Crack

Once a band becomes associated with a tag or genre, it’s almost impossible to escape it. And as much as Times New Viking stress their latest album’s departure from the idea of ‘lo-fi’, it still follows them around, both for their previous staunch adherence to its values and their current conscious movement away.

As the Ohio band embarked on their fifth record, it seems fairly clear that their intention was to prove that there was more to their sound than simply ‘lo-fi’ – that there was a proper band hidden behind the layer of cassette fuzz. To anyone familiar with their previous output, this was pretty obvious.

Utilising an actual recording studio for the first time, the discordant guitars, distorted drums and scratchy vocals of previous records Dig Yourself (2005), Present the Paisley Reich (2007), Rip It Off (2008) and Born Again Revisited (2009) have been tamed, but similarly to Nathan Williams’s Wavves, TNV have found a way to develop their sound towards more accessible territory without sacrificing their aesthetic or values.

So the track Try Harder builds to a triumphant, almost anthemic chorus which might have lacked clarity and space if hampered by the limitations of home recording; Ways to Go bounces along on a head- shaking beat, simple keyboard melody effortlessly cutting through jangly, detuned guitars and yelped vocals. To put it in terms of the 90s indie scene, which so inspired the band, TNV, may have just made their Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.

Rather than a reinvention, you might see this as a band getting to know themselves. Constantly touring and churning out albums (four in five years), recording and doing everything for yourself doesn’t leave much time for letting ideas breathe and develop. But at a certain point something has to give, and in this case moving into the studio has given TMV a chance to move song-writing and melody to the fore.

The band’s mastery of their instruments has also moved up a gear, although they remain a long way from anything that could be described as ‘tight’, they retain the sense of fierce independence and self-reliance synonymous with their scene. Their art college background has always made them a cerebral as well as a cathartic entity, and low-budget videos and vibrant cut-and-paste record covers contribute to the band’s strong sense of identity and individuality. Crack caught a word with keyboardist/vocalist Beth Murphy.



The new album is quite different to what you were going for previously, it’s a lot more of an accessible sound. Was this something that was done intentionally?

Well we kept the process the same – the song writing and how we work together and everything, the kind of songs that we write – but we wanted to evolve and it was just the logical next step. We’ve been home recording for so many years, ever since we started really which was like 2003, we always recorded at home.

So bringing it to the studio, that’s made it more accessible to a bigger audience? Why have you named it Dancer Equired?

Yeah, I guess so. The name is a play on the phrase ‘attendance required’. We just did a word and spacing shift on that, and it’s from an Electric Eels poster I believe. It’s a kind of subliminal message about requiring attendance and getting people to dance.

Is wording quite a big thing for you? You guys are from art-college, so are you big fans of typography and the way things look?

Yeah, I mean we’re interested in typography and we’re a little bit snobby about it and get annoyed when people use that generic typewriter font and associate it with a band. Letterforms are interesting because it’s like, ‘how much can you get away with’ in embellishing the form. The writing that we usually use is Jared (Phillips, guitar)’s handwriting!

So coming from art school, is the image and branding of the band important to you?

Umm ... it should be. I feel like we are really in control of the graphics and how we present ourselves to people and the live shows. Bands that don’t have an art background just hand a lot of that stuff over to their managers or producers or that kind of thing. People just follow fashion and everybody knows that the most fashionable thing to do is to not be fashionable!

How many times have you been in the UK before? How does the UK compare to the US – are the audiences receptive over here?

This upcoming tour will be our fifth in the UK, and yeah, the audiences are great. I guess it varies between cities – at shows in smaller towns like Norwich or York a lot of people turn up but sometimes I can’t really tell if people like what they hear. But it’s definitely better touring in the UK because it’s a new place and the novelty of being the ‘other’ from across the pond is a bargaining chip in our package – we get a shit ton out of it!

When it came to recording, you obviously kept a lot in – it’s still very DIY. Is it important to hold on to that?

We kept the same level of ineptitude really! It’s still us playing all the stuff. It’s always going to sound a little bit wavy or shifted. We kept it on analogue and recorded on tape and we actually cut and pasted the tape back together, so that might have leant itself to that, instead of sequencing and editing it on a computer we cut the actual tape, completely analogue.

How do you see the digital world?

Well we only buy vinyl, none of us have iPods, which I guess isn’t really heard of these days. I think we as a band are right on the cusp of the old school way of doing things and the new technology. We’re almost like teetotallers to that. But with the whole vinyl thing coming back it’s become a way to get people to come to DJ nights. It shouldn’t be a novelty though. I have a cassette player in my truck and a whole passenger seat and foot-well is full of cassettes, so I get how an iPod could be less annoying than that! But also, if I’m walking around not constantly listening to music it’s a really good opportunity to come up with more of my own melodies.

What has been your influence for the new album?

Fleetwood Mac – that’s pretty much the answer to that question. A seven-week European tour and all we listened to was the Fleetwood Mac greatest hits double disk – we listened to it constantly, just remembering how great they are. We kind of wanted to make Rumours 2! We aimed for Rumours and thought then at least we would get Tango In The Night!

How do you as a band find touring and playing live?

We’ve been touring constantly for pretty much about five years. It’s kind of the bread and butter for a band, but at the end of the day we all like it. It’s good to keep busy and to keep meeting new people no matter how stressful things can be for you on certain days. We all get pretty restless when we’re back home, there’s nothing to complain about when you get to travel with your job and go to bars and get drunk.

And what are your future plans? Any festival dates lined up?

We’re working on a little EP, it was kind of a typical project. We used really expensive microphones from the studio where we were and a mixing board and a tape machine and mixed on the four track. So it’s kind of in the works right now, not really sure what we’ll do with it. We’ve not been offered any UK festival slots, which is a shame because we’d really love to do some!



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Tune: No Room To Live - Right Click Here To Download

http://timesnewviking.net

Words: Geraint Davies

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