you won’t remember a thing

Let me con­fess some­thing. I tend to avoid pop­ular bands. All else being equal, I’m pretty sure I would like a band less just because it is pop­ular. I realize that sounds ter­rible, and no, it’s not to pre­serve my “hip­ster cred” or any­thing like that. Basi­cally, I want to like bands that I can see in small venues. Bands that are made up of real, acces­sible people who per­haps even have day jobs. Bands that, just for example, you can watch from two feet away in a crowded Boston bar.

As you might remember from my last post, I under­took a journey to the Bay State (yeah, I looked that up just now) to see the Vivian Girls. In a bit of unknowing fore­shad­owing, I men­tioned in passing that a lot of the locals had no idea who the Vivian Girls were and had come to see another band entirely: You Can Be a Wesley. This was the first thing that intrigued me about this band. The second was that their songs were damned catchy. Upon returning home, I was happy to find their album on iTunes, and after a listen I decided this was a band I should write about.

But what to write? There was little infor­ma­tion to be found. And then I remem­bered why I go to see bands like this in the first place. One email later and the vocalist, Saara (who should obv. get together with Niina and start some kind of club) had agreed to answer my silly questions.

So enough of my bull­shit. I’ll let You Can Be a Wesley speak for themselves:

1. First, the inevitable ques­tion: Who or what is Wesley?

A Wesley is what­ever you want it to be. Not in a way like, “You Can Be What­ever You Want To Be” but more like, what­ever story you’re going to make up in your head about what you think our name means, or what a Wesley is, is prob­ably more inter­esting than if we told you. So we’ll keep you in the dark because it’s more fun for both par­ties that way. Maybe we should have a con­test where people write in and tell us what they think it is and we give a prize to the best answer. I just came up with that now but I like it so I think we’ll do it.

2. How did you guys meet and get together into a band?

We all met in col­lege at Boston Uni­ver­sity and we all lived in the West Campus dorms. The first time we were all together in the same place was at the Islands show at the Y in Cen­tral Sq in Cam­bridge. No one smelled bad so we decided we should jam around together. Our first record­ings were done in a dorm base­ment and Dan was playing drums on boxes.

3. It seems like every time someone writes about your band, you’re com­pared to the Pixies. Are they in fact an influ­ence on your band? What would you con­sider to be your biggest influences?

I think people really hear the Pixies in Nick’s bass playing. I know that they were a big influ­ence to him and when he learned how to play bass I think he took a lot from lis­tening to Kim Deal. Saying our biggest influ­ences is hard because we all listen to dif­ferent things and have over­lap­ping inter­ests. I know at one point it was Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Dinosaur Jr., New Order. At another it was Envelopes, The Shins, The Ven­tures, My Bloody Valen­tine. It really changes all the time depending on what we’re lis­tening to at the moment. I like it better when people ask me this ques­tion when I have some time to think about it cause when­ever people ask me on the spot I freeze up and I can’t think of a single band I listen to. It’s like I can’t even remember that I listen to music at all. And then I go home and think of all the things I could have said to sound really cool and interesting.

4. Your single “Crea­tures” seemed to quickly result in a lot of pos­i­tive atten­tion in the media. Between that and your album, Heard Like Us, a lot of people are very excited about what you’re doing. How does it feel to make that tran­si­tion from “local band” to more wide­spread recognition?

I’m still always sur­prised when I hear of people knowing about us or talking about us out­side of Boston! I think the thing we were most sur­prised about is when this guy from Sweden who runs a Swedish Music mag­a­zine called Devo­tion sent us an email asking for an inter­view and said “Crea­tures” was on the top 20 songs of 2009. We were like “how the hell did this guy hear our stuff in Sweden?!” It was really awe­some. If we blew up in Sweden I would be totally OK with that. I guess that’s the beauty of the internet.

You Can Be a Wesley — “Creatures”

“Crea­tures” starts with a pretty great drums-and-bass opening, but as with all of their songs, the vocals stand out the most to me. Saara’s unique, almost brittle-sounding vocals were the first thing I really noticed about the band, par­tic­u­larly com­bined with her ability to throw in that extra bit of energy at just the right moments. This is one of the songs I dis­tinctly remember hearing when I saw them in Boston, and the chorus there was simply explo­sive with an incred­ible response from the crowd. This is the song that seems to have gained the band the most recog­ni­tion, and it’s well-deserved. Have a look at the music video.

