Interview – As Cities Burn

 

 

As Cities Burn is a pretty special band to us here at Type In Stereo, or at least to myself (and Chris of course). They belong to an elite fraternity of bands (TREOS being the other) that made me get misty eyed when they announced that they would no longer be making music. You can imagine how happy I was to find out that not only would they be playing shows again after four years of hiatus, but that they would be touring the UK. Chris and I were all over those tickets the second they went on sale and I immediately started to work on setting up an interview with Cody. I’ll leave the details of the show to the show review, but Chris and I ended up being able to sit in a van with the entire band, discussing very candidly many of the things we’ve always been curious about. We’ve had a lot of great interviews, but As Cities Burn just about takes the cake with their honesty and willingness to get to the bottom of anything we asked them. We spoke to Cody, singer and guitarist; Aaron, drummer; and Chris, guitarist.

TIS (Ca): This is the first stop on the UK tour. When you announced the reunion show late last year, everyone assumed it would be a one off. Can you tell us about how that show came about and how it led to touring again, even internationally?

Aaron: I’ll take this one. We had a couple of offers over the years, people were trying to get us to play a show, but this guy in Dallas just offered the right amount of money. We’d been talking about doing one, but we knew it needed to happen the right way and we knew that part of it would be money, to be frank. It just made it possible and it was a great offer, which made us say, “If we’re ever going to do it we might as well do it now.” Then after that, it just kind of snowballed. We had a lot of fun at that show and we thought we would do a few more, so we did a few more shows in April that we set up ourselves, and then they sold out unbelievably quick, so that was really cool. We kept getting offers for shows that were really good and we kind of just kept saying yes. But it was fun to do it and we were getting paid money; way more than we ever did when we were a band, so it was just bizarre. The Europe thing was just the same. We had two different offers and one wasn’t that good, and we would have had to pay everything out of pocket to come over here, and we couldn’t afford to do that. The guy that set this one up, was able to front all the money for it and bring us to the UK, and we thought, “Sure, why not?” That’s basically it. It’s just been fun, and at this point everything just had to line up financially and schedule-wise. It did.

TIS (Ca): Any other plans after this one?

TIS (Ch): What if people throw more money at you?

(Laughs)

TIS (Ch): Could this be arranged?

Cody: Well this is one of the things that we always wanted to do, to play overseas. This is checking it off the list and kind of feels like a completion.

Aaron: The problem is that is starts to feel lame if you don’t put out new music. We don’t want to wear out our welcome. It’s really fun to play shows, especially the Come Now Sleep and Hell Or High Water shows. Those are the songs we like to play the most. But it could get lame. Some fans have already called us out on it, which is a little bit frustrating, and we don’t care that much…

Chris: But we agree with them.

Aaron: …that yeah, it can eventually become not cool.

TIS (Ca): Like if you did reunion show after reunion show.

Aaron: We quit calling it a reunion, so people are asking us, “Are you back? Can you just say you’re back.” And it’s like, well… we’re playing shows, what more answer do you need?

Chris: The real question is, “Are you putting out a new album?”

TIS (Ch): Hold on, that’s like question #8!

(Laughs)

Chris: Sorry to jump the gun.

TIS (Ca):  So yeah…new album?

Cody: It’s…I think as…Well, I was listening to the radio recently and there was a poet that was on there being interviewed on NPR Neil Conan [Talk Of The Nation], and this poet said she lost her voice for a while and just stopped writing for a year, and she was worried that it wasn’t going to come back. Someone called in and she was giving them advice because the same thing had happened to them. She said, “Your voice will come back when it wants to come back, and you’ll know.” That’s how I feel now. There is a lot of history with As Cities Burn as a band – that you need to be spiritual or follow borders or boundaries – and with music you shouldn’t have to do that. You should just write something natural. What I write is Cody, and what we write is Cody, Aaron, and Chris, and if we call it As Cities Burn then so be it. We’ll see what happens, and we’ll write and call it what we call it, if that happens. We live in separate cities and are going our separate ways: Chris is moving to Boston, Aaron lives in Nashville, and I live in Louisiana. If I could tell myself to do something, I would want to write something, and I would want to write it with these guys because we have a great thing going. So why not? But you kind of wait, and you try, and you push, and make something come out…but the voice will be found when it wants to be found, I believe. I don’t know what to call it when it happens, but that’s what I think. Ideally, it would be great to say, “YEAH we’re coming out with a new album, expect it next summer,” but in saying that it would put blinders on you and we would have to think, “Alright, we have to make the fourth As Cities Burn album, and what does that even mean?” and you only function inside of that box. I don’t want to do that and I don’t feel that it’s the right thing to do right now, so… I know I will write something else, and we’ll see what it’s called.

