The Cribs are at a point in their career where many bands would be coasting. With enough hit tracks to guarantee UK festival bookings for life, viagra order critically acclaimed albums produced by everyone from Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand) to Steve Albini and a stint where legendary guitarist Johnny Marr (The Smiths) joined the band, it’s easy to imagine the Jarman brothers falling into a similar creative slump as many of their contemporaries. However, the three-piece, made up of twins Ryan on guitar and Gary on bass with younger sibling Ross on drums, continue to evolve and put out quality material.
Earlier this year The Cribs released their sixth album, For All My Sisters. Produced by Ric Ocasek of The Cars, the record sees the brothers embracing their poppier sensibilities, putting together punchy riffs reminiscent of the ones that made their first few albums such infectious hits while also exhibiting the sophisticated musicianship that defined their time with Marr. While well mastered, the album never feels overproduced, retaining the sense of earnestness that made the group such an indie phenomenon in the UK.
The Cribs will be closing our their North American tour at Brighton Music Hall tomorrow night and we caught up with Gary before the show. He told us about bringing friends on the road, being comfortable as a three piece and having Stephen Malkmus practice in his basement.
Allston Pudding: Could you tell me about the album title? It seems pretty ironic given that you’re a band of brothers.
Gary Jarman: I guess that’s part of it really, you know? We are a sibling band. We just thought it was a cool line from one of the songs and decided to use it for the title; it summed up the record pretty good. Being a sibling band, it relates to that. Everyone knows us as a band of brothers. We don’t have any sisters either, so it’s kind of like it’s for nobody!
People ask us about the title quite a lot, which I think means it was a success, really. It’s nice that people are intrigued by it.
AP: How was your experience working with Ric Ocasek?
GJ: So great. It’s something that we’ve wanted to do for a long time. Ric was somebody that we had this feeling about. Obviously he made records that we like, like Weezer (Blue Album and Green Album) and Nada Surf (High/Low) and Guided by Voices (Do the Collapse), but also we love The Cars too. He stood out to us as someone who would be a good match because he’s from a pretty weird background. The Cars were a pretty weird band which managed to have some big pop songs. We felt it would be perfect for us, as fundamentally we feel like The Cribs come from a pretty weird background, but we actually write pop songs too. We figured if we were making an album that would embrace that pop side, Ric would be the perfect guy for it.
He really was. He’s a really nice guy; really mellow but really enthusiastic. He doesn’t produce that much stuff and so that’s a really cool thing for us. He only produces bands he really wants to do it with, so he puts a lot of care and attention into it. That was the best thing about working with Ric- how invested he seemed in it. He was just as much of a part of it as we were. That’s the best thing you can get out of a producer.
AP: Given that you and Ryan have similar voices, how do you split up vocal parts? Do you split it by who writes what?
GJ: Well, nowadays we sort of write a few songs separately and bring them together, which we never used to do at all. We’ve started because of the geographical challenges we have, living in different cities (Gary in Portland, Ryan in NYC and Ross in their hometown Wakefield). That said, most of the songs are still written in the room together.
What happens is we’ll be jamming the backing track and whoever’s got the best idea for a melody will just try singing something over the top. Nine times out of ten whoever comes up with the best melody ends up singing the song. It’s kind of a diplomatic way of doing it, but it also means that the person who’s most excited about the melody and most inspired gets to write the lyrics to.
AP: We’re big fans of SKATERS at Allston Pudding, so we were happy to hear you guys were touring with Michael Cummings earlier in the year. How was your time on the road with him?
GJ: It was great! We knew Michael from when he played in a band called The Dead Trees who opened for the Cribs on tour in 2010. They were actually Boston band originally, before they moved to New York. We really liked The Dead Trees and got on really well with Mike and when he went on to do SKATERS they ended up opening for The Cribs a couple of times as well
We really like having Mike around. Most of the songs work with just us playing, because once Johnny Marr left we went back to being a three piece- we enjoy being that way anyway. But there are some songs, especially ones that we did with Johnny but also some on the new record, that benefit from having a couple of extra elements in there. We don’t have a new band member, we just take people on the road that fill in basically. Always people that we’re friends with; that we like hanging out with. Not, like, a professional musician that we bring in, we just bring out friends along to play some guitar or keyboards or something
AP: That’s a good attitude toward it.
