So, you guys put out an EP and then what happened, how’d you get there to the next steps?
Neon Gold is a project run by [Derek Davies] the step-brother of Syd Butler of French Kiss and he put out - we were his first release - he put out a 7-inch of “Sleepyhead” and “Better Things.” He wrote the blog Good Weather For Airstrikes, that was his blog. I don’t know anything about blogs, I don’t mess with the internet in that sense, but I know a lot of people were paying attention to what he was doing. So they kind of scouted us at a show in New Haven opening up for Girl Talk, which the night before I said I wasn’t doing because I was just too tired and I wanted to do homework – we really weren’t taking it seriously at all. And then he showed it to Syd and Paul at Frenchkss and they were like immediately enamored and wanted to work with us and it was the most amazing experience. I was following Les Savvy Fav all throughout high school and Paul had worked at Capitol and to this day they remain very stable mentors. They’re not going anywhere. And the thing was, once we signed to Frenchkiss, it was Brooklyn Vegan, it was all these scary, scary, really scary blogs like they have to love you or you’re going to get torn apart and we get torn apart because we’re this new hype band. And essentially blogs took hold of it because one of the biggest bloggers in the United States released us on 7-inch and that’s it. And people just aggregated. It just kept moving and moving and moving through the internet, until all of a sudden we realize we’re getting thousands of plays a day and we have no idea why and so we get money from Frenchkiss to record the next album and I went to NY and worked with some friends on some demos and I wasn’t happy with the writing and then all of a sudden we’re talking to Columbia and XL and these humongous labels
Was there a bidding war?
It was just the typical buzz-band thing – everyone goes to the shows, everyone’s fighting over you. It’s really awkward and it’s a little bit of an ego stroke but it’s also the scariest thing that has ever happened to you because you’re just not sure of what you want to make of this project, if you want to make it your life or not. And what happened was, you know, we released Chunk of Change in September and that was received well. It wasn’t that people loved it, it showed that we had potential. I don’t think we were a good band, I don’t think we started playing well until we released Manners. I just don’t think we played well. I think it was just potential, which is really scary to think about because you have shoes to fill that are very big.
It’s kind of an “oh shit” moment.
But I didn’t have that feeling when we were recording Manners because I was convinced that it was going to be solid pop music and people were either going to like it or absolutely hate it and then in five years maybe people were going to really you know feel like it meant something. I want history to redeem us in the end, any problems we’ve had now, people will understand where we fit in today. But the bottom line is, Columbia wanted to take it from here to here, and it was a question of, is me sitting down with my current manager, asking me if this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. If you sign to a major label, you’re signing your life away. And you’re either all in or it’s nothing. So we picked a major label because they had the most to prove because they’re not cool, they want so badly to be cool, they want so badly to have young bands that are cool. And XL was amazing, to this day, I love that label so much. But they’re too cool. We’re not that cool yet. I wanted a label that was going to really try hard.
You’re the coolest band on the label.
They had signed MGMT and that had nothing to do with why we did it, because we just don’t want to be an MGMT at all. We don’t want to be fashion icons. I don’t want to look like we’re trying to be cool and I think they’re a good band, but it was just who had faith in us and who was going to take it to the next level and as a songwriter I decided I wanted to be a songwriter and this project was the vessel and it was exciting and people were responding and that’s it. It’s just the scariest decision ever and sometimes I’m like oh my god. Eventually we’re going to be pushing Top 40, they’re pushing Top 40 in the fall and it’s insane.
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