TIS (Ca): I think the fans that you guys had, especially the ones that clamoured for you to stay together (and I count myself as one of those), I think as long as there is hope of something then…because obviously this dynamic of the three of you has worked really well… I think that the fans that have stuck with you past the, “Oh what, they don’t scream anymore?”, that fan, I dont think would mind if it took 3 years or if it was called something else. It could be an acoustic folk record, because whatever made the hardcore special, whatever made the rock special, will make the whatever-it-is-you-guys-do special. I’ll cut that out of the interview.

(Laughs)

Chris: No that’s nice.

TIS (Ch): So, preparing for this set of shows, I imagine you’ve gone back over your catalogue to get ready. So do any of these songs sound strange or different now that you have that distance?

Chris: Yeah, there is one. ‘Capo’ is a song that we never really got to play, since we broke up pretty much the day that album came out.

Aaron: The day it came out was our last show.

Chris: We wrote that song in the studio as we recorded it, so we never got to feel what it was like at all, and the reception on it has been amazing, as far as the crowd connecting and us feeling it [playing] live. So that’s pretty strange. It never got to have a life until now, so that’s kind of fun.

Cody: Some of the stuff… we just got better at playing our instruments since both the albums [were released]. I think some sound better because we choose to play a little differently, or be a little more minimalistic. [Stephen] Keech, our bass player right now, is very confident in his playing and it really helps our live sound. I think we’re sounding better than we ever have.

TIS (Ca): As Cities Burn has some earlier material that is beloved by a lot of people, notably stuff of Son, I Loved You At Your Darkest, and specifically the song ‘The Widow,’ which I heard you don’t like to play any more and that you’ve understandably moved past it. Is it tough to have songs you may have moved on from as an artist that fans still really connect with?

Cody: That’s a good question, and I think the way I can explain it is that I’ve been to shows where I really like a band’s “certain song,” and it’s clear that everyone in the crowd likes it, and people yell to play that song, and then they don’t play it, and I felt like, “I’m sad, I wish they’d played it,” but I don’t want them to fake it and do it just because they feel obligated to; just because people are saying it. For me and my position with this particular song, it’s personal to me and I don’t even really feel the same way as when I wrote it when I was 20. Yeah, it was 8 years ago or so, and I just don’t think that way any more. I still think what I said was true at the time, but I don’t want to fake it. It’s about my dad, and since I wrote it, I’ve kind of had a good relationship with him, whereas before I didn’t. I think people, with that song, they just sing because they like it and they like the way it sounds. I know a lot of people, sadly, would be able to relate to it personally, but I don’t know if all of them do, and they sing, and it’s catchy to them, and they can relate maybe because they have empathy and that’s good. But for me…well, the second to last time I played it was in Dallas at the reunion show, and I sang it the way that felt right to me then and I actually enjoyed it. Now, I try not to go on the Internet, or at least I’m not very connected as far as social media is concerned – I don’t have a facebook and I don’t deal with our facebook – but I went to YouTube to look at the video, just to see what was out there and see how it sounded on video. I heard what it was and then read that some people did not seem pleased. They were like, “Well we wanted ‘The Widow’ and you gave us something else.” Now I’m like, “Well now I didn’t please anyone.”

(Laughs)

Cody: Because I didn’t necessarily want to play it, but I felt like I owed it to you. I did it the way that felt right to me at the time, and I liked it, and you want the old thing, and honestly I just can’t give it right now.

