#it is probably also a good first wavves album to hear

[bastardwhoisnamedrat]

hippie is punk.... by wavves is... is *coughs* caldre.... *hack*

[thebandcampdiaries]

Trouble’s Afoot - Looking For Parking

A combination of various alternative and indie influences, converging in a very special way.

Trouble’s Afoot is a music project that was conceived by Jordan Cooper, a musician based in Queens, NY. Jordan has a special fondness for indie rock, folk, and other styles, making for an incredibly diverse attitude. Now, the project is actually a 3-piece band, which means there is more room for different sounds and textures! The line-up consists of Jordan Cooper (lead vocals, guitars, and multiple other instruments), as well as Dave Fox (Bass, backing vocals, some guitar) and Christopher Roberts (Drums). The group has a really unique sense of chemistry, and together, these 3 guys are able to combine many different styles. From alt-rock to indie, to pop-rock, anything goes!

“Looking For Parking” features 12 tracks, each blurring the lines between various genres and definitions. In fact, one of the most notable aspects of this particular release is definitely the sheer sonic variety that you will encounter on this here record. The opening song, “A Boy My Age” is a short track (clocking in at under two minutes). After a quirky acoustic intro, the band chimes in at full blast!

“You Say But You Don’t Know” follows with a really infectious guitar riff. This song makes me think of some of the best early British Invasion bands, including The Kinks and The Who (well, before they turned into 70s stadium rock gods!)

The third song on the album is named “Sarah Made A Serenade”, and it has a really cool alt-rock / post-punk vibe, with catchy guitar melodies and great vocal lines. This one precedes “Every Right Hand,” another song under 2 minutes, which packs a lot of energy, in spite of the small footprint! The song leads to “Don’t Be An Idiot.” The attitude of this song is just as upfront as its title, with memorable melodies and great hooks that won’t get out of your mind so easily. This has a cool punk-garage attitude that makes me think of early Cloud Nothings or Wavves!

“And I’m Gone” has a really cool 60s vibe - this song really makes me think of some early Rolling Stones or The Byrds, with a really organic sound and cool vocal arrangements that match the music to perfection.

Coming next is “All I Ever Wanted,” a song with a personal set of lyrics. This is a song about looking for a change - about wanting to overcome one’s backgrounds and “get out,” hopefully somewhere better. “Cellar” is a song that sort of makes me think of Nirvana, not much so for the sound, but for the intriguing lyrics - I like the child-like energy of the wordplay, and somehow the receptiveness of the later motif really works on favor of this track!

“I Care About You” is the classic boy-meets-girl song. This is a very earnest love song, which reminds me of the way I felt when I was a teenager, struggling to really share my feelings and go talk to the girl I had a crush on! Ultimately, this is a very sweet song, with a really cool arrangement and a nice vocal performance to liven it up.

“The Usual Way” is a really edgy track, which immediately strikes for the catchy melodies and a great intro that makes the main chunk of the song even more enticing!

“Everyone Believes Me” is one of the most poignant tracks on the record, and perhaps one of my favorite ones. I love the combination of quality music and good lyrics, and I can definitely relate to the sense of inevitability of life’s end in loneliness, really exposed in the last two lines of this track: “Like all of you, I’m Lined up to die / No one’s ever on my side.”

Last, but decidedly not least, “Dust Town” is a perfect curtain closer for this release. It brings the record full circle, and it really goes a long way, with a poignant and direct arrangement. This song could almost be a lyrical “Cousin” to “All I Ever Wanted” because the themes definitely intersect!

All in all, I’ve really enjoyed the sound and feel of this release! This album has a fresh, young sound, yet it has a tone that reminds me of some of my best records from the 60s, and from the early punk bands of the late 70s as well! In addition to that, this album also makes me think about some of my favorite modern indie groups, such as Cloud Nothings, Courtney Barnett and legends like The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys.

Find out more about Trouble’s Afoot and do not miss out on this project. You can listen to “Looking For Parking” directly through Bandcamp at the following link:

https://troublesafoot.bandcamp.com

We also had the chance to ask the band a few questions: keep reading to learn more!

I love how you manage to render your tracks so personal and organic. Does the melody come first, or do you focus on the lyrics the most?

I’m a songwriter and my songs were written on keyboard and guitar. Sometimes I write lyrics and the melody kind of forms in my head as I sing them to myself, sometimes I find an interesting chord progression and then work a melody onto that, that’s how You Say But You Don’t Know was written.

My drummer took care of the beat. I could not even tell you what he’s doing!

