helen_jupiter

Gram Rabbit is not your average band. They're not writing the kind of boring, junk pop standards that you hear on the radio or see performed on the ubiquitous "Late Night" shows. Instead, the Joshua Tree-based band is constantly striving to push the boundaries of rock, pop, and electronic music. Their first two albums, Music to Start a Cult to and Cultivation, were lyrically inspired and musically complex. Their third album, RadioAngel and the RobotBeat, plays like the soundtrack to a darkly-edged dance party, and offers the same adventurous variety of styles and sounds. You can listen to some of the tracks on their website, then pick it up on CDBaby and throw your own "naked dance party."

I caught up with Jesika von Rabbit and Todd Rutherford, the band's co-founders, when they were recently in LA for the RadioAngel release party. They discussed the evolution of their music, the recent addition of longtime producer Ethan Allen (The 88, Luscious Jackson, Patti Griffin) to the band, and what the future holds.

Helen Jupiter: Your music has evolved so much over the past three albums. The folky, Western guitar sounds of Music to Start a Cult to have made way for the dancy, eletro-pop of Radio Angel and the Robot Beat. What has driven and influenced this direction in your sound?
Jesika von Rabbit: I think we always had that electro-vibe, even on our first record, and after our second record, Cultivation, which was a lot darker and landscape-y and trippy and weird, it was like, "Okay, our next record has to be more upbeat and dancy and fun." I just wanted to make a party record. I wanted to pump up the volume.
Todd Rutherford: The making of Cultivation was draining in a way, because it had that dark, introspective side to it. A lot of those songs were from early on in Joshua Tree. We had a big group of songs, and some of them lent themselves to the electronic side, and some were kind of more rocky, space kinds of songs. We grouped them together, and the electronic songs went on Music to Start a Cult to and the spacey, more introspective songs ended up becoming Cultivation. In a way, this is really the first time that we've stepped away from those songs and done something really fresh.
Jessica von Rabbit: I don't think we fully captured exactly what we wanted.
Todd Rutherford: The naked dance party? We might get there yet.

