The Great Antidote
Pinback Interview
Words: James Ferreira
Photo: Drew Reynolds

Appearing:
September 27, 2007
Club Downunder, Tallahassee

September 28, 2007
The Social, Orlando

September 29, 2007
Common Grounds, Gainesville

It has become increasingly rare to witness actual growth and evolution (musically) within bands across the indie landscape. Once a sound or style that works is achieved, most bands stick with it, leaving us with quite a few uninspired releases from some good artists over the past few years. Pinback, the brain child of Zach Smith and Rob Crow and staple of the indie scene for almost a decade, have avoided this dubious distinction using subtle but noticeable changes in style to create a distinctly more mature sound over the past three years. “I feel like we’ve kind of begun to hit our stride. I don’t know if that sounds stupid, but it’s true. We know each other a lot better now, and know what works, and how to put things together as far as the guitar and bass. I’m not sure if it’s a step forward, maybe a step to the side. A big change was the addition of the live drums. We’ve always played with live drums in concert, but Pinback has been based on samples and stuff like that. So it was fun to bring a drummer in and have it be a little more ‘rock’ this time, because we can do the slow and pretty songs fairly easily now. We wanted to do some more upbeat and aggressive stuff this time around,” Smith explained.

One of the most interesting facets about the San Diego based duo is their enormous number of side projects, most notably that of one Rob Crow. Over the past ten years, Crow has been involved in one way or another with over fifteen separate bands. “It’s all part of each other. All the other projects are kind of an escape valve for each other. If I was to try and make all those different types of music in one band it would sound terrible,” Crow said. When asked if he ever saw Pinback becoming the main focus of his musical life he replied, “No. I mean I kind of wish but, nah…It’s always going to be the mother ship.”

Their latest (and best) album, Autumn of the Seraphs is hitting stores in September, and it has become increasingly evident that the evolution of Pinback isn’t fully complete. “I think it’s the most evolved sounding of any of the previous stuff. The more we record, the more we’ve figured out how to do it. We’ve never been the best producers or engineers or anything, but we never want anyone else to do it so we just continue to learn. We’re almost to the point where we’re not hacks,” Crow informed me.

“I wanted to have it sound more raw. It’s produced, or whatever. But, it’s done by us, as usual. I wanted it to have a little rough edge to it. I was hoping to capture that live energy a little bit more. As far as direction when we write, it’s really just what comes to us. We never sit and say, “Let’s try to do this”. It’s more about the mode we are in and what we were feeling at the time. Hopefully we created an album that will stand on its own and has a style that’s our style, but hopefully not just another Loro, Tripoli, or Penelope. We’re hoping that people will find something new in it, because we’re always experimenting and trying new things,” Smith added.

Pinback has garnered a lot of respect across the indie scene for their ability to make and produce their records on their own. While some might think they take great pride in this aspect of their musical repertoire, it became evident that it isn’t always the best plan of attack. “It’s fun to record, and I feel like we’ve learned a lot, and I’ve really gotten into that stuff. I love being a gear head, and we’ve definitely made a really nice studio that is much nicer than the one we had six years ago. But there is a part of me that thinks it would be cool to go to nice studio and have someone else set up a microphone. The problem is that we write our songs as we record them. So we might just have one part, and then set it aside for a month and come up with another part for a different song, then come back and want to add another part to the one we did a month ago. It’s not like a band that goes in and punches it out in a month or two weeks or whatever it takes. For us, it is something that goes over a six month period as we just patch songs together and record them at the same time. So until we have a ton of money, which I don’t see happening any time soon, I don’t think we can do it that way. But, it’s also really fun, I love to record,” Smith exonerated.

The titles of their last two albums have seemed to share a common theme, but with the addition of a live drummer to record for the first time Autumn of the Seraphs does have a harder and more gritty feel to it at times. When asked about the natural and spiritual aspects of the last two album titles Smith told me that, “It was sort of a yin and yang type thing when we did Autumn of the Seraphs versus Summer in Abaddon, but musically they’re not really that way. Hopefully, they’re different.”

“They’re not biblical as much as they are black metal references,” Crow told me as the colors of one of his other musical personas began to shine through.

Don’t expect to see another seasonal referenced album dealing with ancient Hebrew scripts in the next three years though. I asked Zach if we could expect to see an album dealing with the winter in a couple of years. “Well, I hope not. I hope we don’t do Winter and Spring. It would be a lot cooler not too. I think maybe we got it out of our system. You never know, we may be sitting here in three years talking about a ‘Spring of the Wizards’. Hopefully not…I feel like the first two albums have their art that was similar and the last two albums have had their art that was similar,” Smith said.

Pinback will be playing a series of dates across Florida at the end of September to support their new album. Their unconventional approach towards making music yields one of the best performances you will ever see live as they seemingly always put on a clinic of contradiction. They are gentle, yet violent; subtle, yet blatant; precise yet unbridled.

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