Times New Viking Rip Through Your Ears

Art school bands don't always reflect their backgrounds. See Interpol as an example. They may be a brooding bunch, but their music doesn't really break any musical rules or conventions. Columbus, Ohio's Times New Viking, on the other hand, are exactly the kind of band who sound like they're trying to break every rule.

The group's Matador debut, Rip It Off, is an indie pop riot that's not-so-subtly busting eardrums with its insanely lo-fi production. It follows two other records released on Siltbreeze that gained the trio (comprised of guitarist Jared Phillips, drummer Adam Elliott and keyboardist Beth Murphy) a noisy cult following in the U.S.

Times New Viking are on tour with Super Furry Animals and Jeffrey Lewis and will play Toronto's Mod Club on Wednesday and Montreal's Cabaret the next night.

Noah Love talked to Elliott (who shares lead vocals with Murphy) in January, just as Rip It Off became one of this year's early critical darlings.

ChartAttack: Why go so lo-fi?

Adam Elliott: For us, it's not that we're "going" lo-fi, that's just what we are. That's what our recording sounds like: our equipment. Most music that we like sounds like that, so that's the barometer that we measure our sound on. And with the Matador one, we knew more were going to hear it, but we weren't going to change the way we sounded. The risk of not being yourself is too great. I don't know, I love the way the record sounds.

Don't get me wrong, it works for you guys, but it's an interesting choice to go so…

Lo-fi. I'd say we probably do it subconsciously to, I don't know, not be mainstream, I guess. That's a silly way to say it though.

You could argue that being on Matador isn't exactly "not mainstream."

Yeah, which is, you know, I think why we did it, because we're not Cat Power or The New Pornographers — not that we have anything against their music. It didn't cost very much to make the record.

Did you record the whole thing yourselves?

We did. It was in our practice space. It was mostly Jared, our guitar player.

Is it hard to recreate that visceral intensity in a live setting, or does the record reflect your live sound?

See, the way we usually record is right after we write songs, so it's really fresh. And the more and more that we play on tour, we've actually become a good band, like we can actually play together and be loud. We can play 1,000-seat venues and basements and still have the same sound. So by the time we're out on the road, we've actually learned the songs a bit more than when we recorded them.

Do they sound much different than their recorded incarnations?

It's kind of like how Dylan doesn't play "Like A Rolling Stone," but he plays it every night. He just plays it differently every night. Our songs can change here and there, and we exaggerate certain parts of them when we play them live, so they can have a different character than they do on the record.

Are you getting sick of Guided By Voices comparisons yet?

Not necessarily. I don't see them as much as I thought I would see them. But I love Guided By Voices. Growing up, Robert Pollard was my Beatles. I grew up about 12 minutes away from where he lives, and Jared grew up about 35 minutes away. My older brother was on his record label. But I don't really think we sound like them.

You don't have any sort of relationship with him, do you?

No, no. We played with him, uh, one time.

Tell me a little bit about how the band got started.

We met each other in art school and we were all really good friends. In our senior year of art school, we started skipping class and smoking weed. And we started a band. Jared and I played in a band before then, but it was just a hobby band. We were kind of like a lo-fi Creedence Clearwater Revival, maybe. Beth had never played in a band, but we were all into the same art, so we figured a band was just a natural progression.

How did you end up on Matador?

It took three degrees to end up on Matador. First, all the stars aligned. Gerard Cosley got a copy of our Siltbreeze records (Dig Yourself and Present The Paisley Reich) because he's a fan of Siltbreeze, and saw us live and then asked us to be on Matador.

You guys were signed in late 2006, right?

Yeah, around Christmas.

Was Rip It Off supposed to be a 2007 record?

We tried to get it out earlier. We got it done earlier than they thought we would because Present The Paisley Reich was done early and should have come out earlier. But it just happened that when we finished it and got it manufactured, it made more sense to put it out in January. That's just one of those business things that I don't understand.

There's a lot of buzz from your Siltbreeze albums and your live shows. Do you get caught up in any of it?

I don't think we get caught up in it, but I don't think we believe it either, that it actually exists. Columbus is enough of a problem. There's enough bands and people always talking stuff. There's too much drama here to worry about outside stuff.

You sort of get that impression on your MySpace page, where all the quotes about the band are from people who hate you.

I actually prefer those. The one thing that we're really good at, as a band, is taking criticism, because we're from art school. One thing we learned is that, if you put out a crazy, silly idea, there's going to be some people that aren't going to like it. But those people usually aren't into the same art that you're into, so it's no big whoop.