Interview: Cymbals Eat Guitars
Meet You At The Show: Your debut album, Why There Are Mountains has been getting great reviews from all over the place. How much importance do you place on album reviews? Do you read a lot of them?
Matt Whipple: We read a lot of our own press because we are all daily readers of music press in general. It’s hard to sort of turn that off for your own band but still read about everything else. At this point, it is mostly show reviews and interviews that we see, now that the album has been out for almost a year. My mom will probably email me a link to this interview when it runs.
MYATS: Pitchfork gave the album an 8.3 on 10 and put it in the “Best New Music Category”. Do you place more importance on what Pitchfork has to say over just your average local music blog.
MW: Well, being a daily Pitchfork reader for years now, it’s hard not to put a little bit more stock into what they are saying about something versus what another source is saying, whether it is about our music or otherwise. Some publications just carry more weight, and that’s how it is. We talk a lot about how much we love Pitchfork, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t turned off by a lot of the bands that they herald as often or more often than we agree with their calls. As far as blogs go, the blogosphere is great for a sort of democratization of the “indie culture”, but it can also be a bit lousy with bad writing and lazy references. I’d say we place the most importance on what our fans say to us directly, either at shows or online. Specifically we’d like to be able to do more all-ages shows in the future, which we’ve gleaned directly from fan feedback.
MYATS: How have things changed for you guys since Pitchfork’s review?
MW: The Pitchfork review granted us an audience overnight, plain and simple. It changed everything. Since then we have gone from playing the New York club circuit to 20 friends to national and international touring and sharing stages with some of our favorite bands. We are indebted to Pitchfork for that, but I think if Pitchfork had not picked up on the record, those same things would still have happened. It probably would have taken much, much longer.
MYATS: How important was it for you signing with Sister’s Den Records? Was it a difficult decision to make?
MW: It seems like the record needs to be set straight here, no pun intended. Sister’s Den is our own imprint we applied to the process of self-releasing our record. It is not an actual established label we “signed with”. We do not have a record label in the US. Our label in the UK and Europe is the wonderful Memphis Industries, and we’re currently in the process of working out what sort of label situation we’ll have for our second record in the US. Self-releasing the record was not a difficult decision at all, though. It was finished, and we wanted to get it out there, and self-releasing it seemed to be the quickest way we could do that.
MYATS: You have just embarked an a tour that will take you into May. Is there one city that you look forward to playing the most and why?
MW: Our current tour ends April 9 in Brooklyn, which will be a nice homecoming of sorts, although none of us really have any strong allegiance to or feelings about Brooklyn, at least any more so than any other city. None of us live there, but we do live close by. San Francisco should be great tonight, and Portland, OR is a favorite of ours as well. And of course, Montreal. After this tour, we’re heading out on tour with Los Campesinos! for a few East Coast dates and doing some one-off shows of our own, which will be really fun. We just listened to their new record in the van and it’s really great.
MYATS: Brooklyn is known as one of the best music cities in the world. How is the music scene in Staten Island.
MW: We don’t really feel very much a part of any music scene, Brooklyn, Staten Island, or otherwise, so it’s a bit difficult to comment. We have a very heads-down approach to making music, regardless of where we find ourselves working. We spent a couple months before this round of touring writing and rehearsing in an office building in northern New Jersey, across the hall from a radiology office.
MYATS: After your current tour what do you guys plan to do next? Have you started to work on your follow up album yet?
MW: It takes us a relatively long time to compose and arrange a song, so we are constantly working, but it is either piecemeal due to touring commitments or just slow-going due to how much editing is involved. We have four songs that we’re road-testing now that will be on our next record, and we’d like to write at least five more.
MYATS: I see that you have some Summer Festivals already lined up. Do you plan to add any more to the list?
MW: Do we plan to add any more summer festivals to our schedule? Yes. Can I announce them in this interview? No. There are some announcements coming soon though.
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Well we look forward to anything these guys have coming up, whether it’s more touring or a new album, because frankly, we love this band. We would like to thank Matt Whipple for taking the time to answer some of our questions and we wish the band luck in all their future endeavors.
Montrealers, you can catch Cymbals Eat Guitars live in a week and a half as they will be playing Il Motore on Wednesday, April 7th with Bear in Heaven and Freelance Whales. This is a show you don’t want to miss if you know what’s good for you. Tickets are $10.00 and can be purchased here, or at the door for $12.00.
We are also giving away a pair of tickets to this show, which you can win here.
