When we first listened to the Nodzzz 12″ we were struck by how effortless it was. Songwriting is already a mystery to us, we admit, but the perfectly short tracks were almost too good for an album that sounded like it was produced in an afternoon after a few beers at the beach. We talked about their processes and disillusions at Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco. What we discovered was a band inconsistent with itself: deliberate and restrained in their sloppiness, completely silly in their cool and uncaring wit.
Whose Fault Is That?: This is going to be a crappy interview question but just for my sake… can you clarify what your positions are in the band? Who sings? Who plays what?
Anthony Atlas: Yeah I play guitar and sing.
Sean Paul Presley: What’s your name? *Laughs*
AA: I’m Anthony. *Laughs*
SPP: I’m Sean and I play guitar and backup sing… co-sing? Co-sing. You write all the words–
AA: I sing while Sean concurs.
SPP: He sings, I agree.
AA: There’s a drummer now, Eric, who politely declined to come here and be interviewed with us, ’cause he figured he wouldn’t get a word in edge wise. I told him we’d just pretend he was here and make up answers for him. His name is Eric Butterworth. He put out the Nodzzz 7″ when Pete Hilton was our drummer. That’s the person I started the band with before Sean was here. Pete lives in Bulgaria now, teaching English.
SPP: Eric put out our 7″ and went to a bunch of our shows and we figured that it made perfect sense for somebody who already liked the band and was devoted enough to put out our first 7″ that he’d be a perfect person to play drums. Plus, he’s a pretty sweet dude, so… Yeah, but not the interviewing type… Where as me and Anthony are just… aces. *Laughs*
WFIT: When you guys met to work on your demo how did it come together? Had you had songs written or—
SPP: Well, Anthony and Pete kinda had sketches of three songs. The 7″ came off the demo sessions. We recorded how many songs for the demo? Fourteen?
AA: Lots of songs didn’t make it on the demo.
SPP: We wrote an incredible amount of songs in the first six months that we were jamming together. And we even had more songs that we didn’t record. Maybe a small handful. So we had a big, big pool to pull material from.
AA: That demo was important because I think it shaped what the band was going to be about, as far as releases. If it didn’t make it to the demo, it probably wasn’t going to make it to the show after that. I remember just looking at the track listing and trying to get a feel for what we were doing. All these different song titles, I would stare at the back of the CD demo and ask, “What does this all mean?”
SPP: Yeah, it was perfect. Doing something like that is like streamlining your idea of how you want to be represented by sound and image.
WFIT: How intentional was that? Did you guys have a specific sound or idea behind the band?
AA: I had a rough aesthetic mode which I brought to every song. But, after every song was finished I was always nervous that each song was so different than the next. The demo seemed to me to be all over the map stylistically. But I’m confident now that was a good thing and basically indicative that we weren’t going to be very restrictive with our music.
SPP: I feel like Anthony is pretty much in charge of the aesthetics of the group and I think knowing Anthony as well as I do, he’s very intentional about that. I’ll hand out anything I can think of where you refine it a lot more.
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WFIT: The sound that you guys have has very clear touchstone influences. Is that intentional or shared tastes?
SPP: I think we all share influences. Even though we have really strong influences, I feel like we never postured what we really love. I feel like we always try to restrict ourselves, if something was maybe too much like a certain genre or too much like one band I feel like we wouldn’t really allow it.
AA: It just helps to know, for me, that if we want to reference something indirectly Sean will be able to do that. Like knowing that he knows all the words to every Byrds song. I just feel confident that we can get really poppy and professional if we want to be.
SPP: We love The Kinks as song writers so we’d want to have a song that was goofy like The Kinks but never sound anywhere near like The Kinks. Just in terms of structure and maybe sound aesthetic. Never a formula, I don’t think…
WFIT: Has there been a time where you wrote a song you liked and just didn’t feel like it had the right aesthetic for the band?
AA: All the time. Songs that came off with too much power I felt skeptical about. Because Pete was a technically advanced drummer who was in a metal band. Sometimes I think he can come through a song real dramatically and it just seemed like we were Mudhoney or something. Not that those songs weren’t good in their own right. We’ve canned songs for not feeling right.
SPP: We’ve canned tons of songs.
AA: Ones I’m really embarrassed to think about.
SPP: But I feel like all that is really important. Even writing a song to eventually can it is a pretty good lesson. Even if you’re creating bullshit or stuff that you can ultimately joke about, I don’t know, I feel that’s all part of the process… you can’t refine what you really like unless you’re canning stuff that you don’t like, but still creating stuff that you don’t like.