Aaron: It’s strange how right now, from my perspective (and I don’t write the lyrics or anything, I just play the drums and try to play them well, but emotionally I’m not as involved), kids can give off an idea like they are entitled to something. For instance, ‘The Widow,’ like they are entitled to hear us play it. Like Cody was saying, you go to a show and you want to hear a song, but if you actually got mad, like MAD, and come up to the band and say you’re mad that they didn’t play that song, or you went on the Internet and talked shit about how they didn’t play it, well then you’re just kind of an asshole in my opinion. So, the way I see it, we wrote some songs, when we play a show we get to pick what songs we want to play…

(Laughs)

Aaron:…and that should be acceptable, I mean we play a lot of songs that are the more popular ones, and more often than not we happen to enjoy playing them as well. With ‘The Widow,’ and I’ve even said before when we’ve been talking about a set, or talked about changing a song, I’ve said, “No, if we’re going to play it, let’s just play it the way we wrote it, and play it the right way, let’s not try and change everything,” but with ‘The Widow,’ it’s such and exceptionally personal song and kids just latched on to it. I’m sure some kids latched on because they went through a similar thing, but some kids don’t know what the hell it’s about and they think Cody’s dad is dead, or they misinterpret it. Then some other people are saying, “No he’s not dead, you’re an idiot.” We had another song like that called ‘Timothy’ that I say we can’t play because it was about my friend who killed himself, so I veto that one. Cody vetoes ‘The Widow’… actually I don’t care, I veto ‘The Widow,’ that’s fine…

(Laughs)

Aaron:…I don’t give a shit if he plays it or not. There’s been times he’s played it where we didn’t think we would, but he wanted to, and he came out and did it organically and it was amazing. He changed some of the lyrics and added stuff to update it.

Chris: That was the Dallas show.

Aaron: Even years ago though, when [Cody] added some stuff on the end to update the story, and changed the guitar part. I mean we were young; the way it was written was kind of goofy, and we were on board with it at the time.

 Cody: And it sticks out, like in the middle of this heavy album. It was just this weird thing and it works somehow.

Aaron: It was popular, and I don’t know why it was so popular.

TIS (ca): Yeah, I don’t know if you meant to do it or not, but that album was really well paced.

Aaron: That was intentional. The way we laid it out was very intentional.

Cody: I don’t know if was that intentional. I think a lot of stuff just happened by chance. I think whatever spirit is behind the music just made it flow.

Aaron: Well I do remember when we were putting together the tracklist we thought it would be cool to put ‘The Widow’ right in the middle and then put “Let the Dead” [from 'Wake, Dead Man Wake'] right after – the heaviest song on the record, right after the softest song on the record. So in that way, it was intentional. That was a special album and people really connected with it, but it’s not our favourite.

[Insert TIS (ca)'s long soliloquy on S,ILYAYD and CNS]

Cody: I wish I could try to channel that again. Not that other people aren’t doing the same sort of thing, it’s just that my mind doesn’t think in the way that it used to. I seriously sat down and tried to go back to what I was thinking then and I can’t now. It’s linear, and we can’t go back…it’s A-B-C-D-E and very straight. Also, it’s hard to write that way, and all the songs are like two minutes long.

TIS (ch): So what is your favourite song to play live and the reasons behind it?

Aaron: It would probably be different for everybody.

Chris: Yeah, I like playing ‘This Is It, This Is It.’ To me, it’s like…when we first wrote it, we called it “The Strokes Song” and it kind of channelled this rock and roll energy that our other songs didn’t have.

Cody: No, we called it “Chicka Chicka.”

Chris: Well, I guess in my mind I called it “The Strokes Song.”

Aaron: Well if you wanted it to be The Strokes then I fucked up on the drumming.

(Laughs)

Chris: But I like that song. It’s got this raw kinetic energy that’s in most of our newer stuff, but it’s the most intense form. And I get to do this stupid guitar solo that makes me feel very silly, but I love doing it.

