The Smyrk

Interview with madeloud.com

Here’s an interview with D and Ari with madeloud.com, check it out!

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The Smyrk Talk Comics, Prom Queens

by dan solomon
November 13, 2009 - 10:24am

Post-hardcore is a genre that’s been mostly staid over the past decade, as the commercial blow-up of bands like Thrice and Thursday has encouraged others to stagnate creatively in the hope of chasing fame and financial excess. Connecticut quartet The Smyrk, however, have taken another tack with their approach to the genre - one that’s decidedly more nuanced musically, and marrying the guitars to the full, smooth vocals of a singer in Doron Flake who possesses a strong R&B sensibility.

The combination elevates The Smyrk considerably over their peers in the pursuit of novelty, something their lyrical content – drawn largely from comic books and horror films – complements nicely. As they’ve begun to find themselves making some serious inroads in the burgeoning Afropunk community – they spent SXSW playing a showcase put together by Big Boi from Outkast, and more recently enjoyed a handful of dates opening for Saul Williams and Living Colour, MadeLoud caught up with Flake and guitarist Ari Sadowitz to talk about being a white guy in an Afropunk band, identifying when a song sounds like a guy cutting his own hand off, and the first guy to put bacon on a cheeseburger.

So, how long did it take the white dudes in the band to get used to being part of the Afropunk community?

Ari Sadowitz: It took us about three seconds to get used to Afropunk. That community is so genuine, generous and nice that from our first Liberation Sessions show in NYC with James and Matthew to the festival to SXSW, everything’s been an honest celebration of music and freedom of expression. We love it.

Speaking of self-expression, the lyrical subject matter y’all go for is pretty nerdy. I first became aware of the Smyrk because I’m a Batman nerd, and I saw the title “The End of Jason Todd” [the secret identity of the second Robin]. The video for the song is pretty funny, with the pop-up captions, but there’s something sincere there, too. So let me ask you, nerd to nerd - what is it about Jason Todd that made you want to immortalize him in song?

Doron Flake: The Jason Todd thing actually was Ari’s idea. We had already done a song called “Dial V For Venom”, which sounds like a break up song between a guy and a girl, but it’s actually the jilted symbiote’s story of rejection. The idea sat until I heard an instrumental that fit the subject matter. Then I went to Jamaica and wrote it.

You followed up “The End of Jason Todd” with [the Evil Dead tribute] “A Farewell To Arm”, which is about another traditionally nerdy subject. Are you worried about being pigeonholed as the band that writes music about comics and horror movies? Does that make it harder to be taken seriously in the future?

DF: I’m not concerned about being pigeonholed by our subject matter, because our songs are accessible on their own. If you have some idea what they’re about, it’s a bonus. I see it as writing what I know very well. But unlike my relationships, other people have access to the source material just like I do. So we can connect with established nerds like yourself as well as make it cool to indoctrinate new nerds.

AS: To be honest, I’d gladly welcome being pigeonholed as a band that embraces nerd culture, but with a swagger. We’ll steal the prom queen. I look at some of my favorite bands and see them writing about stuff that’s either more grandiose and less easy to relate to, like Muse, or sometimes indecipherable, like Radiohead, or way more out there than we’ll ever be, like The Mars Volta. We figure if Sir Paul 
can write a song about Magneto and Titanium Man, we can do it too.

What is it about an instrumental that gets you thinking “this reminds me of a symbiote”, or “this sounds like a guy who just cut his own hand off”? Is there something about the way you perceive things, that sets you up to find symbiotes and severed hands in the world around you?

DF: If the instrumentals are a Rorschach test, then my mind is pretty odd…but it’s entirely intuitive. I need a picture or a feeling or a memory to come up when I hear the instrumental or nothing good is gonna come lyrically. In terms of revision and stuff, it’s generally a matter of the overall picture. If I write something and sing it and the rest of the band isn’t impressed, it’s back to the drawing board.

AS: I think we’ve only just started to learn how the instrumentals and lyrics really and truly go hand in hand. By that I mean, as D said, he needs to feel or hear something in the music that spurs the lyrics. In that way he keeps us on our toes as musicians and we strive to write stuff that elicits emotion. The lyrics in this band mean more to me than anyone else’s, so I think that anything that makes a recording generally has to pass muster with the rest of the band. We’re very democratic.

The Smyrk have shared bills with Saul Williams, Big Boi, and Living Colour this year – how do those audiences respond to what you’re doing?

AS: Audiences have responded really favorably. We’re pretty unassuming when we take the stage but when that first note drops we get some confused looks. The confusion hopefully morphs into “Oh, hey, this isn’t bad,” and then hopefully to “I don’t like that shit…but I LIKE THAT SHIT!” That’s actually what we’ve come to call our genre. Someone had to put bacon on the cheeseburger – both were amazing to start with, but incredible together. We’re R&B bacon on a burger of rock.