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First off a note of warning: Matt and
Kim aren’t a typical band and this isn’t
going
to read like your average biography. For example, although
Matt and Kim know
they met while taking classes at Pratt Institute in New
York, Kim’s not sure what
year she graduated, let alone when they decided to start
playing music as a twopiece.
What they do know is that when Matt and Kim started out
approximately
four years ago, they had no idea how to play their respective
instruments—a fact
that makes the band’s success story almost as unique
as their distinctive brand
of synth-and-drums dance punk.
After being forced to play their first show by a friend
months after picking up their
instruments, keyboardist/vocalist Matt Johnson and drummer/vocalist
Kim
Schifino played their first show as Matthew and Kimberly
in October of 2004—
and after slightly altering their name they spent the
next year playing every
chance they could get in their home base of Brooklyn.
Along the way they also
released an EP called To/From and started touring the
United States non-stop,
burning CDs in the van on the way to their self-booked
shows and seemingly
playing every art space and basement in the country.
In 2006 the band released their self-titled debut—which
was instantly embraced
by critics and fans alike—and stayed on the road,
performing at high profile
events such as The Siren Music Festival and Lollapalooza.
Okay, so now that the
timeline is out of the way, let’s talk about the
new album. For starters, Grand was
recorded at Matt’s parents’ house in Vermont
that Kim describes as “being near
nothing and surrounded by three cow pastures.” Or
as Matt says, “I had a friend
from New York come up once and he was like ‘How
did you even find out about
college?’” In other words, it’s pretty
desolate.
However, Matt’s childhood bedroom—which was
still covered with skateboarding
posters and show flyers—ultimately turned out to
be the ideal environment to
record Grand. “While our album is different from
our things in the past, it’s what I
would have always done if we had the time and means to
do it, which we did this
time around,” Matt explains, adding that the band
sporadically spent nine months
on their new record as opposed to the nine days in which
they recorded their
debut. After the tracks were laid to tape the band returned
to Brooklyn where
Matt spent his summer sweating, stressing out and mixing
Grand in the duo’s
apartment.” “I would never record our whole
album ourselves again,” he adds,
“but it came out exactly how I wanted it to.”
The result is an album that takes the band’s musicianship
and songwriting to the
next level and also serves as a glowing representation
of how far Matt and Kim
have come since their debut. From the anthemic opener “Daylight” to
the
harmony-rich, atmospheric ballad “Turn This Boat
Around” and demented pop of
“I Wanna,” Grand is quite literally the sound
of the collective discovering their
voice. “All of the songs on the last album we wrote
the first year we learned how
to play our instruments,” Matt acknowledges, “but
this one is much more diverse
and instead of thinking about the songs we thought of
the album as a whole, too.”
Then there are the band’s legendary live shows,
which look more like dance
parties than traditional concerts and blur the line between
musician and listener.
“I really believe that a band should be honest
when they play,” Matt explains.
“Kim and I are generally just excited to play;
I mean I cannot believe that I can
make a living off playing music, which is what I get
to do now; it’s just so
incredible,” he continues. “We’re excited
just to be able to play and we show it,
as dorky as that can look.”
Lyrically, the band’s writing process is just as
idiosyncratic, with Kim writing
random lines of text and Matt going through them and
putting them together until
they start to mean something to the duo. Understandably
the band’s debut
admittedly tended to be about “figuring your life
out,” but this time around the duo
have experienced enough to feel comfortable writing about
different topics and
have expanded their vision into something that’s
metaphor-rich and a little harder
to nail down with one or two sentences on tracks like “Lessons
Learned.”
In fact, that last statement can be applied not only
to Grand as a whole, but to
Matt and Kim as a unit—and, amazingly, it seems
like they’re still just getting
started. “Even though we eat rice and beans a lot
and live in an eight-foot wide
apartment, we’re doing what we want to do,” Matt
summarizes. “It’s like when
you’re watching a movie, you don’t want to
just see people being content—you
need a struggle to make it exciting and fun,” he
adds. “If you can just enjoy all the
little things, that’s ultimately what makes for
a satisfying experience.” |
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