AA: There’s bands which I think operate spontaneously and can write and record the same album in a day. But for Nodzzz I think we’re a bit more conscious and uptight about what we release and what we play live. At least I am. But I do find it valuable to write a totally awful song but to finish it as such. I feel like I can at least express myself that way. That doesn’t sound right, that sounds like acoustic Green Day or something. *Laughs* It’s weird, the more you play music the more difficult it gets to write the songs I want to write.
WFIT: Did you build the 12” as a whole record, a whole idea?
AA: I think that what saves records is sometimes just a good sequence. I remember when we were arranging the tracks for the 12″ it didn’t play right and then I think we came across a sequence, the one that’s on the record now, and it suddenly just felt like a record. There’s a variety of different sounds on that thing and different lengths. I was worried it would just feel like a compilation of different Nodzzz songs. But with the attention we paid to sequencing, I’m more confident that it feels like an album. There’s a few songs that didn’t make it.
SPP: Certain songs sit in the archive for a long time, like a sweater that you grow out of.
AA: All of a sudden they just don’t fit on you anymore.
SPP: Exactly. You gain weight and your belly is sticking out.
WFIT: When you guys look out and see the music scene in San Francisco, what do you see and what do you feel is happening here right now?
AA: I see a handful of people striving to transcend the difficulties of doing art and music here. It’s really hard to do a band here I think. You have to travel distances, you have to find places to play and practice, which are expensive. Beyond those difficulties, there are people who are doing some really good things right now, which is inspiring. If I wasn’t doing this band I’d have already moved because the difficulties of doing things here. I’ve stuck with it, I’m happy that I did because right now I finally feel that our peers and the scene that we’re attached to are building something our own.
WFIT: Can you describe that scene and your peers and what you’re building?
AA: I don’t know, it’s not a DIY perspective, but it is “sustain your own experiences.” I know a lot of people complain that the city isn’t fun. But all of a sudden it seems like people I know are entirely occupied doing great things, so—
SPP: When we first started playing music — maybe it was because we weren’t really into who was playing music — it seemed somewhat dormant to me in San Francisco like, I don’t know, two years ago when we first started jamming.
AA: I agree.
SPP: It just seems like there’s a really solid handful of bands in San Francisco right now that probably started jamming around the same time we did that we’re really thrilled about. I know when we first started we didn’t know of any bands that we were really too stoked about. But I feel like, now, two years in, we’re in the company of bands right now that we think are pretty incredible.
AA: Grass Widow, Brilliant Colors, Traditional Fools… Those are bands that Eric, the drummer, is putting out… And there’s uh—
SPP: I mean, that’s all I was thinking of. *Laughs* Eric kind of has the market cornered in San Francisco. Each one of those bands is really solid and knows what they want to sound like and it seems pretty important. All their music sounds pretty important.
AA: I’m wary to say that what’s happening now is a moment that should be recognized…
SPP: No, not at all.
AA: Because when you do that it tends to just sort of deteriorate anyway. I find it to be reinforcing and inspiring that there’s really quality rock and roll, punk music being made. I think that a scene can get really healthy if it gets, in a way, competitive. Not in a nasty way, but in a healthy way.
WFIT: You’re touching on a point about sincerity… Is sincerity a point that you consider when you’re writing music?
SPP: If you’re trying to have fun, then you’re sincere about having fun. So even if you write a party song, if you’re posturing to write a party song then it’s insincere.
AA: Yeah. For me, I only enjoy a song when it still feels like it’s part of what I want to express. So a song can quickly deteriorate and die if it doesn’t have sincerity added into it. With Nodzzz, I never worried about trying to become or attain a certain mode or persona. It’s probably one reason why I find it hard to represent our band when people ask us what we sound like, what we do.
WFIT: How do you answer that question?
AA: I usually just say, “Well, nothing weird.” I said this before, we’re not trying to reinvent the Pop wheel. And therein lies our uniqueness. It seems like a lot of bands superficially invite some sort of strange quality or some provocative quality. It doesn’t necessarily correspond to good songs, I don’t know (pause) I hope that doesn’t sound arrogant.
SPP: I don’t find it arrogant when you say what separates us is that we keep it so fucking real. We’re not trying to do anything crazy.
AA: Yeah. Well, you asked before about touchstone influences and I know the New Zealand pop scene is a heavily cited history right now among indie bands or whatever. But for them, one of the influences that I relate to is social. Martin Phillipps from the Chills said the one thing that all the Dunedin/New Zealand bands had in common was a loathing for stage personas.
