Thursday has long been a band that inspired much fanaticism. From the moment the video for their breakthrough single “Understanding (In A Car Crash)” hit MTV2 in 2001, the band has been something of an indicator for a sect of youth culture. They rose to fame with the advent of music downloading, put out two amazing records on a major label but only got the recognition for one of them. After the critical success and lacking commercial prospects of the band’s definitive artistic statement, 2006’s A City By The Light Divided, the band left
Now with their new home at Epitaph Records, fresh out of the gate with t heir stunning new album Common Existence and the headlining spot on the 2009 Taste of Chaos tour, Thursday is at a crossroads in their career. Much has been made in recent articles about the future of the band, but what about the present? Before the packed show at the Electric Factory last Friday, I sat down at a poker table with keyboard player Andrew Everding. We touched on their love for Epitaph, side projects, the new record and spent a lot of time discussing where music in general is going. Prepare for one of the most revealing interviews with one of the most honest bands ever.
Phrequency: So you guys kind of shocked the world when you signed with Epitaph. I, for some reason, expected a more indie oriented label like Matador. What made Epitaph such a good fit for Thursday at this point?
Andrew Everding: It’s been good. It’s funny that you say Matador because I’d never think that.
P: Really?
A: I don’t know if we’d…it’s funny what people perceive us as and what we perceive ourselves as but I’d never see us as a Matador band, I always thought Epitaph would be more fitting. It’s been a good fit, we knew we couldn’t do another major label after the fiascos of what’s going on. It’s not necessarily what happened with the last two records or anything…but most majors right now couldn’t sustain a band like us because we don’t sell enough of what they’d want…we’re not like a giant pop act. Epitaph’s some hard working people and they know what we’re doing…they don’t stand in the way of the creative stuff, you know? They ask us what we wanna do and more specifically they’re like “Thursday, we can’t really change you, you do your thing.” Thursday has a thing and a way of doing things and it’s set in stone almost. They respect that.
P: You took some breaks from touring besides some random shows here and there…what were you doing besides writing?
A: Besides writing, I don’t know. We did a bunch of international stuff between the last full length record and this one. Did
P: Any more Lovecats shows?
A: Oh…yeah I actually just talked to Pete (Steinkopf, Bouncing Souls) yesterday. I forgot to mention that I do have a silly little Cure cover band that I do…
P: It’s genuinely really good. I saw you guys at the Asbury Lanes last summer and I was so psyched on it. DJ does a really good Robert Smith.
A: Really? That’s awesome. Yeah, when I get home from this Pete and I are talking about doing a little Lovecats tour. It’s supposed to be a fun thing, no seriousness in it at all. We could use the money so why not?
P: I read in some interview that you guys worked with the sound designer from Lost on the new record…is that true at all?
A: No (puzzled). Where’d your read that?
P: In some article I was reading a few days ago…
A: Maybe…you never know (laughing). Maybe Dave Friddman is the sound designer for Lost. It’s funny because…I would love to get into that kind of work eventually because it’s really challenging and creative…but there’s a lot of Hitchcock tricks that he does like the Hitchcock soundtracks. There’s this string thing that they do in Lost where ten instruments move around the same note and they all come to land on a chord together but it would have been rad if we had the sound designer from Lost involved.
P: It kind of made some sense to me because the soundscapes and extra sonics on the new album do have a very distinct feel and it’s kind of a cut above the stuff like that on the last album.
A: Sure.
P: When you guys started writing the record, did you guys have a certain headspace already? Did you know what you wanted and just set out to achieve that?
A: Initally it was like “Hey I have this, Geoff has this, Steve has this” but towards the end of it, especially because it took so long, we started steering it towards not really Full Collapse stuff but what felt good to play live in the room rather than experiment. It wasn’t like “lets take this crazy metally part and this crazy Beatles part and put them together.” We wrote stuff that would be more of a live thing. We tried to write a little bit of faster songs too, turn the tempo up a bit.
P: The sonics of this record are a lot different than past Thursday records. The past albums are more crisp and defined but this is more one cohesive sound, kind of a Sonic Youth-ian thing going on with the tones and production.
A: That comment, for me, is a good respectful comment. I really appreciate what they do. I think a lot of people have issues with the last record specifically with the way it sounds. We let Dave do whatever he wanted so we were like “yeah, make it sound fucking crazy.” So he did. Some people have issues with it and other people are like “it doesn’t sound like War All The Time or Full Collapse” which Sal (Villenuva) did. They make very clean sounding records and everything…you can hear exactly what’s going on. But again with the live thing, we’ve never really been able to replicate the sounds and there’s kind of a general overall sound to it and I appreciate recordings that do that. The other big thing though is there’s so much going on melodically and rhythmically that putting that together with lyrics over it with any kind of separation is very difficult with six people in a band and with additional tracks. We’re encouraged when we record with him to after we’re done recording the basics we go home and put more stuff on top of it, like ear candy…textures, atmosphere…the wall of sound stuff comes from a lot of instrumentation on the record.
P: Are there any B-sides from this record?
A: Sure. There’s like three.
P: The singles club thing you guys are doing. Was that inspired by the NOFX 7” of the month club, and why’d you decide to do it now?
A: I’m not aware of the NOFX singles club but we’ve always had an idea of doing that and we always thought it would be cool. You have to think of different ways of releasing music at this point in time. It’s like why not? The Souls are doing that right now too, releasing a song a month for their anniversary.
P: Out of all the new songs, which is your favorite to play live so far?
A: “Circuits of Fever.” We’ve played it every day.
P: What are you guys currently listening to, watching and reading on the bus?
A: I haven’t been listening to too much. I’ve been listening to this thing called Flying Lotus. I think he’s either out of LA or
For part two of this interview, check Phrequency.com tomorrow morning. What can you expect from part two? How about this quote from Andrew: “For us at this point, it’s not like we’re volunteering to do Thursday. If we were it’d be smaller shows and we’d play two shows a year…”
