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METROPOLITAN: CAPITAL SOUNDS K: How accurate would you say this "mix of Pavement and the Velvet Underground" description that's been used to describe your music is? J: I would say close to 100% accurate. Those are two of our biggest influences as far as songwriting is concerned. K: When'd you start listening to them? J: I first got into the Velvets when my older brother brought their records back from college in the late 80's, and have been a huge fan ever since. When I first heard Pavement's "Slanted & Enchanted" I thought it was absolutely unlistenable, way too lo-fi. A few months later, I picked it back up again and was just mesmerized. K: Ha, that's funny. I wonder what brought about the change J: I think it was mostly the state of mind I went through musically at the time. I realized music that wasn't "well recorded" by industry standards could be just as, if not more, powerful and beautiful. It was the beginning of my fascination with "indie rock," I guess. K: Hmmm... how do you figure? J: Well the band I was in at the time was very polished and worried about sounding exactly right, as far as production is concerned. I quickly began thinking against those theories; Pavement showed me you could record a song on your tape deck at home and it could still be fantastic. I think Sebadoh was a big influence on my transition as well. K: The minimalist approach, I suppose. Kind of like your drummer's setup. J: (laughs) Exactly, he has a small drum set but he packs an amazingly huge punch. K: Alright, let's hear about this tour you guys just had. J: The tour went really well-it was pretty crazy going through southern states I'd never been to before. K: "Pretty crazy"? J: Yeah, the south has a very weird vibe in general. K: Other than the numerous strip clubs, what made this such a "crazy" trip? J: (laughs) Well, the Speedwell crew, the DC band we toured with, is downright crazy themselves, so traveling all over North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi with them was quite an experience. K: Was that the first time you'd played out there, or no? J: We played roughly ten dates, and roughly only one town we had actually played before. K: Sounds like you guys have toured quite a bit on the east coast for the short time you've been playing together. How have the foreign crowds' reactions been as opposed to the ones you receive in DC (Washington DC)? J: We've been trying to cover as much east coast ground as possible; I think we've played almost 30 shows in the past six months. The crowd reactions are different in every town. So far we've really enjoyed playing house shows more so than clubs because the kids really get into it due to the more intimate setting. K: I can imagine. It seems like people get all tense in venues, like they're too afraid to loosen up or something. J: Right. The bar/club scene can be very stale and uninviting sometimes. People can get too caught up in looking cool or who's in attendance, etc. K: That's everywhere though. Kind of sad. J: Unfortunately. It's sort of impossible to escape it. We try and loosen the crowd up when we play, making it less of an "up on a pedestal" situation. K: Are your jobs pretty good about giving you weeks off at a time? J: My record store job basically promotes the idea of tour, so it works out well. My drummer and my bassist both have very understanding jobs, too. K: What do they do? J: They are both engineers K: Wow. Nice. J: Engineers by day, rockstars by night. K: Sounds like a nice gig. J: Yeah, they make some good scratch. K: What about Landspeeder? (A side project band that both Saadat (drums) and Shyam (bass) play in.) How much of their time would you say is devoted to that group? J: Both bands (Metropolitan and Landspeeder) share a practice space that is used about once a week, so that helps a lot with conflicting schedules. Landspeeder is still fairly new and not as active as Metropolitan so it doesn't take up a ton of time overall. K: You describe Landspeeder's sound on the Metropolitan website as "sonicdronepop". For those of us that aren't so hip, what the hell is that? J: (laughs) That's a term they coined themselves. I'll have to leave it to them to make that call. K: Well, whatever it is, at least it sounds interesting. J: It's definitely doing its job. K: Back to the touring. What advice would you give those that are thinking about booking their first shows away from home? J: It's a very tough process. At the bare minimum, you'll need some sort of CD with your music on it, whether you have any releases or not, to give out to clubs & promoters. Look at other schedules and tour itineraries of bands you know or are of your caliber, and try and contact the places they have played. Most importantly, use every contact you have ever made, from a band you just had a show with to somebody's brother you know who goes to a certain college, etc. K: What would you say is the most responsive form of advertising for an out of town show? J: Advertising is a tough call because we've played shows where the town was blanketed in our flyers and nobody showed up, and vice versa. K: I mean, you can't just leave it up to the venue. It seems they'll put flyers up around the bar, an ad in the local paper, and that's it. J: Right. Well, a certain amount of it is just hoping and accepting that the promoter will do a good job getting the word out. Send stuff to the record stores, labels, radio stations, and newspapers in every town if you have the means. K: Seems like house parties are the way to go at first. J: Yeah, I think overall they are more successful in getting the word out and bringing kids to the shows. K: Time for the question every band gets asked. Who would you like to play with that you haven't before? J: That list is quite lengthy, but I think some of the top bands we'd love to open for would be Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, or the Flaming Lips. K: Where was the picture on the cover of your latest release (full length entitled "Down For You Is Up" released on Crank Automotive Records) taken? J: It was taken on Kenilworth Avenue in DC near Georgetown by a fantastic Czech photographer by the name of Veronika Lukasova. K: I thought it looked familiar. Knew it had to be in DC, but turns out I've never been to that sidewalk anyway. J: I've never actually been to the exact spot either. I've just been shown where it roughly is. There was quite a debate on covers before the album came out. K: Oh yeah? J: We all came to the table with different designs, in order to democratically take a vote on the best idea. It proved to be a bit of a painstaking process deciding on a final cover. K: I can imagine everyone would vote for the picture they brought. J: (laughs) Yeah, to an extent it initially played out that way. K: What happened? J: We had to come to a compromise by the end, and I think we all ended up liking the finished product once we held it in our hands. K: What did the other possible covers look like? J: The others were also fairly minimal in design, sort of one main focal point or object with our name and title. We studied lots of older record covers we liked to achieve the same affect; covers by Sonic Youth, Captain Beefheart, The Fall. K: I really liked Sonic Youth's "Washing Machine" cover. J: Yeah, "Daydream Nation" has a great cover as well. K: Have you guys been working on any new material, or mostly just practicing the songs off of "Down For You Is Up" (DFYIU)? J: Over the last tour we played 2 or 3 new songs a night, along with DFYIU and Side Effects songs. K: What're the new songs like in comparison to your older stuff? J: I think they're definitely more psychedelic, leaning towards more conventional classic rock sounds. We've been listening to a lot of The Who lately, so it's been influential. K: So, kind of steering away from your original Pavement influences? J: Yeah, we're trying to broaden our sound and influences, I'd say. K: Grow as a band. Makes sense. J: Right. I can't wait to record the new songs. We're really into the vibe of those tunes right now. K: So, it's safe to say that's what Metropolitan fans should anticipate on the next album? J: That will be one of several themes I imagine, yes. We always strive to record albums that have a diverse amount of sounds and song styles to them. We don't see any use in hammering out one style for too long; it seems all too often these days albums only have one hook or vibe to them, I think that's a shame. K: When do you except to release new material? J: DFYIU will be a year old in March, so we're still promoting that for a bit longer. Hopefully some new stuff will materialize in the summer or fall. K: The last album was really great, though. I wouldn't think you guys would need to rush the next one. J: Thanks. Yeah, we're trying to get this record out to as many people as possible. I think it has a lot of life left. It's tough, though, because people always want to see that you're active, constantly releasing new things. K: I agree. |
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