What are your primary influences?
Our influences include the usual suspects like Yo La Tengo, Blonde Redhead, My Bloody Valentine, and Sonic Youth (Doesn't everyone say Sonic Youth? But it's true!). Lately, we've been drawn to Stars, Broken Social Scene, Metric, and especially because we got to know them during our West Coast tour, American Analog Set. Some folks have told us they hear classical influences, too, which wouldn't surprise me since both Jess and I were classically trained. It probably accounts for the changes to song structures, dynamics, and fuller arrangements that pop up once in a while in our songs.
How does your environment influence your music?
Daily life is an influence. You hear something on the news, you catch a phrase from an old movie, or you experience some small interaction on the street that makes you think. Most of the time, you just move on with whatever you were doing. There are some things that don't let your mind go so you gotta write a song to get it out.
Do you find it hard to gain attention as a band in such a wide-spanning genre?
Once you're in an organized group doing an organized thing, it starts feeling necessary to get attention to keep things going. But attention becomes irrelevant when there are zillions of things competing for it and when the powers that be get to make some of our choices. Of course it feels good to get it, but you wouldn't (or shouldn't) live or die by it.
We've gotten compared to a pretty diverse list of bands. I take that to mean that different people relate to our music in different ways, which is great. A lot of folks are programmed to make snap judgments and move on to the next thing. So, if you don't do something that's easy to categorize, some people won't have the patience. With that said, I think we have gotten a decent amount of attention, which is nice since we don't do a whole lot of shows. As long as we keep trying, we'll be fine.
What, in your mind, sets you apart from other musicians?
The fact that we're all women definitely sets us apart, although it is getting more common to see all female bands that write and perform their own stuff. Beyond that, our sound and our approach to writing songs is distinctive. We meld warm, dreamy vocals, cello, and organ, with a powerful rhythm section and distorted guitars. There's the soft-hard thing going through what we do, but it's more than dynamics. It's soft vocals or cello against a hard-driving background and the soft melodies and lyrics that Jess and Rachel write to create lovely contrasts with the other things going on. While we have an appreciation for form, the tried and true formula of intro-verse-chorus, etc. can get boring if it doesn't have something that elevates it above that. Many of our songs evolve through contrasting sections, dynamics, and arrangements to keep things more interesting.
What was it like touring with American Analog Set?
We got our first real taste of touring with American Analog Set and it couldn't have been with a nicer group of people. A few years back, Jess gave Lee of American Analog Set our first CD at their show in San Francisco. They contacted us to play a show when they came into town the next time around but schedules didn't mesh. Amazingly enough, they remembered us and invited us on this year's tour, which turns out, may be their final nationwide one. When you're supporting a bigger act, they can make it pleasant, so-so, or miserable. They made it amazingly pleasant. As you might imagine, they are all considerate, literate guys. They are experts at putting on a mesmerizing show with their deceptively simple, but totally engrossing sound. And, we got to see them perform six times! I learned a lot.
Do you have any plans for a national tour?
Not right now, but we're open to it. After our CD release show on December 8, we have plans to film a couple of videos. We plan on playing at South by Southwest in March and would like to start writing the next album.
Did you learn anything from recording The Weather Inside that you would change in the future?
Although recording was a fairly smooth experience, it was really through the work of our producer, Eric Holland, that we were able to get a sense of cohesion from our disparate recording sessions and resulting parts. We recorded drums, bass, and Rach's vocals in the studio over a couple of days, and then Jess and I individually overdubbed guitar, cello, vocal and keyboard parts from home, with a final studio session to refine percussion, vocal, and cello tones. When you're laying down overdubs hunched over a desk with the amp in the closet while street traffic is honking and screeching its way to the freeway on-ramp, there's only so much you can do to optimize performance and tone. The next time we record, we're all going to take off a good chunk of time to get out of town and mic everything at maximum volume. It will feel like the ultimate luxury.