Aaron: My favourite to play is probably ‘Petty’ because it has the best groove and a lot of little ghost note type stuff…and it’s really easy to play. That sounds bad, but I really like playing minimal output maximum quality, and from a drumming perspective I attain that the most there. Musically, I’ve always said it’s the best song we’ve ever written, strictly from a song-writing perspective. Dynamics, tempos, all that stuff, and we kind of ripped off this band Twothirtyeight on the bridge. Not ripped off, but when we wrote that bridge, I was like, “Man this is like a Twothirtyeight song and that’s cool.” Or ‘New Sun’ is pretty fun on drums because it’s technical and difficult to play.

Chris: So either the easiest or the hardest to play?

Aaron: Well ‘This Is It, This Is It’ is the hardest; it makes me tired. I hate playing it.

(Laughs)

Cody: I think…

Aaron: Cody will probably say ‘The Widow.’

(Laughs)

Cody: It’s hard to have a favourite, because I feel like if you’re not close to the favourite, you get cut; we don’t play you. So they are all pretty neck and neck in my book. But currently in our set, I like ‘Made Too Pretty,’ because it’s around a lot of loud stuff. Well, our set can be loud and full, and then this is one guitar a lot of the time, and bass and drums. Chris, you don’t really play…so I guess it’s good because you don’t play.

(Laughs)

Cody: No, I just think that the groove is kind of consistent. It just feels good, you know? So I think I enjoy singing and playing that one the most of this set.

TIS (Ca): This is a long question, but I can sum it up: Hawkboy put out vinyl on Broken Circles…what are the chances that we’re going to see something?

Aaron: This is a technical question, and honestly we have no control over it whatsoever. There’s literally nothing we can do. Broken Circles has been asking Tooth and Nail for years to put out As Cities Burn on vinyl because he has done a ton of Tooth and Nail bands. He has been trying and trying and trying, and he asked if I could try and help, and I said sure, because I’d love to see any of them on vinyl just because that’s a cool thing to have, you know? I don’t even own a record player, but I think it would be cool. So, I asked Tooth and Nail and they said that aside from all the technical and legal bullshit that they have to deal with because they are…well, they’re Tooth and Nail, but 49% of the company is owned by EMI and they have a lot of influence and a lot of corporate stuff that they pass down to Tooth and Nail that needs to be followed. So before, Tooth and Nail was this cool indie label that could run however they wanted, and now there’s all this money in it and it’s just more difficult. But they said that they have a handful of records that are on a “no” list for licensing to do vinyls because they were considering possibly one day doing a “Best of Tooth and Nail” vinyl series which would probably be…I don’t even know what would be on it, but at least one of our records would be on it and maybe The Moon is Down by Further [Seems Forever]…Juliana Theory maybe…

Chris: The whole record or just one song?

Aaron: Yeah, the whole record.

Chris: Not a comp?

Aaron: Not a comp, but like a favourites kind of thing. They did call recently and say there might be a chance, that they’re looking to do that and one of the A&R guys is trying to make it happen. He said he wanted to make sure that we still wanted to and we said yeah. Not that we even have a say. The way that contracts work, they can do anything they want.

TIS (Ca): It would be cool if you guys could go through Broken Circles as well, because they put out good product.

Aaron: Yeah it would be cool. But the only say we have on that is saying, “Hey, you should do this,” and they are going to be like, “Yeah, whatever.” But I hope it happens.

TIS (Ch): Your first album has a very different sound to your more recent stuff. How much of that change in sound was consciously done? Or was it just the natural feel of where things were going at the time?

Aaron: Hmmm…It had to be natural, I guess.

Cody: Yeah, because of losing the singer that screamed. When writing the first album, I would just not think “I have to sing and play this at the same time” usually. If you know somebody else is going to sing over it, then you can be limitless on the guitar for that part. So, on the new stuff, I would just try to write what I could play and sing at the same time and then that would change the way I would write. So that changed it naturally, I guess.

Chris: And you sound different when you sing.

Cody: Yeah, I can’t really scream for a long time before my voice starts to hurt, so I try to just sing more.