Do you perform live? If so, do you feel more comfortable on a stage or within the walls of the recording studio?

Answer: I stopped performing live regularly around 5 years ago; I find it a stressful endeavor, though I still like to do it once in a while. Being on stage is incredibly uncomfortable, and being in the walls of a recording studio is also uncomfortable. Being on stage is exciting though, sometimes euphorically so, and being in a recording studio is artistically fulfilling (you feel like you’re working on something special, at least when things are going well.) That being said, the hourly cost of a recording studio assures that you can’t feel too comfortable in one.

I’m probably most comfortable in my bedroom studio, but that environment leads to a lot of laziness and procrastination, whereas recordings from a recording studio have a certain urgency and focus to them.

If you could only pick one song to make a “first impression” on a new listener, which song would you pick and why?

Answer: I Care About You. I struggle to find a flaw in it. It rocks my brains. I love my vocal performance (a rare thing for me to admit to), I love how revved up and energetic the band is, I think the mix holds together the most, and I’m really proud of the lyrics. I also love that I put in a recording of my bass player yelling “YYYEAAAHHH!” at the very end. Easy to miss, though.

What does it take to be “innovative” in music?

Answer: I think more about this in a lyrical sense than on the music side of things. It still amazes me to hear songs on the radio with lyrics YOU’VE HEARD 1,000 TIMES BEFORE. I will not let a song out into the world until I’m reasonably sure no one has heard these words sung before. And to do that, I think of specific things from my life that no one else could possibly know about (see: A Boy My Age) or have said already, and hint at them in the lyrics. I do wonder, however, if the general public is concerned with this stuff, considering who the popular artists are these days.

Any upcoming release or tour your way?

Answer: I’d love to go on tour but I don’t know how to do it! And I can’t afford it! It’s 2018, how can anybody? But I do have exciting new releases coming out very soon. My musical project with my girlfriend, Kristen Gudsnuk, which is called “Sally,” has a three-song EP finished up, which will be released shortly on our Bandcamp page and streaming everywhere. It was made in fancy, fancy studios and sounds like a million bucks!

The next Trouble’s Afoot release is already being worked on, it’s a sort of sequel to Looking For Parking, culled from the same drums and bass sessions of that album (12 more songs.) A little darker, a little more focused too. After that, the 3rd Trouble’s Afoot album, made mostly in my bedroom, is called Party Guy, and is a concept album about having a bad time at parties. It’s the most ambitious, exciting music I’ve ever done. It’s actually almost complete, but my gut tells me it’s a perfect “3rd album” instead of a 2nd one.

Anywhere online where curious fans can listen to your music and find out more about you?

Answer: Oh, you bet. My two Trouble’s Afoot home-bases are Bandcamp and Soundcloud. My Bandcamp has all of my official complete albums (including a children’s album I made a long time ago!), but my Soundcloud is full of live songs, demos, instrumentals, etc. It’s exciting!

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/troubles-afoot

Bandcamp: https://troublesafoot.bandcamp.com/music

My main website is www.jordancoopermusic.com, if you are in need of songwriting or composer services. I’ve done music for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and countless Youtube shows, podcasts, etc.!

[radicaltimesnews-blog]

Beer talk: Surf Curse (CA, USA)

Californian band Surf Curse are on their first tour in Europe and they haven’t forgotten about Czechia. Their show in Skatepark Štvanice blew mine and almost 200 more heads away.  After the concert, I’ve talked with the core of Surf Curse and cute short girl Lauren, who’s joining them on this tour. We’ve sat down for like an hour and managed to discuss all kinds of topics, from funny ones to deep ones.

Nick (the drummer): This is the voice of Nick Rattigan. Jacob (the guitarist): This is the voice of Jacob Rubeck. Lauren (the guitarist): This is Lauureeen.

Have you ever played a skatepark before?

Nick: No, first time.

How was it?

Jacob: It was a lot of fun, I wish more people would have stayed skateboarding during our show. It’s understandable though because of the dark.

Everyone actually went to watch your show.

Nick: It’s true, they just stopped and went down, awesome.

Jacob: We loved to be the soundtrack to skateboarders. That’s kind of how we started, our music’s been in skate and snowboarding videos. I guess it somehow fits, especially the early stuff.

You get inspired by movie soundtracks a lot, don’t you?

Jacob: More from films than anything else. It’s weird, cause everyone’s like what’s the most influential band and stuff and I always say that from the beginning it was bands like Wavves and the whole garage-rock scene, but it changes so fast for us. We didn’t really wanna be a part of that culture and just ended up getting more inspiration and song ideas from films.

