Catching Up With... French Kicks

As one of the first bands to join the garage rock revival of the late nineties, French Kicks have made a name for themselves through their low-fi alternative pop and lush harmonizing vocals. With 2008's Swimming, the group softened their dynamic approach with subdued melodies and acoustic ballads before releasing a collection of homages on their digitally-released Covers EP. Vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Nick Stumpf recently chatted with Paste:Local NYC about the band's musical evolution, the current musician immigration into Brooklyn and growing past genre labels.

Paste: The members of your band come from Washington, D.C., Boston and Alabama. What was the first neighborhood in New York you lived in?
Nick Stumpf: It was Park Slope. 16th Street and 5th Avenue.

Paste: How did New York have an impact on you, musically?
Stumpf: We’ve left New York a fair amount of the time to write. The amount you have to work to live in New York is prohibitive. We went to D.C., to a friend's place in Virginia, wherever we could find an empty house where someone would let us stay together. There are a couple songs on the first record that touch that theme of living in New York and being super poor—but whatever you’re doing is going to be in the music.

Paste: You were given a "garage rock revival" label pretty early on, with bands like The Strokes and your buddies The Walkmen, but your latest album, Swimming, has a gentler sound. Why the softer turn? Do you think the garage rock sounds comes from the urgency of a young band wanting to be heard?
Stumpf: I think 22-year-old dudes are full of beans, living a certain way. I honestly think that’s what it is. We’ve only ever tried to please ourselves and do music that we think is cool. To us, we’ve always been experimenting with sounds. We were using electronic piano and vocal harmonies in the phase of "garage rock." It might have been a little louder, but, at least in our minds, I think we’re just experimenting with whatever we're into at that time.

Paste: So what are you into now?
Stumpf: It is getting quieter, as we get into the autumn of our years. Small details change, then the big changes happen much more gradually. There's more acoustic guitar on Swimming. We’ve gone back into heavy, big harmonies, big backing vocals, which I’m really psyched about. It’s just an ongoing process of experimenting, combining sounds in interesting ways.

Paste: The autumn of your years, eh? How old are you guys?
Stumpf: We're mostly in our early 30s. My brother [Lawrence] is in his late 20's. I'm 33.

Paste: You just released the Covers EP. Did you try to channel a time period or anything, or were you just having fun?
Stumpf: It was fun. We recorded 15 songs in a day and a half, really fast-- except "Trouble," which we did while recording Swimming. It’s just a little collection that made sense to put out. It had the most to do with what we’re about as a band, as opposed to us just jerking off.

Paste: Tell me about the title "Sex Tourists," off Swimming.
Stumpf: Lawrence is a genius for titles. We have a lot more fun implying things than hitting people about the head. To preserve that, I’d rather leave it to the imagination a little bit.

Paste: All right, back to your contemporaries. The Walkmen have gone slow-and-steady, while the Strokes were white hot, then seemed to cool off. Have you intentionally followed that Walkmenesque trajectory?
Stumpf: We’ve done it somewhat intentionally. We built our fan base organically. We lined up our first tour just cold calling and sending demos. The result, I think, is pretty gratifying. Whenever we play, it’s a more organic, personal thing for people who like the band, not people who are like, "I read about that, it's the hot thing and next week I won’t care anymore." The more the merrier—if a zillion people are pysched about it, then that’s fine, too. I’m happy we’ve built something sustainable. We succeeded in putting across something that’s always been the truth of our band: It’s a personal thing. I feel like when people get into our band, it’s something they do alone. We’ve always been that kind of band, walking around alone with headphones on.

Paste: You recently finished a string of gigs. What do you do when you're not touring?
Stumpf: If we’re gearing up for a record, we’re writing and rehearsing, figuring out the songs like crazy. If not, like right now, it depends on where we're at in the band. My brother is going to study graphic design soon. I really want to go to Europe. But I'm always, in some way or another, writing music.

Paste: What's your favorite venue in New York?
Stumpf: Bowery Ballroom. I really like the size and shape of the room; it sounds fantastic. The people are really cool. I think it’s my favorite venue in the country, actually.

Paste: Is there a music movement in New York? Is music leaving Manhattan for Brooklyn?
Stumpf: I mean, we’re playing Bowery tonight. But [the movement] is a fact—it’s not really possible to live in [Manhattan] and do art. It was, at some point, a place that was cheap and messed up enough that you could come here, be an artist and survive. There's a romance about parts of town, certain streets, that I used to feel but don't anymore. But there are still people doing great music here. The music scene is much better than when we moved here.

Paste: Oh yeah? Like who?
Stumpf: Grizzly Bear. The Walkmen are still around and great. Beirut. There are a lot of people doing a lot of different stuff. When we started, there was a feeling like not a lot was cool and radio was shitty, so we thought, "We’ll try to do something cool." Now there are some corners that have been rounded in a good way. You can find good music. It doesn’t solve the problem of where you live, especially if you’re starting. That’s what a real scene needs: It needs you to come out and be hungry and try things. And it’s hard. I don’t know what the solution to that is. We’re going through a depression now, so it’ll all be back.

Paste: Do you think you're old souls now? Are there new bands you see making the same moves you did?
Stumpf: We just played with The Pomegranates, a young band from Cincinnati just getting started. We were able to offer them pointers here and there, telling them where they should play, telling them to keep coming to New York over and over again. We're old souls in the sense that we’ve been around a long time in band years. But there are people who do this for forty years, too.

Paste:  Do you see yourselves as a 40-year band?
Stumpf: We’ll see. We’ll see if everyone keeps going through the stuff that tries your patience and your wallet. We’ll be doing music in some way forever.