10 Questions with The Spinto Band, SXSW 2009

I first saw The Spinto Band perform three years ago with little knowledge of who they were and was instantly charmed by their infectious indie pop. Their live shows glow with ebullient melodies and multi-instrumental harmonies that simply radiate happiness. With six band members, a variety of instruments (including kazoos), and gleeful head-bopping rivaled only by the early Beatles, you'd have to be a real downer or a real music snob not to enjoy yourself at their show.

I spoke to The Spinto Band last week while they were finishing up their tour in Europe before heading down to Austin for SXSW.



How would you describe your music for those who've never heard it?

Pop Deco.

How is 'Moonwink' different from 'Nice and Nicely Done'? What shaped the writing of the new album?

‘Moonwink’ is a bit denser than 'Nice and Nicely Done'. It's tricky pop music with a high replay-value. I think the writing stemmed from the fact that we have six members in the band and attempting to create intricate arrangements that took advantage of that fact.

How is the European tour? How are crowds there different from those stateside?

The European crowds have been very generous. German crowds, especially. When we perform, they shake like people at a high-school dance on a film set in the 1950s.

Your music and shows are just about the happiest I've ever experienced. Is this just your style or are you guys just the happiest people in music?

We've been playing around with the music program, Microsoft Songsmith, and it only has two sliders to affect the feel of the music. They are "happy" and "jazzy". On a purely superficial level, I think our music would be on the higher end of both of those knobs. I think on a personal level, we're all realists with a pinch of optimism.

I saw you guys play a few years ago with Art Brut and We are Scientists. How was that tour and do you guys have any favorite bands that you've played with?

We were talking about that tour the other day and how great it was...Honestly. If we gave awards for touring, that may win the best tour for bro-hanging.

Greatest influences outside of music?

Iron Chef Morimoto, Stanley Kubrick, 2008 Philadelphia Phillies, El Chupacabra, Josef Albers, Theodore Roosevelt.

Favorite activities to do on tour?

Challenge people of different cities and nationalities to bowling competitions. Also we like to sample the local cuisine, mainly local sodas, beer, and potato chips.

Most rock 'n roll moment you've ever experienced?

Four out of six of us puking within hours of each other. Not to mention our tour manager, who also puked.

What are you most excited about for SXSW?

Free stuff.

Are you guys still making films? Ever considered coming to SXSW showcasing both film and music?

We still make videos often for our YouTube channel, but we can't imagine being at SXSW any longer than a weekend. Our bodies couldn't handle it.

Will we ever hear any kazoo harmonies from you again?

Some fans just restocked our kazoo collection with hand-decorated kazoos, so that's a maybe!

The Spinto Band play official SXSW showcases at SESAC Day Stage Café Austin Convention Center and Room 710 on Saturday, March 21 as well as free parties at Home Slice Pizza and Red House Pizzeria. Check spintoband.com for shows.

Harlem Shakes, SXSW 2009

I have not been very attuned to the music scene recently, but Brooklyn's Harlem Shakes are one band I've been rather obsessed with for a few years now. It could be just because I happened to come across them or that they're just really fucking good (most likely a combination of both).

Their debut album, Technicolor Health, drops on the 24th and reveals a cohesive, evolved sound distinct from their EP, Burning Birthdays, as well as earlier recordings. Forget the Strokes comparisons from 2005. The new music is rich with their signature vocal harmonies (everyone in the band sings) while radiating a new hope that distinguishes it from past music.

They have been gaining overwhelming positive press for a while now, and they're finally playing SXSW this year (after a mishap with SXSW '07 when their scheduled show with Yoko Ono was cancelled). I spoke to lead singer Lexy Benaim this week, while Harlem Shakes were on tour in wintry Ohio (not to mention sick - yes every member was sick) and longing for the warm sunshine of Texas.

L-R: Todd, Kendrick, Jose, Lexy, & Brent. Photo by Elizabeth Weinberg.

How would you describe the Harlem Shakes’ sound?

I’d say our music sounds like the musical embodiment of prosperity in the 90s.

How’s life on tour been for you guys?

