Just before Freelance Whales embarked on a show-intensive start to 2010, I caught up with Doris Cellar to learn about the record Weathervanes and what to expect from a live show. On Wednesday Jan 20th they play Mercury Lounge with Animal Tropical and Still Life Still - Grab your ticket here.
Christian: Ok so I am coming to see you at the Mercury Lounge, what can we expect from a live show? How do you interact with crowds differently from your infamous street shows?
Doris Cellar: For us regardless if we are on the subway or on the stage, we try to share an experience with one another as a band. It’s not that we are disregarding the crowd or anything but if we can explore the songs at the moment with every ounce of concentration, then we can get lost in our songs and hopefully the experience we are sharing is entertaining or compelling to watch.
Christian: You have a load of ‘proper shows’ coming up, what are you most looking forward to about your Jan tour?
DC: Surfer blood, Animal Tropical, Bear in Heaven are all bands we admire, so we are definitely looking forward to hearing them and hopefully getting to hang out with them.
Christian: I see your off to London (my home town) have you played there before? How did you get that hookup? Excited to play to the crazy British crowds?
DC: We have never played London nor did we know that the crowds were particularly crazy. What should we expect? We were lucky enough to get some radio play early on in the bands development and some how we got some show offers even though we never been there before.
Christian: Your record is very eclectic, like the seriously creepy interlude tracks Hallways and Danse Flat working in the haunting theme…How did you come up with this idea?
DC: Those songs we’re meant to be specifically haunting but Kevin was messing around with his loop station and his electric guitar and we really liked the sensation that they evoked so we decided to fit them into the record. It was a nice way of rounding out the record to evoke an over all dream scape that is a big theme of the record.
Christian: If I did not hear you before I don’t think I would have guessed NYC, you seemed to have escaped disillusion from the harshness here.. Do you think place has influenced your record a lot?
DC: The setting behind the record is inspired by a more rural place than NYC and in some cases you need to be in an urban space to feel nostalgic about the country side. So in that sense New York did inspire the record.
Christian: If you wanted a listener to get one thing out of the record what would it be?
DC: We hope that the record encourages people to dream more frequently and with more lucidity.
Christian: Whats after the January show dates? More touring?
DC: Well we won some free hours at grand street recording studio so we hope we can book some time there to lay down some acoustic tracks before we hit the road again.
