Bridges and Powerlines

For the last three years, New York’s Bridges and Powerlines have been laying the indie pop foundation and framework to make their career work over the long haul. Their roots in melodic sensibilities give them proper footing to venture out just enough to keep thigns interesting. But the quartet is keenly aware of the time it will take to develop the slow build.

So it was refreshing to find the band as thoughtful in conversation as they are concerning their own music. Their new disc, Ghost Types, features Chris Zane (Walkmen) on production and percolated long enough in the minds and hands of those involved to create an excellent debut LP. Drummer Pete Mucek took some time out to tell us about the band’s expectations, hopes and standing behind a record for the first time.

SSv: Can you take us inside the production sessions with Chris Zane?

Pete Mucek: Sure. This is the second record we made. We did an EP about a year and a half ago. We decided this time around that we wanted to work with a producer. We thought it’d be nice to have an outside perspective on the music and the sound and everything. We looked around and looked at records others were doing that we really liked and Chris’s name kept coming up. We got in touch with him, he liked our stuff and we talked to some other folks, but he was one we really zeroed in on.

We set aside some time to start working on our record, so he worked with us on some pre-production. We ran our demos by him and he gave us his thoughts. We first started recording with him in March of 2007. He does most of his work out of a studio downtown called Gigantic. We did two weeks in March and they were great. We spent most of the time tracking instruments. He’s a drummer by trade and so he’s really into getting optimal drum sounds.

Since we’d never worked with a producer before, we weren’t sure how hands on he would be. But it turned out to be exactly what we needed. There weren’t any major changes in songs, but it was a lot of little things he contributed to - changing tempos and there were a couple choruses for us to rewrite. He told us from the beginning that his involvement and shaping of the sound will grow as the sessions move on. So we recorded with him for those two weeks and came back in June to record for another week. Then he and another guy, Alex Aldi, mixed the record in July over nine or ten days.

But I can’t say enough good things about Chris. He’s become one of our friends, too, which is cool. His trajectory as a producer is very obvious. I talked to him about a week ago and he just finished recording the new Walkmen record, which I think will be really fantastic. He has people at all ranges of the indie spectrum approaching him to do their records, so it was 100% positive experience. And in a band, there aren’t that many 100% positive experiences. [Laughs]

SSv: Is that a fragile process to invite someone into your artistry with you?

Mucek: It wasn’t so much fragile. It’s business and so the bands and potential producers look at it through that perspective. It’s not really a client relationship, but we were business-like with everybody. We were looking for someone who would not be afraid to tell us that we need to change things or not be afraid to tell us what to do basically. And yet at the same time, that they’d be willing to step back and let us do what we want to do. It’s a weird thing. And also, we don’t have much experience with it either. I feel like we got pretty lucky. But yeah, we basically just called and emailed a bunch of people after making up a list of who we liked the sound of. But it wasn’t a difficult process.

SSv: With Ghost Types being a debut LP, how far do you put your hopes out there and how much do you realize this is just the first step?

Mucek: One perspective we try to take on everything is that if you put all of your hope into thing, one tour or one record, then you’re going to end up disappointed. We’ve all seen bands blow up on one record or one thing and we as a band have tried not to put our hopes in any one thing. We’re excited about record. We really are. But at the same time, we’ve seen a lot of debut records come out with a lot more buzz. I feel like we had some buzz, but it wasn’t anything tremendous. We think it’s a really good record and we’re realistic about what we want out of this.

Basically we want to be able to expand our tour base. This is the first record we’ve made that I feel we can stand behind. This is the first step. We’re going to tour off of this record - and this is one thing that Chris told us - but the day you stop recording your first record, you should begin writing for the next record. Not necessarily to go in and record it, but the bands that are successful are the ones that are always thinking a few steps ahead. I mean, our expectations are reasonable. Of course, it’d be awesome if we were Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah, but that can only happen to a handful of bands.

SSv: You talked about the band being New York centric. Does that make it harder to make your mark as a band or is it somehow easier there?

Mucek: It’s funny because it’s a little bit of both. There are so many bands but at the same time, there are so many people who love music and who want to write about music. There are so many resources. One thing I think is interesting in New York is that a band can basically break and get huge in New York and almost not leave the city. It happens infrequently, but a band from, say, Idaho is going to have to tour the whole country quite a bit to get the word. But every once in a while, we’ll see a band that really gets big in New York and the buzz spreads everywhere and they’re able to tour off of that.

It’s hard to separate yourself from the pack in New York, but there’s a lot of great bands to network with and there’s a lot of people into the music. Some days I couldn’t be happier in New York. I played in a lot of bands in Chapel Hill, which is where I’m from. And some other days, it’s very hard to get some of the press attention because there are fifteen bands in Brooklyn all over the place right now. Getting ahead of them in line is very difficult.

SSv: Now that the album has been out for a few, is it a sigh of relief? What’s the feeling when so close to a release?

Mucek: We’re mainly relieved. The record was finished back in the middle of the summer. Since we do everything ourselves. We formed our own label. We do have a publicist that helps us out with things, but a lot of the business type things we do ourselves. It took a solid four or five months to prep for the release - with art, distribution and things like that. Having that behind us is the main source of relief because I want to spend time focusing on shows again.

So we’re trying to gear up into being a touring band again, at least for a few months. So that’s very much of a relief. Up to this point, as I said, we didn’t have anything out in general circulation that I could really stand behind. We made our first record after only being together for two or three months, but this was a solid year’s worth of work, so it’s a big relief.

SSv: What does that mean that you can stand behind it?

Mucek: This record is the product of a band that has been playing together for a year and a half and writing for a year. These songs are really nose to the grindstone. We’re rehearsing four days a week for three months. Everything was demoed and re-demoed, revised again and again. We spent a solid month in the studio making the record with a producer we loved. Everything just fell into place. It was the first time in my life that I had made a record where there wasn’t any situation where I would go back and say, ‘I wish I had done that differently.’

We’d all made records before and, as a band, we’d made one other record. Certainly we made mistakes and there are new things we’ll do on the next record, but it’s the first time we felt we had done everything as best we could. If this record wasn’t good, then there’s something wrong with us. It was finally teh right set of things. [Laughs]

SSv: To a reading audience who will probably be hearing about Bridges and Powerlines for the first time, what’s the important thing for them to know?

Mucek: It’s pop music. We try to write short, exploratory, invigorating pop songs. All of us are college radio devotees back in the ’90s. That’s what we grew up with. The indie bands in the ’90s, for me in particular, I was obsessed with the Merge and Matador bands of the ’90s. Subconsciously, that’s what I feel gets channeled the most in what we do. I know that’s not the most profitable avenue to be going down, but that’s the music of my life and that’s what I’ve always wanted to do. We’re all really into melody and vocal harmonies and just trying to take pop songs and deconstruct them just a bit. Pop songs slightly deconstructed, I guess.

• www.myspace.com/bridgesandpowerlines

↓ 2 comments

#1 bridges and powerlines » Blog Archive » we’ll talk your ear off on May 22nd, 2008 at 6:18 pm

[...] stereo subversion was a champ and took some time out to interview pete not long ago. Check it out here [...]

#2 nyctaper - A discussion of NYC live music recording, sharing and archiving » Bridges and Powerlines May 11, 2008 Pianos - Flac and MP3 Downloads and News! on May 26th, 2008 at 4:48 pm

[...] from Pitchfork to Current TV to Paste Magazine. Stereo Subversion did a recent lengthy interview [here]. The positive reviews are well deserved, as Ghost Types is a superb collection of alt-synth-pop [...]

Add to the noise:

Name (required)

Email (will not be published) (required)

URL