Aaron: On the intentional side, I guess we were drawing on influences for that type of music, you know, stuff we actually listen to. I mean, I guess you all listened to heavy music a little bit on that first record. I didn’t really listen to it at all.

Cody: It was a lot of touring with heavy bands, and we were a young band so we just absorbed a lot of that style watching them play live.

Chris: And Aaron, you were never one for the double bass pedal or the blast beat. It was never in your soul.

Aaron: Yeah, I never played a double bass pedal. On the second record we were like, “Let’s try to write more like bands we actually like and listen to.”

Cody: We wanted to change our name because we thought we were changing so much, but we were persuaded by our A&R guy at Tooth and Nail not to. And I think that might have been kind of bad advice. I think it would have been good to change our name and just start new. Then you don’t have anyone saying “Hey, play ‘The Widow,’” you know?

Chris: It would have been very easy.

Aaron: I think we would have had the same amount of fans, because we lost half our fan-base from the first record to the second one. So, if we had changed our name we probably would have just gotten that same half, and maybe we would still be a real band or something. You never know.

Chris: And our sound was so different; it became like going to see a sequel for a movie, having not liked the first movie. You wouldn’t do that, even if it was actually really good. So yeah, maybe it was the wrong choice, but you can’t turn back time.

TIS (Ca): With that said, what kind of bands were you listening to that influenced Come Now Sleep?

Cody: Further Seems Forever always. Since they came out, I really liked them. That band, Code Seven, have a couple of parts…what’s that album called? Dancing Echoes/Dead Sounds. I listened to that pretty heavily during that time. The Strokes…

Chris: I was really listening to Wilco a lot. The Beatles, always The Beatles. They are a constant sound in my ear.

Aaron: I was listening to Jimmy Eat World.

Chris: Jenny Lewis?

Aaron: Yeah, I liked Jenny Lewis and Rilo Kiley a lot…but I don’t think that influenced me…I don’t remember (laughs). Jimmy Eat World definitely, but outside of that I don’t know.

TIS (Ch): With bands like Thrice, Thursday, The Receiving End of Sirens, and you guys throwing in the towel, how do you feel about that scene that you came from? Do you think it’s dying, that it’s growing, that there are new bands coming up to take the places of these other bands?

Cody: That’s tough man.

Chris: Yeah, I really don’t know.

Aaron: We were so far out of it…I mean, even those four bands in particular…like, The Receiving Ends of Sirens, we talked about touring with them one time and it didn’t work out. We never felt like we were in that scene, really. Not in a pretentious way, like, “Oh, we’re not part of that,” but that we never got to really tour with any of those bands. Actually, we were just talking out there about this one tour that we felt was the beginning of the end. We did this tour with this band called Alesana, and sorry, but they were just the worst band ever. They were a really bad screaming band…like mall screamo…like, with makeup and…

Chris: Like food-court screamo.

(Laughs)

Aaron: It was a weird booking agent thing. We were putting out Come Now Sleep, which was like an ambient rock record, and that would have been cool for The Receiving End of Sirens, but that tour fell through, and he said we should go out with this band because they sell tickets. It was the worst mistake ever. So as far as that scene, it’s weird, but we never really felt that much a part of it. I feel like we were always seeking validation, but we were not getting the tours that we would have wanted to get. Maybe because our first record was so heavy and people thought that was what we were, or maybe it was Christian stuff, who knows.

Chris: Touring is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, if you remember those. Once you make one decision you can’t go back. Or like a tournament in a game – you win one match and now you are in a set and you can’t go to a different one. After Alesana, it just kept getting…I mean, they were the worst, but we couldn’t really repair ourselves from that.

Cody: There’s no blaming it on them though.

Chris: No, obviously! It’s not like they killed our band.

Aaron: No we’re not blaming them, it was just a poor persuasion from our booking agent and it was a poor decision on our part. What I was trying to communicate is that we never felt…

Cody: We were guilty by association. Looking back we should have just listened to them and said “I hate this. I don’t like it and I never will like it. I don’t want to be associated with this, so no, we’re not doing this, we can wait.”

Chris: That’s advice that we should give to everyone. Just do what you believe in and never fucking settle for anything else.