It’s been really good. I think we kind of set out having to take it to a new level. I think we achieved the vision we were going for, which is a looser sound, not exactly like on the album so there are some surprises. We generally try to keep it free and loose, surprise each other by banging on things or playing things the others don’t know we’re gonna do - just keeping everybody energetic, and I think the crowd likes that too. If you do something you clearly don’t know you’re gonna do beforehand and surprise yourself, they’re gonna be surprised and excited too.

What have been your favorite cities to play? Does each city have a distinctly different feel, or do they all kind of become the same after a long time on tour?

A couple cities stand out. Different cities have different things going for them. I like playing Montreal. I don’t mean to kiss up, but I like playing Austin. Chicago’s always been great. Anywhere that’s a little strange in some way is always fun to play.

What’s the main difference between playing in your hometown of New York as opposed to say Austin?

Oh you just know about a hundred people in the crowd. That’s always a little weird. We can definitely sell out bigger venues in New York than anywhere else and that’s good. But it’s a little weird recognizing the faces in the crowd, you always feel a little inhibited.

What are you looking forward to most about SXSW?

The banana pudding at Stubb’s Barbeque. And also we’re playing a show on Saturday at Red-Eyed Fly with Chairlift, Titus Andronicus, and the comedian Eugene Mirman, so we’re really excited about that.

How is your new album different from your past music?

I just think it’s a lot more ambitious. We worked a lot harder on it and took it more seriously. It was a more intense, involved experience. The EP we made was after we’d been together for like 2 months. So this record is us in a much more evolved stage.

Your new music and lyrics feel a lot more optimistic to me than your past music. Would that be a fair assessment?

I think that’s true. There is a kind of willful optimism. I really think you’re right.

What life experiences or changes inspired that?

Oh my god, so many. I feel like in the last two years we just lived so much. So much shit happened, good and bad. It’s almost like too much to process, and the only acceptable response for us was this kind of willful optimism in the face of this sea of experience.

I've noticed you revise and release different versions of many songs. You've recorded many different versions of “A Night” and you seem to have updated it and released it as “Sunlight.”

It has the same chorus. It’s a pretty radically different song. But I am a reviser. My main background in studies are in literature and fiction, and revision is a very basic aspect of the form, and I take the same approach to music.

Do you ever feel like you've reached exactly what you want with a song and that it's finished, or is it never done and always open to change?

Sometimes it’s done, but it’s almost always an arbitrary thing when it’s done. Nothing ever matches the Platonic ideal in your head, but sometimes it comes really close. After a certain amount of time, you learn to accept it as its own thing, separate from you. Just a thing in the world.

Who are your greatest musical influences?

I’ll try to say ones that aren’t so obvious. Really like a lot of early 90s music. Blur, Beta Band, Grandaddy.

What are your greatest influences outside of music?

All sorts of books and writers. Those can be as strong as the music for me in some ways. The Polish writer, Wisława Szymborska, I like her a lot. Lately I’ve been reading only short stories by Leonard Michaels. Seamus Heaney, the poet. Who else? Yeah, those are some favorites. Another poet called Alex Nemser, who I went to college with.

If you could form a supergroup with any other artists, dead or alive, who would you recruit?

David Berman for lead vocals. Actually backup vocals for David Berman. I would have Carlos Santana on lead guitar. Biggie Smalls on the rhymes. Who else would be in this magical band? Elvin Jones on the drums. Bill Evans on piano. And John from Deerhoof on guitar. And Satomi from Deerhoof on bass. Yeah I think we might be a little eclectic.

What are you favorite songs to play on tour?

Right now I’m having a lot of fun playing “Technicolor Health.” I’m also having a lot of fun playing this old song we reworked, “Old Flames.” And I like playing “Wild World” by Cat Stevens in the dressing room.

Do you guys ever do covers?

Not really, but we’re gonna start.

Do you have any in mind, who you want to cover?

I want to cover “Wild World” by Cat Stevens. Oh, Cat Stevens would have been in my all-star band, but we have too many singers already. Too many egos.

Harlem Shakes play an official SXSW showcase Thursday, March 19th at Red 7 along with numerous free shows and parties throughout the week. Check them out!

