The Year In Interviews

I had the chance to talk to a wide range of musical artists this year. Some highlights:

John Vanderslice
How do you feel about blogs compared with the mainstream music media?
"...It was very clear to me then that all that print media shit doesn't matter anymore. It totally does not matter. I mean, no offense to Spin or anyone like that, but people right now, hard core music people that pay attention, they're online. The big national glossies just don't have that kind of impact anymore."

Aberdeen City
What was it like working with Steve Lillywhite?
"Looking at his discography, it's pretty intense. He's one of these producers that has a real big picture approach to songs. The producer we were working with we love, he's almost part of the band. So it was great to have someone come in and look at everything from a bit of a distance and making some subtle suggestions that had a big impact on the songs. It was a pleasure to work with someone that has been making records as long as he has. You know his stuff is proven over time. It's hard to say no to the guy but everything he had to say resonated with the band."

Hopewell
You don't hide the fact that you have ties to Mercury Rev. How do you walk the line between dropping their name and making your own?
"Generally we let the people who's job it is to sell us mention Mercury Rev. It gets fairly annoying when it is in every review, every interview etc. But, I have made some peace with it. It was a formative time for me and it was a pretty life changing thing so it's worth mentioning..."

The National
Does that help the whole recording process to go out and play some shows?
"Yeah. When you're in the studio and just kinda writing stuff for a while, sometime you don't get much perspective on what you're doing. So for us it's nice to be able to walk away for a couple of weeks and just listen to the stuff and enjoy it. Sometimes you can forget where the gut of the song is and just start piling stuff on. It gets us back so we can hear where it needs to go. That's the spot we're in right now."

Silversun Pickups (Scroll down)
What's it like being an up and coming indie band in L.A.? In New York the blogs are hyping new local bands every week, whereas L.A. doesn't have as big a blog community or online presence. Did it help to be left alone for so long and be given time to grow?
"I think so. We've noticed that alot of the blogs in New York, and not in a detrimental way, but it reminds me of the press in England, where they find a new band to champion pretty often. I don't want to call them fickle, they're not like the NME,they're just horrible. But there seems to be alot more of the championing of those kind of bands whereas in L.A. maybe since it has the reputation of being the place where shitty bands go to make it big, maybe people don't pay attention to bands from L.A. as much. And in a way, that's kind of nice, not having someone constantly looking over your shoulder."

We Are Scientists
The last time we spoke was in October of 2005 and I don't even think the record was out in the US. So obviously alot of things have happened since then. Looking back, how has the year been for you guys?
"It's been amazing. There's really no way to quantify it, it's been fantastic. Obviously we do way better in the UK than we do in the US. Unfortunately or otherwise, we spent a bulk of our time in the past 21 months in Europe, which is definitely fun and it would be ridiculous of us to complain about the fact that we do really well over there and therefor have to go over there frequently. There's something nice about playing in the States, both in familiarity and just the fact that I've been to D.C. so many times in the past as a visitor and then playing really tiny, crappy places, that it's nice to play a big show and have people come out and have a good time."