Oxford Collapse's New Bits

09/09/08 2:17pm

by Brian Pascual (CHARTattack)

Oxford Collapse have had a tough time lately.

A few days into touring in support of their new album, Bits, the New York trio have just pulled into the venue they'll be playing in San Francisco.

"Things started off a little rocky going through the southeast, which for us has not been our strongest market," admits guitarist/vocalist Mike Pace. "But once we hit the west coast, it's actually been great. Had a couple of days of being rejuvenated."

It's been suggested that maybe the southeast U.S. just doesn't care for witty but snotty college indie punk.

"I think it's a combination of timing," Pace ponders. "Playing Birmingham, Alabama on a Monday night, your expectations are pretty low.

"Plus, school just got back in session, so going to a show isn't the first thing on people's minds. And then combined with the fact that we don't have a good draw around those parts to begin with. We don't play there as much as we should."

The current tour will take the band to cities they've never played before. In Canada, aside from the usual suspects of Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, Oxford Collapse will pull into Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon. They'll set up in Fargo, N.D. and Ames, Iowa south of the border.

While Pace is excited to hit these cities, he's most looking forward to playing the band's new songs live.

"We're having a blast playing them. As long as we're having fun. People are usually either into what we're doing, or they don't care at all. I don't think there are too many people that dislike our band. You either like our band, or you've never heard of us, pretty much."

Oxford Collapse's shows are notorious for being rowdy, raucous shout-along affairs — essentially the reasons that make their records so infectiously addictive.

"Playing live for us is an excuse to go off and have a lot of fun physically and jump around," Pace says enthusiastically. "It's a different entity than recording, which for me personally is my favourite thing to do.

"Hearing your song, from the creation of it to the final recorded version, ideally you have the satisfaction of hearing a completed song you came up with however long ago. That's really fun and satisfying for me. And then being able to play it live is just an extension of that."

Recording Bits was a different experience for Oxford Collapse, as the band intentionally went into the studio with a different game plan than they've used in the past. They didn't want to stagnate and pigeonhole themselves after just three albums.

"With these songs, as opposed to previous records, there was a certain amount of improv in the studio," says Pace. "And some of those gang vocal parts we just had friends stop by and we'd say, 'Hey, why don't you sing on this song?'

"So we incorporated other people as a collaborative deal, as opposed to previous times where we'd go in and we'd know exactly what we wanted to do and everything would be laid out and all the songs would be written and complete and we'd try to nail that particular vision or what we were hearing in our head. But this time around, we were a little looser."

The loose vibe of the recording sessions no doubt made for a more rewarding listen. Fans of the band's previous albums — especially 2006's indie-rock-party-in-a-box, Remember The Night Parties — were getting used to a certain Oxford Collapse sound: post-punk riffs, math rock rhythm sections and shout-along vocals. Bits tones it down and changes the pace, blending the acoustic-driven "Featherbeds" with the funky roll of "John Blood" and its gorgeous background female vocal parts. But nowhere is the band's desire to mix things up greater than on the quirky but beautiful "A Wedding," which eschews all instruments in the Oxford Collapse arsenal in favour of only a cello.

"We absolutely don't want to get bored," says Pace. "We don't want to lessen our worlds.

"We didn't want to write the same songs over and over again. We already wrote those records, so now it's time to try something new, and that was the challenge we imposed upon ourselves. You're just going to get bored if you write the same two-minute song over and over again. And there's nothing wrong with that, but that's not what we're about."

You can see Oxford Collapse and Love As Laughter here:

Sept. 9 Edmonton, AB @ The Velvet Underground
Sept. 10 Saskatoon, SK @ Amigos
Sept. 20 Toronto, ON @ Sneaky Dee's
Sept. 21 Montreal, QC @ Club Lambi