Last fall, Paste named a brand-new New York duo a Best of What’s Next band on the strength of their first single, released appropriately enough by blog Gorilla vs. Bear. The song “Go Outside” by Cults was so immediately catchy and full of joy that it exploded onto the blogosphere faster than Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin could write and record the rest of an album.
But write and record they did, this time at the opposite end of the spectrum, signing with Columbia Records and hiring engineer Shane Stoneback, who’d worked with other blog sensations Vampire Weekend and Sleigh Bells. The self-titled, reverb-drenched debut somehow finds the median between ‘50s girl groups and Animal Collective. And it’s anchored by that unforgettable melody of “Go Outside,” the first song they ever wrote—in about an hour.
Paste: You’ve been on tour a while now. Is this the longest you’ve been away?
Brian Oblivion : It’s been a couple short breaks, but I think altogether we’ve been on tour for like 45 days, so it was pretty brutal.
Paste: You guys got a lot of attention very early on, particularly from blogs for “Go Outside.” Did that feel like it was putting pressure on this debut album?
Madeline Follin: In the first month or so, I think we wanted to record really quickly. We didn’t really know what to do. But it was really really easy and fun for the most part.
Oblivion : We just put a bunch of songs together and weren’t really worried about the hype.
Paste: When you guys first started out did you feel like you were part of the New York scene up there? How did those early shows go?
Follin: Not so well. I mean it was exciting, like we got to play with Sleigh Bells our second show but it was probably, definitely hard for us. I mean we didn’t have a lot to play, at all. We had shows and canceled them; we weren’t ready.
Oblivion : I think it’s just through starting this band, we’ve been able to meet a lot of artists that we like and admire…
Paste: A lot of people out there now have kind of ignored the record label route altogether, but you guys signed with a major. What went into that decision?
Oblivion : Once again we were just kind of lucky to have good people around us that could help us think through decisions for us. When we got around to starting the record, it was like 85 percent of people being like, “Hey, what do you see happening, something like this, well you can change it like this.” Everybody had something to say.
Follin: Just letting people sit and listen to the songs that we had made and seeing what they thought about them.
Oblivion : People at work and on our record label were the coolest people, and the people that were like on label were like, “whatever you want,” and that sounded really good.
Paste: Over the course of making this record, playing out live, being the buzz, what have been some of the most exciting experiences you guys have had?
Follin: We are Spinal Tap right now, and something horrible keeps happening to our drummers. We’ve had three drummers the past two months, four starting tomorrow. That’s been stressful for us.
Oblivion : Broken arms, family crises, crazy girlfriends. The band has kind of been rotating drummers taking turns, but it’s pretty cool and fun. I guess what the most fun thing has just been making relationships with people and playing with bands you really like, like the Morning Benders, Twin Sister, Best Coast. We’ve had really good times performing with them.
Paste: When we first talked to you last October, you said that you never really planned to be musicians, you sort of fell into it. How did that happen?
Oblivion : We were sick of working and [film] school, especially after four years it becomes kind of soulless. We didn’t really have any interest in making movies in our free time because we were writing pages about them and tearing them apart. So we’re like “Hey let’s just go make some music, let’s just go have some fun.” I guess it sort of took off without our ever expecting anything. Now it’s been that we like making music a lot more. Did we want to be musicians because real life is so hard? “I want to be a musician, just like everybody else in the suburbs.” Making music, it’s like so much quicker and immediate, we can get the point across. You can work years and years on one thing and not.
Paste: Were you a suburban kid?
Oblivion : I’m a suburban kid from north San Diego. I was born in San Francisco, but from the suburbs there, lived in suburbs in San Diego pretty much my whole life.
Follin: I’ll never never claim the suburbs, he always says… I have never lived in suburbs. I moved from San Francisco to San Diego and lived in downtown area. My mom lived in New York my dad lived in San Diego so it was kind of back and forth.
Paste: So both of you did the San Francisco to San Diego to New York thing just a little bit differently?
Oblivion : We did it at the same time, both San Francisco and then both to New York after that. It’s actually a more common thing than you might think for San Diego people to do. Everybody kind of realizes that San Francisco is not the track.
Paste: How did you two meet each other?
Follin: We actually weirdly met in San Diego. We both were not living there at the time, but my brother would play a show down there, and he was tour managing. We both happened to be there, so we met at his show.