Thanks to DCist for the words and prose...
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If a band chooses a sweet name like Solar Powered Sun Destroyer, they've already set themselves up for hefty expectations. The moniker brings to mind an all out guitar assault that leaves ears bleeding and brain cells, well, destroyed. The truth is more interesting. Yes, all five members of Solar Powered Sun Destroyer count various hardcore bands among their influences, and guitarists Justin Horenstein and Dave Davies (no, not the guy from the Kinks) both have considerable technical chops. But the guitar parts veer more toward the post-rock end of the spectrum, and the vocal melodies of John Kneip are at once powerful and sweetly emotive. At their most visceral, they could find a spot next to bands like The Life and Times or Explosions in the Sky. At their most experimental, they bring to mind M83.
The most interesting thing, however, about SPSD is how unapologetically excited they are about the band. Their current lineup reflects a recent personnel shift and while all of the bands have played (or still play) in other seasoned and notable acts, to listen to these five talk about the music that they're creating, you'd think that they just discovered rock 'n' roll. Kneip, Horenstein, Davies, drummer Jimmy Rhodes and bassist Ross Hurt (whom we've previously interviewed with Caverns) sat down with us outside of WMUC after their in-studio performance on Third Rail Radio to talk about matching T-shirts, playing with their idols and why they're so pumped about playing in this band.
Find them online at: myspace.com/spsdmusic
Catch them next at: The Black Cat Backstage tomorrow night with Tera Melos
So I know that this is the second lineup of Solar Powered Sun Destroyer. Who’s still here from the original lineup?
JR: Justin and Jimmy. We’re the authentic ones.
How did you find the rest of these guys and recruit them?
JR: I played with Dave in All Else Failed. We knew Ross from Caverns and he’s originally a guitar player. We asked him to play bass and he was totally up for it. So he filled in for a couple of shows on our last lineup. And it was awesome. Justin and I have both known Slobes for awhile now.
JK: Seven years?
JR: Since fall of 2002 or summer of 2002. We’ve been best friends since we met, so we’ve played in bands before. In Nashville. And he just moved down from Ohio to do this band with us. Basically, when the old lineup wasn’t working out Justin and I talked and were like, “If we had a band with our best friends and we were imagining that happening and like, Dave would have to come down from Philly, he would have to come down from Ohio, Ross would have to make time from Caverns...”
RH: I would have to drive all the way out to Olney (laughter all around)
JR: To have all of those things come together seemed pretty impossible but we worked pretty hard to make it happen. Everybody worked really hard to make it happen. And within a period of like, four months, we got a lot done. Wrote some songs and stuff.
Is it all new songs that you’re playing now or still you still play some of the songs that you’d already had?
JK: We’re playing basically like three songs from the first EP. Not really different versions of them. The only thing that’s different is that some of the vocal patterns have changed a little bit. But other than that we’re playing “Some Assembly Required” “Unity of Those Unseen” and “Intromission.”
RH: “Intromission” was the first thing I’d ever heard from Solar Powered, and that’s what really kind of drew me to the band from the beginning. Hearing that just captures their sound. That song, even though it’s just an instrumental, thirty seconds knowing what it’s going to do was nice sort of bookends to the end of the EP and the new lineup. That was the first song this lineup played all together just as a warmup and all of us were just thinking, “Shit...this is going to be cool.”
JK: Let’s do it again!
JR: Basically we just wanted to play it over and over again because it sounded so much better than before.
DD: Basically, every day that we practice sounds better and better and we get more and more excited about everything.
JK: I was thinking about this as we were walking up the hill out of breath after ten steps, actually I know that you’re just as psyched, actually when I was taking a piss, I was thinking, “I am so pumped for this band.” Like after listening back to the show we just played, I was like, “This is going to be so awesome. Like, imagine in September.”
JH: I’m really excited for our writing process, how it’s going, like before, I would just write a bunch of music, bring it to Jimmy and we’d just bang out the song and it’d be done in like a day or two and then kind of go from there. I’ve never been in a band where everyone could actually be in a room and actually write. We actually wrote a couple songs already, one in particular that we think is kind of where we’re going but just feels right and it just happened in a day, all of us in the same room, which has never happened to me.
JK: “Ghost Light?”
JH: “Yeah.”
RH: It’s just like, everyone is on the same page. I’d imagine it’d be pretty close to something like a Christopher Guest movie or an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where it’s just, everyone shows up on set, and it’s on the spot, kind of improv but everybody knows exactly what they’re doing, how it fits in with the song, in this case.
JR: Everyone in this band, you can tell their individual influences from their actual instrument and even by their gear, but we get in the same room and play and it sounds like a very cohesive unit, as opposed to before where it was just Justin and I trying to get everything together. When we finally made this lineup, I consider this the actual real lineup. I don’t ever want to think about the other lineup, we played like ten shows or something. It’s like it never even happened because this is what we were trying to do from the beginning and now it sounds how we want it to sound as opposed to just Justin and I just who felt that we were babysitting a lot of the time, trying to get stuff together and now we’re in a band with our friends and everyone knows the deal. And it sounds like a huge cohesive unit when we’re all together, playing. And if one of us is not playing, you can tell. It sounds very unified.
JH: It’s really nice that we all have similar musical influences.
Like what?
JH: Thrice.
I see the Darkest Hour shirts, Young Widows, Life and Times shirt, Shiner...
JR: We actually have to call each other before shows sometimes to see if we’re wearing the same shirts. Because we all have the same band shirts.
