Throw Me The Statue

Throw Me The Statue write melodic songs of summer that, like all good pop music, remind you of youth – though perhaps I’m getting a little nostalgic. It is not necessarily the music as much as the titles of the songs. Your Girlfriend’s Car and This is How we Kiss are high school all over, Lolita needs little further explanation and I’m pretty sure that Young Sensualists was the name of my school’s poetry club.

Nonetheless, Scott Reitherman, the main man behind the band, does not dislike the comparison. “I was trying to go down the pop route, but be a little bit clever with it too”. Often the tracks start off at the darker end of melody before bursting into full joyous song by the end. Reitherman also does this with his subject matter. On Stupid Stone, he produces a haunting slice of electronic pop but on further questioning he reveals that the song was inspired by a pshyotic old girlfriend.

“It was one long joke about how it would be great to take her on a vacation to Mexico and leave her there buried in the sand on the beach”. He assures me that she is safe and sound though still “a little bonkers.”

Reitherman started his own label Baskerville Hill records with his friend Sam Beebe after moving out to Seattle after college. They released a compilation of bands that they liked from the local scene and after putting out Sam’s album Scott sat down to work on his own. With a determined do-it-yourself attitude, the label not only releases music from Seattle but also from San Francisco and New York.

And as you might expect from one of its residents Scott is excited about the Seattle music scene that his label is part of. “Its getting a whole new vibrancy at the moment. There are some young bands coming through in the local scene. It’s moving away from the floppy guitar of Pavement and Built for Spill.”

Scott recorded the album mostly in his bedroom with Casey Foubert, who has played with Pedro the Lion and in Sufjan Stevens’ band, and who engineered the record. Recording it on a reel-to-reel tape machine in his and Casey’s bedroom Scott put it out on his Baskerville imprint, but had the taste for a bigger platform.

He gave the record to a friend of his, Eric Fisher, who plays with Damien Jurado, and told him to go to town and sell it to the labels. “I gave him ten copies of the record. He sent it to Secretly Canadian and I didn’t hear anything for a couple of months. Then I got an email from Ben Swanson, who runs Secretly.” Although the label was positive Scott was still worried that the deal wouldn’t happen.

“They wanted to see us live before signing us, to make sure that they were signing a proper band rather than just one man in his bedroom.” However, Throw Me The Statue were getting good reviews for their live shows on the blogs so although they only saw a show for the first time a couple of months ago, they were signed long before that.

With such luminaries as Jens Lekman and Richard Swift on the label TMTS are certainly in good company. And the advantages of being with a bigger label soon paid off with Reitherman having the chance not only to trim the fat on the album, taking one track off for a b-side and bringing in Phil Eck, the big time Seattle producer of the Shins, Modest Mouse and Built for Spill, to remix one of the album’s stand-outs, Groundswell.

With a strong summer vibe and having already hit SXSW, TMTS are itching to go out and tour. Scott may only come to the UK and Europe next year but you can definitely picture the band playing the summer festival circuit in Europe or the US. What it is about the band that brings to mind sunny beaches, shorts, T-shirts and of course festivals is still a little unclear. Perhaps Scott’s been listening to too many Beach Boys records or maybe it’s his sunny disposition. This viewpoint isn’t helped by the cover photo of Moonbeams - a picture of a topless woman being pushed into a lake by another lady who you wouldn’t exactly describe as modestly dressed.

Certainly Reitherman is a bit miffed at all the comparisons. “Yeah, everyone keeps saying that! I think that’s cool though, but I didn’t intend to make a summer record but that’s the adjective I keep hearing."

Summer or no summer, the band certainly has a bright future.