Cute Is What We Aim For's Communication Breakdown

09/11/08 2:52pm

by Jessica Lewis (CHARTattack)

Buffalo, N.Y. emo-poppers Cute Is What We Aim For were supposed to record their second album, Rotation, in 30 days. But it ended up taking three months, a few songwriting trips, some help from producer John Feldmann and a personnel switch. ChartAttack recently sat down with vocalist Shaant Hacikyan and new bassist Dave Melillo to find out how it all went down.

ChartAttack: You've said there was a lot of pressure to make this record. Explain this and how you coped with it.
Shaant Hacikyan: The only pressure we had within ourselves was to write the amount of songs necessary to fill out an LP. The outside pressure of being successful and stuff like that was erroneous to me because I felt as if we should really be thankful and appreciate where we are now as opposed to worrying. [To Melillo] Were you worried about the pressure of the success?

Dave Melillo: No, when you're in it, of course, you feel it. But I think that was conducive to us making the best record that we could have possibly made. I think if we didn't have that pressure or those expectations from ourselves, then I don't think we would have made as good of a record.

So did you just not have enough time to write?
SH: We had a lot of stuff going on. I don't think we were even in the right head space as a lineup to write. We just couldn't do it.

DM: A lot of the work was done by Shaant, Jeff [Czum, guitar] and myself. All the ideas that we came to the studio with were 90 per cent from us. From the beginning, we had a lot of ideas, but it was just very hard for us to completely fill it out because we didn't know where everyone else stood.

SH: It was brutal, because you'd sit there and you'd write a whole song and then you show it to a bandmate and they shut you down. It was like, "Are we doing something wrong? Is this broken?"

So there were problems between each other, in terms of communication?
SH: Yeah. We were having brutal issues. But I attribute that to just the formative years and us growing up. But with anything, you move through and transition. For us to not really know each other well and get launched into this whole bizarre world that is the touring industry can definitely tell you who you are. I think that our personalities were clashing because we all wanted to be different and it took us to sit down and decide that, "Listen, we're an entity, this is all for one and one for all."

Were there moments of doubt?
SH: Yeah! We were on the verge of a break-up for how long?

DM: We were sitting in John Feldmann's living room all in a circle, and it was one of the first days of being, "Hey, here's an idea, do you like this?" And we struggled so much to get through songs. It was between being nervous, unprepared and being in this new situation that we were scared to death of. I was sick to my stomach during that because John was looking at us like, "What the fuck are you doing?" I feel like that day made us go home, kick ourselves in the ass, and we came back and we killed it. A lot of that happened in the studio where it was like immediate redemption.

Would you say that's the moment that made you come back together or was there another?
SH: There were so many I'd say at this point, but that was a catalyst.

DM: I feel like one of them, out in California, at least when [Shaant] really took the whole musketeers mentality...

SH: I do use that phrase too much. That's so annoying.

DM: We did a songwriting trip up to Monterey Bay. We all had time to spend with each other. It was all good vibes. Shaant came into my room and said, "Dude, it could be like this all the time. We're on tour, we're going to all these awesome places, why can't we make it like that?" And that was the day where I felt everything changed.

SH: Happiness. It seems like a far-fetched ideal, but it's all a matter of communication. We just communicate now instead of being like, "Fuck off!" and not talking to each other for weeks at a time. We'd go home and we wouldn't talk for two or three weeks. Like, two of us would, which was brutal. Then we decided we're not little kids anymore. We need to step up, this is ridiculous, and this is a job. We need to give the effort that everyone that we're surrounded by puts in.