DD: I showed up at Jimmy’s today and I was like, “Oh good, I’m really glad you have a Young Widows shirt on today. And not wearing a Life and Times shirt.”
RH: And Jimmy actually had to text me and tell me, “Oh, by the way, I’m wearing a Young Widows shirt today.”
DD: And we have to do that all the time because we all have the same type of influences for the most part.
RH: And we’ll do that when we go to the mall. And the State Fair. You should see people’s faces when we’re all in bumper cars together wearing the same clothes, it’s like a little gang. But the band is just dead serious. We’re just dead serious. (laughter)
You guys already have a tour set up, where are you going?
RH: Yeah it’s still in the super super early works but in July, a quick ten dates from D.C., Baltimore, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Nashville, Ohio, Missouri and Italy. And hopefully we have a day off to go to Cedar Point.
JK: Yes! We’re going, dude!
You guys are actually getting to play with Frodus next month? Who set that up?
RH: That was actually Jason.
JH: Jason actually asked us to do it which was a huge honor because I’ve liked Frodus for a long time. Even if you hear Frodus later in your musical career, they influence you and you realize how important they actually were. So being able to be asked to open for that band is such a huge honor. It’s at the Talking Head and I think we’re playing first. It’s pretty intimidating playing with them there.
JK: We’ll rock it.
RH: Caverns is also playing that show and Caverns would not exist if Frodus did not exist so it’s beyond an honor twice over.
JR: Jason’s kind of like a helpful guidance counselor to us. He doesn’t manage bands anymore but we always going to him for advice and he talks to us about band situations. Basically, if we ever have questions, should we do this or should we do this, he tells us another way to think about it. He’s a helpful source to go to all the time.
RH: From bass drives to back rubs, he’s got it all covered.
It sounds like you guys have a lot of resources both here in the area and outside of the area as well. Is there anything or anyone in particular, as well as Jason, that you’d recommend to any newer D.C. bands?
JR: It’s weird. A lot of people I’ve met have been through hardcore bands and a lot of people that I’ve met in hardcore bands end up doing music with more melody later in their musical career. They were kind of hitting that point. Like our friend Steve, he plays in Circa Survive, he was in a hardcore band, that’s how we know those guys. All of those guys used to be in heavier bands. We knew them through that sort of connection. Helped us out with some shit. Steve Lambert did sound for All Else Failed in Michigan.
Steve Lambert from the Rock and Roll Hotel?
JR: He did sound for All Else Failed in Michigan. Lansing, Michigan. We broke all our gear that night. He still remembers that and the first time I ever met him again, he remembered me from that show, I had no idea who he was at that time. Little connections like that are super helpful. We consider most of these people, not just connections, but our friends and because we’re such good friends with them, they’ll help us out. Anybody from Deleted Scenes to J. Robbins who let us come in and record for our EP when we were hurting money-wise, he helped out. It’s awesome to have friends like that who just happen to be higher up musically. We’re just starting, we’re a brand new band.
JK: Don’t burn bridges with people either. Isn’t that a good one? Treat people as you want to be treated.
RH: You don’t want to waste your time hanging around negative people.
Do you have any other bands in the area that you particularly enjoy?
JR: It’s really awesome as far as D.C. bands right now there’s a bunch of us that are friends and we actually consider as friends and not just bands that we play with. We’re friends with Caverns, Imperial China, Hammer No More the Fingers are from North Carolina but they’re basically a D.C. band, they play up here so much. Deleted Scenes, we’ve been best friends with those guys since high school.
JH: Yeah, pretty much my whole high school band was with the entire lineup of Deleted Scenes minus Scheffey. That’s how I know them.
RH: New Rock Church of Fire. The recently deceased Black & White Jacksons. We’re friends with all of them.
JR: And there’s a lot of bands that are very similar in sound along the East Coast. Like the Bronze Course is one that really stands out as a band that really fits in well with Solar Powered, Survival based out of New York. But there’s a lot of bands down here that we know. It’s funny, Solar Powered is such a huge deal to us but we all have our own things that we do on the side. Ross has Caverns, Slobes has his own stuff.
JK: I’ve got two things that I’m doing right now. I’ve got this thing called The Spectator. I’m trying to improve my skills as a drummer and a bass player so it’s basically like a beginner/intermediate drum and bass player, you can tell the difference. But I did this thing in Nashville where, once I have time to actually get it out, I did this thing called NASA Wives. Probably some songs I wrote two years ago, I started recording them and I have an EP that I’ll be putting out in a couple months.
JR: And I have this project that I’m not supposed to talk about at all. Basically, with members of bands that are higher up in the music world. Justin keeps writing stuff.
RH: He plays video games.
JH: I play video games and I have a hard drive full of song ideas but those are probably going to be in the vault for awhile considering how well we all write together. If we ever wanted to write again, we could probably just go to my vault, because I took all of last year to write for this band and I’ve probably saved like, a hundred ideas. Just recorded anything I played. We have a lot of stuff we can go back on but everything is coming together so well that we can all rather do the writing. We’re all getting some new gear. Our sound will be changing a little bit.
RH: The last thing that Justin introduced is now our set opener. Justin’s an incredible songwriter. Right now we’re calling it “These Old Socks and Shoes” but all of our song titles are all ridiculous titles like “Loose Hoagies” is our set closer.
JK: It’s called “The Roulette Year”
RH: It’s called “The Roulette Year” but all of us call it “Loose Hoagies.”
DD: We’re in the stage of naming songs right now.
Are you still recording right now?
RH: We’re recording a three song demo EP that we’re going to be handing out.
JK: All new stuff.
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