Thebrotheregg, Friday, March 21

[March 19th, 2008]

[PSYCH-POP] Since recording its first 7-inch in 1992, Thebrotheregg has maintained a release schedule as mercurial as its bristling, psychedelia-tinged popcraft. Now, the self-described “avant-rainpop” quartet has a new guitarist, Jairus Smith (replacing family-bound member Chris Kalani Gabriel), and a self-titled EP—full of unabashedly frail and overtly intellectual tweaked indie anthems—forthcoming. WW sat down with 34-year-old singer-guitarist-songwriter-godhead Adam Goldman to discuss the band’s trajectory.

WW: It’s been three years since any new material. Why?
Goldman: The last album [Aortica Mor, its fourth full-length] was almost 80 minutes long! We just started to take advantage of new technologies, being able to...record part of a song in one place and part in another. I thought I was done putting out records. Somebody suggested that we do vinyl, and we were going to put out a 10-inch. [Laughs] I think we do things deliberately to be difficult.

Why weren’t you going to put out albums anymore?
[It] just seemed like there was a big paradigm shift [within the music industry]. I figured we’d collect songs, and, all of a sudden, we were having a little more fun writing pop songs that we weren’t married to, that didn’t have to be under the umbrella of an album format or concept. I always had this morbid fantasy that I’ll be dead, and some archaeologist will put the songs out.

How’d you choose the songs on the new EP?
Some of them were written in one week, some of them sat around for 10 years. There was a Darwinism about the process; the ones that weren’t as good just got filtered out earlier. I wound up mixing the whole thing and wearing a number of different hats, and that sometimes causes problems of perspective...I remember having someone say, “Your songs don’t mean anything, and that’s what I love about them,” and it made me upset. I don’t believe that things mean nothing. I wouldn’t want to live in that world.

What are the band’s plans for the future?
We’re doing everything ourselves. It just means a lot of things don’t get done. We’ve kinda embraced this cult-music mentality. The kids who are going through bins and bins of records looking for obscure bands, I see ourselves as being one of those bands 30 years from now. [Like,] “Oh, my God! Look what I found!”