Photo courtesy of axs.com
Slim Wray—the irreverent garage-surf rock group is dropping a new EP—Post No Bills on July 14. They have released a single, previewing the track, “Take It Or Leave It,” available to stream on SoundCloud.
Drummer, Chris Moran describes the EP as a British Invasion-y, garage-surf rock alternate to their first album, Sack Lunch. In Post No Bills, the band focuses more on the structure of each demo in aspiration of releasing something that is rock and roll in its purest form.
When I spoke with them, we talked musical influences, the creative process behind Post No Bills, and the media platforms they like best (i.e., Brooklyn-raised carrier pigeons). They have an East Coast tour planned for this summer and release party in Manhattan at Rockwood Music Hall on July 9—don’t miss it.
Slim Wray formed in 2012, so you’ve surpassed the 3-year mark. How has your sound changed since you first started rehearsing and recording?
Basically, when we first started, Howzr and I were playing in a band, probably back in 2007, and then we created this band and it was really grungy and it was super influenced by Alice In Chains…and some Pilot stuff. Now, over the years and over the different kinds of bands and different types of relationships we’ve formed with bands, we’ve really just sort of stripped away all the B.S. and kept it really straight-forward and raw, so it’s kind of just cut out all of the fancy slash meat-and-potatoes of it. You know it’s really important to have a structure of a song that people can actually hold onto instead of just trying to show off to people that you can play 50 million notes. We kind of just took the approach of less is more and just focused on one idea for each song, so it kind of just started melding into this garage-y surf, wildebeest that just started terrorizing New York City and Brooklyn. With those different bands that we had that broke up…we kind of just went on a hiatus and in 2012 reunited and went in a little more of a garage-y direction, a little more towards Iggy Pop and The Kinks and The Animals and all of that good stuff.
You finished your regional tour for Sack Lunch not too long ago and now have a smaller East Coast tour that’s about to start. Has it been easier to book shows this time around?
Yeah, definitely. We definitely notice that this time around, this lineup and this material, we’ve learned a lot from the past like what Chris was saying about how to write good songs, and then also experiences like being on the road and how to book shows and how to put on a good show and everything. That whole process is no over night thing where all of a sudden shows are bigger. It’s just like you’re slowly day-by-day getting better. That’s what we’ve seen, and when we put out the first Slim Wray album, people are just trying to get an incentive of who you are and what you do, and then that’s kind of where it’s at—do what you are and you’ll start doing well. It’s definitely easier though, it’s just easier to play at a club you haven’t played at before—it’s sort of like your rough resume of what you’ve been doing…a couple of years ago we were crickets, so that helps. Its kind of way different, we kept just hitting these circuits and we kind of just don’t play the city as much and then when we do come back they’re bigger shows and people are really excited and it turns into a whole event—its kind of like a circus. Then we go back out on the road and we do it again and again, and you’ve got to keep doing it because it’s really just building up this friend-base of people on the road and you start to see that that they’re coming out with more of their friends, and their bands are unique…and then the next time around there’s a little bit more of a circus.
What is the story behind the name of Slim Wray?
We’re pretty good at answering this question. Slim Wray came from kind of a meld of Blink Ray and Hargo Slim, and we were looking for kind of clearly something that supplies our sound, so that was what we were doing a little bit, and then we were having a hard time coming up with some names, so we looked at a list of “Awesome 50s Artists,” and kind of just started doing a mash-up. We liked the sound of it—it flows, two words, it’s easy to remember and it kind of sounds like we sound a little bit…
What media platforms do you use to promote Slim Wray?
Chris Moran: We really like carrier pigeons. We really want to bring that back—we think that they’re going to be really huge in 2016.
Ryan Houser (Howzr): Chris just has a huge coop on top of his apartment…Chris sends them out across the city.
Chris Moran: Yeah, that’s usually how we book shows in Philly and D.C. and stuff—we just send the carrier pigeons out.
We used to attach them to stray cats but then we realized that the dogs were eating the cats, and then we attached them to the dogs and then the dogs were getting eaten by dinosaurs, but then once the dinosaurs died we resorted back to carrier pigeons because nothing can catch a carrier pigeon. You’ve got to get the pigeons to fly. The next time you’re in a park and you see all of these pigeons just hanging out, eating, you know where those came from—from Slim Wray.
I’ll definitely think of that.
We like Instagram. I think it’s pretty cool because it gives this unclouded version of what we do and what we are, and it’s kind of more like an experience for the people on our Instagram. We don’t use Facebook or post stuff or stuff like that. We’re kind of slacking in the Twitter world because honestly, we just really haven’t gone to that. We do Twitter, but it just seems a little unapproachable and not real. It seems a little impersonal. I think the thing is really that the reason we started grabbing onto Instagram more really is because it feels like a picture diary of what the band’s life is, you know. So, if we’re in the studio, we can take a picture and post it, or even if we’re just meeting at a bar to brainstorm ideas…it adds a little bit more of a feel to it I think.
When you recorded hits “Bear” and “I Gotta Girl (with a list of needs)” were you ever like “This is it—these are the song we’re going to promote,” or did any of you want to promote another song?
