Long-Island natives, Robbers, will be making their Metro debut this Saturday, January 23rd alongside Loyal Divide, Suns, and The Felix Culpa. The five-piece outfit released their second EP Flesh in 2009, following up their 2008 EP Ugly Savy.
A band loosely defined under the Indie/Alternative genre, Robbers offers so much more than just those two categories offer. Tossing an array of contrasting ingredients such as spoken rants, folk, electronica and more progressive rock into their musical pot and allowing them to simmer has created the wide ranging and fully unique sound that has garnered so much attention from music publications as well as their fellow members of the music community. The band’s slightly spectral sound has the versatility to come down heavy as well as haunting, with a composition to it’s individual songs that show these guys clearly know their instruments, themselves, and each other well enough to create the intricacies that make up their musical fusion.
Though Robbers has experienced a number of member losses and exchanges, the band has held fast to their vision of what it represents, no matter who has been in or out. “Whoever believes in what it stands for is just as much a part of it as any of us playing the songs on stage. I think that has a very romantic and personal feel, and it’s my favorite part of this band.” (Andrew Accardi)
More recently the band has been preparing for their upcoming tour, taking place over the course of January and February, and welcoming their drummer Mike Hennen to the area, who recently moved from St. Paul, MN. “We certainly have been a lively state of mind since he’s been here” (Andrew Accardi) While 2009 did not prove to be quite as fruitful as hoped, due to some dropped tours with lessons well learned, Robbers look to 2010 to be a “very, very good year”.
Robbers Online:
Myspace
Unicrons
Robbers will be playing this Saturday, January 23rd at the Metro alongside The Felix Cupla, Loyal Divide, and Suns. Doors at 6pm/Show at 6:30 $11.00 at the door.
Click the flier to purchase pre-sale tickets for $10.
$5 with the promo code ‘betta
Robbers’ Andrew Accardi was kind enough to talk with Telegram Sam this week about musical influences, the making of Robbers, and what we can look forward to from the band in the future.
Telegram Sam: Who are your top three favorite local bands at the moment?
Andrew of Robbers: Few favorite local bands from New York, without question are Family Lumber and The Lillapucians (but they just broke up). Very good people, very talented song writers. They keep Long Island alive, not many artists doing that right now.
T.S: If you could book a tour with any 3 bands, past or present, who would they be?
Andrew of Robbers: Three bands that we’d want to tour with…Well if it was up to me we’d just tour with Modest Mouse all the time, because to me they’re the only band that’s worth a damn. But If you asked Mike, he’d probably want to tour with the whole DoomTree crew, which would be a pretty amazing experience too.
T.S: Give us some background on the current releases you have.
Andrew of Robbers: Whenever I think back about recording Ugly Savy, I wish we could have gone back to that time with the same mind-set we have now and do it all over again. It was the first time we ever heard songs we created recorded decently, so we were so complacent. Everything sounded great to us! If we approached it now, we’d rip those songs apart, and I don’t mean re-write them, I mean give them all the emotion they’re missing. It’s a completely different aesthetic listening to those recordings and hearing the songs live. I just wish we could have gotten more of our live set in the recordings. Flesh is great. I am very proud of it. All the songs on Flesh were written over a period of three years. Flesh is more of a collection of songs that coincidentally shared a similar message, as opposed to Ugly Savy; they were all pretty much written back-to-back three/ four years ago.
T.S: What are your top three musical influences as a band?
Andrew of Robbers: Unfortunately for me I’m not finding too much inspiration in music, I don’t have an ambition to search or listen to new stuff. This funk has been hovering over me for almost two years, hopefully it will end soon..But it probably won’t. Most inspiration is found in writing, poetry. Bukowski, and the New Testament. Sounds like a dirty combination, but it’s very interesting. We’re also finding a lot of inspiration in exploring each other’s likes and dislikes as far as art, especially on the road. Plus, we’re going to be doing a lot of filming this tour as well. Interview random anybodies we meet at shows or bars, find out what expression through life and art means to them, and all that existential bull shit. I think it will make for a very wide variety in results. The world has a lot to say.
T.S: What are your plans for Robbers in the next year?
Andrew of Robbers: Our plans for the future are going to be kept a secret for a little while longer, mostly because there’s still some important decisions to be made. It’s all very exciting, I’m just looking forward to when we finally get to work on..whatever it is we decide.
T.S: What other projects have you been a part of?
Andrew of Robbers:We’ve all been in bands before this one. Joe went to Institute of Audio Research in Manhattan and was up for an award for a piece he recorded. He knows his shit. I’m excited for when we get back home from this tour because I’m going to recruit some local Pianists for an improvisation project. No premeditated ideas, just sit at the piano and play the first thing that comes to mind. Very productive challenge.
T.S: Where does the Metro rate on your list of venues to play?
Andrew of Robbers: Playing Metro is definitely a feat we are very proud of reaching, all thanks to our now very close friend, Rebecca. She has a promotion company out of Chicago called Betta Promotions. I got in touch with her back in October to set up a last minute show for one of the runs we were supposed to do with All Get Out this past December. But that just turned into her offering us a show at Metro because she believed in us that much. We’re very proud of that. Like I said before, we’re growing very quickly. We’re finding so many people that believe in what we do and this Metro show just proves that. 2010- Gonna be a very,very good year.