When people look your music up on the internet, they may end up thinking that you’re a two-piece band, but you usually play live shows with third person, a second guitarist. How so?

Jacob: We only started doing that recently, with release of the latest record Nothing Yet, so it was in January 2017.

Is there someone else on the record apart from you and Nick?

Jacob: We recorded everything ourselves, Nick did most of the secondary instruments like synths. We just sat in a room in North Hollywood in the back of our friends’ parents house.

Nick: We also recorded the first two albums there, so we ended up working with him for third time.

Jacob & Nick: His name is Andrew James McKelvey!

Nick: And he’s an amazing producer and sound engineer. We recorded the first two albums in two days time, we recorded the instruments in a day and the vocals in a day. We tried to do the same this time, but we just kept coming back and adding things, so that’s why the album has a lot of different sounds.

Jacob: We wanted to do something that’s a lot more interesting.

Do you feel like you’ve matured over time considering the sound of the latest album?

Nick: Absolutely. We’ve also made an effort to mature the music. We’ve both been through so much… so much life and shit over the past few years.

When we heard Nothing Yet for the first time, a friend of mine noted: “Where’s the sun drenched-vibe of Surf Curse, it’s more melancholic now”…

Nick: I think that melancholy is a good way to describe it, yeah. I mean, if you ask us what our music sounds like, it’s always one of the hardest questions to answer. A lot of the old stuff was very fun and sweet. We were like nineteen, writing all these songs in our basement in Reno and then we just got hit with a lot of life experience and all sorts of things. I guess that’s why we tried to communicate a deeper meaning or something more heartfelt and emotional in our music.

Who are the TELE/VISIONS, Nick?

Nick: Oh yeah, it’s like a completely different band than Surf Curse. Surf Curse are always me and Jacob doing things together, TELE/VISIONS or Current Joys has always been my effort to experiment with music and pushing song-writing skills.

Do you play the drums as well in other bands?

Nick: I’m not a drummer in TELE/VISIONS, I play the guitar there. Current Joys are just my solo project.

Which sound is closer to your heart, the sunshine-filled Surf Curse or darker TELE/VISIONS?

Nick: That’s a difficult question. They’re obviously different. I’m definitely more melancholic than I used to be in the early days. Music is just all about the emotions, your emotional states and those change constantly with age and years. So I think it’s a constantly evolving thing with both of the bands, but it’s ultimately just to be as true and honest to ourselves as possible. It’s hard to really place where I am now or where I was before, but I hope the music speaks for itself.

And what about Casino Hearts, Jacob?

Jacob: Ohh, that’s overwidth now. I stopped doing that, but I have a new project called Gap Girls. It will come out eventually, there’s only one song available online at this time.

Were Casino Hearts your solo project?

Jacob: Yeah, it was just me recording songs in my bedroom, kind of experimenting with guitar and writing these weird-ass pop songs. I stopped doing that when I moved from Nevada. If I ever write songs in Nevada, it’s gonna be Casino Hearts, but if I’m anywhere else, it’s gotta be something new.

I’ve also heard that you’re more of a drummer than a guitarist, Lauren..

Lauren: Did you hear that from my dad?

I don’t wanna give up my sources, but.. yeah, I spoke to him before. (Lauren’ dad was also here tonight, at the concert)

Lauren: He always says that, because it was his dream to play drums, so he’s always seen me as a drummer, but I don’t think I consider myself mostly as a drummer. I like playing everything, but I probably like playing guitar more than playing drums.

How come you’re on this tour with Surf Curse anyway?

Lauren: I came onto this tour like 5 days before the tour, because I lost my job the same day their old guitarist had to drop out. These guys are good friends of mine. First time I actually saw Surf Curse play, it reminded me so much of the time when I was in high school and saw No Age play, the same energy and it was really nostalgic, so I’m really happy to be here.

Nick: She also makes music apart from Surf Curse, that’s really great.

What’s that band called?

Lauren: I shouldn’t say, cause I’m working on a new thing right now. It’s called The Who.

How’s the tour so far? Do you ever get tired?

Nick: This is our first four week tour ever, it’s been great –     

Jacob: We were gone for a month and a half in US once, but we only played like 7 shows. Here in Europe we have a show almost every single night, we’ve only had two or three nights off.

Nick: Yesterday for example we played in Kreuzlingen, Swiss/German border. There’s a town of Constance on the German side and there actually were more people from Germany than from Switzerland. Today we drove for 6 hours to get here.

What’s the festival you most enjoyed playing?

