The Invisible Cities

The Invisible Cities' "Watertown" (make yourself a favour anb buy your copy here) continuous mix of different styles may leave you surprised at first, and that was also the case with us at indiepop.it, but after intensive listenings we couldn't fail to notice how good this young band from San Francisco is. With one of the most peculiar drumming ever heard in a pop/rock record and the beautiful voice of Sadie Contini, The Invisible Cities manage to create a vast landscape made of lush and dreamy pop numbers alongside catchy rock tunes, mantaining a superb although sometimes disjointed songwriting quality from start to finish. Here's what thay had to tell us on the subject.

Probably the best thing about The Invisible Cities is the way you manage to put songs like "Synaptic Gap" alongside plain pop numbers. This comes probably from you having such diverse experiences and breeding grounds as musicians, or from the plain fact that the first album is usually the most eclectic. Is it so?

Sadie: I wanted the songs to be somewhat different from one another, in part to convince myself that we weren't writing the same song over and over. Also i like the way certain albums like the White Album and Latin Playboys sound a little like you're listening to the radio instead of hearing one band's latest songs and I had that in mind to some extent.

Han: I'm not sure how conscious i was of making sure the songs on the record sound different from each other; it seems that it just sorta turned out that way. A lot of that is probably due to us not wanting to write the same song over and over, and i also completely agree with sadie about how records like the White Album (and heck, even "Rubber Soul") jump from style to style are really fun to listen to.

I have found all aspects of your record to be quite enjoyable, but they tend not to blend together; it's as if "Watertown" is made up of clusters of songs: the jazzy ones, the poppy ones, the folky ones. was this intentional or a result of your method of working/writing? Do you agree with this opinion at all?

Sadie: I think we just tried to come up with a collection of songs that varied (before bringing drums in), and then on top of that I think Tim's drumming kind of has the final say in terms of the feel of each song. And some reviewers do seem to find the variety disjointed, but I like hearing the differences back to back. I also don't think they're all that different. It's not like we sound like Devo on one song and the Shins on the next. We always pretty much sound like a guitar driven indie band.

Some reviews were lamenting the fact that the slower songs were not anywhere as brilliant as the fast ones. Maybe the contrast between the two may make somebody think some of the songs are kinda unfinished. Is there something you do not like about this album? Some song you wish you had left off and/or developed more?

Sadie: I like that a couple reviews that say our fast songs are the best and a couple that say the slower ones are better and more lush feeling. it's true that some of the songs are very sparse, and that was very much on purpose not to have an instrument pile-on all the time.

Han: yeah, completely agree. a lotta records these days don't leave enough room to breathe. it's just one big compressed RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGG for 75 minutes and it's exhausting to listen to. so we definitely wanted to keep a lot of space on some of the songs. on the other had, some songs like "take my picture" have a thousand guitar overdubs. and regarding developing a song this way or that, i certainly think some songs have improved as a result of our performing them live, and it woulda been nice to record them after playing them live for awhile. hopefully some of the songs on the next record will benefit from having been stage-tested to an extent.
And re: catchy - one of the interesting things we've found is that at some point or another, every song on the record has been named as somebody's favorite song. so i guess it's nice that everyone has their own definitions of what works for them.

Some aspects of your sound reminded me of bands I used to love, like the Blake Babies or Lemonheads, who have experienced a somewhat controversial success. Do you feel you have something in common with them? Are you rooted in the so called college-rock scene?

Sadie: Did you mean by controversial success that those bands were not successful on mainstream radio? If that's what you mean, then I wouldn't be surprised if we're in that grouping. Also, there is a scene in San Francisco that we're a part of, in the sense that there are other bands we like to play with.

What is it like being in an indie band right now in the US? How's a normal day in the life of an indie band? Do you get to play a lot, see shows? Do you have day jobs?

