INTERVIEW: Remember Sports
By Reed Romanko
WTBU DJ Reed Romanko talked on the phone with Remember Sports’ Carmen Perry about their upcoming album and current tour. Remember Sports plays at ONCE in Somerville on April 8th. Tickets are available here.
Reed Romanko: Later today, you’ll be playing in Richmond, Virginia for the first performance of this tour. How are you feeling about that?
Carmen Perry: Pretty good! We’re on our way there.
RR: So are y’all in the van?
CP: Yeah, that.
RR: Alright, so regarding the tour, is there a theme musically for this tour? Something like “We’re playing mostly Slow Buzz,” or “We’re doing songs about break-ups,” anything along those lines?
CP: We don’t usually have, like, a theme, we’re just sorta playing what feels right, I guess we’re playing mostly stuff from our latest album, yeah.
RR: Okay, that’s good.
CP: Yeah, and there’s some new stuff that we’re working on too!
RR: Oh, that’s exciting! So you’re done with the recovery from Slow Buzz, and moving onto some, new exciting stuff?
CP: Yeah!
RR: So you’re saying we can expect to hear some of that on the tour?
CP: Yeah, we’re gonna play some new stuff.
RR: That’s wonderful! Is there thematically anywhere you’re going with this new stuff, are you moving into new realm lyrically, musically, or anywhere along those lines?
CP: It’s kinda of early to say…
RR: That’s fair.
CP: It’s gonna take a little while to see what form our album takes.
RR: In regards your albums, and album art, one thing I find really interesting is that Sunchokes and All of Something have pictures of people, and then Slow Buzz is, I think, a doily on a table cloth, is that right?
CP: I guess you could call it a doily, yeah. Jack’s sister did the artwork, Hannah Washburn, and it’s a Riso print. She works with textiles, yeah, she did that for us.
RR: It’s a really nice pattern! I’m just curious, is there any reason, stylistically, you went from people to that?
CP: Yeah, I mean, this was sort of a new lead for us as a band, the album was. The first time being all together in the same city, and not really having the same time constraints that we had with our last stuff. So, yeah guess subconsciously, we wanted to move in a similar direction with the album, which was sort of different for all of us.
RR: Speaking of Slow Buzz, musically it felt more stylistically varied than your other releases, but still felt very cohesive. With what you’re working on now. you plan to continue to branch out in the future, or hone-in on some elements you’ve laid out already in your previous releases?
CP: I dunno… I guess there’s some new directions we took in Slow Buzz that it’s sort of already started to feel like we’re already following. I think we like to embrace changing our sound and growing with it.
RR: Talking about some of your previous releases, in “Town,” one of my favorite songs off of All of Something, Jack, I believe, is on lead vocals, right?
CP: Well, he wrote that song…
RR: That’ll do it. So it felt natural for him to take the lead there.
CP: Yeah.
RR: And my understanding is, with Slow Buzz, it was a much more joint effort in song writing, rather than All of Something and Sunchokes.
CP: Yeah, I wrote most of the songs on Sunchokes and All of Something. Slow Buzz was a little bit more collaborative, and that’s something we’ve been trying to work on more and are devoting more time, as a band, to writing and all that stuff.
RR: Do you think, because it’s more collaborative now in regards to the songwriting component, we might hear more of the voices of your other band members?
CP: It’s possible!
RR: That’s fun! Now, going back to Sunchokes, “Clean Jeans” is one of my favorite songs off the album. It’s such an enjoyable song for me because it’s this catchy, really up beat tune with these scathing lyrics. Is the person the song references an actual person, or is it more of a criticism of a type of person?
CP: Oh, it’s a real person!
RR: To me, this is by far your most blatant and obvious F.U. song, so to speak. Is there potential for more of these in the future, or was this a one-time thing?
CP: Um, I don’t know. That song kind of feels like an outlier to me, in terms of what I usually write about. It is a fun one, it felt cathartic. I could do that again, I guess.
RR: Going back to 2017, Remember Sports collaborated with Pllush to make a split. Do you guys have plans to work with another band in the future to create another split?
CP: We don’t have plans to do that right now, but we’re open to it. We were really pleased with how that came together with Pllush.
RR: If you had the opportunity to make a split with any currently active band, which band would you choose?
CP: Ariana Grande.
RR: Any reason why?
CP: I really like her.
RR: Makes sense. So, back in November, Remember Sports had an AudioTree Live Session.
CP: Yeah!
RR: What was that like as an experience?
CP: It was really fun! We’ve been AudioTree Fans for a long time, we felt honored to be there, to be asked to be there. It’s always a little nerve wracking getting ready to do a live, video thing, cause there’s a lot more you have to worry about, but it really fun, and I’m glad we got to do it.
RR: I know for the session, there’s a lot of Slow Buzz, and I’d imagine that was to promote the album. Any reason for the other songs you chose?
CP: No, we just play certain old songs live, so they just felt right.
RR: Reeling it back in to the tour, are there any places you haven’t visited yet, any places you really happy to go back to?
CP: On this tour, I think that we haven’t played in Rochester or Albany, yeah, so excited to see what that’s like. There’s a Sub Shop in Amherst, so we got some sandwiches, hopefully. Should be a good time!
RR: Any final things you want to let the fans know before the start of the tour?
CP: We’re really excited to get to see Joey Nebulous play most of the night with us. They’re a great band. I don’t know if they’ve done a lot of touring on the east coast, so I’m excited for people to see them!