ArchAnimals

Local retrospective fuzz trio ArchAnimals just released this excellent single from their first upcoming EP. Equal parts fuzzy nostalgia and thoughtful Americana, “Pokemon” shows the band at their noisy best. Really looking forward to hearing more from these guys! - Chinquapin Records

ArchAnimals is a New-Orleans-via-Texas three piece that features jangly guitars, yelping vocals, and some of the best lyrics I’ve heard in years. (Their best song, “Garden”, opens with the lines “You got bombed like Dresden with a friend / Well, you looked like a tourist / Waking up in someone else’s bed / Twist one up, call your roommate, grab the dustpan” which is my favorite description of a night out/hungover morning and should ring true for anyone who’s spent significant time in the Crescent City.) I heard about the band from the guys in Caddywhompus, who promised me I would love them. They were right.

The guys recently chatted with me about their music, getting bombed like Dresden, how they met Caddywhompus, and how they feel about semi-colons. Also, stream their track, “Garden”, and check out upcoming tour dates below the jump.


BACKGROUND QUESTIONS

What are all three of your names?
Christian Baraks, Dennis Sager, Matt Seferian.

Where you boys from?
Dennis and Christian are from Dallas. Matt’s from Houston.

When did you meet?
Christian and I met at a high school football game and we ended up playing in a sick alt-country group called Gaffney together back in Dallas. I met Matt when he came to watch me and Christian play at the Neutral Ground Coffee House. Matt and Christian met at school.

How long have you been ArchAnimals?
We play our first gig as the three of us back in February, but Christian and I have been playing under the name since last August.

Any story behind the name of the band?
It sounds nice.

How old are all of you?
Matt’s 19, Christian’s 20 and Dennis’ 21.

MUSIC QUESTIONS

Who writes the lyrics?
Dennis.

Who plays what instrument?
Matt and Dennis both play guitar. Christian plays the drums.

How would you characterize your “sound”? (To ask the lamest question ever.)
Dirty literature.

I played your songs for a friend, and he described you guys as “Baby Pavement”. Does that make you proud, furious, or ambivalent?
Matt’s a crazy Pavement fan so he’s very proud to be called Pavement’s baby.

Are you working on an EP? LP?
We’ve got something in the oven.

What’s the ideal way you’d like to record your music?
In our buddy Ben Littlejohn’s back house studio. He’s got a great ear and is one our best friends so it’s a really relaxing and productive environment. We did live tracking which is ideal for the sound that we were kinda looking for, then just did some dubs to give yall what you hear on the album.

What albums have come out recently that you liked? That you didn’t hate?
Joyce Manor’s new record is awesome, our buddies Habitat just released a really raw self-titled demo that we listen to often.

Favorite venue to play?
Your house.

Great live show you’ve seen recently?
Caddywompus. We cannot begin to tell you how genuine and truly kick ass these home boys are; not to mention our favorite show to go to. We also ran across Hello Chief, a sick nasty pop math three piece out of Beaumont, TX who rock balls live. Christian was on top of a table rockin out during the first song, we were hooked.

MISCELANNEOUS QUESTIONS

Who designs the cover art of your singles?
Christian did one of em’, and our friend Casey Jordan did the other two.

How do you know Chris Rehm and the Chinquapin Records [a NOLA recording collective] crew?
Matt knew Chris from growing up playing music in Houston, we all met them through the NOLA music scene and school.

Have you ever, yourselves, gotten bombed like Dresden?
You betcha.

Do you like Slaughterhouse Five as much as I do?
Yes I do, it was the first Vonnegut I read. His books got me into reading fiction, before that I was just reading Wikipedia and song lyrics.

Did you ever hear Kurt Vonnegut’s quote about semi-colons?
Yeah, something about how they just show that you’ve been to college.

How do you feel about semi-colons?
Semi colons scare the shit out of me, but I do have a good friend named Lisa with a semi-colon tattoo that I really dig. - InvadeNOLA

Before I get lost in the flight of fancy that is to follow, let me begin by saying unequivocally that ArchAnimals are currently the most underrated live band in New Orleans. In a town practically run on a collective desire to hone and perfect a particular style of music designed to embody all that is “the Big Easy”, three young men are, at this very moment, in a precarious position that finds their milieu far from “perfected”, yet more fully realized than it might ever be in the future.

