Annons
Annons
Are you still playing in punk/hardcore bands or are you 100 percent focused on this project?
Dave: Carson and I are both pretty active outside the band. Our other band Church Whip plays more frequently than Merchandise does. That definitely falls in the punk/hardcore category. We have a bunch of other projects going on all the time. The variety is a necessity.
Pat: I still play in a hardcore band, too, and have a few other projects on the horizon. I don't feel like my other projects encroach on the happenings of Merchandise, though. Since English isn't my first language, I have a bit of trouble understanding the lyrics, but I get a sense of pain when I listen to your records. Are you loners?
Carson: Yes and no. I have some songs about love without heartbreak, but not many. Being in your early twenties is sort of a crummy time. People still act like children but can drink legally and drive cars and make adult decisions without understanding the consequences. Most of the lyrics have to do with coming of age and time's passage. People have asked me a lot about my happiness on this tour and I'm sort of at a loss for what to say. Writing is sort of a reflective thing where I don't really know how I feel about something 'til the song is written.Sadness and drama is a big part of it, but I hope that it comes off as theatre and not someone airing out dirty laundry. The place I wrote from the past four years was very strange and I was depressed, but life has thrown a new reality at me and nothing about the past seems to be true today. Everything inspires me, especially beauty. I hope I'm not a loner, but maybe I am and just don't realise it. Have you always experimented with pop and noise music or is it just something you stumbled upon?
Carson: I've been working with this style since about 2007, I think. I've had weirdo, non-electronic recording projects since I was in middle school. Tampa has a bigger pop underground scene than a punk underground scene and most of my friends that play noise write songs, too, so I don't think in terms of genre really. It was more like 'Do I want to make mean music or make pretty music?'
Dave: It's something we've been doing for years and years – we're just spending a lot more time on it now. We've been playing in punk bands since we were 14. There's no way we could limit ourselves to just one way of writing songs.
Pat: The way this project is approached is always changing, but I don't feel there was ever a conceived shift, things have just fallen into place due to our environment.
Annons
"Become What You Are", AKA the best song of 2012.I'm surprised about the good reception that the record has had among punk kids in the USA. That's something I wouldn't have seen in Spain; you'd probably have been crucified for being punk kids doing pop music. Did you expect that?Carson:I don't know. I think it’s hard for "punks" to identify with punk here. There's so much that's open to experience in the past, the present and the future. I think most punk kids now are full blown hipsters; that is to say hippies or bound to a generation. I think our time is going to dictate our art or voice more than a single style. I just don't care either way. There are poets and painters that died hundreds of years before rock and roll that mean more to me than that. I grew up in hardcore but I was listening to jazz, too.Dave:We grew up in the punk scene. Our records are on a punk label. It's just the crowd that has known us the longest. People have tended to identify us more with our past bands than as a project of its own, but that seems to be changing as our songs reach more people outside the punk scene. An easier and more shallow answer: A lot of (American) punks love The Smiths and we're probably the closest thing they're gonna get to that in the hardcore scene.Pat:I think a lot of the support we see from American kids and adults alike comes from people respecting what we're doing because of ethical similarities that we've shared growing up in the shaky punk scenes around the country.
Annons
Annons
Annons