Exclusive Q&A: Todd Goldstein Is ARMS

Todd Goldstein of ARMS

Todd Goldstein, best known for his involvement with New York band Harlem Shakes (RIP), is a solo artist in his own right. Kids Aflame, ARMS’s debut album is finally getting its US release through Gigantic Music on October 27th. New Yorkers can preview the material this Saturday at the Bell House when he plays a free show with his new band; in the meantime, read what Todd has to say about his inspirations, the direction of the second album, and why ARMS and not legs.

Flavorpill: Where did the name for the solo project come from?

Todd Goldstein: Well, I started doing this five years ago. I started doing this new music that had a specific style and a certain feel. I had been doing very different stuff before that. So I was like, “This new thing needs a name.”

The story that I tell is there’s a British rapper called Ears and the idea of having a body part — sort of plural body part — as a name was something that just struck a chord, so I literally went through a bunch of different body parts. I was like “legs, hands, feet…” ARMS has a silly double entendre within it that I could live with. It didn’t hit me like a bolt from the blue, but I figured I could live with this name. So it has stuck. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I hate it, but it’s alright.

FP: Why all caps, or is not caps, because I’ve seen it —

TG: All caps happened recently. I don’t know I just think it looks a lot awesomer, all caps. When it’s capital A and a couple of small letters, it seems like you’re talking about the actual object of arms, but when it becomes — when it’s all caps it puts the focus on just the letters and the word and I think it’s got sort of a weird authority, seriousness when you put it in all caps.

FP: The solo project came about because of the downtime with Harlem Shakes and all your other projects?

TG: No, it was before I joined Harlem Shakes actually. I’d always been making music myself and writing songs for 15 years now and I — yeah, I don’t know. I was doing that and then I joined Harlem Shakes after I’ve been doing for maybe two years already. And already — I’d just gotten a record deal in the UK and then I immediately started playing with Harlem Shakes.

FP: So, more fun to play by yourself or with a band?

TG: Different. When I play with other people, I can kind of hang up my ego a little bit and just play my instrument, which is something that I really like doing. When I work by myself it’s this very time consuming and energy emotional, emotion consuming experience — trying to write my own songs and do something that, you know, that’s an expression of just my own ideas, but I keep the ARMS stuff a lot closer to me than when I work with other people.

FP: I noticed for your inspirations, you wrote books and coffee. Anything specific?

TG: What, in terms of books or in terms of coffee?

FP: I guess books.

TG: Books… I really like Philip Roth a lot. I just find it really funny and smart and sort of lucid in this way that I really relate to. So I’m getting close to exhausting his catalog, which is weird. I like Nabokov a lot. I’m reading Ada or Ardor right now which is like a 600-gigantic-page vaguely erotic novel. I don’t know, I just really like it. I like these sort of alienated, horny intellectuals.

FP: How’s the second album coming along?

TG: I’ve got most of the way through writing a second record. Now that I have a band, I’m working out the new material with them and getting a new sound together. I think it’s going to be completely different from Kids Aflame. It’s like a totally different band.

FP: Will you be recording with the band?

TG: I hope so. Sort of working it out with them right now.

FP: So will it be less acoustic because there’s going to be a band involved?

TG: It will be more acoustic and less acoustic. With Kids Aflame I had this project in mind where I was like “I’m going to do this thing that sounds like this.” And with this new record, I kind of just took all the restraints off and I’m just going to make the most – I’m going to try to take this as far as I possibly can in terms of, you know, sound and mood and lyrics and the whole thing.

It’s just a lot more complicated than Kids Aflame. In all meanings of the word.

FP: Have you started recording yet or just in the writing process?

TG: Writing, arranging, kind of putting it together. I really want to get in the studio in the next six months.

FP: So, I’m guessing it’ll take less than three years to record?

TG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it may take that long to write ’cause it just takes me forever to write. When it’s done, it’ll just be like [sound effects] pooping it out.

FP: I’m curious, why did this album get released in the UK first?

TG: That was just the first person who approached me to release it. I had put it on the internet and this UK label, literally just kinda knocked on my door.