GJ: Yeah, and it makes it really fun. The songs that Johnny played with us- we need the second guitar on those. Also the stuff on the fifth album- In the Belly of the Brazen Bull– and the new record, we’ve gotten used to having a couple of extra things in there. We can get by without it but we do like to have it. On this tour we’re actually just a three piece. Mike played with us last night in NY though. In Portland, one of Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks played with us. Again, it’s like having our friends fill in!
AP: Speaking of Stephen Malkmus, I read that he practices in your basement sometimes…
GJ: He does, yeah. All the time, actually!
AP: How did you guys meet?
GJ: The Cribs and the Jicks toured together in Europe in 2005. I started dating his bass player (Joanna Bolme) and moved to Portland and we later got married. When I started writing some Cribs stuff, I built a home studio and the Jicks basically took it over, since The Cribs aren’t in town that often. They use it for writing, as well!
AP: You had Lee Ranaldo (co-founder of Sonic Youth) come onstage to play your collaboration, “Be Safe”, in Montreal the other week. How did that appearance come together?
GJ: The label we’re on in America was having a showcase gig at Pop Montreal festival, which is like a bunch of gigs all on the same night. Lee was playing one of them and we were playing one. Just because we were in the same city at the same time, we thought it was a pretty rare opportunity to play that song in the way that it was conceived and recorded.
Usually we do it with a backing track, which we get by with. Lee made a cool video for us, so we use his vocals from the backing track and play the video. But being in the same city we really wanted to try to make it work. The record’s been out for eight years and we’ve only managed to do it twice now, so it was really cool. It made that night really special.
AP: Have your parents heard the new album?
GJ: Yeah, absolutely. They actually even hassle me for demos when we’re recording, which I never let them hear. When they hear the record it’s gotta be done, pretty much.
AP:Did they like it?
GJ: Yeah! My mum thinks we’re the greatest band ever. (chuckles) I guess she’s obligated to think that, but then she’ll always tell me “no, I’m not just saying that! I genuinely believe you’re better than the Beatles.” So, you know, that’s good enough for me!
AP: The Boston show will be the last of the US tour, and you’ll be hitting the UK next month. How do the experiences of touring America and England differ?
GJ: They’re very different, because in the UK, that’s where we do most of our touring. That’s where we’re a big band. On the other hand, when we do the US, we basically just throw our gear in a van. There’s five people in that van- three band members and two crew members. It’s very DIY, you know?
The first show of the US tour was at the Cobalt Theatre in Vancouver, which was a 300 capacity venue. The gig we did before that was for 60,000 people at Reading Festival. It’s a pretty big contrast, but we really like it. When we first started out, we were the sort of band who just got in a van and did everything ourselves. It’s fun to come to America and live that again. The UK’s really fun and enjoyable because it’s on a really big scale; really surreal and cool. The US is fun because it takes us back to why we did it in the first place and what we loved about it. I like both sides for totally different reasons.
AP: For the fourth album Johnny Marr joined the band. Would you consider adding another member to the permanent lineup in the future, or are you pretty set as a trio now?
GJ: We don’t want to, I think for the reasons I was saying before. We sometimes have extra stuff that we put down on the record, but we don’t need it really. I’d rather that we were never dependant on anything. Even when we can afford it, we try not to take tour busses and we don’t use dedicated monitors or anything like that. I like it just being three brothers who can load up a van and play anywhere. I like being independent. So yeah, we’re happy as we are, really.
Well, unless Lee Ranaldo decided he wanted to be in the band full time. That was pretty fucking cool playing “Be Safe” the other night, so I’d be down for that!
AP: I read last year that the plan was to release two albums- this one and a punk album produced by Steve Albini. Is that one still planned for release?
GJ: Yeah, well- what happened was I think the way it was reported initially made people think it was more imminent than it was. A lot of people thought it was going to be a double album, which it wasn’t. We just said that we were working on two albums at once.
We’ve got about half of the Albini record done. We just need to get to Chicago and finish the other half. The way that we work with Steve, we recorded four songs in two days and mixed them. We probably just need to head back for three or four days and wrap it up.
We’re just enjoying the liberty of it. There’s a whole idea behind that project that we should feel free to do what we want, and a lot of the songs were half finished when we went in there and we just jammed out to finish them. I think that’s what we’re going to do again. We’ve got the basic idea of what we’re going to, but I think we’ve got gotta thrash it out in the studio.
We don’t even know what we’re going to do with it, though. We might just finish recording it by the end of the year and just stick it out unannounced. I don’t want to go through the machine with it. I think it would lose something.
The Cribs will be playing Brighton Music Hall tomorrow night (9/25) with openers Farao. Tickets are still available here.