HJ: One thing that always seems to show up in your music is a sort of edgy, social commentary. It was there in your first album, with songs like "Kill a Man" and "Devils Playground," and its there on RadioAngel. In "American Hookers," you sing that Decadence is killing me, killing you, the whole country, and in "The Rest of Us Sleep," you offer a detailed summary of whats fucked up about the evening news and by extension, our world. What are the issues that most inspire you to write, individually and as a band?
TR: Just pop culture in general. Watching TV, which we don't do a lot of, you know we don't have cable or anything but we watch the network news. What really drives me nuts is when you turn on the TV and there's one of those magazine news shows on, and it's just like, "Jesus, who gives a shit?" It's really disturbing with all the things that are wrong with the world, and all the intense things going on with the war, that it takes a back seat to what Britney Spears is wearing or where she's buying her fast food. It's so insulting, and it's really scary. All this meaningless, worthless input beamed into kids' brains. Where is it leading?
JvR: For me, "American Hookers" is a combination of America's overconsumption tendencies and technology just progressing so much it's kind of scary. The line "Tapping on our little toys, all the girls and all the boys, everybody's hooked now, everybody's hooked," was about me going out to a club and seeing someone in the middle of everything sitting there texting. There's a band playing, everyone's talking, drinking, and I'll see that and it bugs me. It's not that I'm against the technology, I just wish there was a balance. It's inevitable for life to progress like this, and I'm sure a lot of good can come out of it, but it's just like everyone needs more and more.
HJ: Whats your writing process like? Do you usually start with music or lyrics? Do you start things together, or bring them to one another once theyve begun to take shape?
TR: Every song has its own story. Sometimes one of us will sit down and program a beat, sometimes we'll sit down and jam something out together.
JvR: Yeah, there's no really set formula. It could be anything, like with "Fancy Dancy," I just wanted to write a song called "Fancy Dancy." I just liked those two words, and they inspired a feeling, and I wanted that to be the title of the song.
TR: I don't think we ever expected it to turn into a song about drug and party addition. It's a funny, happy kind of weird song, but it's also really dark.
HJ: Your longtime producer, Ethan Allen, recently joined the band. How did this come about, and what kind of impact has that had on your writing, producing, and performing?
TR: My brother, who was playing guitar for us during Cultivation, quit the band, and when we went in and made Radio Angel, it was just Ethan and me playing guitar parts. Throughout the process of making the record we talked about needing to find a guitar player. Ethan was interested, and finally just came out and said that he'd play guitar for us if we could balance his producing career and his band career at the same time. We love Ethan, and we have a great relationship. We're very close, and he's extremely talented, so he can definitely add a lot.
JvR: We haven't had a lot of time to write with him, yet, because we've been getting ready for a lot of shows and playing our Spaceland residency this past September. That's been awesome, and he's been really dedicated. Also, our new drummer, Brian MacLeod, is a longtime session drummer here in LA, and he's really talented too, so we're hoping we can sit down soon and write with these guys. It's kind of tough because we're out in the desert and they're here, and they have busy schedules.
HJ: Youre currently without a manager, label, and booking agent, and recorded RadioAngel on your own. What prompted your decision to go it alone, and what have you learned so far in the process?
TR: It was basically a plan that fell through. We had a distribution deal lined up through our manager's record label, but the label decided to call it quits right before the album came out, and then we called it quits with our management, so we were left with a new record, no manager, no means to put it out. We had to make the decision whether to seek out a new manager, which could take several months, and then have them shop the record, which could take several more months, then find a label and have them put it out, which could take another four months, so we decided to put it out at least in a small capacity ourselves, for now, and let all that stuff come together in the meantime.
HJ:Your music has started to find its way onto television, with tracks appearing in shows on NBC, CBS, and MTV. How do these licensing deals come about?
JvR: It's always just like someone is a fan that works for the show. We were on "CSI" a couple of years ago.
TR: We've been on just about ever major network. We've done really well with licensing.
JvR: Yeah, it just happens. "Kill a Man" was on the Andy Dick show on MTV about three years ago.
TR: Yeah, and then there's been Bravo, Fox, CBS, NBC, MTV, MTV2.
HJ: So how is it for you guys having your music used that way?
TR: It's good. It helps us do things like make a record on our own.
JvR: Yeah, it takes forever for them to pay you, which is the downside of it.
TR: The bigger the network, the longer it takes for them to pay you.
HJ: Youll be playing with Better Than Ezra in early 2008. What other shows are you working on getting lined up? Anything already in the works?
TR: We've got a few shows. I think we're going to do San Diego and a couple of shows in Texas on the way to New Orleans. Then we're going to be there for about five days, playing shows and having a good time. We're going to venture up the East Coast to New York, and across the tops of the states.
HJ: How are you funding this?
JvR: Good question. We're hoping that one of those checks we're waiting on from a network will show up. It's going to be expensive, and that's really why we haven't toured more up until now. Gas is insanely expensive, we don't have a label supporting us, we have to pay for it on our own. It's been tough, but we finally going to bite the bullet and figure it out. We need to get our music out there and play some places other than the West Coast.
TR: Bands poorer than us do it by hopping in their vans and somehow making it across the states, so why can't we?
HJ: What other bands would you ideally like to tour and play with?
JvR: I'd love to play with Basement Jaxx, Daft Punk, Air. I don't know, anybody!
HJ: What do the next three years hold for Gram Rabbit?
JvR: Another good question.
TR: It's hard to say. The business side of things is...
JvR: Fucked.
TR: It's just hard, you know? We're kind of a strange band, and we've had lots of interest and fancy people liking us throughout our career, but nothing has really seemed to take that's really taken us to the next level, so hopefully that'll happen. We're just going to try to write and record as much as possible, and continuously put things out, whether it be full length records, EPs, or singles, whether it be on record labels or Internet. Just try to keep ourselves out there and see what opportunities present themselves.