related items
During high school Patrick Kennan, the architect behind The Winter Sounds’ stripped-down synth-pop, listened to nothing but Rush. “I’m not so into it now,” laughs Kennan, The Winter Sounds’ singer/bassist. “But the melodies were always really good and the musicianship was incredible. I’ve always heard there’s only one type of Rush fan—you’re either totally obsessed or you don’t like them at all.”
The Winter Sounds infuse indie jams with Kennan’s adhesive hooks and Meredith Huff’s big-80s synth beeps. “O’Fear,” from their new record “Church of the Haunted South,” opens with a hymnal Fleet Foxes-like intro before rolling into skate-center pop.
“Take a melody that would be on a guitar and put it on a synthesizer, and that lends itself to dance beats,” says Kennan, a 30-year-old Greenville native now based in Athens. “Then these things happen naturally that make the music as fun as possible.”
What song best describes what it’s like growing up in Greenville? That’s a really good question. Actually the album has a lot to do with relationships I’ve been in, but it’s also a retelling of “Gone with the Wind.” When we were on tour someone picked up the book for a dollar in the book store. He read it and was like, “This book is amazing, even though it never seemed like something I would be interested in.” It’s this amazing story about our history. I wanted the album to be a loose interpretation of what the characters may have been feeling. Finding parallels in your own life to characters in old books and feeling an artistic connection. I never enjoyed music that had a completely literal interpretation.
Expand on the album title. For all of us (in the band), there’s a thick and twisted religious history. I went to Catholic school in Greenville and got kicked out. Our keyboard player (Meredith Huff) actually graduated as a theology major and music minor. But everybody’s kind of drifted away from those strong religious ties. For me personally, there was a lot of anger coming out of it and doing my own thinking. I felt a lot of frustration with how religion manipulates fears to control you.
What did you get kicked out of Catholic school for? There wasn’t anything major. It was a lot of little things that added up. Throwing a baseball through a window. There was a fire extinguisher incident. There was a lot of time spent after school for talking out and stuff. I was changing and it was hard for me to be contained in a small school.
Since the members of The Winter Sounds live in dispersed cities, like Athens and Chicago, how do you get ready for tours and records? Clayton (Taylor, guitarist) and I spent a month-and-a-half in Chicago in April in between tours. There we have a practice space and we can rehearse there. Before the last tour, everyone came here and we spent a week rehearsing. We kind of write a lot on our own and send MP3s back and forth. Our drummer will record drum tracks and send them our way. Then we’ll put together these rough versions of songs. While we’re on the road we’ll be tweaking it. Sometimes we’ll be rehearsing in Athens for a week, or in Baton Rouge where our drummer Ryan (Durdin) has family, or my mom’s living room…crazy stuff like that. Sometimes we just do it with acoustic instruments on the road.
What were some of your sources to find new music in Greenville? Manifest. I’d just buy from the used CD dollar bin. I’d buy 10 and maybe one or two would become favorites. There was also this place in Easley called Scum Records. I would basically cut class and do the same thing. Listen to music and scour the used section.
In your bio it says the band eats a lot of Ramen Noodles on the road. What’s the best flavor? We don’t ever use the seasoning. We’ll just use the noodles and put some lemon pepper or spicy sauces in there. The way it goes on the road, we’ll have a lot of butter beans or corn and all the vegetables will rotate and the sauce will rotate because you’ll get sick of it in a week. But if you rotate, it’s a whole new food adventure.
The Winter Sounds open for The Whigs at 8:30 p.m. July 30 at The Handlebar. Tickets are $11.
For more information, check out www.thewintersounds.com.