Just the idea that you didn’t need to reinvent yourself to be in a rock and roll band is something I find is important for the Nodzzz. I want all the flaws, all the ineptitudes and everything that makes us human to be part of our music. I think that would be where our sincerity and our authenticity comes from.
AA:Is it okay to drink water while I—
SPP: Yeah just don’t swallow it.
WFIT: What did you guys put in your mouths?
AA: Is that an interview question?
WFIT: Yeah, that’s an interview question.
SPP: It’s this stuff called snus which I guess is Swedish technology that Camel kind of stole. It’s spitless, smokeless tobacco that eats away at your gums and satisfies.
AA: It says on the side, “Warning this product may cause gum disease and tooth loss.” But at least it doesn’t say cancer and death.
SPP: We’re just trying to lose our teeth without using heroin.
AA: But apparently it’s been popular in Sweden for a while. We just toured with Love Is All and they were all addicted to it. I didn’t know until the last night and they were all… snusing? So we traded the American Camel bullshit for the original. It was more potent. I don’t smoke cigarettes and I don’t have a nicotine habit yet –
SPP: I do!
AA: — but all day at work yesterday I couldn’t keep this shit out of my mouth.
WFIT: But you don’t have a habit.
AA: No, no, no, yeah. This is real new and this morning I woke up with a headache and I was like, “Oh, I need tobacco.” You need to tell me what a tobacco addiction is like. I don’t know what the symptoms are.
SPP: Well, a good physical sign would be waking up with a headache.
AA: Really?
SPP: Probably because you’re not used to it and you had tobacco overload.
AA: But we’re interested in the world around us, so if it involves putting snus in our mouths.
WFIT: So what do you guys do outside of music?
SPP: I work at a grocery store. It’s a lifestyle.
AA: I keep busy with a lot of visual projects.
WFIT: What kind of work do you do as an artist?
AA: I do weird drawings, kind of… unhappy graphic stuff. I feel like I could be a one panel cartoonist if I tried. I couldn’t be a comic artist. But, all that finds its way into the flyer art for the band. It’s one of the reasons why I enjoy doing the band because it can keep the other things I’m interested in in good practice. I also walk around San Francisco with my friends enough to feel vaguely part of the city as a young person.
SPP: Just hangin’.
AA: Yeah. I think that if the band was to suddenly stop I would move to New Jersey, New York and either go to school again or maybe get serious about an entirely different field that I’ve studied.
SPP: Yeah, I actually thought that today. If the band wasn’t going on I’d probably start business school.
AA: Between my siblings, one of us was going to do art. We all started doing art in high school, I’m the only one that ended up doing something creative — mainly, primarily. So I think I’m kind of carrying that torch in my family. They’re really supportive of me. My mom calls me up and leaves me messages where she sings Nodzzz lyrics. She watches YouTube videos of the Nodzzz before she goes to sleep. She says it gives her a lift.
But, I don’t know, I’m 24, I feel like it’s a strange time to be doing a band. Because in your twenties you want to evolve your skills which will equip you for your thirties and forties. I’m really worried about doing the band so intensely that I’ll ignore my other skills, my other interests and the only thing I’ll be able do is a band. I’m not happy about that.
SPP: It’ll probably just really help you to realize that you should probably be doing something else when the life of this band is over. *Laughs*
AA: Just that unhappiness, that worry?
SPP: I mean, by the time this is over I think both of us are gonna realize, well, uhh… that was fun.
AA: It’s weird just to gauge what’s going on with this band. It seems like a party just to even come to a coffee place and talk about the band, like a privilege.
WFIT: You both have an expectation that the band is going to end–
AA: Yeah, I feel realistic and cynical. I’m apprehensive about becoming emotionally attached to a band, because it’s so defined by your youth. And I just think I need to be resigned to the fact that it’s going to end soon and just not define myself by the band, even though it’s what I do right now.
SPP: Not to be quoted out of context and put in gossip mags that the Nodzzz are ending soon. There’s no end in sight. I’m fully aware of certain travel opportunities, certain artistic opportunities, creative satisfaction that a band provides. But it doesn’t seem realistic to see this as still the same fun project ten years down the road.
AA: It’s not a sustainable identity. Not to take gospel from the Rolling Stones, but if you watch old documentaries of them at the peak of their popularity, they were really cynical about what they did. Brian Jones was like, “I want to be a graphic designer.” They scoffed at the idea of calling themselves musicians. They thought musicians played music all day, devoted themselves to the craft. They were making rock ‘n’ roll songs and enjoying it in the very present tense.
