After playing some 300-plus shows in support of their debut album, are back on the road. The sophomore release “Static” not only doubles the amount of songs they have in their live repertoire, but has them dealing a rougher sound suited better to rocking than just .
Reverb called up guitarist/songwriter Brian Oblivion to talk about their new, “aggressive” energy, the benefits of playing with an imaginary band in the studio, and the insane popularity of 89-member Japanese girl band, AKB48.
Cults play Denver’s with SACCO and Mood Rings.
How goes the tour? Are the new songs starting to gel live?
Yeah, we never as a band have played over 45 minutes, because we toured so much but we only had one 36 minute record to play. Now we’re playing over an hour for the first time in our lives. There’s a little bit of a learning curve. Making set lists, how to pace yourself, not feel rushed and be confident. I think we’re close to getting it figured it out.
Is there anything you want to try differently now that you have some experience under your belt?
For us, it’s not only the ability to play more songs and more aggressive songs, on this record, but it’s about challenging yourself. That’s the thing with modern music—it’s so easy to put things on a backing track, or make it so can play themselves. That’s what electronic instruments are designed for, to play themselves. We work really hard to put a set together where we’re performing everything that people hear. Sometimes that means we fuck up. I think that that’s cool. If there’s no element of danger or ‘this might go wrong,’ then it’s not a real live performance.
You were just in Denver this summer for . How’d you like it?
That was really fun. I’d never seen so many rock and roll people in one place. Everyone was so beautiful and tattooed and I didn’t know that a culture like that existed in Denver. I was really impressed. We got to walk around and see a lot of local bands that were really good. I think Denver has a very underrated rock and roll scene.
What was it like making the follow up to your debut? Did you feel any expectation after its success?
I don’t think we ever worried about expectations other than the kind of standards we always hold ourselves up to. On my end, I wanted to try to flip the formula of the last record, which was made almost completely on my laptop with fake instruments and samples and plug ins. I wanted to venture out and try to make a real, analog, live-sounding record. We record all the instruments separately, but I wanted it to feel like a band in a room.
We kinda had to make up imaginary personalities for the different players. Like what would keyboard guy play, what would that bass player in the corner play—and try and work all those sounds together into an authentic thing. That was an awesome experience, because I’ve never made a record with real drums before.
When you were imagining these session player personas, were they based off of anyone you knew?
Kind of, yeah. It was more imaginary archetypes. We had the rushing, overeager drummer, the laid back, fat bass player, the earthy keyboard guy (laughs). It was like an imaginary dream band.
Was your 2012 tour stop in Japan your first time there?
Yeah, that was my first time there and I fell in love with it. Everyone was worried when I went there that I was just gonna never come back. I grew up really into anime culture and a lot of Japanese bands like Boris and Merzbow.
To me it’s exciting because it’s the only place in the world that I’ve been that I just don’t understand. There’s actual cognitive dissonance between you and Japanese people—you think completely differently. That’s a frustrating but also really exciting thing, too. It can be…kind of a revelation.
It’s almost like the exact opposite of our culture.
Yeah! Have you heard of AKB48?
No, never.
So it’s a girl, Japanese pop band. And there’s 48 girls in band. (Ed: as of today, the band is .) It’s the most popular thing in Japan. One Direction times a hundred. They have an A-squad, B-squad, C-squad, a D-squad and they travel all over Japan and do these shows. They have a theatre in Tokyo that’s so popular you literally can’t buy tickets—you have to enter a lottery to get tickets.
And they have a member that does not exist. One of their most popular members is a computer generated person using some of the best features of all the girls, and she’s like this big star.
I was talking to a lot of really cool people . That breakdown between popular and underground culture doesn’t really exist in the States. But I think the U.S. is kind of heading that way.
How so?
I was talking about this last week in Vegas, about how the moment that we live in right now, a Nicki Minaj song is just as likely to soundtrack a summer or important moment for a kid who likes as Deerhunter is. We’ve entered into this crazy zone where Top-40 culture and indie culture are meshed. And I’m excited to see what’s gonna come out of that.
is a good example. Where does stand on the spectrum? It’s hard to place. That’s something we kind of aspire to, too: to be somewhere in that middle ground. That’s what’s exciting about this level.
Do you think band fandom can be something of a cult?
I always struggle with the idea of what a band is supposed to be in a way. I think a lot of bands today don’t aspire to create a culture around themselves like certain bands used to. Like, we don’t dress a certain way that all our fans dress when we come to the show, we don’t have a name for our fans. I don’t think we’re trying to impact people’s lives in that way.
What a lot of bands today aspire to is a more subtle connection. The band I think of when I think of that is Kiss. I think it’s a beautiful thing that they’ve been able to provide a sense of identity and belonging to so many people who feel like outcasts. No matter how cheesy you think their music is, they have a tremendous impact on people. I would be excited if that kind of trend came back. I think is kind of trying to do it right now, which is cool.
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Dylan Owens is Reverb’s all-purpose news blogger and album reviewer. You can read more from him in Relix magazine and the comment sections of WORLDSTARHIPHOP.
