The LadyBug Transistor (your favorite sweeping pop, Brooklyn royalty band) have a new, excellent album out “Can’t wait another day” hot on the heels of their covers EP “Here Comes the Rain”, and are back in DC for the second time in barely a month playing with Julie Ocean this Sunday at DC9.
The Ladybugs have come on a long way since you were a teenager and they came out with “Marlborough Farms”, their semi-seminal mid-90s album named after their semi-seminal living headquarters in Brooklyn, where their friends met, lived and created music. Now on Merge records, and with friends including members of Architecture in Helsinki, Clientele (with whom they played in May at the Cat), Calexico, Soft Machine (and more) and faced with a recent loss of their long time drummer San Fadyil, buy still fearlessly forging on, we felt it was a perfect time to send some questions over to Gary Olson, and were lucky enough to get some answers back
(though, we must note Kyle Forester helped a lot with these)
BYT: Hi! You just now released your 5th full length album in 12 years, lets do some compare and contrasts to begin with. Brooklyn in 1995 is different from Brooklyn in 2007, how?
TLT: There were a lot more things you had to go to Manhattan for then.
BYT: The record we listened to on repeat back then was?
TLT: Scottish band The Jesus and Mary Chain.
BYT: And now is…?
TLT: Swedish band Je Suis Animal.
OK, on with the actual, more than one word responses.
BYT: Now, tell us how it all started? (we read something about being a key inspector in your family’s piano factory, which sounds very magical realism, storyline perfect to us)
TLT: The piano factory story isn’t actually true.
BYT: What is “the truth” then?
TLT: The piano factory story was from our first ever bio from around the dawn of the internet so it’s made the rounds. My parents were
actually Lutheran ministers in Brooklyn. I was a church brat… the son of a preacher man!
BYT: That is probably even better. How did you decide to be a band, and a band collective, and a band collective with one of the most open arms in the music world today?
TLT: Well, thank you. We like having people over, and there’s a recording studio in the basement!
(which indeed they have. Actually, some myspace snooping (since, you know, internet “focusing” is what life is all about, unveiled a myspace profile entitled People I met in Gary’s Kitchen which features not only photos from the actual Marlborough farms kitchen (we presume) but also recordings of songs created while they enjoyed “having some people over”. We highly recommend it to all music trivia lovers and seekers)
and here is…the house.
BYT: What were some of your favorite moment of this kind of collective living/musicmaking?
TLT: Encouraging a roomful of Australians to sing with their accents on “Everybody’s Missing the Sun” (by DC’s own Grin!) cover.
BYT: The songs are always just credited to band as a collective. Is it really that kind of utopian democratic situation?
TLT: The song always starts as somebody’s idea, but then everybody has input. Utopia!
BYT: Utopia indeed! (we wish BYT worked like that, but its all egos and hairpulls and “my article wants to be on top”)
Is there a song you wish you had written but someone else beat you to it?
TLT: “Say You, Say Me”.
BYT: “Can’t Wait Another Day” marks the departure of Sasha Bell, whose vocal became sort ofsynonymous with the band’s output over the last few years. Did that affect the sound?
TLT: Of course!
( side note: for those of you who miss Sasha around, please do make sure to love her still in Essex Green and her new, and very wonderful project The Finishing School)
BYT:On this album and the covers EP “Here come the rain” you worked with some formidable collaborators. I’ll go ahead and list (some of) them and if you don’t mind describe them/collaboration in 1 sentence :
Aislers Set
These people are very good old friends from San Francisco.
Architecture in Helsinki
Australians are universally fun to be around.
The Clientele
They make beautiful music, and personalities which are almost as
beautiful.
Jens Lekman
One of the sexiest men in a country of sexy men.
Kevin Barker (Currituck Co., Vetiver),
He lives here.
Heather McIntosh (Circulatory System, Instruments)
So does she.
Roy Nathanson (Lounge Lizards/Jazz Passengers)
Kyle sometimes babysits his kid.
BYT: Any particular plans while your are in the District? Faces and places to see? Hands to shake?…
TLT: We will probably go to Ben’s Chili Bowl. Also, one of our siblings lives in Alexandria.
BYT: Obviously, you know what you are doingm both when visiting the District and otherwise. What is next for Ladybug transistor?
TLT: We are going to Europe at the end of the month, and then all around the US the rest of the summer. Louis is playing drums.
BYT:Speaking of drums…Sadly, last month the collective suffered a great loss with San’s untimely departure. Since then you have been incessantly on tour, with Clientele, with The Rosebuds…how is the band doing, has the energy changed?
TLT: San was an absolutely amazing person (you can read lots of things people have to say about him at sanfadyl.blogspot.com) and losing him has been unbelievably sad and painful. The band was so important to him, it feels like keeping it more alive than ever is the best possible way to honor him.
BYT:Indeed. Thank you so much and…
TLT: See you Sunday!
in the meantime, listen to some more Ladybug transistor at Their Daytrotter Series with several songs free to download.
or stream their whole new album through Merge
