and who worry about embarrassing themselves in public. Gareth Campesinos!, the lead singer of Welsh band Los Campesinos! is not one of these people. It’s hard to be when you’re at the forefront of the so-called twee revival.

Los Campesinos! are unique in that they are music fans first and musicians second. They proudly flaunt their influences, and Gareth in particular takes pride in his unpredictable taste. We talked about the band’s formation, the necessity for fun, and why the world shouldn’t write them off as “the band with the glockenspiel.” Gareth was in fact so eager to talk about music that he started the conversation before I could ask him anything.

---

Is that an Architecture in Helsinki shirt you’re wearing?

Yeah, it is! Good catch, I don’t think anyone’s figured it out before. I noticed during sound check that Tom is wearing a Deerhoof shirt. And last time the band was here, you wore a Xiu Xiu shirt. Do you purposefully wear band shirts from San Francisco when you play here?

No, it’s just because all the shirts I own are band t-shirts. I think I have over 100, and at least ten of them are Xiu Xiu shirts. It’s a weakness and a little bit of trying to be more interesting by wearing interesting bands’ t-shirts. It cuts out need for conversation and just moves right to a mutual recognition of a shared interest. Not that it’s ever really worked for me, though.

You’re still a relatively new band, so would you tell me about how the group formed and started playing?

The seven of us came together about two years ago. Initially, it was Neil, Harriet, and Ellen just jamming together. I lived with Neil, and when he started the band, I didn’t expect much to come of it. He met Tom at a pub in Cardiff and overheard Tom talking about The Decemberists. They didn’t know each other but started talking about being fans of that band. Tom started coming to practices, and he’s a very talented songwriter. I heard the demos and changed my mind about the band not going anywhere. So I told Neil that I was going to go to a practice, and all we had were these post-rock songs, which needed something else. Harriet plays the violin, and we thought that, although it’s a bit cliché, it would be a nice addition. Ellen and Aleks were friends, and she joined the band even before we heard her sing. We got to seven and called it quits there.

What do you like about having seven as opposed to the more traditional three or four?

Songwriting is a lot easier, and it gives us so much more scope to work with. When you’re just guitar, bass, and drums, you can’t go much of anywhere. But adding the keyboards, glockenspiel, and violin gives us such a broader capacity. There’s also more sound to hide behind if you mess up, which is nice. And more people to talk to if you fall out with somebody. More is more.

Other than the scope you said they provide, is there anything else about the specific instruments the band uses that you think adds to the overall effect?

I’ve actually come to resent the glockenspiel quite a bit. To a lot of people, it seems that we’ve become “that band with the glockenspiel.” We went in to a radio program once to do an acoustic session, and the host goes (assumes cheesy radio voice) “I want to see the guy with the glockenspiel!” And I’m just like “Oh, god, not again.” I think the violin is key. When Harriet plays solos or leads on the violin, it’s a lot more interesting, rather than on the guitar.

We’re working on new stuff at the moment with more instruments. When we tour again in October, we’re going to have a second drum kit and proper keyboards. We’re excited about that.

Where did the band name come from?

Neil used to be fluent in Spanish, but when he got to Uni and started drinking more, he kind of forgot. It’s sort of a hangover from that, I guess. It’s phonetically nice and aesthetically pleasing, but the literal meaning is insignificant to the band. I wasn’t even in the band when they came up with the name, but don’t think we thought we’d get anywhere or that anyone would care about us. If we’d expected to get anywhere close to where we are now, we probably would have tried to come up with a better band name. But it does the trick.

Are you planning on legally changing your names, Ramones-style?

Actually, the night we recorded our demos we were really happy with them and we were a bit drunk, and we went to a pub and the DJ played our songs. People actually liked them, and so we got really happy and said “If we ever play a gig in America, we’ll all legally change our names to Campesinos!” We didn’t expect anything to actually happen, but lo and behold, it has happened, but we’ve not [officially] changed our surnames. Nor do we intend to. We overshot our aims, which is a really good feeling.

Bimbo’s is a bigger venue than Great American Music Hall [where LC! Played in San Francisco on their last tour.] Have you been playing to bigger crowds across the board?

Definitely. On the East Coast, we sold out both our shows at the Bowery Ballroom, which was really nice, and tickets have sold really well for tonight as well. I also think we’ve been getting bigger crowds because we’re playing more all-ages venues, which I really like. Younger people have no inhibitions, so they’re a much more enthusiastic crowd to play to.

Are there differences between fans at home and here in the U.S.?

I think we definitely like the U.S. better. People who like us in this country and in Canada have heard about us through college radio or the internet. Whereas in the UK, it’s more of an enemy type thing where you have different sorts of music fans who like one thing and they’re very antagonistic toward those who like other things. In the NME, we get lumped in with a lot of other bands, and we get lads coming into our shows heckling us and trying to start trouble. It’s because the base of our music is upbeat and danceable and they like the more intense stuff, so they feel sort of angry toward us and like they need to defend their music. But I’m the biggest snob in the band, so if you talked to someone else I’m sure they’d say something different.

