In the current avalanche of electronic-tinged indie, Joywave are looking to set themselves apart. The Rochester-based five-piece has been active since 2010, releasing a string of well-received mixtapes as well as an EP, titled How Are You?. However, the band’s profile began rising exponentially over the past year with their feature on Big Data’s inescapable single “Dangerous”. After a well-received appearance on Jimmy Kimmel earlier this year, the band dropped their debut album How Are You Now?, which they have been aggressively touring since.
Joywave’s sound is hard to describe in the best sort of way. While generally keeping to a broad synthpop aesthetic, influence varies wildly from track to track. Touching on everything from house to grunge, their success comes from their sonic exploration, finding driving, poppy goodness in a variety of different sounds. That said, the band keep a strong voice throughout- no matter what genre Joywave is exploring, they still sound distinctly like Joywave.
Joywave will be hitting Brighton Music Hall tonight, 10/16, and we caught up with frontman Dan Armbruster before the show. He told us about hearing his music in an X Games commercial, the pains and pleasures of opening for other bands and his current editorial project: a Huffington Post series chronicling the making of every track on the album.
Allston Pudding: So before we start, I read the beginning of your HuffPost series where you said that you’re tired of bullshit questions from interviewers. I’ve taken the liberty of cutting out all of my bullshit questions… there were three of them!
Dan Armbruster: Thank you! I really appreciate that!
AP: On that subject, as an up-and-coming band, do you feel like members of the press generally take the wrong approach with you?
DA: Yeah, for sure. A lot the people interviewing in the US seem to be kids who the outlets get to write for free. I think that impacts the quality of the questions. A lot of them are unsure or don’t necessarily prepare for the interview. Sometimes people are genuinely just like “I listened to your band five minutes ago, how would you describe your sound?” I’m like, “well what did you think when you listened to it?” It’s kind of frustrating.
AP: You guys are based out of Rochester. Would you say growing as a band outside of a major cultural hub helped you find a different sort of sound?
DA: For sure. When you’re in a band in Brooklyn or LA, all these bands are working beside you and you think “this thing is working for this band, this isn’t working for this band.” There’s kind of that pressure to keep up with the neighbors, and there’s not in Rochester. There’s no other band like us. There’s, like, a metal band and that’s kind of it. We get to exist in our own little bubble.
AP: “Somebody New” and “Tongues” are massive-sounding pop tracks. Did your attitude to fleshing out and recording songs like that, when you’re centering them around a catchy hook, differ from some of the deeper cuts on the album?
DA: Not really. We just try to make things the best we can make them and the way we would want to hear them. Those just happened to be the singles. With “Tongues”, that was a song that had been written for a while- it had been featured on a mixtape that we had released previously. With “Something New”, that just got picked to be a single. There was nothing in the creation where we were like “we have to make this for the masses.”
AP: You guys decided to produce your own record, which is a very bold decision for a debut. Did you study up on other more established producers’ methods going into that or were you more figuring things out as you went along?
DA: I mean, we’ve been producing our stuff all along. One of our favorite parts of being in a band is creating things. We definitely studied up on mic’ing techniques and things like that, but we didn’t really research what other producers were doing.
AP: What influences were you looking to on this album?
DA: I would cite Kanye West and Damon Albarn as big inspirations just because their influences also vary greatly. They just do whatever’s real to them in the moment and aren’t worried about doing the same thing eleven times in a row. I think that was the biggest part for us.
AP: I really enjoyed the old-timey spoken word clips that broke up some of the songs on the album. Why did you guys decide to put those in?
DA: Those samples are all from Disney Animated Classics. We signed to Hollywood Records and their parent company is Disney. When we were deciding where to sign we thought maybe if we went with them, they’d allow us to sample Disney stuff, because no one has been able to do that. We were right and they were super-helpful about getting those licenses to include them on the record.
AP: Going back to the HuffPost series, you’re diving very deep into both the inspiration and the tech of the tracks. Other than taking control over some of the press cycle, why did you feel inspired to share so much more about your process with listeners than most bands do?
DA: Just because I felt like no one was asking us the right questions. Those were things that I felt were important to know about the record to help people enjoy it properly. Let them hear it in new contexts. Even with the record out for six months, I couldn’t point to any interview or media clip that would share these things. I felt like it was something I needed to spell out for people.
AP: The EP last year was called How Do You Feel and now have How Do You Feel Now. Was it always your intention for the EP to be, I suppose, a taste of the full length, or did it just evolve into that?
DA: The titles were very deliberate. We knew that the record was going to be titled How Do You Feel Now when we did How Do You Feel. The songs on the EP were really just the first four songs we finished for the record. It was kind of interesting, because when we put it out some of the reaction was like “these songs just don’t make sense together!” They obviously don’t, they’re not supposed to. They’re part of a full record that isn’t out yet. But yeah, it was one of those things you do so you have something to tour on and get people familiar with the band instead of just releasing your debut record outright to an audience who has no idea who you are.
AP: “Somebody New” has been licensed this year for, among other things, the new Pro Evolution Soccer game and X Games commercials. What was your reaction to hearing your music played in contexts outside of just you playing it?
DA: I like it. It’s usually one of two things: either awesome or just funny! (chuckles) I don’t play video games, so I haven’t seen any of that, but the X Games one was pretty funny because the song wasn’t intended to be “extreme”. I’m not an “extreme” or even energetic guy, so watching people shred on skateboards and things that I never could to the song was pretty entertaining.
AP: You’ve opened for The Killers, Bleachers and RAC. How has the experience of touring with more established artist compared to headlining your own tour?
DA: Very different. When you’re opening you’re preventing people from seeing their favorite artist in the world. You’re inconveniencing them the entire time you’re onstage. We felt that the most with The Killers; we had this guy yell when we were onstage “I’ll give them $100 to get off the stage right now!” It was before we even played a note!
You really have to own it and, in a way, be confrontational with the audience. You have to feel for them that you are inconveniencing them, but you have to have fun with it. I usually threaten the audience and tell them that it’s in our contract that we don’t have to leave until we feel satisfied. Until their reaction has been proper for our set. (laughs)
AP: Could you tell me about the live show on this tour?
DA: The instrumentation is a little more traditional rock band than the record. Guitar-based with live drums. We’re recreating on the sounds on the record a little more organically. The samples are used to keep things inline with the record, though, so you are very aware of which song is playing. I’d hate for people to show up expecting certain songs and with all the changes have no idea what they are!
It’s nice to be out on a headline tour where if people don’t like it they can leave. There’s no one coming on after us, nothing to wait around for!
Joywave will be playing Brighton Music Hall tonight, 10/16, with Kopps and Mikaela Davis. Tickets are available here.