Nick & Jacob: COACHELLA!

Nick: No, not at all. Honestly this tour has been so great for us. Because in US, we started playing bigger venues and this has been a lot of small bars, that are really packed and intimate. Personally I can say I feel a lot of love and genuine emotions and also a lot of energy and catharsis when playing these shows, which is quite beautiful. Some of them have been my favorite shows to play, all these strange towns that we never thought we’d play in. It’s very different than playing in the States.

Now, I know it’s your first time playing in Czechia, but have you been in Europe before?

Nick: Never ever, it’s the first time across this ocean for both of us.

What does it feel like, playing overseas?

Nick: Very different. I mean, we’re in divergent cultures and lifestyles every night, which is much different than in the US, where you’re just playing a different state every night, which is sort of the same think-tank. Here you cross borders every day. We’ve been to Spain, France, Switzerland Czech republic and took a ferry to the UK, which is a completely different world.

Jacob: I’d say it’s overwhelming, cause you’re surrounded by different environments all the time and being here forever and you’re just like: “Wow, so this is actually real!”

How surprising do you find it that people actually know you?

Jacob: Feels great, there’s people coming up to us saying: “We never thought you’d come here.” That’s the sickest thing ever.

Nick: Yeah, they’re like: “We’ve been listening to you since the first demos you released.” We printed around 30 of these shirts back in Reno, when we started the band. And this girl in Belgium had one of the shirts on at the gig. It’s so unbelievable.

Jacob: That goes back all the way to the times, when we first put our music up on Tumblr. It feels awesome that some people experienced the beginnings with us.

I actually remember that you were the first band ever, whom I sent money for an album through Bandcamp. It was probably like 5 bucks, haha. Do you guys wanna Make America great again?

Nick:  Ehmmmmm, no. We wanna make garage punk great again.

Jacob: (laughing) No, cause America’s never been great.

Nevada or California?

Jacob: I enjoy a lot of things about California, but I think I’d like to move back in Reno later in my life. I’d never move back to Las Vegas, where we both grew up. We both then lived in a bunch of places, but I think Reno is kind of where my heart is, as far as where I feel safe and comfortable. But you know, after being on the road for so long, I don’t really want stay in one place. Once you experience the rest of the world, you just wanna keep exploring and experiencing more. There’s the whole world out there.

Many of the good bands we know are from California and Nevada. It’s like all the bands are from the same place. Why do you think it’s like that, what does make these places so special?

Jacob: Well, there’s like an obsession with surf culture, that fucking good weather and it’s really quite a magical place. I mean, a lot of garage, surf-rock or Burger Records bands are not from California, they’re from all over the place, but everyone just ends up in California anyways, cause that’s where the scene is.

Yeah, I guess they must be influenced by Californian scene from their beginnings. I remember when we met Moonwalks, we thought they’re from Cali and they’re actually from Detroit.

Jacob: Yeah, exactly, but they live in California now. The thing is, people always say that California is the place to be, that you gotta move to California and in the end, they do. I never thought I would be living in California, but I fucking ended up there anyways. And it works, if you feel comfortable there, we’re able to see shows every night, so it’s just exciting. And there’s always new people there, so there’s always something to do. There’s just weird magic towards California, it’s like New York, there’s magic too, you always think about the CBGB stuff, Lou Reed… I feel there’s something magical and inspiring about Reno too.

And then there’s The Smell That Saved Your Life. What’s your connection to this club?

Jacob: That’s one of the DIY music venues that’s been around for almost 20 years now. And there always was a lot of people that would go there to get inspired. Our favorite bands would always play there, when we were younger.  

Who might that be, for example?

Jacob: Abe Vigoda, BARR, Mika Miko, No Age, Health and so on. I wasn’t really a musician when I went there for the first time, but I loved music so much I had to go. I was like 18 and I never got to experience these shows before, cause in Nevada almost every venue is 21 plus. In Nevada I got to interview bands. I never saw them play, but I got to talk to them, which was awesome. Then I told Nick about The Smell and we eventually went to 14th anniversary show and it was insane.

Nick: We went for No Age, but every band that played that night blew us away. We drove back home from that show and all we talked about was starting a band so we could play at The Smell and do what these other bands were doing. And eventually, in between school, on a weekend, we got a chance to play there. I was so scared to go down to L.A. and play show for the first time, but we then kept coming down more and more. People started to think we’re from Cali, but we had to drive 9 or 10 hours to play at The Smell.

