Interview: The Bravery
The Bravery @ The Club at Firestone, Orlando, Fla.
Sam Endicott – Vocals
John Conway – Keyboard
Anthony Burulcich – Drums
Michael Zakarin – Guitar
Mike Hindirt – Bass
www.myspace.com/thebravery
www.thebravery.com
When a band grabs your attention, you follow. The first time we bumped into The Bravery was during a show at Spaceland, way before they released their self-titled album and during a time they were creating major buzz, as they were getting rave reviews from various music magazines. We continued to follow them as they traveled the world, played at major festivals and opened for such bands as Depeche Mode.
There’s just something about The Bravery. They make black nail polish look hot, and with their New York style and attitude, you can’t really compare them to other bands, because they stand on their own elements and their own turf. The Scenestar made the four-hour trip from Miami to Orlando to be one of the first to hear the new songs from their upcoming album The Sun and the Moon. But before that, The Scenestar was granted access to The Bravery’s sound check, and we were able to chat with them afterward.
SS: Out of nowhere you come to Florida [trust me, people who live in Florida understand this question] and pop out these secret shows?
Sam: We are almost done working with our second record, and we wanted a chance to play the new stuff live before we started touring for real so that we don’t suck when we are playing them.
SS: I was reading that you were recording in various apartments in New York. What is the purpose of that?
Sam: Well, the first record was recorded that way. We just did it at home, so it’s sort of a joke to say that. I mean, it was recorded in my apartment, at his apartment and like our friends’ studio and shit like that. We just kind of recorded all over the place, like random, so I just wrote that. And in [The Sun and the Moon], we did a lot of it that way but most of it in Atlanta. So we try to get the best of both worlds: the homemade aspect and the studio aspect.
SS: Second albums are usually what people look at the most, focusing more on it than the first one. But I would consider Sun and the Moon almost as a “first album,” because by the time you launched your first album, we already knew the songs; you did massive tours.
Sam: I remember the entire [first] album was online before we even put it out. I typed it on LimeWire to see if I could find it and everything we ever recorded, like all of our b-sides, before the album came out. So you LimeWired it?
SS: We only knew the three songs that were on the launch player [on Bravery’s Web site]. So, yes, we had to.
SS: Do you feel a lot more pressure with the new album?
Sam: Like you said, a lot of times the second album is the one that defines your career. I really don’t know what that means. I guess it’s the one that determines whether you’re a one-trick pony or whether you can change over time and there is more depth.
SS: Do you feel the second album is a change from the first?
Sam: It is definitely very different than the first. You’re not going to be like, ‘what the fuck are they doing?’ It’s as different as it can be and still sounds like us. I can give you an example: It’s a lot more organic, less synthetic sounding, but there are still a lot of unusual sounds on it. It’s just we made those sounds with more organic instruments.
SS: Did you feel comfortable going more organic?
Sam: Well, we went so synth crazy on the first one, then you start writing a song that way and you think, ‘well, we’ve already done this song kind of,’ so you try to do something new.
SS: What is the influence for The Sun and the Moon? What changed in comparison to the first album?
Sam: Well, that was a big part of it, trying to find our new sounds in a new way. I think it was getting back to the roots, to the stuff we love the most, mostly classic rock stuff. And so there’s a lot of classic rock influence like The Rolling Stones, T-Rex and The Beatles. I listen to British Invasion stuff all the time. Not that our albums sound like that at all but that is where a lot of the influences came from.
Anthony: I think over the 18 months of touring for the first record, we really got tighter as a band and grew musically with each other. This album has a lot more participation; the whole band is now singing. In the new songs, you’ll say, ‘whoa, John’s singing.’ I think in that respect, Brendan [O’Brien, music producer] brought that out more in the second record. It’s more of a band thing.
SS: Could you say you felt comfortable moving to the next phase and not sticking to the same style?
Sam: Well, the first one we intentionally made it all dance music. You just wanted to have that vibe all the whole way through versus this one, [which] has a lot of different, I guess you’d say…
John: Variety.
Sam: There’s a variety of styles on it; there are slow songs, fast songs.
SS: When you recently played in New York, it was a bit shaky, but what was the response of the audience? Obviously that’s your home base.
Sam: It was great. It was really a shitty show for us, because everything was breaking, like every piece of equipment was fucked up, and so that just rattled us. The crowd was awesome. It’s cool. People in New York have heard our old songs so many times; they were psyched to hear stuff they’ve never heard before.
After the interview, came the show, and there were feelings of anxiousness, as crowds can either love or hate a band’s new songs. In this case, The Bravery not only showed how much they’ve grown together as a band, but also how they can move to other ventures while still sounding like themselves. They hit the stage stronger, more defiant, more solid. Among the favorite dance beats of “Swollen Summer,” “Unconditional,” “No Brakes,” “PSA,” “An Honest Mistake” and “Tyrant,” they featured a new list of songs:
The Lead
Angelina
This is Not the End
Tragedy Bound
Every Word Out of Your Mouth is a Knife in My Ear
Bad Sun
If This is It
Now, here’s the impressive part: The new songs kicked ass. You can hear influences that come from such different sources as Motown and country. From the slow to faster songs, each new tune had a different element, and what we were hearing weren’t just new experimental songs; we were hearing the new territory that The Bravery so comfortably walked into. It’s a territory that many bands don’t know how to enter or are too afraid of—or perhaps these bands are meant to have only one sound. The Bravery managed a smooth transition between old and new songs, and they ended the night with an exclamation point—“Fearless.” I can sum it up by saying that The Bravery’s upcoming album The Sun and the Moon is on top of my list of most anticipated albums for 2007.
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