SPP: The thin line between work and pleasure.
AA: There’s weird ways to become an old man through a band, like the guy from Devo, he just grew out a pony tail and became an A&R guy, right? Gerald Casale? One of them became a record label dipshit with a pony tail.
SPP: If you’re a band in Los Angeles or New York that received any notoriety you either perpetually play in bands for the rest of your life or you try and work your way into the industry and become a liason for a recording label and find new, hip artists.
AA: Well, in San francisco you have this interesting community of punk people who the people most devoted to it end up living at MRR [MAXIMUMROCKNROLL -- Ed.] and devoting energy to that magazine. It’s like the DIY version of that or something. There are places and communities which can keep you involved in this very kind of fleeting thing. I say fleeting, I just mean that as I get older I want to do things that are more considerate. I’m not sure whether punk music really gives a fuck about people.
WFIT: Since we’re closing out the interview, maybe I can hit you with an attack question. Some of the coverage that exists on Nodzzz has referred to the name of the band as “terrible”… Do you want to address those critics?
AA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, I’m happy that people think it’s terrible because secretly I’ve always thought it was terrible too. But I’ve had friends who are like, “No, that’s a great band name! How did you come up with something so good?” So, now that I know people don’t like it, it just confirms my fears and I feel better.
SPP: I think that was always kind of the idea of the name, too. It didn’t take us a long time to settle on it, which was knowing how exhausting — being in bands before — how exhausting and stupid it is coming up with a band name because I feel you grow out of it at some point anyway if the life of the band is longer than six months. So the band name really has no meaning and I think it was intentional.
AA: You can hit the lottery with a great band name that, in itself, is artistic and meaningful. We just didn’t happen to hit upon that name.
SPP: *Laughs*
AA: It’s also an indicator of where we came from. If we wanted a more marketable identity, we’d probably have a different name. We might be called, uhh… like, umm… Neil Young or something. But I don’t stress about the Nodzzz. What I’ve noticed lately is there’s other bands with repeated letters.
SPP: We’re getting a lot of flak for that.
AA: A certain mainstream indie rock publication lumped us in with this growing scene of superfluous consonant letters which is entirely coincidental and kind of a shock that other bands at the same time repeated these letters in the middle of their name.
SPP: Ours is at the end though.
AA: At various points we had a subtitle to our band name which was “The New Jersey Dads”. Our dads were from New Jersey, mostly. And we thought maybe we could become dads from New Jersey. But there’s some Ds in there and an N so it’s a related name.
SPP: If we chose to spell dads with a Z at the end—
AA: To what extend does a band name mean anything?
SPP: Right. In my experience, all the best band names are really crappy bands. And some band names, if there was no substance, would’ve been really bad band names. But I probably associate their names being great because they also made really great music. Like, I don’t know, what’s that band? The Rolling Bears? The Rolling Stains? I don’t find it important. I just wanted to make sure we had a name that didn’t take itself too seriously. I think we definitely succeeded in that.
AA: Yeah. In LA apparently on the radio when they play our song, like, “this is from the No-Dees.” I don’t know why it’s so phonetically difficult to read the name. And people have a weird mental lapse when they look at it, they go, “oh, the No-Doz?” That’s fine, though. That’s what the name sponsors. I think at this point the idea of a fixed band name is just a limited idea, so there’s bands now with more dynamic names. You can change your name, you can add letters. We can even have a maternal name.
SPP: Or we could have the word Crystal in our name.
AA: Crystal Nodzzz.
SPP: Crystal Nodzzz! Crystal Dads?
AA: Crystal Shit.
SPP: Crystal Shit!
AA: Crystal Shit!
SPP: There’s just like a flux of bands with the word Crystal in their name.
AA: Well, let’s do it. Let’s try to end this interview and rename the band. Ideas for a new name. We’ll just spontaneously think of new names for the band.
SPP: Okay.
AA: Okay.
SPP: Uhh… Snus and the Teeth
AA: Uhh… umm… Moby… Moby Dick?
SPP: Umm…
AA: No, no, no. Hold on.
SPP: Norwegian… Norwegian… Norwegian… Wood.
AA: Norwegian Wood is pretty fucking good. Uhh… maybe we are awful band namers.
David Cole interviewed Anthony Atlas and Sean Paul Presley on December 16th, 2008 in San Francisco. You can keep up to date with Nodzzz via their blog or their MySpace.