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An Interview with Think About Life (Matt, Graham & Martin)

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DOWNLOAD: Paul Cries (MP3)

THINK ABOUT LIFE’S MATT, MARTIN & GRAHAM
Think About Life @ Knitting Factory

Think About Life played an intimate gig at Finger on the Pulse at the Lucky Cat in Brooklyn Friday night (July 28. 2006). Christos Mountzouros and crew were there to capture it on video. The next morning Christos and crew met up with TAL at a “huge, 5,000 sqaure foot empty warehouse room” in DUMBO (Brooklyn, NY). Here’s what they said to each other…

BrooklynVegan Christos: How did think about life, come together, and decide to think about life as a unit?

Matt: Well, let’s see. Graham and I lived in a place called the electric tractor, a venue loft space, in Montreal and uh it took a little while to convince him that we should play together, but we went down and practiced in his space, and normally he plays guitar but there was this cheap white keyboard there, and plugged that in… and it was just MAGIC. Then we decided we needed a vocalist, and Martin played in a band called DONKEY HEART, and he just seemed like the only choice.
Graham: I added him to my windows messenger, started sending him mp3s…
Martin: The internet!

BrooklynVegan Christos: This is obviously a new age of music, with the internet fueling your popularity, is that weird for your guys? Were you the types of people who served music blogs before you started popping up all over them?

The entire band chants…fists in the air…
“Blogs! Blogs! Blogs! Blogs! Blogs! Blogs! Blogs!”

Martin: No, we don’t check out any music blogs.
Matt: I read some blogs!

the boys give him a hard time…
Matt: I now do, I never did before… now that I’m narciss-surfing all the time!
Martin: I was gonna say, the internet is full of porn and tons of other stuff that you can’t find anywhere! You know, so you might as well find blogs, and music from around the world.
Matt: It does open up a lot of new options though, you don’t have to rely on mainstream media to get your information.
Graham: Exactly.

BrooklynVegan Christos: What about your friends? I was reading about a band the other day and one of the band members said some of their friends don’t know they’re even in a band. What about your friends? How active are they in your career?

Martin: Without our friends we wouldn’t be here… most of our friends really helped us. Everyone was really excited about our music in Montreal, it was really supportive.
Graham: Yeah, a lo them were involved in the booking… the artwork…

Think About Life CDBrooklynVegan Christos: I was going to say, the artwork on your website and your album art is pretty amazing. Did you know the person who did it personally? How much of it was your idea, or did they just come to you with this images that happened to work?

Martin: Let’s say his name! First of all, there’s Jack Dylan and then…(points to matt)
Matt: I’m Matt Shane! Yeah, Jack and I collaborated on the album art itself, mostly from Turkey, I was living in Turkey for a while. I would send him out samples, he would put them all into Photoshop. A guy named Brendan Reed did the website, he works in the same kind of style as Jack and I… he also sings in one of our songs.

BrooklynVegan Christos: Looking at the album art, and your myspace page, I have to ask, are you basketball fans or what?

Martin: It’s been asked before… sorta…
Matt: Former Basketball fans.
Graham: We’re into Barkley and Magic Johnson.
Matt: We all dream as well I think.
Martin: The Dream Team basically. Look, basketball turned into Gangsta Rap at some point and that’s when we sorta said…”guys, look, we love gangsta rap, but we won’t promote it in basketball.
Matt: We don’t want them to be the same! They have to be seperate.
Martin: I agree.

BrooklynVegan Christos: In terms of the vocals on the album, there seems to be more of a concern with creating sound and exploring sound so that it means something, rather than simply creating crisp, perfect pop vocals. Did you always have that in mind?

Martin: My voice is fucked up! My whole family has a fucked up voice. So that’s how the vocals came to be… it was just natural.
Graham: We recorded them all in one take too.
Matt: We’re also all coming from different backgrounds. I was always into hardcore. Getting into this band was like, cleaning up a little bit. I feel like we spent a lot of time in the production, though by industry standards, we didn’t spend much time at all.
Martin: Haha… no one went to California, LA, to record stuff… none of that happened.
Graham: I actually, secretly recorded my parts in California.
Martin: You did?
Matt: His hideaway
Graham: I’m considering moving there.

BrooklynVegan Christos: How did you guys end up on Alien 8?

Matt: They’re in the area, and they showed some interest in us early on.
Martin: Actually, it’s all because of this guy Dave from Quebec City who saw us play and said to the Alien 8 guys, “you have to sign these guys!” We have to thank him, I think his name is Dave… yeah…Dave.
Graham and Matt: Shout out to Dave!

BrooklynVegan Christos: What’s touring with THINK ABOUT LIFE like? Do you guys find time to write new stuff on tour? Or are you more focused on fine tuning the old songs, making sure they get better and better on the road?

Matt: We work on new stuff.
Martin: On the road though?
Matt: Well, on the road we don’t work on anything. We generally try to figure out new stuff while we’re playing at home.

BrooklynVegan Christos: Anyone your fans of? Bands you’d like to collaborate with?

