Cymbals Eat Guitars, an alternative rock band from Staten Island, New York, burst onto the blog scene earlier this year with little warning and great brio. Their debut record Why There Are Mountains is unusually spacious, suspenseful and downright loud for this day and age. They play with Blk Jks and the Last Minute at Eclectic on Friday (10/2). We managed to catch a brief conversation with frontman Joe Ferocious as the band made its way through the outskirts of Atlanta, GA.
Argus: What led you to go self-released?
JF: Because we had to; because we didn’t know how to get a record label to be interested. We didn’t know at the time, but it would have been totally fucking impossible because people are so unwilling to throw money at new talent or something they see as not stable, volatile, young people – it’s a shit-shoot and we would have had a really rough time if we’d just been like “Matador, please sign us!” or like, “Drag City, please release our record!” People, labels and everything, want to see you do it yourself, they want to see you garner all this acclaim and interest and stuff without the help of their PR, and radio, and college radio. Even now, really all the good labels that are sort of looking and saying “Oh, this is going to be awesome for the next record, would you be interested in working with our company” are only interested now because of we’ve done what we’ve done by ourselves.
A: So it turned out to be kind of a happy accident that you went self-released.
JF: Yes, it’s a really happy accident. Also, we really needed to keep our money. We couldn’t just pay somebody. We needed to funnel it back into touring and plane tickets for when we went to Europe. Everything we do is on our ticket for the time being. It makes a difference. That’s what we did.
A: Pitchfork describes your album as “topographical,” and I certainly see this sense of place, especially natural places, in both your music and lyrics myself. What do you think inspired the rising, falling, craggy ride that is your sound?
JF: I’ve always found it easy to sort of write gestural things like that, big explosions and then calm moments… that kind of cacophony… I like things that hit me right in the face and that give me chills. I like to have maximum moments of that in every song that I write just because it’s what I like. In my formative years, in high school, I was just listening to indie rock, like Arcade Fire and Pavement. There’s a lot to be said for direct musical pleasures, at least what I consider to be direct musical pleasures. I just try to write with the ideal that’s kind of formed in my head, with those influences, and that’s what comes out. And lyrically, like everything is pretty much drawn from my experience.
A: Is your song “Merritt Moon” (alternately titled “Some Trees”) about the Merritt Parkway? (Sample lines: Baseball field lights that shine/Over the shedding pine/Each bulb’s a blinding sphere/In the secular nation).
JF: The Merritt Parkway is in Connecticut.
A: It’s actually on the road to Wesleyan (from points south).
JF: Oh, then you know what I’m talking about. I had a girlfriend who lived in Stamford, I think that’s like Exit 34 or something, kind of what that’s a reference to.
A: Pitchfork also sees your album as good car music – would you agree? Did you intend this at all?
JF: I feel like anything can be good car music; like, we’ve been listening to James Brown live at the Apollo, and we’ve been listening to Boards of Canada, and we’ve been listening to a host of things that you might not consider good car music. I listen to everything in the car so I kind of understand something like [Modest Mouse’s] Lonesome Crowded West or [The Silver Jews’] American Water, you know that’s great road trip music, and I think our record numbers among great road trip music. I don’t know what qualities make it a good travel album but I agree with them.
A: Maybe the audiovisual experience of sorts, with the music and the road.
JF: Maybe it’s just that the dynamics keep you awake. (laughs)
A: I know people who can fall asleep listening to the band Cream, even though that’s a really exciting band to listen to. Isn’t that weird?
JF: Yeah, that is weird. I don’t think I could fall asleep to Cream, to be honest. I used to fall asleep to Trail of the Dead and My Bloody Valentine. I guess you could definitely fall asleep to Loveless pretty easily.
A: Anything with that predictable, hypnotic quality to it could potentially put you to sleep, I guess.
JF: Loveless was one of those albums I listened to when I first started to get stoned. I listened to that album all the time and saw a pink god every day. (laughs)
A: I read that your bassist Neil Berenholz is 32, so he’s older than a lot of you guys. Do you think there’s any kind of age tension thing that’s going on, since you guys grew up in different eras?
JF: Not even a little bit. I mean, I think that any good band has some degree of tension, maybe not personal, although that often comes into play. You know, like in Wilco circa Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. There’s nothing like that here – no personal friction – but he definitely comes from a different background and he likes a lot of music I’d never, never listen to, like old Motown and R&B. Some of it I find irritating and some of it I don’t find compelling, and some of it I do find compelling, but when he’s influenced by it and to it puts a Motown bass line to an indie rock song like in “Cold Spring,” it works well and there’s tension, but a good kind of tension.
A: Exactly. That exciting, artistic kind of tension.
JF: I love Neil, and we’ve been very copacetic and we’ve all been getting along really well. Hate has never been an influence!