5. I’m intrigued by the mes­sage that’s apparent in some of your songs; for instance, “Make Up Your God.” What do you hope for people to hear in this song, or in your music in general?

I don’t really write the lyrics for anyone else but myself. I mean of course I want to make them inter­esting and thoughtful and aurally pleasing so that people can con­nect to them, and it gives the songs more depth, but I never write thinking “I have this mes­sage and I want to preach it to people.” In “Make Up Your God” it was some­thing that I was thinking a lot about during that time. Death and the after­life and orga­nized reli­gion. I think I had recently read Dharma Bums and was get­ting into some alter­na­tive thinking and that song was a state­ment on how I felt about the kind of opiate of the masses that orga­nized reli­gion has become (or maybe always was).

I do remember writing the second verse of that song after coming home from one of the best week­ends of my life. I had gone to see the most epic show at Randal’s Island in New York with two of my best girl friends. It was Les Savy Fav, Blonde Red­head, LCD Sound System, and Arcade Fire. Then we went to some ridicu­lous ware­house party in BK and our minds were just blown. That weekend made me feel a lot better about every­thing. That’s what it’s all about.

You Can Be a Wesley — “Make Up Your God”

I liked this song within its first ten sec­onds and, although this is prob­ably not some­thing that someone who writes about music should admit, I’m not sure I could prop­erly artic­u­late why. It man­ages to be the most soothing song I’ve ever heard about not believing in some­thing. That is, until the jump in energy in the chorus, which also makes this the most upbeat song I know of about not believing in some­thing. For a lot of people, I imagine that the words in the chorus (“The truth is you leave in the same way you came / You won’t remember a thing”) might stand in oppo­si­tion to the thor­oughly pos­i­tive place the song comes from, but for me it totally works. This song also has a music video.

6. I saw you play on March 8^th. You guys seemed to be having a great time on stage and the crowd def­i­nitely loved it. For the majority of us who never expe­ri­ence it, what’s it like to play for an audi­ence excited about your music?

There’s nothing better than playing for an audi­ence who is into what you’re doing. It can really make or break a show. It makes us play better and we feed off the energy from the crowd. We’re excited about what we are doing and we believe in the music we are making so when we see that excite­ment returned it’s really gratifying.

7. Your band spent a few months on hiatus while you guys were spread across the world. I’ve read repeat­edly in the Boston press that you came back with a dif­ferent sound. How has your music changed since you started, and what do you see your­selves doing next?

That hiatus was some­thing that we all felt like we needed to do. It was our chance to live in another country with pretty much every­thing taken care of by our school. We knew that if we were going to commit our­selves to this band then this was the time for us to get away before we had to settle down. We joke that the band is like a mar­ried couple and we decided to get mar­ried, we recently moved into a big house together and we got a kid. Well not a human kid, but a really sweet van. It’s our big baby.

Our music has changed a lot since we started. A lot is prob­ably to do with where we were prac­ticing and the equip­ment we had. If we wrote a song with an acoustic guitar in a dorm room it’s going to sound like a twee-pop quiet folky song. If we write in our prac­tice space now with our big amps and pedals and all that it’s going to come out a lot louder. The changes are all pretty organic. We’ve never said “hey let’s change our sound, this isn’t working.” We just let what comes out come out and then develop the song from there. Some­times it will be com­pletely dif­ferent than what you first expected of it but it sounds awe­some so you just let it do its thing.

8. What’s in the imme­diate future for You Can Be a Wesley?

We’re doing a North East tour at the end of April hit­ting Mon­tréal, Burlington, Northampton, Prov­i­dence, New London, New York, and Philly. We’re also writing a ton of new songs and have a full album’s worth of mate­rial and more in the works. Part of that will be recorded very very soon but we’re still fig­uring out how we want to release it, whether it be a single at a time or an EP or a full length. We’re going with the flow at this point but we’re very excited about every­thing that we’re making and doing.

Seeing these guys play is a great expe­ri­ence, so keep an eye out if you’re near any of the above places. Until then, you can check out their album, Heard Like Us, avail­able on the band’s web­site. Give my other favorites, “Stuck in a Battle” and “Rearrange The Sea,” a listen while you’re there. Many thanks to You Can Be a Wesley for answering my ques­tions, and I wish them the best of luck with their tour and upcoming recordings.