Hospitality is coming through this Wednesday July 30th at The Sinclair with Allston Pudding favorites Porches and Frankie Cosmos. Amber Papini provides vocals and guitar for your listening pleasure in Hospitality, ask and she took some time to talk to us about touring, bands to get excited about, Beavis & Butthead and pho among other things. Read the interview below and make sure to come out to the show! Tickets are still available.
Allston Pudding: How stoked are you for tour, and which dates are you most excited about?
Amber Papini: I’m really excited! We’re playing with really great bands like Ex Hex for some of the shows and Porches and Frankie Cosmos for some of them as well. I guess I’m looking forward to the Merge fest. They’re having their 25th anniversary. I’m really excited. It’s always fun to play a festival. So many good Merge bands are playing.
Pudding: I wish I could make the trip for that. It’s looks so ridiculous. I can’t even believe it’s a real thing, and that all these great bands are on Merge.
Amber: I know, so many!
Pudding: The “I Miss Your Bones” video is really great. Pretty much everyone’s been talking about. Where did you guys get the idea for that?
Amber: Thanks! It was Lara [Gallagher], the director’s idea. She seems to really be into YouTube videos, and I think that’s where the inspiration came from.
Pudding: Did you guys have any input on what the instructional YouTube videos would look like?
Amber: We’ve never really been involved in videos much. It’s not really our strength. We prefer to work with cool directors that know what they’re doing and they come up with the ideas. They’re always really good.
Pudding: Was it fun to shoot?
Amber: It was cool! We did it through Skype. She directed through Skype. The photographers were in New York, so that was our first Skype-directed video. [laughs]
Pudding: That video would not have existed 15 years ago, not even 10.
Amber: Absolutely!
Pudding: The new album is great. I like that it takes this interesting departure from the self-titled. It’s still you guys, but there’s something there that makes it different in a way. What was the writing or recording process like this time around vs. last time?
Amber: This time was completely different, not in the process of writing the music and arranging it as a band. Definitely we had more time in the studio. The first record we recorded in four days. Most of the time it was mixed, we weren’t even there, and because we had very little money, the guy who was doing it for us was doing it in his spare time and as a favor, because he was a friend. We didn’t have a lot of control over a lot of things that happened.
I guess this record we recorded and mixed it in a month and a half. We were more involved with the engineer, Matt [Boynton], he was giving a lot of input; we were giving a lot of input. It was just a more relaxed process. We could be more thoughtful.
Pudding: It definitely feels that way.
Amber: The first record sounded more poppy, and this record is more lo-fi.
Pudding: It’s got an edginess and a roughness to it that I like.
Amber: There’s a darker element in the sound world. That’s fully attributed to Matt Boynton, the engineer and producer. He has a really dark aesthetic. He was mixing things very dark.
Pudding: Did you change the way that you sing? Or was that more into the dark mix idea that you were just talking about? I feel like your vocals are more dark and rough too.
Amber: A couple of the songs I’m singing in a lower register. I think that kind of changed the character of my voice. Also we double-tracked a lot of the vocals, which we didn’t do on the first record. I think that that added an extra texture to my voice that isn’t on the first record.
Pudding: What bands have you played with recently that we should check out if we haven’t already.
Amber: We were playing in Europe back in May… Cloud Nothings! We played with them. They’re really great. You should definitely check out the bands that we’re touring with coming up, Frankie Cosmos, Porches and Ex Hex. They’re all amazing. I’m looking forward to hearing those guys like every night.
Pudding: I don’t know if I could take seeing Ex Hex every night live. It would be too much musical stimulation for me.
Amber: [laughs] Yeah I know! They’re amazing. We toured with Wild Flag a couple years ago. They were amazing every night. It was really fun to watch. They’re such professionals. Carrie Brownstein one night had no voice; she was completely sick. You could not tell when she was on stage. She is a pro.
Pudding: Some quick fun ones… Are you ready? We’re going to do a this or that. Bagels or doughnuts?
Amber: Bagels. I guess I like savory foods over sweet foods.
Pudding: Ice cream or fro-yo?
Amber: Ice cream, because there’s nothing that replaces ice cream.
Pudding: Comics or novels?
Amber: I can’t answer that. I don’t know comics that well.
Pudding: So novels by default?
Amber: I guess so by default. Neither: I’m more into biographies or history books.
Pudding: TV or movies?
Amber: Movies, because they’re longer.
Pudding: Beavis or Butthead?
Amber: I don’t know! I feel bad. I’m a child of the ‘90s, and I should know them.
Pudding: What do we have to look forward to from your set that you guys are going to play? Are you going to do cool lighting or stage setup? Costumes?
Amber: I wish we could do costumes. That would be cool. The arrangements are different for the songs. We’ve been focusing a lot on the music part of it. You’ll find that there are different arrangements, and that might be interesting to people. I think hopefully we’ll get to play a song that’s kind of rare. It’s only on this Polyvinyl single that not a lot of people have. We might play that.
Pudding: What’s your favorite thing to do or place to go in Boston while you stop through on tour?
Amber: I like Boston a lot. I can’t remember the name of it, but there was a Vietnamese place. They had really good pho. That’s all I know. I don’t know the name.
Pudding: [laughs] That sounds like something in Boston, so I’ll take it! We have good pho.
Amber: Yeah. Good pho in Boston. You can write that.
Hospitality with Porches and Frankie Cosmos
Wednesday, July 30
The Sinclair
52 Church St, Cambridge, MA
Doors at 7:30pm – 18+ – $12 adv/$14 dos