Sure, New Orleans is known for its brass and ArchAnimals are a brassless indie rock band, so the rules ought to be a little different; but even in the city’s underground rock and roll community there tends to be at least a little bit of homogeneity. Many of the newest wave of young college-age musicians that have slowly begun to make themselves known in the New Orleans underground of late – the majority of which are, unsurprisingly, imported talent from Texas and Tennessee – carry with them an ostensible tinge of southern drawl. Coyotes feel like an indie-glossed Gram Parson and Pals bring back the vague nostalgia of loose jaminess, while Gold and the Rush are almost specifically a southern rock band. Yet if I were to try and delineate the arguable influences of Dennis Sager, Christian Baraks and Matthew Seferian, I’d have a difficult time making a case for any singular – or even particular – reference point from which to place the band’s sound, save for Seferian’s revelatory penchant for the staggering balance between form and dissonance originally personified by Archers of Loaf guitarist Eric Johnson.

As baldfaced a comparison as that may be, Seferian’s (and, by proxy, Johnson’s) presence in ArchAnimals gives the fit of a puzzle tailor-made for its own pieces. Until recently, the band appeared to be nothing more than Dennis Sager’s voice and guitar surrounded by any number of musicians present at whatever venue he happened to be performing. Indeed, it’s tough to nail down a solid identity when your band comprises one guitarist, or two, or sometimes three, with the occasional bass or harmonica, and your only consistencies lie in a budding songwriter and a drummer (Baraks) who’s been banging on skins for a mere matter of weeks. Yet, with the addition of lead guitarist Seferian, ArchAnimals have parlayed their already-loose live approach into something more raucous than one can reasonably describe with text. At such a risk, it’s a fairly thrilling – and deceptively simple – broth of a songwriter whose intentional lack of grace in delivery probably couldn’t find better foils than in a drummer whose talent’s infancy frees hims from the constraints of style and formal technique and a guitarist whose systematic purpose is to create noise and antagonize the edges of melody and rhythm.

For nearly a decade, indie culture has seen a rise in lo-fi music that almost perfectly coincides with the reissuing of Pavement’s entire catalog. As a result, an entire generation of contemporary musicians tends to view that band as the reigning kings of college rock (which, frankly, they are), and these musicians’ wholesale emulation of said kings is at least marginally more impressive than their even clumsier attempts to draw influence from the more obscure pockets of 90s indie and noise. In that decade I’ve listened to and analyzed pocket band Archers of Loaf (and particularly their sophomore recordVeeVee) as the kind of perfect blend of simplicity in function, complexity in execution and against-the-grain progressive art rock conceptualism that no future band would ever be capable of doing justice. But (and this really shouldn’t be much of a surprise considering how correct young New Orleans indie rock bands tend to come these days) leave it to a trio of Tulane and Loyola students in 2012 to serendipitously grasp what requires years of intellectualizing from losers like me. - Barryfest

Think early Modest Mouse meets Built To Spill, topped off with all the feedback and grit of Neutral Milk Hotel, and you’ve got ArchAnimals. Since first laying ears on the New Orleans based indie rock outfit’s debut song “Pokemon” nearly six months ago, we immediately fell in love with their raw and genuine sound. While each song has a simple, lo-fi style to it, every line from ArchAnimal’s young and carefree lead singer packs a punch, as he sets his heart on his sleeve from the very beginning in “Face Full Of Metal”, with every lyric coming out with a feeling of nostalgia and heartfelt honesty. As the EP progresses on to “Bandages” and “Gardens”, we begin to hear the band’s brilliant versatility, as the fuzzy, distorted instrumentals power us through each song and seamlessly blends each track into the next.

It’s comes with great pleasure and a warm heart to announce that months after first sharing “Pokemon” with you all, we now are able to present you all with an exclusive stream of ArchAnimals’ debut EP, Waiting For Marriage, three days before it’s October 19th release. For those of you who live in the New Orleans area, be sure to join ArchAnimals this Friday for their album release show at The Prytania Bar. - This Sound Goes Around

New Orleans’ own ArchAnimals just released their new EP Waiting for Marriage. If you’re a fan of Modest Mouse, then ArchAnimals might be your new favorite band. Waiting for Marriage is an immaculate example of what a lo-fi album should sound like – throbbing build ups of musical chaos and forceful, yet sentimental lyrics that we all can relate to. My naive childhood self is immediately drawn towards “Pokemon”, and my badass college self loves the shit out of it because it goes hard in the paint.

You can download the entire EP off their Bandcamp, you name the price, but thank these guys for producing such great music by throwing them a few bucks. - goodmusicallday.com