Matthew Whipple of Cymbals Eat Guitars
You guys were down in Austin a week or two ago playing South by Southwest. How was it? Lots of fun we presume…
SXSW was a blast and really not as grueling as we had mentally prepared ourselves for. We did five shows in three days, which seems leisurely in hindsight compared to what we heard some other bands did. Our tour mates Bear in Heaven did nine! We ate a lot of tacos and barbecue. On the last day, it got really cold and we had to play two shows outside. We’re troopers though.
A year has passed since Pitchfork first awarded Why There Are Mountains “best new music”. How has that, and all the other critical praise you guys have gotten, shaped your past year?
Critical attention, particularly from Pitchfork and the blogosphere, are what granted us an audience in the first place. A band like us doesn’t get to do national and international tours from radio plays, and the record was made and picked up by a lot of online music media basically before we were a live band, so it’s not like we developed a following coming up in a scene where we made an impact prior to our record coming out. Pitchfork picking up on our record basically allowed the past year to happen the way it did.
You’ve said before that Pavement and Modest Mouse are big influences on your music, but we’ve noticed that a lot of the songs on the album have a lot more sweeping buildups and complicated arrangements as opposed to the average 90′s alternative rock song. Who are some of your other influences that have inspired this type of sound?
I would put Wilco, The Wrens, Sonic Youth, and My Bloody Valentine in the same category as Pavement and Modest Mouse as far as major influences go. We do love all that classic 90′s indie stuff, but we also listen to a lot of shoegaze bands or post-rock, or even classic rock or current indie records. We all sort of have our personal favorites and then our favorites in common that color how we like rock music to sound. Driving from Boise to Salt Lake City today, we listened to Fuck Buttons, The Breeders, and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. We listen to a lot of different stuff.
Your first time doing a full-on tour was just last year, which must have been quite the experience. Have you gotten accustomed to life touring? Any crazy stories from the road?
We have done a lot of touring over the past year so it has sort of become the norm in terms of the level of comfort and amount of rest you expect from your day. There really isn’t that much crazy stuff that happens on tour, but tonight in Salt Lake City I got a haircut from a fan at the merch table about two minutes after leaving the stage. I haven’t seen a mirror yet, but I’m confident she did a more than passable job.
On your current tour you’re playing primarily with Bear in Heaven and Freelance Whales. How has that been?
Bear in Heaven and Freelance Whales have been wonderful tour mates. I think each night on the tour has a pretty unique vibe. It feels well-curated. With Bear in Heaven playing directly before us each night, we rarely get to watch their whole set, so we went to see them play three times at SXSW.
As far as we know, Cymbals Eat Guitars has a distribution deal, but no record deal. The creative freedom must be really nice, but has it been difficult promoting and getting the word out there without the help of a record label?
At this point, doing it how we have done it so far is all we really know, and it has worked pretty well, but we’re definitely looking for a label home to release our next record, which we’re currently writing. We basically have all of the infrastructure a record label would provide now. We just finance it all ourselves at this point. I don’t think signing to a label will feel very different, but it will definitely be nice to have more hands on deck…people who have made a decent living putting out great records.
We have a couple of shorter questions that we always ask too…if you could collaborate with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be?
I first learned to play bass from a John Entwhistle instructional DVD. An in-person lesson would be cool.
What’s your favorite venue/city to play in?
I’m currently on tour in America for the first time, so I have a wide-eyed fascination with whatever the next city on the calendar is. Denver tomorrow! DENVER!
Who’s the band you most enjoyed performing with?
The few songs we get to enjoy from Bear in Heaven every night are magical. We also really dug Surfer Blood and Japandroids at SXSW.
And lastly, what are your three favorite albums at the moment?
Beach House – Teen Dream
Neil Young – Live at Massey Hall
Sonic Youth – Rather Ripped
F… you!