FP: Yeah, it’s been over a year since it got released in the UK.

TG: Which is kind of annoying that now it’s finally — over a year later, these songs are like five years old — it’s finally coming out in the US. Yeah, it was just the first person to show me any attention. I was like: “Yes, yes, yes, let’s put it out, let’s out it out there!” Like, great, so excited to have the opportunity.

FP: Who’s part of the new line-up, because it’s a different line-up than the one you had before?

TP: Yeah, the new one is Kendrick from Harlem Shakes on keyboards; the drummer, my friend Sam who played on Kids Aflame who now lives in New York and can play with me again, and a bass player named Mattie. Everybody sings, everybody has like really beautiful voices, so we’ve been doing a lot of like very intense harmony stuff and just a lot of reverb and really like, I don’t know, it’s got a sound. As of last week, I was like, “Oh, it’s got a sound now, so cool.”

FP: What’s the sound?

TP: Big. It’s just bigger. It’s more dramatic.

FP: Being a multi-instrumentalist (such as the ukulele), is there an instrument you don’t know how to play, but would like to?

TP: I want to be better at drums. I have like big drummer envy, so every chance — every time my drummer steps away from the kit, I like run over and have to mess around for a while.

FP: Any good yet?

TG: I’m not bad, at this point. I’m no longer bad. Yeah.

FP: It’s more difficult than it looks.

TG: Yeah, it’s really hard, it’s like juggling. It’s like all of your limbs are doing different things at different times, it’s crazy.

FP: There’s a lot of musical comparisons for your album in reviews, like Neutral Milk Hotel and Weezer. What’s the weirdest you’ve heard?

TG: Weirdest… well, Weezer would be one. I guess if it’s kinda power-poppy, I guess. There was actually one that was so weird because it was incredibly esoteric and like terrifyingly spot-on. I found some tiny, tiny UK review that compared ARMS to this short-lived band called The Icicle Factory, something like that. And I looked them up and it sounds so much like ARMS, but from like the early ’80s England that it was like finding this sort of long lost artifact. I was so pleased to find it. That was just kind of neat.

FP: What are you listening to right now and any recommendations?

TG: I am listening to —

FP: Florence and the Machine?

TG: Yeah, you found my Twitter feed. I like the Florence and the Machine record. I’ve been listening to my friend’s band Bloody Panda a lot. It’s really arty, kinda doom-metal, sort of like Sunn O))). Really like scary, noisy, a-melodic kind of stuff. So I listen to that, and I like Wale’s Mix-Tape About Nothing; I’m into that right now. It’s like hip-hop about Seinfeld.

FP: Interesting.

TG: Yeah, it is.

On the set of "Do You Want To."

It’s July 29th and in New York’s Skylight Studios Franz Ferdinand are shooting a video for the first single from their sophomore album: ‘Do You Want To.’ Undaunted by the heat of summer and eager to be part of what surely will be regarded as their return to the scene, DIY is on the set to capture the mayhem, the madness, and the cinematic magic in action.

Following in the footsteps of some of their earlier videos such as ‘The Dark of the Matinée’, Franz decided to recruit fan extras in addition to the paid variety. Even Alex‘s girlfriend Eleanor Friedberger of The Fiery Furnaces is spotted later in the evening. The extras are a colourful bunch: there’s several scantily clad models made up to look like mannequins, quite a number of older ladies and gentlemen who look fit to be grandparents, a few sleazy looking characters, and a full assortment of people dressed for a night of partying and misbehaving. On the whole though, there’s much more idle wondering and waiting rather than partying – but that’s the normal order of business.

“Well, here we are at the Transmission party,” mimes Alex Kapranos. And perhaps we are. A blow-up astronaut almost as tall as the light rigging and tables full of strange mechanical knickknacks seem to indicate that we are.

Transmission PartyDressed in identical red and black striped shirts, tight black jeans, embroidered Japanese jackets, and pointy-toed boots (in other words: the usual fare), the band are jovial: playfully shoving and jostling when the camera's not rolling. When it is, they dutifully perform take after take of their drunken 'crashing in on an art gallery party'. It gives a new meaning to 'art rock', that does. At one point guitarist Nick McCarthy is sighted trying to peel the 'o' off "Count Duckula" stenciled on one white wall alongside a host of other cartoon villains. That takes care of the misbehaving nicely.

