Interview with Laarks

Making the trek from Wisconsin this weekend to play the Nomad World Pub is the Eau Claire-based quartet Laarks. Band member Ian Jacoby fielded questions from Culture Bully’s Jon Behm for this week’s Five Questions, covering the band’s connection to the fantastic Land of Talk, its relationship with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and challenging Justin Timberlake to a game of streetball.

Jon Behm: I don’t know a great deal about your band. What are you guys all about?

Ian Jacoby: We are an “indie rock” band from Eau Claire, WI. Yes, this term is vague. I guess when I try and explain what we sound like, I usually end up saying something like, “Just imagine a version of Coldplay or The Killers that didn’t make you look like a giant pussy while listening.” That’s usually good enough for most people. If you are an old lady at the library I work at, I would say that we sound, “A lot like Rod Stewart.”

We play fast, dance-pop with a little bit of epic-ness and obligatory white-guy guitar noodling; there is plenty of noodling on the new record. Our Drummer, Brian Moen is in the band, Land of Talk. They are originally Canadian, but recently relocated to Eau Claire. Our guitar player, Kyle Flater spent a good chunk of his life living in the Twin Cities and eating rice and teaching little kids to swim. Our bass player, Zach Hanson is ruggedly handsome, lives in the Twin Cities and works and records at The McNally School of Music.

JB: You borrowed microphones from Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) as well as some creative input to record your debut album – was any part of his advice to sequester yourself in the middle of the woods all winter?

IJ: We didn’t necessarily hole ourselves up in a cabin, but we definitely wore more flannel than was previously the norm. I don’t know if any of us can chop wood that well, so that could’ve been a disaster. A big chunk of it was recorded in a luke-warm room in a house that we all live in. It has enough squalor to be artistic.

Justin’s main input was to say, “Sounds great guys, keep it up.” He was in and out of Eau Claire during the recording, but came by often enough to make us feel like we were doing something of value. We’ve all known Justin for years, so it is nice to see him being validated for all the work that he’s put in. Other than that, we mainly value him for his skills in basketball. He is surprisingly nimble for being so pasty and meaty. I would put our band plus Justin against any other basketball playing musicians in the country. Yup, even Timberlake. That guy’s game is all flash.

JB: I have been hearing a lot of buzz about Eau Claire bands lately – first Bon Iver, Cranes & Crows, The Daredevil Christopher Wright, and now you guys. Is the Eau Claire scene blowing up or what?

IJ: It’s really weird for us that people are “discovering” the Eau Claire scene all of a sudden, because it’s been really strong for as long as I can remember. Eau Claire is a weird place in that it’s a big enough college town to have its own identity, but close enough to be influenced by the Twin Cities. There have been countless amazing bands playing locally, at least since I’ve been going to shows (the past five years or so.) Amateur Love, Echo Bravo and Justin Vernon’s first band, Deyarmond Edison are all worth checking out. We also have a really great local City Pages type magazine called Volume One that has gotten the creative types better connected throughout the city.

We’ve really benefited from having a ton of really strong songwriters start bands all at the same time. I’ve heard people jokingly say that we want to be the next Omaha. I hope not, if only for the fact that Omaha seems like a barren wasteland to me. I hope that we’re the next Duluth, but you know, without all the crippling industry.

JB: What does “S” stand for if it doesn’t stand for science anymore?

IJ: The “S” Stood for Science is a stupid title trying to explain what the “S” in Ulysses S. Grant stood for. Get it? Ulysses Science Grant. The song is about science and rockets and living forever and history, so I guess it seemed like it made sense at the time. I never really tell the guys what the songs are about until after we’ve learned them so that they can’t make me change the lyrics. We also have a song called, “Look Out” which is part about growing up and part about if sharks could fly through the air. Go figure.

JB: So you guys are done recording your first album – what’s next? Lot’s of touring? Courting labels? High volume Myspace friending?

IJ: We just got done recording and are in the process of mixing. That’s sort of a process in itself, but I guess after that it is shopping the album around and playing shows and making our parents’ ashamed of us. We would love to up our myspace count, it is one of our main reason for doing internet interviews. We have like 400 friends right now, but something like 350 of them are rap groups who send borderline-obscene messages to us nonstop. We’re going on a tour with The Daredevil Christopher Wright at the end of this week, and perhaps another one in August, but other than that we’re just looking to play shows, eat sandwiches, and watch horrible television.

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