This is fine.
Continuing on with our coverage of established SXSW bands and their current state affairs today, we take a look at Australian outfit An Horse. We sent over some of our SXSW oriented questions to Kate Cooper who represents ½ of the band. Follow the jump for her sweet responses.
With SxSW right around the corner, music schedules are being filled out like NCAA Brackets. We will have to make tough choices and let go of venue grudges to be happy. Here are a few thoughts on venue selection as I know everyone has one or two places they have a love/hate affair with…
As we get closer to SXSW, we hope to have more great interviews for you all. Here is one from our favorite act of late, The Fresh & Onlys. We were lucky enough to grab a hold of bassist Shayde before the band heads our way. Read on ya’ll.
ATH: So you’re headed to Austin for SXSW, and we know you’ve been here before. So what’s the first thing you guys have to do, aside from the business side of things, once you pull into town?
Shayde: Finding a place to sleep or camp out is always a challenge during SXSW. We’ll probably going door to door looking for some Texas hospitality.
ATH: What do you guys think of SXSW? For you as a band, is it just like a great big party? Are there bands you’re excited to see, or friends from the road? Or is it all business…promoting the band?
Shayde: It always feels like a family reunion. All the bands and people that you get to know from doing music are all there so you end up partying more than usual. There’s never been a feeling of doing “business” for us there. It’s just pure fun.
ATH: There are literally thousands of bands coming to town for SXSW. What’s the one thing you want to tell our readers that will make your band stand out above the rest?
Shayde: I’ve never been a good salesman. But you know where it’s at.
ATH: You released the excellent Play It Strange last year, and you always seem to be working on releasing some sort of new material. Is there anything coming down the wire in 2011 from Fresh and Onlys?
Shayde: We have a 5 song EP coming out on Sacred Bones called “Secret Walls”. We plan to record the next record between now and June. It’s gonna be a monster.
ATH: Along those same lines, due to the high volume of output from the band, how do you guys continue to stay motivated to write new material? Is there one principal songwriter, or is it more of a collective effort?
Shayde: The songs varie in origin. Tim and I are always challenging each other and that keeps it interesting. It’s always exciting to see what Wymond and Kyle bring to the table when we show them new songs. That’s really where the magic happens. We’re far from being dried up as far as songs go. We keep getting closer and closer to what we do. That’s what inspires us most. I love it.
ATH: What are your favorite songs to play live? Are there songs you would absolutely never play live? Why or why not?
Shayde: Waterfall is always great to play live. People are familiar with it and it feels like such a thick song when we play it. I can really feel that one penetrating the crowd. I feel that way about Invisible Forces or Peacock and Wing as well. There are several songs that we’ve never been able to get a grip on. It’s okay though. There are plenty more lying around and many more to come. It’s never good to force a song live. Too many bands do that and it’s painful to watch.
ATH: If your band were an animal, what animal would you be? Don’t be a kitten, please don’t be a kitten.
Shayde: I love kittens but we are definitely not a kitten. Platypus. Definitely.
Thanks to Shayde for taking out the time to answer our questions, and to the fabulous Nick Dierl for helping make this work.
ATH: You’ve got a new album coming out, Actor-Caster. How will this album compare with the work/sound of Con Law? Did you try any new tricks this time around?
Grant: This album is a little more cohesive than Con Law. The songs hang together a little better. I thought that the diversity of that record was one of its strong points, but we wanted to make this new record more of a unit than a collection of different influences. Not too many new tricks. I think we’ve gotten better and more confident at producing our demos. The demos we came in with for Actor-Caster were very close to what ended up on the record. A lot of the actual tracks from the demos made it onto the final record, so I think that reflects the fact that we’re getting closer to honing in on exactly what we want at an earlier stage in the writing process. As a result of that, I can hear that the performances are stronger and more confident, the vocals are stronger and better performances. We didn’t really worry about whether or not we could even make a record, which was something that we struggled with on the first one.
ATH: As a band that hails from New Orleans, how does the city’s music history influence your music, or do you tend to work against that history, choosing to create your own sound entirely?
Grant: It’s not a direct influence nor is it an anti-influence that we actively try to work against. That is not to say that we don’t appreciate traditional New Orleans music. Very much the opposite, Ted and I have spent a lot of our time in New Orleans going to see bands and musicians play traditional New Orleans music, especially in our high school years. Specifically The Meters, Art Neville, Irma Thomas, Rebirth Brass Band. We are huge fans of the city and the kind of music that New Orleans is famous for, we just don’t try to play it.
ATH: At this point in your career, where are you guys hoping to go, either musically, or popularity wise, etc.? Let it be known, we’re thinking you should be huge.
Grant: Thank you. We also think that we should be huge. I just read online that LCD Soundsystem instantly sold out their final show at Madison Square Garden. We will feel like justice has been done when we can instantly sell out the Louisiana Superdome instantly, which holds about 80,000. We would also like to be the first band to play a concert from the top of Mount Everest which we would broadcast over the web for all to see. We are currently talking to some folks at WFMU in New York about sponsoring that concert for us.
ATH: What are you looking forward to about your trip to Austin for SXSW? Are there any bands you’re looking forward to seeing? Sites or restaurants you have to hit up?
Grant: We’re playing a Force Field party on Wednesday 3/16 that I heard Lower Dens will be on also, we are admirers of their stuff so I hope that rumor is true. The Park The Van showcase at Mi Casa Cantina on 3/18 is going to be insane. We’re playing with Floating Action, The Spinto Band, Giant Cloud, Brass Bed and Empress Hotel. And that place is not a big venue so I know it’s going to be packed and it’s going to be so fun.
