Last month, Abe Vigoda released their hotly anticipated new album Crush. Under City Lights caught up with their bassist, David Reichardt and drummer Dane Chadwick, to get the low-down on their new album, The Smell and DIY ethics.
Why did you choose to name yourself Abe Vigoda?
David: Abe Vigoda is an actor who’s been 100 years old for years now. He used to be on the Conan O’Brien show, which we watched pretty much every night when we were in high school. We came up with the name 7 years ago when we were all still young. We thought it would be really funny, and it just stuck for all this time.
Do you know how he feels about you taking his name?
David: Probably fine. I think I’ve heard that someone trying to get in touch with our band has contacted his people, and he was like “oh, you must want them, not me.” So at least his people know us.
Your new album is pretty different to your last albums. What influenced the change?
David: Well, it’s been a long time since we wrote material from Skeleton. We’re still growing as people, discovering tons of new music and taking it in to influence us. Since we’ve been in a band for a really long time, we decided we’d like to start working with keyboards and drum machines…
Dane: When you have the opportunity to work in a studio, it’s pretty amazing.
David: Dane also joined the band a couple of years ago, and he had more experience that we were able to use. We also had a really good producer, and a friend who was handy with analogue keyboards. It all just came together in a big way, into something that was really interesting and new for us to do.
Were there any other bands you were listening to that influenced you?
David: In 2008 we did a tour with Diplo. One of the other support bands was Telepathe, from Brooklyn, whose music was all synth drum machine based. They’ve been friends and an influential band to us for a while. Cold Cave use similar heavy synth stuff too that we like, as it’s still pretty melodic.
Dane: A lot of New Order too!
David: Yeah, we’ve always been fans of New Order and OMD, and I think that kinda comes through.
Sure, when I listen to the album I can hear a very 80s English vibe coming through.
David: Yeah, we’re all really into it, but it wasn’t like we wanted to make music that sounded like that. We made music, and our influences came through in it.
Dane: We’ve had these ideas floating around, but we’ve only just been able to actually implement them.
What’s it like being on Bella Union, a label founded by Robin Guthrie, from the Cocteau Twins?
Dane: Yeah, that’s amazing. The Cocteau Twins are a HUGE influence on us. We met him at SXSW.
David: He’s a super nice guy. The time we got signed, I wasn’t a huge Cocteau Twins fan, but I was aware of it. It kinda hit me later about how cool it is to be on that label.
In the US you’re on No Age’s label, Post Present Medium. What’s that like?
David: Yeah. We’re good friends with No Age. We’re going to start touring with them tomorrow for a couple of months. That’s very exciting. We’ve toured with them in the US a few times and they’re some of our best friends, so to get to hang out with them in Europe is going to be pretty fun.
You did a ‘secret show’ out in Dalston in a tiny venue, what was that like?
David: It was cool. It was a funny, scary thing.
Dane: It wasn’t that funny! We fried the microkorg that all the main melodies are coming out of right now. We plugged it into the wrong power source, and it just fried it. We’re just using Jonathan’s keyboard right now, which is meant for backing parts really, so we had to figure out how to recreate all these sounds on it.
David: We had a couple of hours where we were sat round this keyboard like passing around one set of headphones seeing if it sounded okay. It took a long time. The gig itself was really good though. We had support from a really good band, Girls’ Names.
Dane: They were good.
David: It’s always nice to come out here and hear a lot of bands you’ve not heard of before.
What do you think of UK crowds in general? How receptive are they compared to the US?
David: I always relate it to NYC, same kinda crowd. There’s always going to be a lot of…
Dane: Well-dressed individuals, lot of pretty girls who have boyfriends… fuck!
David: LA is cool, but it’s a lot more relaxed. It feels like a lot less pressure. You don’t really feel like you’re being stared down. Especially walking round this area of London [Shoreditch], I always feel like people look you up and down and just look away. But everybody we actually meet is always supernice.
How about Europe?
Dane: The crowds are definitely weirder.
David: They’re very reserved, but they’re always really interested. They just let us do our thing and just watch and get excited once a song is over. When we’re playing they’re not really going wild, I think they’re into it, but just don’t show it. Any banter just seems like it goes in one ear and out the other.
Dane: I think people are pretty much all the same. They start off reserved, but once someone in the crowd seems to be into it, then it gets everyone else going. It always takes that one person to get everybody engaged no matter where you are.
Over here the music press group you guys together with No Age, Health and Mika Miko as “The Smell” bands. To what extent is that a real grouping or scene?
Dane: It kind of is.
David: We don’t really play there that much anymore. This group of bands all got lumped into that. We all have similar ideals about music and DIY, but we have different sounds. It’s changing there now sound-wise, but everyone still has the same attitude. The Smell is for all ages, so loads of kids come out there. It’s a very welcoming place to all different types of music and people. I guess people just think of it as a club, but it’s more like playing at somebody’s house, but a bit bigger with no bar and no door guys.
When did you guys start going there? We don’t really have all age venues in the UK.
David: We were pretty young, probably 14. We all come from the suburbs around LA; so going to the city was a big deal. We just found this place that was very welcoming. You’d go out there and be scared of the big city, but you go there and you feel really welcome and safe, despite the fact it’s a pretty sketchy neighbourhood. We started playing there a couple of years after we started going.
We know that you’re a DIY band. In our magazine we’ve being having arguments over whether we should have advertising. What’s your attitude towards advertising?
David: We’re definitely open to advertising. More than trying to present this image of separation from advertising, we’ve just wanted to get our music out there and heard.
Dane: Why would you make music if you don’t want it to be heard?
David: The cash is a big thing also! We’re not going to act like we don’t want to get paid for doing something we love.
Dane: It’s funny when people are too punk. Obviously the attitude can be a bad thing, but having people hear your music isn’t bad!
David: Even the cheesiest commercial, we’d love to have our music on it, at least someone liked our music enough to want to use it. I’d also love to be a composer, scoring music for movies or TV.
As a DIY band, what’s your feeling on music being involved with politics?
David: We’re not very political at all. We just want to make music. If there was a new law that prevented us playing music, then maybe we’d get more political!
So is the DIY more about the fact that it gives you the ability to make music, rather than any particular statement?
David: Yeah, absolutely. When we started the band, we began with home recording. Then we wanted to sell the music at our shows, so we started putting it out on CD-Rs. Then from that we set up our own mini DIY label, putting out a hundred or so copies of a CD. Mostly it was just a necessary vehicle for releasing music. It’s totally possible for people these days to record music on their computers and release it on the internet, and that’s totally valid. We’re starting to move away from that now though, because we’ve finally got access to studios to make a really great sounding record.
Dane: We just want to make the best possible record we can with what we’ve got!
David: We never went for the lo-fi aesthetic. I think it’s weird to want to make lo-fi. I mean if you have a tape machine, then that’s all you have, so you record onto it. But some people take it too far, and record onto garage band and then just put distortion on it to make it “lo-fi”. It doesn’t really make sense to me.
It seems like a way for people to sound more punk than they really are, when really they’re just rich kids recording onto macbooks.
Dane: Its something we were kind of into. But now we’ve got the means to make a studio quality record, so we’ll do that instead; we’ve got no excuse!
David: The older records are kinda lo-fi but that’s because that’s what was available. Skeleton was recorded in our friend’s dad’s garage, which just happened to have pro-tools and a few microphones.
At this point, Abe Vigoda’s manager comes over to whisk them away for dinner with their record label. Check out their new album Crush, out now on Bella Union.
Dasal Abayaratne
Under City Lights 