Sadie: Lately we've been playing a couple times a month locally. A lot of cool bands have sprung up in San Francisco in the last couple years, and there's a lot to see now. A few of my current favorites are Scrabbel, Love is Chemicals, Terese Taylor, Goh Nakamura.
As for jobs, Tim plays drums professionally and occasionally takes on a day job temporarily. Gary is a professional bassist in NYC, and I don't know the last time Gary had a day job -- when he's not playing gigs he's busy souping up gear he buys off eBay and recording tons of instrumental bits. Han and I seem to usually work in the web industry. And our friend singer/songwriter Goh Nakamura has been playing shows with us lately. He's a busy guy, teaching and performing his own music a lot around the bay area.

Is there no electronic at all on Watertown? Do you have something against its use in a rock band?

Sadie: Do you mean loops and stuff? i think mostly we just used what we had played live up until that point. but we're pretty open to using all kinds of sound makers.

Han: yeah, and who knows what the next record will contain? we've used loops and such on stage, and one of the songs on the record originally was based on a drum loop but we canned it in favor of a better version without.

I believe Tim's drumming is one of the most peculiar things about the IC. And it obviously doesn't come from pop. How did you got him into the band? Was it easy to incorporate his drumming in a pop context?

Tim: Always trying the peculiar angle, I guess. When I met Sadie & Han via craigslist.org I was playing a ton, but getting very burned out on playing jazz that was uninspired. I went searching for something, not really knowing what. I really connected with Sadie & Han's music. I enjoy trying to go everywhere musically, & they provide me the freedom to try stuff that other bands maybe wouldn't. I'm just as happy playing simply as I am trying to mix it up every bar.

Sadie, do you write lyrics to the songs? I was wondering especially about Birthday, as it's very dense and sung with a kind of beautiful and ragged anger. Do you write lyrics to let out things that happened to you?

Sadie: So far, Han and I have both written the lyrics. I did write the Birthday lyrics -- I usually think of it as wistful.
I'm inspired by a lot of things, and I like it best when I am not sure what a song is about right away. Birthday was like that. Han came up with some music and I started with a few lyrics that didn't necessarily mean anything to me yet. It's not really autobiographical, but it's the one song people seem to expect to be autobiographical -- especially folks that knew me growing up. It does mention a river, and i did grow up near a river, so maybe there's something to that. I kinda like the the confusion between what is autobiographical and what isn't. I guess I think about whether I identify with a song or not rather than whether it really happened in a literal way. I think that any song could be non-autobiographical and could end up feeling very autobiographical at times.(sadie)

I particularly enjoyed "Lost in translation": the way the voice is layered on different tracks, the quiet guitar chords, the song seems to live in a world of its own. What is it about? Does it have anything to do with the movie of the same title?

Sadie: after seeing the movie i really liked finding out what other people thought of it, because people's impressions of it seemed so different. people would comment on the cinematography, or how it showed the relationships you have when traveling, or the alienation of being in another country, or how bill murray was so dissatisfied with his job, etc. And i think in terms of songs in general, that's the most interesting thing to me -- is what people make of it, and how what it means to someone may change over time.
The song did come together right after i saw the movie. i assembled the chords from an old recording i had of Han playing around on guitar. it was the last song we recorded for the album, and it was recorded before we ever played it live.

It's amazing that a record with so much quality as Watertown should be self-published. But then lately we do get a lot of great self-published record from the US. Is it that difficult to find a record deal? Are labels generally less willing to take risks with new bands?

Sadie: aw, shucks! thanks! i think that with digital technology, it's a lot easier to make records without needing the kind of money labels provided in the past.

How much the city you live in influences your sound?

Sadie: I'm not sure. i've been told we have an east coast sound, though i'm not sure what that means. han and i and gary did all grow up on the east coast, though.


Finally, what are the Invisible Cities up to at the moment?

Sadie: We're playing shows locally and hoping to tour a little bit before we go on safari to a far off place and unearth the remains of the oldest ever dinosaur fossils known to science.

Salvatore

Links:

The Invisible Cities Website: www.theinvisiblecities.com
The Invisible Cities@indiepop.it: bands/invisiblecities.htm