New adults on the block
Neighbor is a heavy band with some heavy thoughts on their mind. They celebrate the release of their first full-length album, Neighbor, with a release show at Zanzabar on Friday. LEO asked guitarist Sean Gardner about the new record, which was produced by Trip Barriger at Treehouse Audio.
LEO: Who writes what? What inspires the songwriting?
Sean Gardner: I find the term “inspiration” problematic. Writing is a matter of work, not divine revelation. In our case, the labor is collective — beginning with a small idea for a single instrument and expanding with rapport among the band.
LEO: I detect a somewhat militaristic sound at times, at least on “Hordes.” Is this intentional?
SG: “Hordes,” especially, is organized around violent sounds — scratches, alarms, explosions. The marching call-and-response that begins that song is intended to evoke something like an imminent social violence. And what we mean to express is an anxiety that underlies and spews from such a violence.
LEO: How has playing in Neighbor been different for you from playing in Bu Hao Ting or Twenty First Century Fox?
SG: There are plenty of technical and conceptual disparities between those three bands. But it’s the result of more than a dozen rather unique individuals engaged in a common, collaborative process. Neighbor may be dynamically aggressive, BHT primitive and atonal, or TFCF melodically infectious, but these qualities are results of the same procedure — sharing ideas among friends.
LEO: When someone discovers this record in 80 years, what would you want them to think about it?
SG: Nothing. We just want to incite arousal.
Listen at neighborusa.bandcamp.com.
This article appears in February 5, 2013.