Flyer Profile: Hermit Thrushes
As a musician, the worst question you can get asked by someone is “What kind of band are you?” What they’re wanting is a one or two word answer like “Country” or “Rock” or “Metal” but when multiple people with multiple influences get together to write songs, rarely does the sound that comes out fall into such a simplistic category.
This holds especially true if your band is Hermit Thrushes from Philadelphia. The most common fallback for describing a band like Hermit Thrushes is probably “avant-garde” or “experimental” but I prefer the following from their Sonicbids page:
Bizarre, happy & truly frightening pop music performed by a frenzied rainbow.
These guys are playing a house show tonight at The New Deli along with Pygmylush, Thank God, and Fayetteville’s Zombie Dice.
In preparation for the show, we sent over an interview for a Flyer Profile. In reading their answers, we were sort of confused at first until we realized that they’d changed all of our questions. Maybe it was the drummer, Sam, who we originally corresponded with or maybe it was Yianni, who seems to have been the one tasked with answering them. Some of them were only slightly altered. Others were completely reworked.
In other words, what you’re about to read is either Hermit Thrushes interviewing Hermit Thrushes or Hermit Thrushes’ interpretation of the Fayetteville Flyer’s interview of Hermit Thrushes. Either way, fair enough.
What have you been eating lately?
None of your beezwax.
What do you think of Arkansas?
I’ve never been there but I’ve defended it to a bunch of stuffy Yanks so it had better kick ass.
Do you think Jesus was a real man or a metaphorical embodiment of “doing the right thing”?
What? Who cares.
What’s in your CD player right now? Everything except rap and country?
Seriously? We listen to mostly bagpipe music. Scottish highland, balkan tsambouna, Moroccan, etc.
Philly seems great. Is it?
Absolutely. It’s a great place to live and hear good music. The following Philly bands are worth a listen: Reading Rainbow, Power Animal, Drums Like Machine Guns, Rad Racket, Popo, My Mind, The Extraordinaires, etc.
For the edification of 12 year-olds and/or people that never had parents or a car made before 1995, what is a “cassette tape.”
A cassette tape is a trashy, disposable plastic case housing magnetic tape that can be encoded with sounds. We have a cassette tape split with Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk from Kansas. We chose this particularly crummy sounding medium for release to cover up all the mistakes we made.
What hot new recording studio do you lay down your trax?
We recorded “Benaki” and our soon-to-be-released album “Slight Fountain” (Joyful Noise Recordings/Slipshod Mucus Kiss) at Castle Gay in Philly.
Which one of you guys takes your pants off in public?
Our drummer has a serious illness that causes him to continually feel a sense of extreme discorporation and at the event in question, he thought he was in the Bahamas and not waving his white thighs at a Village Voice reporter.
I heard your live show features PCP-induced heroism, Chinese acrobatics and shadow puppet theatre. How high can you kick?
Let’s just put it this way, I won three consecutive high-kicking competitions during a show/party at the last Flower Shoppe show in Chicago.
What’s your deal? Do you do anything outside of making noise?
When we’re not playing with Hermit Thrushes, we all play in a band called Folklore. Our guitarist plays songs under the name Snowcaps. Our drummer sometimes plays in Mose Giganticus.
[UPDATE: Tune in to KXUA 88.3FM tonight (3/16/09) from 6 to 8pm for the Monday night feature show with guests Hermit Thrushes]
Click below to hear “Fourth” by Hermit Thrushes
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Discussion
The Fayetteville Flyer doesn't necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full policy.
By Beebs on March 16th, 2009
That’s funny. My favorite part is Everything except rap and country?
By mtaylorlong on March 16th, 2009
This self-interview is classy. I like it, and now I must go to this show.
By Total Bastard on March 16th, 2009
Memphis Pencils are way better.
By reed on March 17th, 2009
These guys put on a wonderful show that even a self-created interview can describe. Except for the high-kicking comment, that was right on the money. Damn.
Even Memphis Pencils would have a Total Bastard check these guys out next time they come through town, March 23 (a Monday) at Smoke & Barrel
By Ashleigh on March 19th, 2009
These guys are my new favorite band.
By Jack Pierce;DEA on March 24th, 2009
Impressive tune. Boyish antics in the interview. Dig.
By hal on May 7th, 2009
DON’T PATRONIZE THIS BAND. SAM TREMBLE IS A NARC/SNITCH:
http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2009/05/05/citypapernet-exclusive-i-caught-the-hipster-grifter-kari-ferrell/
By George on May 8th, 2009
Damn hal. You nickels is crazy up in philly.
That article is just plain weird. After mildly careful consideration I find Mr Tremble guilty of being a self-serving hipster douche. Why would a guy set a girl up like that to get busted and then brag about it in an article that he freaking wrote himself?!? Kind of takes the whole ‘I just wanted to do the right thing’ argument away. F’ing lame publicity stunt! Why do I care? I have no idea, except it bugs me.
Trackbacks