Aaron: Yeah, but with a record coming out, you have to be doing something. What we should have done was headlined and picked bands to take out or something…what was the question about? Something about those bands quitting?

(Laughs)

Chris: Oh, the scene!

Aaron: Yeah the scene. I just don’t think we know anything about the scene. We never felt like we were in it, and I promise that’s not a pretentious way of saying that we were above it or anything.

TIS (Ca): I think a lot of your fans associate you with it, but you never felt like you were in it.

Aaron: Yeah, I can see our fans liking those bands.

Chris: I mean, we look up to those guys a ton. They’re our heroes.

Aaron: Yeah, I love Thursday, and Thrice was awesome. I saw Thursday last year.

Cody: Thursday, Thrice and The Receiving End of Sirens…you could probably put them down for the question before as influences.

Aaron: Actually, that list would be like a dream tour. I wish we could have gotten on that tour (laughs). But now they’re all done, and they never asked us (laughs).

Chris: Hey, well we’re doing a reunion, so…

(Laughs)

Cody: But who knows, man. I mean, it’s Skrillex; that’s the new wave.

Aaron: You think we should go on tour with Skrillex?

Cody: No, just that whatever this scene was, it will be absorbed by Skrillex. I mean, the drummers will be out of work because all you need is a mechanical beat, and…

Chris: You’re going to have to learn how to wobble. Throw some “wubs” in there…and Aaron is a great free-jazz drummer, so you know, if you can get into that…

(Laughs)

TIS (Ca): Awesome. So, which was your favourite album to record and why?

Aaron: Wow, that is a multi-layered question.

Chris: I’d say Come Now Sleep was the most fun. We were all together the whole time for that record. Cody wasn’t doing production duties, so he was free.

Cody: Yeah, Come Now Sleep was great. It was probably the best. We had the longest time and it was fun.

Aaron: We had the longest time, the biggest budget, and we were the least poor.

(Laughs)

Aaron: On the first one we were all poor and the budget was tight, but it was fun, and then the second one was super chill and we had six weeks. It was fun.

Chris: And it was cool working with Matt Goldman, whom I had never gotten to record with. I wasn’t on the first album, so I had never worked with someone of that caliber.

Cody: And Hell Or High Water was lonely for me because we only got together a few times to finish writing the songs. Aaron recorded the drums and Chris did a couple of parts, and then I just kind of put myself in a cave and did lots of work. It was just lonely and not fun. I had to really rely on myself to say “Oh, that’s good,” but you really need everyone to keep your head clear. Although that’s my favourite album, probably because it’s the most current. I like how that one turned out the best.

TIS (Ca): So that’s the one you like the best, but Come Now Sleep was your favourite to record.

Cody: Yeah.

TIS (Ch): Your lyrics lead me to believe that you are a reader. Have you read anything good recently?

Cody: Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan. I read that recently and it was very, very good. It’s thought-provoking. I like reading but I don’t read enough. I don’t know why…probably timing. I go back and forth. Whenever I am reading fiction, I think that it’s wasting my time because I need to be reading non-fiction so I’m getting something real, but then fiction holds my attention more a lot of the time. I usually ask Chris what’s good to read and he’ll give me Tom Robbins or something.

Chris: I guess the last book I read that melted my mind was The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus. In it, language becomes toxic. So, as we get older it becomes harder and harder to communicate, and it reaches the point that it can actually kill you to talk to people. It’s set right now but with this one change to make it kind of post-apocalyptic. I thought it was cool.

Aaron: I’m not a big reader. I mean, I read, but I don’t read fiction. I read political literature and I read about baseball.

TIS (Ca): Who’s your team?

Aaron: The Braves. And my favourite sports writer is Joe Posnanski, if anyone cares.

TIS (Ca): Who are some bands that more people need to be listening to?

Aaron: Tallhart is a band we just took on a couple of shows. They are on Equal Vision and they played with Hawkboy in December on some shows. They are one of my favourite bands that are out there right now. And there’s a band called Behold the Brave that I manage, but they are really good.