Jacob: It’s really such a special place. They’re tearing it down pretty soon and they’re replacing it with a parking garage. That’s quite tragic. They’re trying to relocate it.

It’s not gonna be the same, is it?

Jacob: Who knows. These DIY venues like The Smell are never meant to last that long anyway, it’s kind of in the nature of what they are. It happens, but then new venues are opened, new people come. New good chapters begin, I think that’s the way of life is.

Nick: There’s always new potentials with the venues, just look at the skatepark here. Trends are kinda made to die and be reborn again, then it keeps things fresh and interesting. There’s always an attitude that exists in people and youth that’s gonna exists beyond any geographic location.

Since you studied journalism Nick, when it comes to life goals and stuff, are you really just killing your time?

Nick: (laughing) Well, I don’t think we’re just killing our time and doing stuff that’s meaningless. It may be a cool thing to say, but you know, I don’t wanna sound pretentious or anything, but I think what we’re doing is quite an important thing. Bringing people either joy or sadness or same sort of release or empathy or whatever. Whatever we can give people with what we do is one of the most important things that life has to offer.

What are those important things for you?

Nick: Music or any form of art. I think that it’s a shame that music or any other form of entertainment is seen just like a radical, crazy thing to do with your life. I really think it’s quite important and it gives some people a reason to live.

Jacob: It takes a lot to get to a point, where we can just make music. We know that it won’t last forever, but as long as we can do it, it’s very important and we’ll do it for as long as we can.

There’s a new law in Czech republic which says that you cannot smoke in clubs. What do you think about that and why?

Nick: Smoking kills. It’s been a thing in America a while ago, you also can’t smoke in bars or clubs. Jacob: Except for Vegas.

Nick: What’s crazy about it is coming to Europe and seeing these horrific images on all of the cigarette packages.  

There’s just a baby with a cigarette on this one.

Nick: (smiling) I know there’s just a little baby, but there’s also these realities of smoking, that are gross. I think that there’s this giant global effort to warn people that smoking is bad, but there’s still this culture of cool behind it and people do it anyways. It’s slowly taking peoples’ lives, it’s making people die younger –

Jacob: It’s your choice too.

Nick: Yeah, it’s your choice, whatever. But I mean, I don’t smoke, it’s interesting from an outsider’s perspective. It almost feels like I’m in a Black Mirror episode, with people inhaling the smoke with packages that show: “This is gonna cause you harm,” but it’s still kind of ignored, cause it’s seen as a globally accepted social function..

Well, from what I’ve heard, smoking is the most classy way to commit suicide. Thank you for the interview, guys.

Surf Curse: Cheers!

                                                                                                                         AR

[noiseartists]

KNOW (USA): A mesmerizing new Lo-fi Dream Pop feel

KNOW is a new alternative band based in Los Angeles. The line-up is Husband and wife Jennifer Farmer and Daniel Knowles. You may know Daniel as a former member of Amusement Park On Fire (see our article).

Their music is a beauty of dream pop, sparkled with catchy melodies and clever sound.

Their music work to date is:

2019: 143, single

2020: Hold me like you know me, single (with a superb Music Video)

They are working on their first album and we can not as the first 2 singles are amazing. Discover the band and their music in this interview full of photos and music links to enter their musical realm.

Who are the group members?

JENNIFER: We are a husband and wife duo, Daniel Knowles and Jennifer Farmer. Dan does all of the recording, production, mixing/mastering and plays everything on the recordings. I sing and write lyrics.

How did you meet?

JENNIFER: We actually met when Dan’s old band, Amusement Parks on Fire was recording “Road Eyes” in Los Angeles. We had a lot of mutual friends and my friend Dave, who was in Film School at the time and now in a band called Nightmare Air, introduced me to APOF! Dan had broken his arm during the recording process and I had recently quit my job so we ended up having quite a bit of time for each other it turns out! 

How did you come up with your name?

JENNIFER: I came up with it, Dan says he doesn’t remember this being the case but It’s just our last name “Knowles” minus the “LES.” I wanted it to just be KNOW and not “THE Know” but there was someone else using that at the time. We considered changing it last minute because it’s a very un-google-able and generic band name, but we couldn’t come up with anything else and I couldn’t bear to spell it “The Knovv” so we just kept it.  If you want to find us, the best way is to google “wearetheknow” :) Probably would have been better off calling it "Japanese Beach Wavves"

What is your music about?

JENNIFER: A lot of our songs are personal. Stories about our relationship or our lives. There are a lot of specific details in the lyrics that are meaningful to us. For instance, in "143" the line "Emmy's broke but Gram's in town" - Emmy and Gram are our dogs (named after Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons.)  

