MFR Interview: Josh Grier of Tapes 'N Tapes
Tapes 'N Tapes, pride of Minneapolis, will see their debut The Loon, self-released last October, come out on XL Recordings next Tuesday. That night, they will perform on The Late Show With David Letterman. Before all this, however, is their first time playing the historic First Avenue mainroom in Minneapolis on Saturday night, sharing a bill with another Minneapolis buzz band, MFR favorites The Plastic Constellations. I interviewed frontman Josh Grier for Twin Cities music magazine Rift.
It's just too perfect: Tapes 'N Tapes, a band who, in the course of a couple years, went from four-track experimenters to indie rock fetish objects, endured and enjoyed boatloads of gushing hype, played both opening gigs and sold-out headlining stints, had to pull over their tour van in Arizona to escape the elements.
"We've been going through some crazy windstorms," vocalist and guitarist Josh Grier said. Muffin, their beloved tour van, was rocking back and forth as he spoke, but fittingly, Grier was calm, collected and bemused. If there's one thing this band has learned, it's how to survive an onslaught.
"The Loon," the debut LP from Tapes 'N Tapes, is full of jagged edges, melodic u-turns and oblique lyrics. Remarkably, it's also joyous, catchy and head-bobbingly satisfying. Tapes 'N Tapes are no longer Minneapolis' best-kept secret, a label that was attached to the band for a scant few months. Pitchfork, online purveyor of all things hip, scored the record an 8.3 out of 10 after its release last October, declaring: "Credit the band for avoiding the toothless mush that typically results from this sort of populism, and arriving instead at a fresh vision through eloquent pastiche." (In Pitchfork language, of course, this is a rave.)
MP3 blogs such as Stereogum and Music For Robots gave their two cents, and Tapes 'N Tapes was on their way.
The band started a national tour at the beginning of June 2006 and will play their debut First Avenue Mainroom show on July 22. Their 2006 has so far included a UK tour, appearances at the South By Southwest festival and countless interviews concentrating primarily on their name. Initially self-released, "The Loon" will be re-released by XL Recordings on July 25, which will inevitably prompt another media windstorm.
In short, the members of Tapes 'N Tapes – Grier, Matt Kretzmann (keys), Jeremy Hanson (drums) and Erik Appelwick (bass) – are busy, tired, excited and going through something extraordinary.
"It's all new," Grier said, still surrounded by airborne Arizona sand. "You can't call up your parents and your friends and ask, 'You guys been through this? What do you do?' You just go with the flow."
The success was also unexpected. The band began as an improvisational project in a band member's kitchen. They recorded their debut EP in a Wisconsin cabin without plumbing, played some opening gigs and the rest is history.
Grier and his bandmates found the Minneapolis music scene very cooperative, a perfect atmosphere for a new band with an ever-growing number of fans.
"The bands here are really supportive of other bands," Grier said. He admitted when opening for other bands, "You kind of foster relationships."
In fact, "The Loon" was produced by a member of the local music scene: former Hopefuls and Vicious Vicious member Erik Appelwick, a good friend who bugged the band to record a full-length album.
"It turned out to be a great match. We like a lot of the same music," Grier said. Appelwick has since become the band's bassist. (On June 6, The New York Times reviewed the band's set positively and gleefully noted Appelwick's onstage "gyrating.")
The most remarkable thing about Tapes 'N Tapes is the fact that their output largely comes from noodling.
"[For] a lot of these songs, I would just mess around," Grier said. "I'd play guitar for a couple hours and things would come out of that. For the most part, things just materialized. Usually it's pretty organic, how the songs develop."
These songs, however, hardly sound like the result of messing around. They crackle with enthusiasm and as a whole, "The Loon" is the rare record that actually sounds like the originality described in its hype.
This originality might explain Grier's hesitancy when answering the obligatory "influences" question.
"We listened to a lot of Flaming Lips and Pixies growing up, and a lot of Beatles and Dylan. I think all of us listen to a lot of different music," Grier said, after some deliberation.
This eclecticism reflects the band's mixture of experimentation and attention to melody, though the arts media have generally tended toward another touchstone when describing Tapes 'N Tapes: Pavement.
While Grier certainly doesn't deny Pavement as an influence, he's a bit bewildered by this critical consensus. But, like other aspects of the band's reception, he doesn't mind going with it.
"At least we're getting compared to a band we like and admire, and not, like, Sammy Hagar," Grier said, proving again that things for Tapes 'N Tapes are not only going great, they could definitely be much worse.
This article originally appeared in issue 16 of Rift magazine. That article can be read here.