Matt: Spencer Kruger. Aren’t we all dieing to do a side project with Spencer Kruger.
Graham: Spencer’s a good guy.
Martin: I don’t like Spencer.

BrooklynVegan Christos: Any albums that really touched you recently?

Matt: Sunset Rubdown, before that, Wolf Parade. Oh, and Final Fantasy, that’s a fantastic album.

BrooklynVegan Christos: Talk to me about opening for Wolf Parade, I saw them about a year ago and they were crazy, and while I missed your set, I did notice that your lead singer wasn’t Martin? Who was that and where is he now?

Martin: Was he big and white?

BrooklynVegan Christos: Yes! And was his name Beaver? Because I think I met him in a bar.

Martin: Another shout out!
Graham: Martin actually couldn’t get into the States that time, so we sort of just asked Beaver if he wanted to go on tour with us, take the role of front man, and he did. He ended up doing all of the driving too.
Martin: I think he’s about to release an album soon.
Graham: Yeah he does really great solo stuff.
Martin: Beautiful stuff.

BrooklynVegan Christos: What has been your favorite city thus far while touring? Any places in particular you love?

Martin: Portland.
Matt: Montreal… and Brantford Ontario.
Graham: Downtown is like totally destroyed, there was like no one there, but there were concerts behind abandoned factories. It was awesome.

BrooklynVegan Christos: Did you really start as a band with just a distorted Casio keyboard and drums to provide entertainment for a house party? Do you like playing small parties as opposed to bigger shows?

Matt: Well, our first show was the last party we had at our house. We like playing small, intimate, sweaty shows, they take the cake over large venues.

BrooklynVegan Christos: You’ve played with Wolf Parade and Art Brut… which experience was a better one?

Matt: Well, it’s tough to say. Martin wasn’t with us for Wolf Parade, so that sucked. But, on the other hand, Wolf Parade are our friends and it’s always more fun to tour with friends.

BrooklynVegan Christos: Your songs seem well crafted yet still erratic. There’s all this panic in the music, mayhem if you will, and then it all gets soothed, quieted down, resolved. Your songs are like stories each with an exposition, and a climax, a resolution… Is this planned or does it just happen organically?

Martin: Fully organic.
Matt: We don’t bring much material to practices, like Graham will have a riff or two and we’ll jam on that.
Graham: Just as long as the ending is louder than the beginning.
Martin: There’s lots of pauses and we’ll be like, “Maybe this should go here?” and then we’ll change our minds and change the song completely.

BrooklynVegan Christos: Alien 8 calls your songs, “party anthems” do you agree? And do you guys like to party? I also like the phrase, “causing panic on the dance floor,” was that one of your intentions?

Graham: I was kind of panicking last night. I saw Martin on the dance floor and he grabbed this guy by his shirt. It looked like he was gonna fight the guy, the guy was dancing…
Martin: The guys wasn’t dancing! I grabbed him because he wasn’t dancing! He danced after I grabbed him! I had to grab him to start the dancing!
Graham: I was panicking. There was panic, there was a dance floor there you go.

BrooklynVegan Christos: I’ve also heard you described as an “electric tractor house band.” Any idea what that means?

Matt: That was our house, the name of our old loft.

BrooklynVegan Christos: Why isn’t snowee caterpillar on the album?

Martin: Good Question.
Graham: I don’t like it anymore. I sang it, and I just don’t like it.
Matt: It’s one of my favorite songs, actually.

BrooklynVegan Christos: You’re also touring with the Long Blondes, signed to What’s Your Rupture. Love is all is also signed to that label. You a fan? I envision the perfect tour: The THINK ABOUT LOVE tour. You down?

Graham: That might happen actually. Kevin from What’s your Rupture is always in touch, and we love Love is All.

BrooklynVegan Christos: The songs have so much energy and motion, do they mostly come from a happy place?

Martin: I think it does come from a happy place. But I think it comes from a place where, we’re three boys going to the boys club, and we’re like, trying to get away from our parents and all the problems and stuff around the city and just come together and be ourselves.

Matt: I find no matter what mood I’m in when we get together, it’s about the collaboration and that comes from a happy place. It isn’t one person’s vision really.

BrooklynVegan Christos: Well, lastly, what’s next for you guys? More shows? Another album?

Matt: We wrote a lot of new songs, hoping to record an EP by this January.
Martin: Basically, we’re going to try and record a new album, make new music, and play it all over the world!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Christos Mountzouros has been a music lover all his life. While he currently works as a design coordinator for an animation company, he loves seeing music, making music, and writing about it. His past concert antics include: making Bjork a CD of himself singing a bunch of her songs and throwing it at her on stage, pretending to be part of an opening band to hang out with the headliner, jumping on stage after concerts and pretending to be a music video director, and of course, screaming his token, “Never Stop!” at bands he loves. Christos lives in the east village but already misses Dumbo, doesn’t eat meat and loves wine, open bars, and brooklyn bridge park.

Previously
Think About Life finish three night NYC run
Think About Life @ Knitting Factory, NYC | pics