Features
Bring On The Pop
The band’s tour gets rolling August 11 at the Lifestyle Community Pavilion in Columbus, Ohio, and runs through the end of September.
Highlights include stops at New York’s Bowery Ballroom (August 29), the Rock And Roll Hotel in Washington, D.C. (September 1), 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis (September 5), Chop Suey in Seattle (September 10), Mazzanine in San Francisco (September 14), The Casbah in San Diego (September 17), the Granada Theater in Dallas (September 20), the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Ga. (September 25) and Headliners in Louisville, K.Y. (September 29).
Tickets for most shows are available through the band’s web site.
Comets, which drops August 28, is VHS or Beta’s second full-length release and their first since 2004’s Night On Fire.
Singer and guitarist Craig Pfunder said the band worked with producer Brandon Mason, who has helmed projects by artists ranging from Secret Machines to David Bowie, to create an album that defied genres and was filled with something that’s somehow become anathema in recent years – pop songs.
“We really focused on songwriting – on creating pop songs in a time when pop has been watered down,” Pfunder said. “I wanted to write an album with huge catch and melody, but also something more.”
The album features guest appearances by Jim James, Carl Broemel and Bo Koster, all members of indie faves My Morning Jacket. It also marks the first time that drummer Mark Guidry has used primarily a standard, acoustic drum set instead of electronic percussion.
Fans worried that the band has abandoned their dance floor roots in favor of the pop charts shouldn’t be so quick to sound the alarm. The first single, “Burn It All Down,” a fiery track full of potentially controversial lyrics the singer describes as “a personal statement about what’s going on in the world,” will be released in advance of the album with an array of underground club mixes.
As for the album’s decidedly pop feel, the band felt it was necessary to make an album of music that was at home in a club or far away from the disco ball.
“I didn’t want to be a band that just had a dance club hit, and this album proves that that’s not the case,” Pfunder said. “Our love of and background in dance music is so strong, but here we switched gears and let the band be the band.
“We haven’t abandoned our roots – we’ve just opened our minds to new things. There’s a fine line between trendy and timeless: I wanted to write a record that people would dance to, but also crosses generations.”