Cody: I haven’t actively sought out any underground bands or anything…I listen to the radio a lot.

Aaron: Yeah, I wish Katy Perry got more recognition.

(Laughs)

Cody: I mean, I listen to Elliott Smith a lot, but I think a lot of people listen to Elliott Smith.

Chris: I wish they would play Bjork and Animal Collective more in the mall.

Cody: (Laughs) I think that would creep people out. No one would want to buy anything.

Chris: Oh, and me and Cody just made a new CD under the name Wall of Ears. It’s just like four songs.

Cody: Yeah, we’re going to mix it when we get home. And your old band, Twin Killers, are fantastic. So that’s another one that people should listen to.

TIS (Ca): So, one of my friends is in a band called Gates, and he jokingly asked me to ask why you left the song ‘Gates’ off the full album of Hell or High Water. But I thought, yeah, that is kind of an interesting question. Because I remember I already owned the album, and I saw it was an iTunes exclusive, and I didn’t want to have to buy the whole album again…

Aaron: Yeah, I think that was a Tooth and Nail thing. Also, I think we decided it didn’t fit.

Cody: Yeah, there wasn’t a good place for it. And now, if you buy it on iTunes, it comes after ‘Capo’ which is kind of weird.

Aaron: Half of that song was recorded for Come Now Sleep and for some reason we just didn’t finish it, or…

Cody: It’s just that Come Now Sleep was so long. You know, you start writing an album and you think “We have to have this many songs on it,” so it was a possible one for the final cut. Then when it came down to putting it on there, the band was fizzling out and the A&R guy asked us “Hey, how do you feel about using this as a bonus?” and we were like, “Yeah, whatever you want, man.” I mean, I want people to hear it, but I would rather just have it as a free download from the Internet, not necessarily as a part of Hell Or High Water, because I don’t really feel like it is a part of it. I mean, the CDs I have don’t have it on them, so that to me is Hell Or High Water.

Aaron: And that song was written specifically to be played live, and sometimes I feel like maybe we didn’t capture the true nature of it.

Cody: I haven’t heard that recording in a long time. I don’t know what it sounds like to be honest.

Aaron: It sounds fine, it just…

TIS (Ca): It sounds like it should be on Come Now Sleep, now that you mention it.

Aaron: Yeah, that was the intention.

Cody: It was the outro to the last song from Son, I Loved You At Your Darkest, which is kind of ironic. Whenever we played ‘Of Want and Misery: The Nothing That Kills,’ we put it on the end. And then it somehow made it on the end of the last album.

Aaron: Yeah, we put it there to manipulate emotions.

Cody: (Laughs) yeah, we’re bringing you back to the beginning (laughs).

CAR: Is there anything you plan on doing, or anything interesting you have done while staying in the UK?

Cody: We met some beautiful people at our hostels from all over the world. We just learned so much about their cultures, and we went out and had a good time. You know, in any of those melting-pot cities you can expect that kind of experience. I guess what’s cool about the hostels is that no one’s from London.

Chris: Yeah, we’re all in the same boat.

Aaron: Me and Chris went to the Tate Modern art museum. They had a fucking mirror and called it art. It pissed me off so bad.

Chris: Yeah, that’s contemporary art for you.

TIS (Ca): Yeah, when it comes to modern art…like when it’s Salvador Dali, I think “I couldn’t do that,” and so I consider it art.

Aaron: Well I love modern art, like if you are thinking of late 19^th Century to the ‘70s or whatever.

Chris: Yeah, those were triumphs of the imagination, but now it’s like mixing minimalism with absurdity.

TIS (Ch): The Tate had a pretty cool sunflower thing last year.

This led to a lengthy conversation about the values of different artistic forms and styles until we decided we should head back into the show. Like I said, As Cities Burn could not have been nicer or more engaging. Cody, Aaron, and Chris continued to talk to us outside of the venue for a long while and we got the sense that they were really excited to be playing together and doing this tour. A big “Thank You” from us here at TypeInStereo to As Cities Burn for playing a great show (review here) and taking the time to meet with us.

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