Though as much as I like touring the U.S., I do get incredibly homesick sometimes. I live with my sisters and my mum, and I miss them a lot. There’s also something ever-so-slightly soul-destroying about the monotony of the days. It’s intense and you don’t get to see anything other than the bus.

Both the band’s music and lyrics make your influences very clear, a good example being the similarity in title of your song “Knee-Deep at ATP” with [Camera Obscura’s song] “Knee-Deep at the NPL.” Why is that — sort of name-checking the older twee culture — so important?

First of all, you’re the only person to have caught that reference to Camera Obscura. But I guess it’s kind of inevitable for the band, because I write the lyrics, and most of what I do with my time and what I care about is listening to music, so I can only write about what I know and I only want to write about what I know. It’s inevitable that these reference points are going to come up in the songs. The whole movement with C86 and Riot Grrrl and K records is something I really wish I could have experienced properly, so I guess I’m trying to appropriate it for myself. It’s inevitable, but I think that some people don’t like it and think it’s a bit unnecessary. But it’s all I know, so it’s inevitable that it come up in the songs.

And in terms of the music, you really do like following them, as opposed to say Xiu Xiu, who I know you are a big fan of. I don’t hear that as much as, say, Tullycraft in your music.

That’s really the band as a whole having their say. I don’t have the ability to write music, and Tom [the band’s songwriter] isn’t as big a Xiu Xiu fan as I am. And we do certainly sound like those more twee bands, but the lyrics I write are often a lot darker than the songs might suggest. That’s certainly something that I’d like to develop more. A lot of the time we’re pigeonholed as being this ridiculously happy, upbeat, carefree band, which isn’t really the case. Hopefully the juxtaposition between the music and the lyrics is going to become more extreme. We’ll see how people react to it.

How do you hope people react to the music, or to seeing your live show?

Live, I think we make it a lot about enjoying ourselves. I guess we’re a bit selfish in that respect. We played a gig in Eugene a couple days ago, and although we didn’t play particularly well, we had such a good time. There were only about 40 people there, and Parenthetical Girls were in the audience crowd-surfing and moshing and fighting each other. I was really quite drunk, but I do remember being heckled to take my shirt off and I did. The set ended with me being led onto the dancefloor and Parenthetical Girls holding my legs and spinning me around and around. I have burns on my back. We really just want to have fun. If we were overly sincere, I don’t think it would work.

I don’t really know what reactions I’d like people to have to our music. I guess I’d like people to “get” it. If people that like the same bands that we like enjoy our music, it’s extremely flattering because it means we’re doing something right. There was a kid in a Xiu Xiu t-shirt in the front row in Eugene, and so I got really excited about that.

It really sounds like you all are friends and enjoy being around each other. How does that help the band’s dynamic?

Well, we’re touring the world, and it’s a massive holiday, and it’s nice to be doing it with people you love and have fun with. It’s incredibly cheesy, but it makes it a lot more enjoyable.

Interview: Cloud Cult (5.14.08)

Cloud Cult are one of those infectious bands that you constantly listen to, and before too long, you realize you know all of their songs. The genius of what they create sneaks up and sucks you into a world of both breathtaking beauty and unbearable pain. I sat down with four of the members: Craig and Connie Minowa, the band’s singer/songwriter and artist, respectively; Sarah Young, their cellist; and Arlen Peiffer, their drummer. At heart they are Minnesotans traveling around a world that is overdeveloped compared to their scenic home, but their tenacity and honesty force the inhabitants of that unnatural world to reconsider the destruction we create.--

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Unlike the other Cloud Cult albums, all the songs on the new album have consistently positive lyrics. Was that intentional?

Craig: Yes. When I was writing the album, I was really focused on rebirth. The message is more intentionally positive, because I’m at a time in my life when I’m realizing the power of perspective and the necessity of looking at negative things in a positive light.

The album is also a lot shorter and composed of full songs without any of the interludes that other albums had.

Cr: We really wanted to do something shorter and more succinct, even leave our fans hanging a little bit more. Our time to finish the album was also shorter, which rushed it. There were other songs I wrote for it that I thought of including at one time or another, but when all was said and done, the complete project felt like it needed to be a little shorter.

“Story of the Grandson of Jesus” is a unique Cloud Cult song in that it carries a third-person narrative and is sort of a complete story. Is that something that you’re finding yourself doing more, as opposed to the more personal songs that comprise most of Cloud Cult’s repertoire?