What are your goals as an artist artistically/commercially?

JENNIFER: Obviously, it would be great to do this as a full-time career but we are nowhere near that point yet. I’d love to just really hone in on my vocal and songwriting skills and enjoy the process. Telling stories through lyrics and visuals are really important to me. Maybe David Lynch having us on Twin Peaks?! 

What are you trying to avoid as a band?

JENNIFER: Boring Ourselves

Why do you make the music you make? Is it in you? Is it your environment?

JENNIFER: I’m pretty private about my personal life so it’s therapeutic to let some of that inner monologue out. I happen to have an amazing collaborator & husband by my side that makes it fun and easy.

What inspire you for the music or for the Lyrics?

JENNIFER: PERSONAL LIFE EXPERIENCES, CRATE DIGGING.

Tell us what you are looking when trying to achieve your sounds. Do you experiment a lot or have a clear idea of what you want?

DAN: A little of both, I know what I like and don't like, I certainly appreciate sounds that register as something a little out there to me. It generally starts with experimenting.  I've had people comment about the keyboard sounds on 143 to me which is funny because 90% of the sounds on that song are guitars that have been heavily processed.  

in general I just chain together and (mis)use effects or recording techniques until I hear something that interests me, once I do that becomes a part of the "sound" of the song.  The way I have to play the guitar is also often informed by the sound itself and once I have one thing in place that interests me the rest tends to follow fairly logically.  I used to layer a lot more sounds together to get a kind of smudged nondescript dense wall but these days I'm favoring finding just a few sounds that interest me, letting them lead the way and keeping the layering to a minimum

Explain your songwriting process.

DAN: There's been no one way, we just start somewhere and keep working until, for better or worse, it seems like we're done.  The starting point is usually a chord change or sound I find interesting or a few lines and basic melody line Jennifer has sketched out.  We then record pieces of it, see what we have and get on with it.  If all else fails turn to Bran Eno's oblique strategies cards

Describe your palette of sound.

DAN:  Guitars that sound like keyboards, keyboards that sound like guitars, open tunings, lots of effects chaining, reverb and distortion both play a part obviously, tuning and timing errors are welcome, I own some beaten up toms and a crappy snare so we usually play basic beats with them then heavily process them for a kind of Moe Tucker in the 80's sound!  In general I like messy sounds, nothing too carved out and cleanly placed, things that overlap and smudge, contrasts between Hi Fi and Lo Fi etc

Who would you want as a dream producer, and why?

JENNIFER: Already have mine and he’s in the band!! 

DAN: David Lynch or Tom Waits

What musical skills would you like to acquire or get better at?

JENNIFER: I actually CANNOT for the life of me play the tambourine. It makes NO sense to me so I’d like to learn how to do that. 

DAN: I'm always impressed by a good Marimbist

Which other musician/artist would you date?

JENNIFER: The guy in my band who is the dreamiest and most talented of them all! :) 

Is there a band that if they didn’t exist you wouldn’t be making the music you make?

JENNIFER: Giant Drag. I think I mostly learned to sing by listening to Hearts & Unicorns on repeat for like 2 years. Annie later became a good friend and is the one who encouraged me to start singing for real.

If you could guest on someone else’s album, who would it be and why? What would you play?

JENNIFER: We love The National and they have a lot of female singers they collaborate with so that'd be kind of cool! It'd be cool to do something with Jesus & Mary Chain too. Giant Drag opened for them once and Annie got to sing Just Like Honey with them!

DAN: David Lynch or Tom Waits.  I'd play whatever they told me to.

You are from US/UK what are the advantages and inconvenient?

JENNIFER: We’re based in LA and Dan is from the UK. I think there are definitely more advantages than disadvantages to being in a major music city. The music industry is pretty much based in LA.

What are some places around the world that you hope to play with your band?

JENNIFER : It would be cool to play in my hometown, in Houston Texas since all of my family is there. Also, would love to tour Europe - they have some of the best festivals. I’d love to go back to Tokyo some day too.

When is the next album/EP due?

JENNIFER: We don’t have an exact date yet but SOON! March/April. 

Some artists you recommend.

JENNIFER: Cults have a new record coming out and I’m really excited, huge fan of theirs! Also, been into Agnes Obel lately who has a record out soon. New FKA Twigs is great. Someone recently sent me Orville Peck and said he sounded like us with Roy Orbison on vocals. Fairly accurate and I dig it.

Anything else you want your fans to know?