Reflecting on Szerencsétlen

I was at Virgin Records in New York last spring when I was struck by a song playing unlike anything I'd ever heard. It turned out to be "Szerencsétlen" by electronic artist Venetian Snares. It opens like a contemporary classical composition, with sharp, fragmented strings and pizzicato, before erupting into an electronic frenzy. Imagine an army of computers crashing into an orchestra. It is remarkable how he unites discordant pieces (not to mention genres) into such harmonious music.

Here's a brilliant fan-made video for the song:

Can't really go wrong with Venetian Snares and the best cartoon series ever.

Control (2007)

Shadowplay: Sam Riley is Ian Curtis in Anton Corbijn's Control

Photographer Anton Corbijn's debut film Control manages to escape the conventions of biopics documenting the life and death of troubled rock stars. Possibly it is the fact that Corbijn is foremost not a filmmaker but a figure deeply established in the story he is narrating, having photographed Joy Division and directed one of their videos before Ian Curtis's death, that makes the film so moving and raw in its account.

Sam Riley's Curtis is persuasive and utterly heartbreaking. Troubled by emotional fragility and bouts of epilepsy, he is tortured by uncertainty, indecision, and the fact that life and its decisions are not defined by one clear right. He cannot bring himself to leave Debbie, the woman he fell in love with and married too young (Samantha Morton), nor can he resist the beautiful Belgian woman he loves yet hardly knows (Alexandra Maria Lara, Riley's real-life companion).

Aside from love tearing him apart, he is disillusioned by the pressure of the band's swelling fame. He longs for the simplicity of life before Joy Division's rise, a time when he could love without distortion - music, literature, his family.

Shot in black-and-white and with the aesthetic elegance that comes only from a photographer's eye, the film simply captures the heart and soul of Ian Curtis. It does not loiter around creating background or making clear the progression of the band's success or the events of Curtis's life. With these details disregarded, Corbijn has ample room to explore the human tragedy of the singer's life, resulting in a film heartbreaking and profound in its narrative.

The film closes at the cemetery with a lovely shot as the camera slowly pans up until it lies just above the rooftops and gazes lingeringly into a blank, grey sky. Joy Division's 'Atmosphere' continues throughout as we float above this worldly conception of death to something beyond, something as of yet undefined, and, most of all, something that holds great hope, creating a sense that the music Ian Curtis created with Joy Division transcends all the tragedy and pain, all the absurdity and gravity of mortal existence, both Curtis's and ours.

A Surrealist Fantasy about Reality

After trekking through a portal into John Malkovich’s brain, challenging the boundaries of self-reflexivity in Adaptation, and ultimately undergoing memory erasure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we end up in Charlie Kaufman’s latest cerebral romp, Synecdoche, New York.

Inspecting miniscule art or human existence?

Marking his directorial debut, Synecdoche offers Kaufman at his “Kaufman”-est, with no filters installed by Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze. The result is a film unrelenting in its complexity, persistently confusing, absurd, surreal, heartbreaking, and, above all, beautiful.

The film’s protagonist, playwright Caden Cotard (played brilliantly by Philip Seymour Hoffman), suffers fears regarding his mortality and the pressure of achieving something meaningful before dying. Earning a prestigious MacArthur theater grant, he finally gets his chance to create a massive play that will cement his legacy to the world.

Upon embarking on this task, however, his vision grows larger and larger until he abandons his old reality to live in the reality he created. He is living in a play about his life creating a play, and new characters are brought in to play old characters, leading to uncertainty over what is reality and what is his creation.

Rather than try to understand the physical complexities of the film, we should appreciate that Kaufman has crafted a reality that is simultaneously absurd and deeply poignant. He offers plentiful humor, usually in the form of nonchalant acceptances of painful truths many of us don’t like to acknowledge. However, even in the midst of such pessimistic realism, he presents beautifully understated moments of life’s simple grandeur.

Kaufman offers a philosophical view of reality, the world, and our human existence within both. Using his films as texts, one can delve into his view of human experience: that there simply are no solutions or explanations, no matter what we try to do to create one. Though this appears to be the track to despair or nihilism, within Kaufman’s narratives also lies an unbounded optimism in finding profundity in the everyday existence that connects us as a human race. His stories tend to end with a twist that lands the protagonists far from conventional happiness, yet manages to be oddly uplifting in its depiction of life’s many ironies – and this film is no exception.