Formed by a group of VCU students two years ago in a dorm room, Young Adult Fiction have grown into one of the better indie rock bands that the Richmond scene has to offer. Their incorporation of a modern pop sensibility into a sound that harks back to the great guitar-driven indie rock bands of the 90s, such as Built To Spill, Archers Of Loaf, and Pavement, helps them to stand out with a striking and unusual style. They released their debut EP, Paradise Birds, back at the beginning of the year, and recently followed it up with a full-length collection entitled Passage Graves, which mixes new full-band recordings with solo demos and four-track creations by individual members of the band. Both of these releases are available for digital download from their Bandcamp page. Young Adult Fiction will be performing at the seventh annual Ghost Of Pop festival, taking place this Saturday, December 10, at Gallery 5. In preparation for that show, I emailed them a few interview questions, and received responses from each member of the band: guitarist/singers Joe Paulk and Ben Harsel, bassist Zach Hanson, and drummer Matt Timko. I've done my best to incorporate each individual set of answers into a cohesive interview, which you will find below:
How did Young Adult Fiction get together? What were your initial goals for the band?
Matt: Well, before I started my freshman year, I met Ben in a VCU group on facebook. We talked about our mutual love for Pavement, which I guess initially formed a friendship before I even met the guy. A couple weeks went by when we started school, and thats when I met Louis, our first bass player. We would take amps down into the Johnson Hall alley wall, plug in a guitar, and just beat it with drum sticks and make “noise music.” Joe joined the noise jam in the alleyway before we got kicked out by VCU Police; I guess thats when we exchanged information.
Joe: The band was formed by strangers in our freshman year at Virginia Commonwealth University. The initial goals for the band, broadly, were to just play music and have fun.
Ben: I met Joe our first year of college. We began playing music together, and not long after we recorded two original [songs] and posted them online. Matt heard them and wanted to play drums.
Matt: I got an email from Ben. It was a two song demo, one of which was "News Reports" (our first hit, I guess you could say). I was blown away by it. I noticed it had electronic drums, and asked to play drums. We actually had our first practices in the VCU music department (until we got kicked out for playing the jazz drum kits too hard.... haha).
Ben: [Matt] grabbed our friend Lou to play bass, and so we got together to practice. We played a house show not long after our first practice, and from there we just kept playing. We basically just wanted to play in a band because we all have passion for music in some way. We always try to play as many shows as we can and record some songs ourselves every so often.
Matt: Our initials goals for the band was just to play a LOT of shows, get our name out there, and have fun. We recorded our first tracks as a band in Johnson Hall--even the drums. We had to do the drums in one or two takes, so we didn't get written up for a noise complaint.
Zach: We started off as a four piece with Louis Henniger playing bass. At that time I was playing bass in Winter Wolves, now Jabroni, with Louis playing the drums. When Louis decided to focus more on his drumming, YAF needed a new bassist and I was asked to fill in the missing spot.
As relative newcomers to the city and the music scene, what's your experience of Richmond been like so far?
Matt: It has been very welcoming. We have been really lucky to have played a lot of the venues in Richmond, ranging from The National and the Hat Factory to your friend's basement. We do have to say we love house shows best.
Joe: The experience so far has been a mix of both excitement and some discouragement.
Ben: We all really like the city of Richmond. Lots of places to see music, and lots of people who are excited about playing it. We'd all say that house shows here are more enjoyable than venue shows 9 out of 10 times.
Zach: So far, my experience with the music scene in Richmond has been extremely positive. Everywhere we've played people have been helpful and encouraging. I think that's really great, especially noting Richmond's diverse music scene.
In light of the current state of the indie scene, your loud, rocking sound could be seen as somewhat of a throwback to an earlier era. Do you as a band feel any kinship with the indie genre as it exists in 2011?
Matt: When we first started playing shows, we were always compared to Pavement, Sonic Youth and Dinosuar Jr.--that 90s indie rock. I guess since we really weren't matured as a band back then, we just went with these labels. We definitely love 90s indie, and these bands are influences of ours, but we are trying to form our own unique sound. We see too many bands trying way to hard too fit in with the RVA scene and striving for that rockstar super indie look, and we could really just care less about that. We have been called a “college rock” band by some, but I am fine with that even if that comes with connotations of being lazy and sloppy. We would rather be sloppy and make genuine expressive music than have an ostentatious image and sound. Though, all our friends are in bands which we all love and have been playing shows for almost three years now. Jabroni, Basmati, Midair, Dirty Kicks, Your Jovian, etc.
Joe: The kinship in the local scene has been through a circle of friends bands (Basmati, Midair, Night Idea). As for the indie genre that exists today, it seems overly superficial and boring, so it would be best for the band to separate itself from the indie rock label.
Ben: The scene now is problematic, in the sense that most things happening are in fact a revival of some sort, because so many types of music have been played from, say, the 1920s to today. The modern scene in rock seems to just be a mix of different eras' sounds. You see the 90s bands, the 60s bands, the 2000s bands... It would be impossible to pinpoint the specific sound for the current scene.
Zach: I see our connection with the music scene of 2011 just as strong as it would have been in 1994. Although we don't really fit in with the majority of new groups these days, I find a lot of the new music I'm hearing to be just as inspring as anything 15 years ago, if not more.
Your new album, Passage Graves, features only a few full-band tracks, and is filled up with solo tracks recorded by individual members of the band. What led you to take this approach, rather than waiting until you had an album's worth of full-band material?
Matt: We kind of see our band as a collective, given the fact that each member has a solo project that we write songs for. So basically Ben, Joe, or I will write a song, present it to the band and make it into a YAF song. I guess this album is just showing our diversity. On average we write a couple songs a month for our own personal intentions and only present songs we feel will make good YAF songs.
Joe: This approach was taken to showcase the diversity of the band's songwriting, to ensure that this band can't be simply labelled as throwback indie rock. The decision is also appropriate on a conceptual level, to exhibit how this band functions. As each member came from different foundations in music, communicating on a creative level has been especially difficult. So every solo track encompasses each individual songwriter's own take on how they would imagine the band to sound like. It's a compilation of books on a shelf.
Zach: I have no idea, but it's a pretty cool way of showing what Joe, Ben, and Matt had been doing over the summer [when] we weren't playing or recording.
What's coming up in the near future for Young Adult Fiction? Do you have any plans to release your music in physical rather than digital formats anytime soon?
Matt: Well, we have a tour in the works! And actually, [it] has been going really well. We have a lot of good venues booked, including Arlene's Grocery in NYC, where the Strokes got their start. So who knows what could happen! Since we are in college we are very broke, so it's really hard to press something up with our funds. We have been saving, though, in hopes of putting out some vinyl. We have some offers from studios who want to record us. Until we work out the details and press something, we will always have our music online for free.
Zach: We hope to possibly realease a 7 inch or an EP with our friends Basmati before we tour this winter.
Ben: We have a winter tour in the works with our friends Basmati, so we're trying to concentrate on that right now. This semester we've basically played on average at least 3-4 times a month, so we're going to try to slow down in that sense.
--
More info about Young Adult Fiction:
Facebook
Bandcamp
Myspace