SW: I think I felt that way about “Bear” right away. I think it was kind of formulated for a while, then we sort of got the idea to have this constant, kind of what we were talking about earlier—how we pick one idea and kind of stick with it. In a lot of ways it’s just starting with that rhythm that’s the backbone of it, and then the riff. I think we were just kind of excited by it so we were like “Why not make that the chorus.” So it kind of came about organically in a way…and I think that happens in general. It’s a big part of our process really, because we’ll be jamming on ideas and when we start putting a song together, it’s just really quick and everyone will get really excited about that song and be like “That songs awesome,” and then we’ll go back to it three weeks later and if we’re like “Yeah, lets play that one song we played a couple of weeks ago,” then that kind of informs us—this is something that’s worth sticking around and putting it in our set and seeing how people respond to it. If it’s one person that’s like “Hey, lets play that song that we did two weeks ago,” and everyone else is like “Eh, whatever,” then we’re just like “Screw it, its not even worth it. Drop it.”
Yeah, if we come in and we remember the song, then it’s a good sign. If we’re kind of actually coming in really eager to play that song, then that’s a really good sign. Also, another thing we realize is that if we’re not dancing to it, if it doesn’t make us move, why would it make anyone else move? We kind of go along those bylines. There are some things that might sound awesome but they just don’t go to the next part of the song, which they’re really supposed to somewhere, so we kind of put those on the back burner and come back to those. We have like thousands of recordings on cellphones just of ideas and concepts, and some of them are labeled just so we can go back to them and pull from them on a rainy day, and just be like, “We just might go with that one part we really like.” But then sometimes you just go and write something and its completely written and it just sounds and feels really good, and then you don’t mess with that because you hit the golden moment where everything just kind of flows together, and it’s like don’t touch it, don’t do anything, it’s perfect the way it is—just record it. So it varies a lot.
We’re really honest with each other in a polite way. I think that’s really important to the process. If someone says “Yeah I’m not really feeling that,” then there’s probably a good reason. If the band doesn’t even like it, then what’s the point of putting it out into the world? In a lot of ways we play songs that are the right music for ourselves first, and we hope in doing so that other people kind of join our little cult, our little world.
SW: In our band, there’s no ego of like “No, I have to play this because its what I have to play.” It’s more like “Shut up, nobody else wants to play this,” or its kind of like “Yeah we think this is good, this is cool.” I think with a lot of younger bands there’s an ego-trip where its like “I want to write my songs,” but it’s like “No—that’s not how music goes, it’s a collaborative process.” It’s like a flow, you have to compromise with stuff and once you actually realize what the other person is trying to say with their notes, then you can have your own voice because you’re going with the flow instead of against the grain. We kind of just do it like that, I guess, I don’t know. Maybe.
SW: It’s so much of a part of evolution too. In other bands, with other lineups, one day you’ll have constructive conflict, and then there’s another one where it’s really unconstructive, there are egos, people have a different idea of the direction of the band, that doesn’t really get you there. Its better to say this is what we do—it’s simple. Everyone’s got to vibe with it, and we’re doing this as a group.
You’ve already released single “Take It Or Leave It,” and your new EP is coming out this summer. What is the EP like?
Chris Moran: It’s just a little more focused on the garage-surf sound, but kind of thrown back with a little British invasion-y kind of stuff. It’s just really stripped down and focused on the structure of the songs. I think for Sack Lunch, we love Sack Lunch, but it kind of has a lot of different feels, that kind of are a bunch of places, but with this its just unforgiving rock and roll, put the peddle to the meddle, go out on the beach, surf, and then have sex on the beach. It’s just rock and roll, I don’t know—there’s no other way. It’s just so stripped down that it’s naked, so it’s cool. Is that what you were trying to say, Howzr?
Howzr: Exactly. In general, its more focused I think. A little more soul, a little more of that garage rock influence…in some ways it kind of runs with the theme of “I Gotta Girl,” the album kind of goes consistently with that vibe. And, everything Chris said, about the girls, all of the fun facts.
Will you release a new music video with one of the songs on Post No Bills?
SW: Yeah, we’re in preproduction for it; we’ll probably shoot it in the next couple of weeks. We’re choosing between two different songs, and we have two different concepts for both of the songs, and we’re going to be shooting the video June 6th. I don’t know if we can really give away what we’re doing yet, but we have one concept of flipping open the back end of a U-Haul and whipping out notes, like random concerts around the city, and seeing peoples reactions and stuff. Another one is just a concept of going to different car washes—I’m not joking. Who knows, that could change over night but those are the concepts we’re going with right now. We think they’re pretty cool because the first one is kind of crazy, weird and you get people’s reactions, and it’s kind of just a rip-and-dish, just go out there and play and see what just happens and then, who doesn’t like car washes. That’s really just something everyone has little reminisces of—going through car washes. Plus, every car wash is different, but I think we’re going to have a storyboard built into that so it’s not just all car washes.
What band or musician is the most influential to your sound?
Chris Moran: For me, as a drummer, I really like…John Bonham, I like the drummer from System of a Down—he’s really creative. I also like the drummer from Ringo Starr. I love the players who aren’t exactly perfect, they don’t play 50 million notes, they’re just pocket players who know how to get creative.
Howzr: For me, I think big influences are Eric Burdon from The Animals, Iggy Pop, some of the early Stones stuff, The Pixies and Nirvana, and then a little alternative, early grunge. I think we really like that mix of the juxtaposition of a sort of pretty pop mixed with a dirty edginess, and those are the kinds of bands that we really reference, and not just from ’60s grunge on, but ’70s pop, and some early ’90s grunge stuff. So that mix of the prettiness of the Beach Boys mixed with the darkness of Iggy Pop. It’s a big part of our thinking when we put songs together, because we like to have that basic pop structure but then we like to get really wild and gritty with it.
by Katie Garry
