Interview: In Support of Their New Album, Les Savy Fav Look to Put on a Party at The Sinclair
They say that good things come to those who wait, and who knows that statement better than music fans? When it comes to reunions and album releases after a long gap of time, there are questions that are always being asked with the anticipation mounting on a daily basis. For fans of the Brooklyn via Providence art punks Les Savy Fav, this officially ceased with the release of the band’s first album in 14 years, Oui, LSF, on May 10 via Frenchkiss Records. As part of a run of shows in support of the release, the quintet of vocalist Tim Harrington, guitarists Seth Jabour & Andrew Reuland, drummer Harrison Haynes and bassist Syd Butler will be taking the stage at The Sinclair on 52 Church Street in Cambridge on June 30. Boston punks Kal Marks are going to be kicking off the show at 8pm.
The gig was originally supposed to be at Arts at the Armory on 191 Highland Avenue in Somerville, but it got moved to a bigger venue due to increased demand. I had a talk with Butler ahead of the performance about the making of the new album and running a record label during this current decade.
How did the conceiving of Oui, LSF come about after such a long time? Who first realized that this was the right time to get back together and start hashing out ideas?
It kind of happened organically, I would say. A couple years ago, we were asked to play Primavera Sound in Barcelona, which is one of our favorite festivals. When we got there and as we were so well-received, we started to get excited again about the potential of making new music. We realized that during our sort of hiatus of 14 years from recording that we needed to write new songs. We needed something if we were going to continue this energy, so when we came back from that trip, we slowly started hanging out again in a focused band way.
We all were hanging out at Tim Harrington’s house in his attic and over the past 14 years, he had accumulated some recordings that he started demoing, which then led to making the record. The process happened in a way that was different from our previous records. Seth Jabour and I have been part of the house band for Late Night with Seth Myers where we’ve been generating songs so quickly for the show, so we felt less pressure when it came to recording. I think with this process, we were just cranking out songs at such a quick clip that if we liked something then we’d move onto the next one. We all got behind it, we all brought in our parts, and we all felt very connected to it in that way.
It’s why the album has the title that it has, it was us as a unit.
It’s cool that it worked out that way. You mentioned this energy that you guys felt while performing at Primavera, so was capturing something similar a central focus while making the album? Was there a sense of reinvigoration within the band, or was there a feeling of something else?
I think both, to be honest with you. We definitely love to play live, and we always have. We love to travel, and we love to tour. It’s an experience of life that we’ve missed for sure, but we needed another record to maintain that lifestyle and we eventually fell in love with recording again. The energies kept ping ponging back and forth between us touring and making a record, writing a song so we can play it live and then playing it live so we could put out a record. That all started going back and forth a bit.
You directed the music video for the track “Limo Scene”, which has a bunch of folks wearing various costumes with the overall quality looking like it was shot by using one of those old school camcorders. What would you say inspired this vision for the music video?
Tim found this cool outfit that he used to create that exact look, the feeling of the ’90s, and we tried to come up with a video using a very limited budget. It was basically a couple hundred bucks to make this video and it was basically the idea that everyone has these ghosts, or these alter egos, around them all the time. Tim has this alter ego that’s in this limo that he’s dealing with, so everyone has this baggage that they hold on to. Each one of us has these ghosts or these entities around us that either motivate us, bring us down or lift us up. That was sort of the idea, Tim’s alter ego or his ghost is in a limo with the video matching the lyrics of the song as he has to battle this himself.
It was a fun thing to do, and I’ve dealt with some terrible nightmares, so this was a great way to exercise some of those demons.
I can see that. Much like the majority of Les Savy Fav’s releases, Oui, LSF is off of Frenchkiss Records, which is a label that you’ve been running since 1999. The past 25 years has had quite a progression when it comes to how people listen to music going from the dawn of the CD to downloading mp3s to now, where streaming services are the method of convenience while vinyl has been making a comeback. As a record label owner, how have you been able to adapt to these rapid changes?
In the beginning, it was really simple. You put out a CD or a record, you would pitch it the stores and the band would get some of the stock. They would go out on the road and sell it out of their van. You would then call up record stores to see if they would buy an order of records on consignment and it would start building in that way. Having a distributor made it a lot easier and then as the world of mp3s and streaming came along, it became much more difficult to make decent money. I’ve imagined the record business as being a giant rock on the beach, then someone came and smashed that rock into a thousand pebbles, so now it’s about gathering all the pebbles that are scattered everywhere and it’s just a pain in the ass.
It used to be so simple and clean, but now it’s scattered. If you don’t make it on a playlist or if you’re not on the algorithm, then it’s much harder. People are lazier now; they don’t want to have to search for things. I can talk about this for hours, but I find it much more difficult now to give a band what they want in terms of their expectations. It used to be a lot easier to do that by saying “Here’s your 10,000 CDs” or “Here’s your 500 records” to a band and they would go sell them by going out on tour until they would come back for more stuff.
Now with streaming services and band’s expectations, I find that it’s much harder to deliver financially to meet those expectations.
Especially with the internet and the way it is where it’s so flooded with content. It’s like you said, most people don’t want to look for things and if you’re not on a playlist then you’re kind of screwed.
There are people at Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and all of these streaming services that all have different ways of providing music. They have people who make the playlists, and they have people who control the algorithm, so if someone doesn’t make it on either of those things, they’re human and they can change that. The days of going to a record store, talking to the guy or woman behind the counter to see what’s cool are withering away. There’s a lack of the community that I grew up with and it’s very hard to find anything similar to that online.
I couldn’t agree more. You have this run of shows that’s occurring in different intervals throughout the year, including the upcoming show at The Sinclair, so how has it been with intertwining this new batch of songs with the older material while crafting a setlist?
When we go to practice before we go on tour, we rehearse a bunch of songs and then when we’re putting together a setlist we pick and choose depending on how we’re feeling that day. We’re definitely going to be playing five or six new songs at every show and we’re probably going to keep some of those songs in the setlist as we become more adept at playing them. We’re still trying to figure out some of the new songs live versus how they were recorded, but this is our sixth record, so there’s going to be some of the best songs off of our previous records plus these new ones.
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