Chairlift

There’s commotion on the other end of the line. Voices pass the phone around until I land in the hands of Aaron Pfenning, Chairlift’s guitarist and co-writer. He’s relaxing on a Thursday in L.A. taking advantage of a few spare moments in his band’s hectic schedule.

Since releasing their debut, Does You Inspire You, on Kanine Records in 2008, and especially since its rerelease on Columbia this past April, Pfenning’s psych pop trio, which also includes chanteuse/keyboardist Caroline Polacheck and drummer Patrick Wimberly, has been riding a building buzz.

Although they may not be a household name yet, Chairlift’s catchy tune “Bruises” was handpicked for Apple’s iPod “Nano-chromatic” ad, boosting the tune itself beyond a multitude of televisions and into the ears, hearts and, inevitably, iPods of millions of watchers. But for Chairlift, the ad couldn’t have been more fitting. While it declared the new iPod Nano’s to be nano-chromatic, the band too wanders a spectrum of sound. For those not yet in the know, the cutest song of 2008 is only the beginning for the Brooklyn-based trifecta.

From a snack bar in L.A., Pfenning chatted up SSv’s Natalie B. David about playing Bonnaroo, that infamous ad, and how moving to Brooklyn has impacted the Chairlift sound.

SSv: So you guys played Bonnaroo last Thursday night, so how did that go?

Aaron Pfenning: Did you go to Bonnaroo?

SSv: Nope. Not this year.

Aaron: Well, it was our first real, like, time playing a real big American festival, that wasn’t like SXSW or an industry thing. We did a couple small festivals in Europe but this was the biggest thing we’ve done. And I’ve actually never been to a festival like Bonnaroo or anything where people are camping out.

SSv: They’re pretty crazy.

Aaron: Yeah, it was really a good time, meeting all the other musicians, too.

SSv: I went in 2006, and it was crazy, and then when I ended up getting there, I realized there was no tent in the box my parents had let me borrow and it was just a crazy, crazy experience.

Aaron: They were actually explaining it to me that I think since two years ago it’s been really disorganized and that only in the last couple years they’ve got their shit together and the festival is now way more organized.

SSv: Well, it sounds like you guys did well there.

Aaron: Yeah, it was really fun. Solange Knowles came up and sang on stage with us. It was fun. She joined us for a song.

SSv: So, how sick are you of talking about that infamous iPod ad?

Aaron: Um. I never really think of it. We don’t worry about it. I’m not that sick of it, actually. I just, well, actually, yeah, that’s true, I’m pretty sick of it. But it’s cool.

I was thinking about it today because the last time we were in L.A. the iPod ad was airing and I got kind of sick of it last time here in Los Angeles. But it feels so much better being in Los Angeles now ‘cause I’m not seeing that iPod ad everywhere, although, tomorrow I have to go to the Apple store ‘cause I need a new phone.

SSv: A lot of buzz about Chairlift kind of started because of that ad. Do you think you all would’ve ended up on Columbia and gotten to where you are now if you hadn’t placed “Bruises” in the iPod ad?

Aaron: Well, Columbia actually, we were signed before they knew about the iPod ad. And that was kind of a nice surprise for them to find out that we were in that ad, and it’s definitely helped. But we’ve been working hard ourselves on the album and getting it out there. We’d be doing ok, I think, but who knows? It’s hard to tell. We don’t accept everything that we’re offered. But we like iPods. Everyone uses them, everyone I know, and Apple is a forward-thinking company and we like to support that.

SSv: Cool. In a lot of ways commercials and song licensing has really almost become the new radio. And one of the cases that I always think of is The Dandy Warhols and their song “Bohemian Like You.”

Aaron: Oh yeah.

SSv: Even my grandmother has probably heard that because it’s been used in commercials, movies, movie trailers, but they’re still a fairly obscure band. So I guess how do you get the word out that that is your song, and capitalize on that sort of exposure?

Aaron: I like the way they did it. I think they did a good job of not really marketing it around too much and just focus more on music, although I don’t really know what they’re doing now. I really like that band, though.

We’re actually trying to not capitalize on that song too much, because it doesn’t really express the rest of the album accurately. It’s really an outlier on the album, it’s not really like anything else on there.

SSv: Definitely. It is a really varied record. I mean, “Don’t Give a Damn” is basically a country song, so “Bruises” is not the end all, be all of Chairlift. But are you afraid that people maybe won’t see beyond just “Bruises” or even “Evident Utensil?”

Aaron: I’m not afraid of it, but I know people will be like that. It’s already happening. We’ve seen some YouTube comments online where people are like “Bruises” is cool but the rest of the album…they’re not really into it. Which is fine. We’re never worried about pleasing everyone. I’m not afraid of….we’re not trying to piss anybody off. Just following our obsessions.

SSv: Something I’ve noticed as far as press and stuff goes, is that you’ve been kind of lumped in with bands like MGMT and Yeasayer as sort-of this new guard of psychedelic pop. Do you all feel at all like you’re at the forefront of some new musical trend?

Aaron: I think there’s really great energy in where all of this is coming from. And a lot of it is just plainly geographical because we all are neighbors and live close together and so we’re always seeing each other and going to the same shows, and have a discourse about, you know, we just talk about ideas together. But the music that we make is pretty different, I think. But it’s really great. I wouldn’t call it a scene because I don’t think that there’s a Brooklyn music scene, but I think it’s just a bunch of really good musicians kind of encouraging each other and helping each other out. But there is no “Brooklyn sound”. A band like Grizzly Bear, too, their new record I think is going to take them places that they’ve never been. Their music takes me places I’ve never been.

SSv: You mentioned that you all are based in Brooklyn now, and I know when you formed you all were living in Boulder, Colorado. You say there’s not a Brooklyn scene, but has moving there influenced your sound at all?

Aaron: Yes, I think so. I think when we got to New York we were so over-stimulated by going to shows all the time and keeping the pace with everything that we just sort of wanted to pull back and think about the slower, softer side of sounds and more subtlety. So we spent a lot of time on textures and sounds that were more dreamy and not so over stimulating. So I think it affected us in that way.

SSv: So sort of in the opposite way than people may expect.

Aaron: Yeah, it was sort of like an antidote to living in New York.

SSv: How does the songwriting process work for Chairlift. Who does what and how collaborative is it?

Aaron: Caroline and I each write the songs. We write them separately, usually. She’ll write some and I’ll write some and we’ll bring them together and show each other. I usually experiment by recording them first and then showing them to her. She’ll just play ‘em on keyboard for me, and then we bring in Patrick and he throws in arrangement ideas. So it’s become more collaborative. The next Chairlift album will be super collaborative, more so than the last one.

SSv: You guys recently released a video for “Bruises”. How important do you think music videos still are, or do you think they’re almost more important now than they were in the ’90s?

Aaron: Um. I think the most important thing is the music first, and then music videos obviously come second. Um. But I think a good example is this band Fever Ray. I’m really into her. And when you watch her music videos, and see her cover art, and see her live show, everything about her world starts to make sense. So I think a band can really be successful in saying what they want to say if they can integrate a visual philosophy into the music, too.

SSv: So making a more all-encompassing artistic endeavor instead of separate pieces of something?

Aaron: Yeah. I think a lot of bands are just into the music and don’t think much further. They don’t really think that making the video, they’ll just say “We’ll have a director come up with an idea and we’ll do it’” and the director will come up with whatever idea. He’s probably in a hotel room in Japan writing out some idea and the band will do it and it just won’t make any sense. There are just a lot of retarded videos out there.

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Tagged as: psych pop

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