Artist: ELEVENTYSEVEN
Label:
Flicker Records
Label Mates: Fireflight, Pillar,
nevertheless, Kids in the Way, Flatfoot 56, Until June.Here's the deal.
Here's the BiG DeaL. That shitty four-piece you've been in with your mates since
Year 8 eventually managed to get some daft industry type to hand over a blank
cheque and to tell you were going to be famous. Very famous. You wouldn't have
to talk to your former classmates at school. You wouldn't have to get up early.
They only thing they didn't tell you was that music was more than just writing
songs and shaking your balls on stage. It was about being there on time. Releasing
something on time. It was about being famous on time. And then sometimes
there’s issues like God, the World, the Universe and Food Fights to take on board
too. Things you wouldn’t necessarily associate with landing your first deal or
with cranking out pogoing punk power pop to the waiting nation. But that’s precisely
the kind of brow-furrowing platter of concerns EleventySeven’s new album
‘And The Land Of Fake Believe’ (Flicker Records) serves up. Where your skate
park, your skate pants and your ollie and your grind fit into all this is unclear,
but these boys have somehow managed to splice the breakneck bounce of bands like
Blink 182, Hawk Nelson and Sum 41 with uplifting, god-fearing, spiritually empowered,
bible-bashing sentiments and produced an album that is as chirpy as a bagful of
battery-chicks, as feisty as a punch in the groin and as positive as a DC power
supply. ‘We Could Throw Away Our Cell Phones and Only Answer Calls Coming From
The Stars’ the band propose on chugging drive-thru anthem, ‘Nostalgiatopia’.
And then there are the issues of self-hype, integrity and superficiality songs
like ‘MySpace’ dredge up. They’re barely old enough to vote, but the band is already
coursing through the US Rock Singles chart like a pack of battle weary veterans
with enough band-aid products to heal an entire platoon and enough beef with the
super-indie-neo hardcore to start a Bovine spongiform encephalopathy pandemic:
"You get tired of being yelled at, hearing the same parallels drawn
in every song," Langston explains. "Knives. Night. Pain. Winter. We have been
put here to enjoy the blessings in life, not cry about the curse of our self-inflicted
pain. We want to push people past their feelings, passions, and experiences...past
their circumstances to see the big picture of God's creation.” We caught
up with the South Carolina pop/punk trio’s itchy neo-prophet, Matt Langston
and tried to figure out if this new Flicker Records signing has managed to just
get in just before the power-punk pop boat leaves for good. Or for God. You decide..
1. How did you get signed?
A good
friend of ours was recording our first record, who was also good friends with
Will from ‘Audio Adrenaline’, who happened to own a label called Flicker Records,
who was looking for a punk band. This is the first in a chain of events that led
to us being signed, but you get the idea.
2. How did you celebrate?
We took our friend Travis's boat out on the lake for some wakeboarding
action, and then went cliff diving. That wasn't too smart because after you go
cliff diving you're too sore to wakeboard anymore.
3. Did you have
any other labels biting at your heels?
We had a few but it was more like
they we're barking in a very unintimidating manner at our heels.
4. What
would you NOT be prepared to do to promote yourselves?
Pose in a suggestive
manner.
5. What other names for the band did you consider?
One that sticks out in my mind was "The Finger To Socket Attraction", but there
were a ton of them that were just as lame. Why this one? I guess we chose this
one because we were tired of thinking about names, I (matt) just made up a number
and we just went with it.
6. Live circuit or showcase? Did you do
it the hard or easy way?
Funny story, we actually got signed without
any label executive seeing us, ever. We did it the "other" way.
7. How
did you blow your advance?
We didn't blow it on anything, we used it
to pay off merchandise debts and get better road gear. And we bought groceries.
8. On signing was there anything you were asked to do that you didn’t
want to do?
Not that I recall.
9. How much did getting signed
rely on being tied to a scene?
Actually it had nothing to do with being
tied to a scene for us. We're very anti-scene to be honest with you. We just never
tried to be anything other than what we were. But I guess writing predominantly
pop music kind of keeps you distanced from scenes altogether. Bands in scenes
usually have to prove how "scene" they are, and we just didn't want to get caught
up in that.
10. Does your label or your management support or discourage
unruly rock n’ roll behaviour?
They've never had to take a stance on
it with us, because we don't really live the "rock and roll" lifestyle. We like
going out and having fun with our friends, but not at the expense of other people.
11. Where’s the strangest place you’ve been asked to do publicity?
Probably our hometown. Apparently people still haven't caught onto the
fact that we're a band and doing things with our lives.
12. Have you
ever been conscious of lifting directly from another record?
No, we try
to stay as far away from that as possible, but I'm sure if you looked hard enough,
you'd find something like that to accuse us of. Lol…
13. Ever burned
a copy of an album/single put out by your label for a friend?
No, we
usually just go in the office and get the real record.
14. What’s
your biggest Rock ‘n’ Roll style fantasy?
To tour Australia with Weezer
and MXPX.
15. How dirty a word is ‘industry’ to you?
It's
not so much a dirty word. It's just a part of music. There are good and bad sides
to it. Sometimes it feels like it's working ‘for’ and sometimes it feels it's
working against you.
16. Here’s the deal: you’ve made an excellent
record and some unscrupulous hack handling the press release is about to screw
it all up. What words would YOU use to describe the release?
Fun, energetic,
powerful, apples.
17. If it were all to collapse tomorrow would you
go back to your old job?
I’d go back to work for ‘Aeropostale’ (‘mall-based
specialty retailer of casual apparel for young people’, apparently) Caleb, ‘Public
Works’ and Jonathan, back to waiting tables.
'The
Land Of Fake Believe' - Released 16/05/06 by Flicker
Records .
relevant
sites:
www.eleventysevenrock.com
www.flickerrecords.com
Nosey Bastard for Crud Magazine 2006© |