Cr: I have a friend in San Francisco who met this homeless man who actually claimed to be the grandson of Jesus. The friend believed him for awhile and followed him around. It seemed like an interesting story and a good vehicle for the messages that we usually like to have in our songs. I really just found the character very interesting. The album was actually going to be called “Stories from the Pleides,” and every song was going to be a narrative. But after writing a couple songs, that changed right away.

What do you like about having such a large group?

Sarah: I like the people! It’s been an evolution into this current group, and I really like the dynamic. We’ve got everything covered for touring too — some of us are strong, some of us are good drivers. Some of us are sassy also.

Arlen: It’s really fun, too. Lately we’ve been having these band-wide laughing fits. They’re not really triggered by anything in particular, but they go on for about 20 minutes. The giggling fests are awesome.

The aspect of environmentalism is really important to the band. How do you balance that with the music?

Cr: We try to incorporate it as much as possible into our business model, though lyrically not so much the music. I do write most of our stuff on our farm in Minnesota, though, so it’s impossible to ignore the beauty of that in the music. It gives it a sort of organic feel, which I like a lot.

Coming from such a small town and a natural place, was it a hard adjustment to start playing in huge metropolitan areas?

Cr: Definitely. The first few tours were really grueling. The demand of being on all the time and going directly from the van to a show and then back to a van and doing it all the time was really hard. We got sick almost the whole tour. We really wanted to go home.

Co: For a lot of us, it’s still like that, but we know what to expect. A couple of the members live in Minneapolis, so they’re used to it. We also have day jobs working for environmental nonprofits, so it’s hard to not feel like we have to get stuff done all the time. We do like being homebodies, and we want to spend some more time working on the farm so we can get off the grid.

Your music is often very intense and cathartic. How do you keep the energy up?

Cr: Because the music is so intense, we have to get deeply involved in it. The best performance is when you can have a personal catharsis. It’s tough to do that a lot without feeling you’re going to turn into ash.

A: This is my first tour ever, and I’m really starry-eyed. It’s a dream come true, so being able to do this is inspiration enough.

S: it’s just an honor to be able to play this. I like 98.9% of Craig’s songs, and he writes a lot of songs!

You write a lot of songs that don’t make it to albums, then.

Cr: It varies album to album. They Live On the Sun was 100 tracks, and it’s only 21 on the album. Usually there’s one track ditched for every song that makes it onto an album.

With all that unreleased material, do you ever think about making a B-sides album?

Cr: Yeah, actually. We want to work on starting a family and having a baby, so we have a lot of songs saved up that could take the form of an album while we’re doing that. I think we’re going to take a break from these long tours and start being more strategic about where we play.

S: That’s really awesome for me, because I have two kids and I travel with them, so I have to pace myself. It’s hard.

Co: Craig, I’m going to remember that. On the next tour, I’ll remind you of when Sarah talked about how hard it is to keep a kid with us on tour. And you’ll have to listen to me. Sarah and Craig and I have all been on the road for five years, and we’re ready to slow down. The newbies are like “Gotta go gotta go!” and we just sit here and say “Nuh-uh, we’re tired!” We’re the geezers of the band. The energy has shifted, and the driving force has changed. It’s nice to have the new energy to keep us going. Arlen is like a new set of eyes to look through.

“The Ghost Inside Our House” has a line about starting a family. Is that song about what you two are trying to do right now, then?

Cr: Yeah, it is. The ghost in the house is Kaidin [Connie and Craig’s son who passed away when he was two]. We always feel like he’s around, and there’s a desire to see that ghost because we want to have that tangible experience and say ‘Yes, he’s still alive, the other side exists and he’s there.’ We have a need to believe he’s with us and still in our family.

Connie, your painting is really unique to the band. What do you like about doing it?

Co:Well, I love painting period. It adds a unique visual element. I went to art school and have been doing it all my life. I’m also huge music buff, and it’s nice to combine two of my biggest passions. It’s a visual expression of the music that’s being performed. Craig and I are celebrating our 10-year wedding anniversary. We’ve been doing this relationship for a long time. He’s a musician and I’m an artist, and it’s nice that we can combine our art forms and be creative together. That’s what I like most is being able to be with my honey. A lot of it is also inspired by the journey we go through on tour.

Cloud Cult has been making a lot of music for quite awhile now. Craig, how do you feel you’ve progressed as a songwriter?

Cr: I focus a lot more on lyrical content. Early on, whatever came could be, and it was more freeform. Knowing that that there’s radio play now and that a larger audience is hearing it means that I feel responsible for what I put out there. It needs to be positive because I want to propagate something good.

This album was a process of sorting through lyrics very meticulously, making sure that every line had something positive and empowering and helpful. If you go back to Who Killed Puck?, it’s a very dark album and was reflective of what I was going through at the time. There was no intent for people to listen to it. It was more for me, because I had the need to vent. They Live On the Sun was the same way. It can be good music, but I feel like if I’m doing this for a living, I want my career to be something that’s positive.