Ahead of their appearance at Laneway Festival – which kicks off this weekend – I had the privilege – nay, the honour – of speaking with the legend that is Tim Harrington, the lead singer of New York rockers Les Savy Fav. He was sitting at home in New York and I was just waking up in Sydney. It is, without a doubt, the funniest interview I’ve ever done, and words hardly do it justice – so rather than bore you – let’s get straight into it!
So let’s get right into the hard hitting questions. Mr Harrington, please tell me about your day!
It’s been pretty solid. I stayed in most of the day. Right now there is hideous, insane, slushy rain flying around everywhere.
Definitely the worst kind.
It’s like a thick slushy! Picture that flavoured of dog shit and car fumes, and you have that poured all over the street. And yeah, so you can catch the vibe right now! Feels like a dystopic future.
But perfect for a New York snow ball fight!
*laughs* Yeah, those damn sloppy dog pee snow balls. Weirdly enough, that’s the title we’re giving to our Australian tour: “the damn sloppy dog pee snow balls” tour. Twenty Eleven. Just add vodka.
*Laughs* That reminds me of a Seafarer’s breakfast – seawater and vodka.
Oh I never heard of that, that sounds good! I so was waiting for you to say a seaman’s breakfast, which is Vodka and Jizz. Try not to have semen for breakfast every day. It’s bad for your waistline.
You’re familiar with that are you?
*Laughs* I dunno, I’ve never been at sea persay…
I had some vision of you as an avid boatsman. Or maybe that was just a press shot.
I wanna get into catamarans. I did follow Australia’s wild string of victories in the late 80s of the America’s Cup, off the coast of Rhode Island. You guys and your tricky boats. It’s called the AMERICA’S CUP. But that’s OKAY. It’s all in the PAST. There’ll be no hard feeling about yacht races from the late 80s when we get over there. It’s like water under the bridge.
We just like to keep everyone on their toes.
*mutters* Australia’s Cup… no, but Australia has a long history of nautical activity. I mean you insist that you’re an island, which is neat. And then your scientists are always angry that Japan is stealing the whales and the dolphins so they can eat them. My Father-in-Law is an international legal arbitrator, and once dealt with a case in Australia about it.
Now THIS is rock talk. What to journalists want to talk about? Dolphin burgers. They want to talk about dolphin burgers. You can cut the nose off and just use it as a hot dog!
I believe they call that a Filet O’Fish, which I’ll use as a segueway to the Australian tour. It’s been quite a few years since you were last down here, are you looking forward to getting back to the Australian Summer?
Really really excited. I’ve got my flip flops on, I’ve got my short shorts ready, my Bondi Beach speedo primed. Look, we’re horny for Australia, we’ve been pining for some time, we’re going to land on your shores like a bunch of wild pirates.
And you’ll be bringing with you your latest album, Root For Ruin, which was released back in August of last year. It was a few years between drinks this time around – can you talk a bit about how the recording process got started?
The whole process of this one was really party oriented. We were still playing our last album, Let’s Stay Friends, which we never toured in Australia for our shame, and we’re like – we want some new songs to play live. And we were just going to write a bunch of songs, we weren’t going to make an album. We said, let’s make them be a bunch of raging party songs so we have heaps of fun playing them live. And the next thing you knew, it was so much fun that we had written a whole record pretty much.
The whole energy on Root For Ruin, and our mission on the record, was to really capture the kind of raw energy that we had on our first two records 3/5 and The Cat and The Cobra. And I think part of that was a reaction to the two words: chill wave. I feel like we heard the words chill wave, and we’re old, so we’re like what the fuck? We’re going to write some KICK IN THE BALLS songs. That said, I have fallen asleep several times to chill wave. Our record, I wouldn’t recommend for falling asleep to.
We were trying to make a record that was irritating to be played out loud for people who didn’t want to hear it, and impossible to sleep to. So far, I’m feeling pretty good at those plans.
I can certainly imagine it inducing nightmares at the very least.
I hope so.
That’s what you’re going for I’m sure!
Yeah for sure. But also, I mean all the bands that influenced us when we started out in Providence (Rhode Island) in the mid-late 90s, and all the bands that we played with, like Lightning Bolt, it was a scene that was really really agro, really intense. We were obsessed with the intensity, but I don’t think I was ever able to pull off every being a legitimate “badass”. Lucky for us, it means our audience is there for a good time, than for headbutting opportunities.
We’re more buttbutting… you know, it’s a headbutt but with your butt. Maybe it should be called buttbumping. It happens a lot during disco. It’s awesome.
Well my experience at your shows is that there’s certainly plenty of both…
Nice!
Of course you’re famous for your live shows. There’s such a ridiculous amount of energy that you put out on the stage, you really “use the space”, as someone might say.
Definitely. I’m always reaching to output more energy when I’m on the stage. I think I have a competition complex against the audience. I want to be generating MORE, and be faster and be in more places at the same time, than everyone else here. Which is a fun thing to try to do. It’s a little bit of a Don Quixote project. I like to push and challenge the audience to get excited. In the classical sense of the coolest band wanting to be cool and collected, we want to be the hottest band, as hot as possible.
I remember at the Laneway in Sydney last time you were here, you abseiled down a wall using a microphone. Such is one such example no doubt.
Yeah that was one of my cooler moves. I don’t know how I could possible top that without playing. That was one of my more athletic endeavours *laughs* It worked great! I weigh 4 mic cables… so if I have 4 mic cables I’m fine, but 3 will snap. So I tied it around the tree, and then repelled down. The video may show differently, but in my memory it was 1,000 feet or 700 stories, and I got to the bottom, and in one Indiana Jones move I was able to pull the whole mic in with one bull whip crack, just as the song hit in to the crescendo.
I actually have seen the video, and it appears to be more like a fat guy falling of a shed.
Surely it was more of a Spider-Man moment than that?
You know, it was for everyone but the people videotaping. Actually one thing I’m really proud of is that the band fancies it impossible to document the energy. There might be snippets of it, but I like to keep it so dissipated and surrounding everywhere all the time, moving around so much, that video doesn’t really translate the impression that gets left. Myself and everyone at the show will say “uhh, it felt MUCH more exciting than that.”
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SIDESHOW DETAILS!
MELBOURNE
BILLBOARD
Tuesday, February 8
Tickets on sale now from Moshtix,
Ticketek and Polyester Records
SYDNEY
MANNING BAR
Thursday, February 10
Tickets on sale now from Moshtix, Oztix and the venue
Supported by RRR, FBi and FasterLouder.
Also appearing at Laneway Festival 2011.