We really love Austin, we were there in August recording the Trust EP and we just fell in love with it. I can’t wait to get back. I will go straight back to Maria’s Taco Xpress on S. Lamar, Home Slice Pizza on S. Congress, we love Club De Ville and I can’t wait to go hang out there again. I’m getting really excited thinking about it!
ATH: You guys are a band who has this huge sound on record. In the live setting, do you think that you’re album transfers the way you want it to? Are there things you wish you had on hand to boost the sound, or things you wish you could leave out?
Grant: We have been tinkering with the formula of our live show for a couple of years now and I feel like we finally got something that I think is translating the songs really well to the live setting. At this point we’re playing the songs very faithfully to the recorded versions. We added a fifth member to the lineup so that we can fit in more of the parts and we’ve also added a couple of trumpets for all the shows we’ve done this year so far and we intend to keep that going for the foreseeable future. It might get hard for all the SXSW events we are playing, but we are trying really hard to set that up the horns for SXSW right now. Our old drummer Tess has started her own band called Au Ras Au Ras and we replaced her with our friend Juston Stens who has a style of drumming that is much closer to the records that we’ve made. Including horns, we’ve had seven and eight people onstage at a time for all of these shows, so I feel like we’re getting to where we are finally able to really put a really full huge sound together for the live shows, which is fun.
ATH: You’re in Austin, you meet a random guy on the street, and you’re trying to convince him to make it out to your show. What do you say? How do you pull it off?
Grant: “Do you want to continue to live in the darkness of not having seen this Generationals show? Come with us into the back yard of Sidebar, we will change your fucking life right now.”
Thanks ATH! You guys are radical.
ATH: No, thank you, Grant.
Generationals will be playing at Mi Casa Cantina on 3/18 @ 1 AM
Despite what we see in jewelry commercials this time of year, life and love isn’t all hallmark moments and wonderful memories. Sometimes we make mistakes, big mistakes. Mistakes so big that simply buying your loved one aforementioned jewelry can’t help. When that happens, being true to your heart and honestly apologizing is always best. With Valentine’s Day rapidly approaching, poor (dumb) souls can take comfort in the fact that you are not alone; after all you’re only human. If your heartfelt apology is not enough to smooth these rough waters you are sailing, consider a mix tape. After all, God created mix tapes for this exact reason; to tell someone through song, what you are feeling inside. If you find yourself in this position, here are a few tracks to hopefully ease the pain and invoke the love back into your Valentine just in time for a romantic day. Commence sappiness in 3…2….1…
If you were willing to skip across dark patches of ice in order to make your way down the treacherous 7th Street, then hopefully you were able to catch what was, in my mind, one of the best shows of the year so far, though admittedly it’s only February. The night was filled with many young new bands, all of which are likely to be mainstays for time to come.
1998. The sweet sounds of Savage Garden on the radio. The warm assurance of knowing the stock market will continue to go up forever. A time of wonder. Those memories seem so faint now. After the Y2K epidemic caused our government to collapse and the America’s secret zombie program was inadvertently unleashed, the situation- I think we can admit now- got a little hairy.
For a while there the walking dead feasted on the brains of the living and wrought havoc on everything in their path. But hey, at least American Idol was good. I loved zombie Paula Abdul! Now that I think about it, that may have just been regular Paula Abdul. Those times were great, but I’m glad our benevolent overlord Stephen Colbert was able to defeat the zombie menace and piece together the somewhat functional government we have today. It’s possible I’m not remembering the past correctly. Savage Garden could never have actually been popular. Right?
Luckily, when I’m feel nostalgic for the turn of the century I can just hop in my 1998 automobile. The interior seems modern enough, but if you look just above the CD player you’ll see something mind blowing. It’s what the ancients referred to as a “tape player.” You see, back before music was just a series of 0’s and 1’s being read by a computer, there were these little tapes that held reels, and on those reels there was music. Crazy right? Crazier still, I continue to use this wacky contraption. Only now, I plug my phone (which is really a pocket camera/mp3 player/super computer, WTF!) into a device which goes directly in the tape deck. Then, I hear the music. Glorious music. The faint hiss of the tape deck and music.
I could, honestly spend hours honoring this personal request, and at some point just might do that fucking thing. F*CK new music! Sure we get the occasional handjob every now and then, but really? Do we see a respectable Disciple on the horizon? Not really.
Anyone who thought that Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs really deserved an album of the year nomination for 2010, should check out now. Booooorrrrrring. We live in a time where music/art takes place in a nanosecond. Things move fast now, and as you move forward in life, only faster. Controlling the content is completely up to you.
It’s interesting being a huge music fan. You come across bands that you absolutely adore, and you rush to make mixes for your friends who ultimately decide that they hate the one song you were most excited for them to fall in love with when you made it. I started thumbing through my catalog and the Internet, diligently searching for the bands in my collection that I love, but I feel people hate; I also looked at bands on the net I know people love, but I hate. Here’s my list of the Top 5.
Austin band Whalers have been at the music game in and around town playing live shows and making a name for themselves for about two years at this point. It’s a shame that we haven’t discovered them sooner, but we all know this town has more bands than we know what to do with. These guys recently finished their debut EP How the Ship Goes Down that features their very own brand of good ‘ol fashioned rock n freaking roll. If I were to make a bill of similar local bands, I’d build a show with SuperLiteBike, The Happen-Ins, and Whalers. All bands that know how to rock and don’t need a lot of added BS to create a solid sound. You’ve got a chance to check these guys out live next month on February 2nd at Beauty Bar in Austin along with Only Thieves and Look Mexico. In the meantime, you can check out the band’s new EP for free on their bandcamp page and let us know what you think.
Download: The Whalers – Magic Tricks [MP3]