From the fragmented shots that were filmed under the direction of Diane Martel, the video looks very exciting and strange, but pieced together it will look even stranger. There’s dancing involving bottles of pills and grandparents in evening wear, a man set on fire, scores of extras dancing as one in a mechanical fashion, a very spirited live performance – even from the normally stoic bassist Bob Hardy, Kapranos climbing a ladder comprised entirely of bicycles, as well as drummer Paul Thompson wearing what looks like a black cat suit and a blond wig. Which doesn’t suit him at all.

Well, do you want to?

Tired after a very long day, some having been on set for 18 hours, some for 12 (the fortunate ones only 6), and having heard bits of the song far too many times to count, there is still enough energy to bop enthusiastically whenever the track booms through the speakers once more. In fact, the song belongs to the rhythm section. Precise and stomping, while the guitars pinwheel around frantically, there’s even a slight resemblance to ‘Michael’ lyrics-wise.

There is a general air of camaraderie and tired contentment when the extras are finished with their final take. Shouting, applause, and a rest for sore feet followed soon after.

Now all there’s left to do is wait for the video to air on a TV screen near you on August 16th to see the finished product in all its colourful glory. You may even see DIY in it – so watch closely!

Previously published on This Is Fake DIY.

The Tears have arrived.

The Tears‘ line up officially reads Brett Anderson on vocals, Bernard Butler on guitar, Nathan Fisher on bass, Will Foster on keyboards, and Mako Sakamoto on drums. In reality, it may as well just say ‘Anderson and Butler, reunited at last’.

Their creative partnership began after Butler responded to an advert for a guitarist in NME, back in October 1989, and resulted in the forming of Suede. Lasting for five years, in which the songwriting team burned so brightly in their swift rise it wasn’t long before they were mentioned in the same breath as the Morrissey and Marr companionship, before it dissolved into arguments and verbal abuse. The fall out came before the band’s second album ‘Dog Man Star’ was wrapped, and on 19th July 1994, Butler’s departure from Suede was officially announced.

Despite doubts that the band could stand on just one leg, Suede snapped back from the shock and managed to release five more albums whilst Bernard worked solo and dabbled in collaboration. After ploughing ahead with only half of their creative power, going through several lineup changes, and immersing themselves a little too far in the destructive rock n’ roll lifestyle, the band disbanded on good terms, Anderson stating that he “need[ed] to do whatever it takes to get [his] demon back”.

Butler turned out to be this long-lost element. After practically a decade of silence stretching between them, and only a chance encounter that almost put Anderson under Butler’s car in 1996 to qualify as a meeting, they finally sat down for a quiet talk – once Brett made the first move and picked up the phone. Pushing aside the enmity that drove them apart, they convened at Butler’s home studio to demo their new material, making the final mix in a studio in East London.

“The first thing we said when we got together was that we won’t release a note of music unless the album’s spectacular” declared Anderson, his renewed vigour and creativity as high as during the sessions which provided the first, and some would argue best, Suede album. Naming themselves The Tears, as per the inspiration granted by the last line of the Philip Larkin poem ‘Femmes Damnées’ – a cheerless, depressing yet poignantly poetic affair, they are set for a resurrection.

Brushing off the dust for a live showcase of the new material, the band played several sold out gigs to eager fans, many of whom were seeing the dynamic duo together on stage for the first time. A proper tour is set to commence this month, and is likely to only whet our appetite further. The consensus is that whatever it is they have cooked up, it’s certainly noteworthy. But don’t expect any Suede songs, Butler insists, and rightly so – this band is called The Tears for a reason.

Their first – and hopefully not only – album ‘Here Come The Tears’ is to drop sometime in June, preceded by the single ‘Refugees’ on April 25th. Expectations are running high, fueled by the delay of both releases. Wiser from their ten years apart, and eager to make great music together, it’s time they wowed a whole new generation of music devotees.

Previously published on This Is Fake DIY.