Interview: Crystal Antlers

Their debut EP troubled the higher reaches of our best of 2008 and first UK shows (review to follow) were similarly, overwhelmingly impressive. Jonny Bell, frontman of Californian psych-rockers Crystal Antlers, talks to Ragged Words.

Your full debut Tentacles is due out on April 6, it’s all completely new material right, there’s nothing on there from November’s ‘EP‘?

Jonny: Originally we were planning on re-recording the songs from the EP but as it turns out a lot of people ended up buying it so I think people would have been disappointed if they heard songs they already know. That made it kind of difficult because it gave us very little time to write a whole record, so we just really focused the last few months and I’m really happy with all the new stuff.

How does it compare to the six songs on the EP? How have things progressed or changed?

Jonny: At the beginning of the record, some of the songs really sound like the next step right after the EP, a little bit more refined. There’s also some that sound like they could be on the EP and we do have a couple of songs that were written around the same time. Then there’s some stuff that’s leading towards where we’re going next which is a lot more organ-based. Most of the new record I wrote from piano and organ.

One of the things that stood out from the EP was the apocalyptic nature both of the crashing sound of the songs that was also reflected in the lyrics. Will there be similar themes explored in the new one? Titles?

Jonny: Yeah, a lot of the material is more personal but a lot of my personal feelings are apocalyptic so for me, it’s hard to escape writing about that kind of thing when paying attention to the news, the rest of the world and what’s going on. It just seems to be the most relavent thing to write about.

Ikey Owens form the Mars Volta produced the first time around, was he involved again?

Jonny: We didn’t work with him this time around because we wanted to produce it ourselves. I think Ikey did a great job on EP and we really love him but our schedules didn’t allow us any time for preparation so it just seemed better for us to do it on our own because we’d a clear idea of what we wanted to do.

You said you’ve been writing on piano and organ - how exactly then does a Crystal Antlers song come to pass?

Jonny: Most of the time I’ll come up with a skeleton for the song. The songs on EP were all from bass and then everyone else complete the arrangements with their parts. This time around we did a lot more of the arrangements with everyone and there was a lot more collaboration.

There are so many styles too in your music - punk, psychadelic, soul etc - what music brought you guys together?

Jonny: We all sort of grew up in the punk scene so that initially brought us together and is one of our real strong common threads. But all of us wanted to go beyond that and try different things and our music is really a result of that, sort of experimenting out of punk. Certainly the soul stuff - Otis Redding things like that - were always really inspiring for us.

Do soul singers inspire you, you’re an Al Green fan as well as Otis Redding right?

Jonny: (chuckles) I was into lots of 60’s soul and girl groups and also a lot of the Miami soul stuff, like Della Humphrey, I’m a big fan of her and she’s been really inspiring for this record. Personally lots of old soul singers informed this record as well as the old punk stuff.

What’s the music scene in Long Beach like or is there one? Is there anything similar to what’s going on in LA with No Age, Mika Miko, Abe Vigoda and bands like that?

Jonny: No, I mean those bands are specific to one scene in LA. In Long Beach there’s a lot of support for music there but there isn’t one scene. It’s like any city or town in the U.S.A., it just like if we lived in Idaho or London. I’ve always avoided scenes in any case.

I’ve also read you’ve steered clear or certainly been unaware of the mechanisms for internet or blog hype - is it true that you’d know idea who Pitchfork were when they gave EP a very excited review?

Jonny: Yeah, none of us had ever heard of Pitchfork before. Now, of course, shortly after they reviewed our EP we realised the kind of influence they have. I guess we weren’t really keeping up with what was going on on the internet and have never really operated in that world. From that we got to do something for Pitchfork TV and they were really nice people. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a good thing but it’s seemed to work in our favour.

I guess the overwhelming response to EP helped you clock up the miles around the US, something like 6000 miles on 25 dollars of gas riding a vegetable oil-powered school bus?

Jonny: When we finished the tour, we actually drove 10,000 miles on one tank of diesel so it was a lot of vegetable oil. We basically pulled into a gas station in Long Beach, did the whole tour and we came home and went to the same gas station. I mean we have a big tank that can go about 1,200 miles but we had to stop in restaurants and places like that to stock up on vegetable oil.

Any chance of a similar arrangement for the European tour?

Jonny: Unfortunately the tour part is going to have a lot more costs involved but we’re still looking forward to it because we hear that bands get treated so much better over there.

It’ll be your first time over here and you’ve garnered a great live reputation in the States, has playing live always been where the band are at their best?

Jonny: I think that’s something we got from playing in punk bands. It’s part of who we are. Playing live is everything, it’s the most important part about presenting your music.