We have a limited edition vinyl pre-sale our EP up on our website: www.wearetheknow.com and will have a limited edition CD available through Shoredive Records soon!

MORE ON THE BAND

You can listen to them there:

Spotify

Soundcloud

Youtube

Bandcamp

Their social media:

Band’s website

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

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Green Day: Dookie

When he was 10 years old, long before he sang about masturbation losing its fun, Billie Joe Armstrong lost himself in music. His father had just died of cancer, and in Rodeo, Calif., a smallish East Bay suburb next to an oil refinery, Armstrong retreated into MTV, the Beatles, Van Halen, and a Stratocaster knock-off he nicknamed Blue. He grew close to schoolmate Michael Pritchard, who had his own family grief and who introduced Armstrong to British heavy metal giants like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Pritchard later earned the sobriquet Mike Dirnt, for his constant dirnting on bass guitar.

In high school, Armstrong and Dirnt smoked pot and played in a band called Sweet Children, finding their tribe in a tiny clique of DIY punks. By 1988, Sweet Children had their first gig at 924 Gilman Street, the Berkeley punk mecca opened the previous year by Maximumrocknroll zine founder Tim Yohannan, and Armstrong told his waitress mother he wouldn’t be graduating. Sweet Children signed to Lookout Records!, changed their name to Green Day, and put out a pair of rough but promising EPs. They brought in Frank “Tré Cool” Wright, a drummer known equally for his musicianship and his mischievousness, and with their sharply improved LP Kerplunk!, Green Day arrived.

As Kerplunk! landed on shelves in December 1991, Nirvana’s Nevermind zoomed to the top of the album charts. A band with Green Day’s momentum and punk pedigree was obvious bait for the major labels. Still, it was Armstrong’s voice, sneering and congested, that initially put one A&R exec off of Green Day’s demo. Luckily, he passed it to his producing partner, Rob Cavallo, whose father had been Prince’s manager circa Purple Rain and who, despite signing respected L.A. pop-punks the Muffs, was sorely in need of a hit.

He found one. Co-produced by Cavallo and the band themselves, Green Day’s Dookie was released on February 1, 1994. To date, the band’s Warner/Reprise debut has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide. Most of those album buyers probably know nothing about its makers’ humble origins. But that story helps to explain the unique series of balances, between showmanship and disaffection, dogmatic punk ideals and romantic stadium dreams, sweetness and scatology, partying and pain, that have turned Dookie into one of the greatest teenage wasteland albums of any generation. Armstrong’s Dookie guitar? His childhood’s trusty old Blue.

What set Dookie apart from the grunge rock bellowers of its day was Armstrong’s voice, foggy and vaguely unplaceable. “I’m an American guy faking an English accent faking an American accent,” he teased at the time. Though Armstrong’s tone was bratty, his phrasing had that lackadaisical quality that left room for listeners to fill in their own interpretations. On Dookie, Armstrong channeled a lifetime of songcraft obsession into buzzing, hook-crammed tracks that acted like they didn’t give a shit—fashionably then, but also appealingly for the 12-year-old spirit within us all. Maybe they worked so well because, on a compositional and emotional level, they were actually gravely serious. Sometimes singing about the serious stuff in your life—desire, anxiety, identity—feels a lot more weightless done against the backdrop of a dogshit-bombarded illustration of your hometown by East Bay punk fixture Richie Bucher.

“Longview,” Dookie’s outstanding first single, smacks of the most extreme disengagement: a title taken from Longview, Washington, where it happened to be played live for the first time; a loping bass line supposedly concocted while Dirnt was tripping on acid; and a theme of shrugging boredom that placed it in the ne’er-do-well pantheon next to “Slack Motherfucker” to “Loser.” Adolescent interest may always be piqued by lyrical references to drugs and jerking off, the way a 5-year-old mainly laughs at the Calvin and Hobbes panels where Calvin is naked or calling Hobbes an “idiot.” But as beer-raising alt-rock goes, this is also exceptionally bleak, with the narrator’s couch-locked wank session transforming into a self-imposed prison where Armstrong semi-decipherably sings, per the liner notes, “You’re fucking breaking.” No motivation? For a high-school dropout hoping to succeed in music, that mental hell sounds like plenty of motivation.

