You\u2019ve heard them, this new barrage of bands paying homage to the late \u201970s and early \u201980s, playing their \u201cwanna sport the keytar\u201d synthesizer pop\/rock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not naming any names (Empire of the Sun, Passion Pit), these bands are finding fresh fans even while their sound stays in the past. It\u2019s as if Marty McFly took them back to 1981 and decided to ditch them there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s no wonder Ryan Schaefer, the singer\/keyboardist\/beatmaker of Knoxville, Tennessee\u2019s Royal Bangs, sounds weary discussing those \u201cinfluences\u201d he keeps hearing about when others try to define his band. Even when, it turns out, some of those descriptions come from a familiar face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI know what the press says about us, with the \u201870s influence, and maybe that comes from me too, and maybe I misspoke,\u201d Schafer says, laughing. \u201cBut I\u2019m not interested in throwback rock. We want to make something new, especially right now, there\u2019s a lot of music I can\u2019t get behind. It\u2019s music that sets itself square in the middle of a musical idiom that started and ended. I don\u2019t know how you sustain a career making records that sound like records that have already been made.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To combat this time warp, Schaefer and his four bandmates offer up \u201cLet It Beep\u201d, a crisp collection of up-tempo tunes and electronic flourishes you\u2019d never hear in a 1980s musical movie montage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Released in mid-September, \u201cLet It Beep\u201d is the Bangs\u2019 sophomore album on Audio Eagle Records (the label run by Patrick Carney of The Black Keys) and is generating a steady level of enthusiasm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe way we did this album was always the way we wanted to do it, with all the extra pulses, extra instrumentation and
percussion,\u201d Schaefer says. \u201cThis record, to me, is catching up on some ground. With the exception of one or two songs, all songs were recently written; they all go together. There were one or two older songs that were good songs, and the recording came out really well, but it just made the album drag. They didn’t seem to fit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finding its place to fit has been one-part luck, one-part patience for Royal Bangs. Schaefer and drummer Chris Rusk formed the band while attending high school in suburban Knoxville under the name Suburban Urchins. The duo wrote \u201creally shitty songs. It was a wreck,\u201d Schafer remembers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guitarist Sam Stratton kicked around the same high school, but with other bands. Fast-forward a few years, and with a name change and the addition of Stratton, the genesis was set for the home-recorded \u201cWe Breed Champions\u201d (2006). \u201cChampions\u201d is a collection of relentless drums, eclectic clicks and bouncy beats, but at first the trio never expected the album to go much beyond the Knoxville borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe whole reason we recorded that album is because we thought the band wasn\u2019t going to be around anymore,\u201d Schaefer says. \u201cI was moving, so a lot of that was just documenting those songs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schaefer moved to France \u201csoaking up 90 percent beer and writing new shit,\u201d he says while Rusk was using the Bangs\u2019 MySpace page to get anyone he could to listen to \u201cChampions\u201d. And then one day, while sitting in class at the University of Tennessee, Rusk got an e-mail response from Carney. He wanted the demo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 2008 re-release of \u201cChampions\u201d, an epic 2 a.m. Bonnaroo performance, and an added legion of critical acclaim later, the band sits atop a precipice of uncharted territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Embarking on a fall tour with Drummer (Carney’s side project), the Bangs\u2019 roster (with the addition of bassist Henry Gibson and guitarist Brandon Biondo) has with it a new level of expectations. Expectations intends to sustain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re slowly making the transition into doing this full time, and it’s exciting, but nerve-racking,\u201d Schaefer says. \u201cAll we want to do is work. The only thing we told our booking agent was we don’t want any days off. Every day we can play a show, we should. A lot of people I know like having days off every now and again, but we want to play music. Why spend another day in a city where we can spend money we don’t have? That doesn\u2019t interest me. I\u2019d rather play a show. I’d rather work.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You\u2019ve heard them, this new barrage of bands paying homage to the late \u201970s and early \u201980s, playing their \u201cwanna sport the keytar\u201d synthesizer pop\/rock. Not naming any names (Empire of the Sun, Passion Pit), these bands are finding fresh fans even while their sound stays in the past. It\u2019s as if Marty McFly took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-royal-bangs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":742,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions\/742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}