The Republic Of Wolves - Sound In The Signals Interview
Your new album No Matter How Narrow comes out December 17, 2013. This is your second album. What kind of ideas did you have or expectations did you put on yourself with this album?
Our expectations changed a lot over time. At first we felt this pressure to decide what kind of album we wanted to make, and we were conflicted between our impulse to make dark, heavy rock music and our desire to write more fun, accessible songs. At a certain point we realized that trying to plan it out in advance was just holding us back, so we just kind of let it happen naturally and did whatever felt right in the moment. We ended up striking a pretty good balance in the end, but it definitely leans a bit more toward the catchy side than our previous releases.
Dan Gluszak played drums on the album and you also had Will Noon record some percussion for the album. How did it work out for you guys to get those guys on the album and what was it like working with them?
It was an honor working with both of them, although we didn't actually get to record in person with Will Noon. He actually posted something online offering up a free drum session to someone who sent him an unfinished song, so we sent over an early version of "Keep Clean" and he laid down the drums. Those were actually the first drums recorded on the album, so it was really exciting. We got in contact with Dan Gluszak through Andrew Accardi from ROBBERS, and we ended up spending a few days recording in his basement studio. He's an amazing musician and a really great guy, so it was a pleasure working with him on the rest of the songs. We brought a lot of our own percussion ideas to the table, but he ended up adding a lot creatively to help shape the songs on this album.
The album art is really interesting for your new album. Why did you guys choose the art for the album and who came up with the concept?
We were really conflicted about what direction to take with the artwork for this album. We knew we wanted something that would stand out as unique among our releases, and reflect the changes in our sound, but we also didn't want to abandon the aesthetic that represented us as a band. For most of our previous releases we've used the artwork of a great Pittsburgh artist named Ben Kehoe, and some of us really wanted to follow through with that tradition. So we threw around a lot of ideas and ended up taking a piece of one of our favorite Ben Kehoe paintings and making it the centerpiece of a collage. The combination of old and new felt really reflective of the music for us.
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| Official Artwork For The Album |
The album will be available on various formats including vinyl. You guys have always put out really nice vinyl products. What can fans expect from the vinyl release of No Matter How Narrow?
We've always been really interested in the physical aesthetic of an album, and vinyl is a great medium for that. We've had the pleasure of working with a great company from California called Simple Stereo that funds and presses our vinyl products, and they've helped us put together another great physical release for this album. We've got some great packages available for preorder that include signed vinyls, hand-written lyric sheets, posters, and some beautiful art prints of the album cover.
One thing people have noted is that the tracks that have been released have kind of a somewhat different sound and vibe than some of your previous releases. The song "Spare Key" in my opinion reminds me of the band Days Away in some respects. What about your writing process caused these songs to take on new sounds than some of your previous releases?
We have a pretty wide range of influences, and it's hard to say whether any specific artists or records inspired us more than others when writing these songs. But we've always been fans of more fun, upbeat, catchy music, and when writing for this album we opened ourselves up a little more to that influence. "Spare Key" was actually one of the few songs where we consciously decided to do something a little different than what might be expected of us as a band. We started with a guitar riff that had a really bizarre rhythm and then laid down this major chord progression on top of it. We had a moment of hesitation because it didn't sound like "us", but we decided to follow through with it and kind of let it happen. We're really happy with that decision, because I think it allowed us to expand upon our sound without abandoning it.
Varuna was such a well received album and you guys rode a tidal wave of interesting press after the "Brand New youtube" craze. You guys are a little more removed from that now. Looking back on that how has it effected the way you run your band today and what is the craziest memory from the Varuna time period of your lives?
That whole youtube scandal was definitely the craziest thing that happened to us as a band, and it's still hard to believe that that's kind of what started everything for us. Getting away from the Brand New connection was something that we worried about a lot toward the beginning, because we obviously didn't want to be seen just as "that band that sounds like that other, bigger band." As time has passed and our sound has developed, that hasn't been on our minds so much. But the fact that we initially caught people's attention through the internet has really defined how we operate as a band. Since our fanbase is so spread out, we haven't focused as much on playing shows and building a local following. For us, recording and releasing material has always been the first priority, and live performance has often been kind of an afterthought. For the first time in over two years we're getting back into playing shows, though, and since we've just finished recording a new album we can hopefully focus more than ever on shows and touring.
If you had to describe the new album in five words or less what would those five words be?
This is an incredibly hard question. I guess if I had to think of five adjectives to describe the album in our eyes I'd say emotional, honest, immediate, diverse, and accessible.
I guess that about wraps it up. Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions. Do you have anything else you'd like to add?
Thanks so much for the interview, and thank you to everyone who's out there supporting us. Since we're an independent band it's really important that people share our music and spread the word as much as possible, and we're so grateful to everyone who's been doing that. Keep listening!
You can pre-order the band's new album: HERE.
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