The other singles mix Armstrong’s burgeoning songwriting chops with deceptively lighthearted takes on deeper topics. The opening line, “Do you have the time/To listen to me whine?” is endlessly quotable, but the self-mocking stoner paranoia of the irresistible “Basket Case” was inspired by Armstrong’s anxiety attacks. As late as 1992, Armstrong still had no fixed address, and “Welcome to Paradise” reaches back to those nights crashing at dodgy West Oakland warehouse spaces. It also brashly embodies punk’s trash-is-treasure aesthetic at its most American. But the closest Armstrong came to a pop standard, one that any guitarist who knows four power chords can play at a home and a more established star could likely have made an even bigger hit, was the midtempo “When I Come Around”—a smoldering devotion to the then-estranged lover who would become the mother of Armstrong’s two children. They’re still married.

Elsewhere, the bouncy, brief “Coming Clean” is from the perspective of a confused 17-year-old, uncovering secrets about manhood that his parents can’t fathom; Armstrong has forthrightly related the song to his own youthful questions about bisexuality. “Seventeen and coming clean for the first time/I finally figured out myself for the time,” he declares, in one particularly sublime bit of wordcraft. Teenage angst pays off well: Now he was bored and almost 22. Likewise, the rest of the album tracks often further showed what an accomplished songwriter Armstrong had become. “I declare I don’t care no more,” from breakneck slacker anthem “Burnout,” would be a classic first opener on any album, even though by now we know it contains an element of false bravado. The contrasts that made up the band’s identity also helped elevate Dookie above its shitty name, couching anti-social childishness in whip-smart melodic and lyrical turns. When, on the last proper track, the nuke-invoking “F.O.D.” (short for “fuck off and die”), Armstrong vents, “It’s real and it’s been fun/But was it all real fun,” it’s his Dookie-era way of saying he hopes you had the time of your life.   

Critics have been kind to Dookie, but not overwhelmingly so. It’s tempting to wonder how many of these lyrics could’ve been influenced by Robert Christgau’s two-word, two-star Village Voice review of Kerplunk!: “Beats masturbation.” Still, he gave Dookie an A-, and the album made it onto the Voice’s 1994 Pazz & Jop year-end critics’ poll at No. 12. But the backlash against Green Day in the pages of Maximumrocknroll was real and visceral. The June 1994 cover showed a man holding a gun in his mouth with the words, “Major labels: some of your friends are already this fucked,” with Yohannan sniffing inside, “I thought it was oh so touching that MTV decided to interrupt playing Green Day videos to overwhelm us with Nirvana videos on the day of Kobain’s [sic] death.” At Gilman, where major label acts were banned, graffiti on the wall proclaimed, “Billie Joe must die.” So it’s an album many people adore, but like loving the Beatles, proclaiming your adoration for it doesn’t necessarily win you any special recognition. Oh, you were in seventh grade and learned every word of a Green Day album? Duh.

Time has worked on Dookie in strange ways. Most blatantly, the post-grunge alt boom allowed an album like this to exist in the first place. Green Day were masters at pulling stoner humor out of malaise, and that is what the so-called alternative nation needed. One of Dookie’s great light-hearted touches, the image of Ernie from “Sesame Street” on the back cover, has been airbrushed away from later physical editions, ostensibly due to legal concerns. Among the many things streaming has ruined was the old ’90s trick of including hidden tracks on the album buried without notice at the end of the CD, so all digital releases treat Tré Cool’s novelty goof “All By Myself” as its own proper track. The unfortunate “Having a Blast,” about wanting to lash out with a suicide bombing, is understandably absent from most recent Green Day setlists.

Then again, so many of the fights that Dookie started have happily become moot. In 2015, Green Day played their first show at Gilman in 22 years. Whichever Maximumrocknroll readers were mad at Green Day for trying to make it out of their working-class suburban beginnings probably have more adult worries today (the zine, however, hasn’t forgotten). Though Green Day never quite embraced the term pop-punk and certainly didn’t invent it, they were pegged as its popularizers; you could hear their echoes several years ago in records like Wavves’ King of the Beach, but younger pop-punk torchbearers like Joyce Manor, Modern Baseball, or You Blew It! have been more likely to name-check the more tightly genre-fitting Blink-182. In interviews, Armstrong still claims the “punk” mantle, but over the years Green Day emerged as a classic arena-rock band, noted for their pyrotechnics.

These days, Armstrong knows how to fire up crowds by promising them they’ll have a good time. Fans are brought up on stage every night to take their instruments and play a song. A T-shirt cannon is somehow involved. Green Day have matured in all the ways the biggest bands usually mature, and that’s their right. Immature but crafty, punk but pop, American pretending to be English pretending to be, well, whatever, Dookie-era Green Day were, for a time, in a class alone. Call them pathetic, call them what you will. They were all by themselves, and everyone was looking.