Silverstein Interview

ON APRIL 26TH YOU RELEASED YOUR FIFTH STUDIO ALBUM TITLED RESCUE. THIS BEING YOUR FIFTH ALBUM, YOU HAVE A LOT OF EXPERIENCE BEHIND WRITING ALBUMS NOW. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED IN REGARDS TO WHAT PEOPLE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU?
Just when you think you might know what people want, you will put something out and then people will say “Oh, I wish they had done this.” I think all of our albums have been well received for the most part, which is good. When we make a record, we try to progress naturally with our sound. We don’t try to do anything drastic and freak anybody out. We enjoy what we do, so with us, we want to stay along the same path musically and not stray too far from it when you talk about progression. We feel that we are accomplishing what we want to do with our music.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO WRITE THE RECORD?
This record was a bit different than the other ones. With the other records, we would have kind of a window between touring, so like three or four months to write it, get in the studio, record it and then it would come out pretty much right away. When we started working on this record, we didn’t know when it was coming out and we didn’t know who was putting it out. We literally didn’t know anything. There was a lot less pressure at least time wise. We actually spent over a whole year writing and recording. When it came down to actually taking the two months to record the album in the studio, we already had everything dialed in because we had already recorded everything with demos. It was a lot less of a stressful process this time and a little more calculated.

YOU ARE WITH A NEW LABEL NOW, HOPELESS. THIS IS YOUR FIRST ALBUM WITH THEM.
That’s right!

DOES IT GET EASIER OR HARDER WITH EACH ALBUM TO MAKE SOMETHING CREATIVE AND NEW?
It definitely gets harder. I think every artist, when they put out an album, it should be their best. I know it isn’t always their best album, but it should be. If it isn’t, the band should believe that it is. With every record that we have put out, we truthfully believed that it is the best. If it wasn’t then we wouldn’t put it out. That is something that is important for us. When you are constantly trying to out do yourself at every turn, it’s challenging. I don’t want to say there is less to talk about because that’s not really true, but you’ve done a lot of things lyrically before and you’ve used a lot of ideas, so it does get harder and harder to continue to come up with new things.

THIS ALBUM IS ABOUT DOING YOUR PART TO HELP YOURSELF AND THOSE AROUND YOU. TELL ME ABOUT THE NAME RESCUE FOR THIS ALBUM.
Yes, that’s absolutely right. You did your research, that’s good. We kind of wanted to go with a one word album title and we were trying to think of something that was a powerful word and at the same time was uplifting and positive. We thought that was a great name for the album, not only because of the message of hope in the songs, but also because of where we are in our career right now. We were switching labels and going on a new path. We thought it was a fitting title.

I READ THAT YOU TOOK CHANCES WITH THIS RECORD. WHAT WOULD THOSE BE?
I think the biggest chances that we took were that we did things a little bit differently when we were writing songs. On every song that we worked on, there is always a part whether I’m writing it myself or we are all writing it together, where you decide which direction you are going to take the song. You will have a riff or a couple riffs and maybe one will be the verse and one will be the chorus. There comes a point where you say “Okay, for this bridge or this midsection, what are we going to do? Are we going to make this song heavy? Are we going to break it down and make it soft or poppy?” With this album, when we got to those points we didn’t do what we thought people thought we should do. We didn’t say “Oh, well this is what Silverstein is supposed to sound like. This is what Silverstein would do here. We better do what Silverstein would do.” We 100% abandoned that idea and we just did it how we wanted to do it. There are songs like “The Artist” on the new album that are very different in my opinion from what we’ve done before. A song we wrote for ourselves, without any sort of structure or any sort of thought in terms of what we thought someone would expect. “Burning Hearts” I think was really similar too. Even the first track “Medication,” I think is very different from what people might expect from us musically.

THERE IS A SONG TITLED "IN MEMORY OF," WHICH I’M SURE IS VERY CLOSE TO YOU. I WOULD SAY THAT IS THE SONG THAT MEANS THE MOST TO YOU ON THE NEW ALBUM.
I would agree, that song is about my cousin that passed away in 2006. He was like a brother to me. He was the same age as me and I don’t have a brother, so we were very close. It took me this long to be able to kind of get the words together, get them down on paper and have myself be happy with them enough to say “I’m alright with this being out there. I’m okay talking about this and I’m okay with myself doing this.” I felt a lot of closure from that. This song is very meaningful and special to me.

YOU ARE PUTTING THIS ALBUM OUT ON VINYL AS WELL RIGHT?
Yes

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE BENEFITS OF OWNING VINYL ARE?
I’ve been buying vinyl my whole life. We have put all of our records on vinyl and it is something that will always be important to us. My favorite thing about vinyl and always has been is that the artwork is way bigger. I like that; I think it is awesome seeing an album cover that is in Hi-res. I love the collectivity and exclusive part about it. You know how they limit the record to a thousand copies on one color? That makes it special. When you actually listen to a vinyl record, I love that it’s two sides. I love that it’s two albums in one. When I was growing up, my mom had a bunch of Led Zeppelin and KISS records that I used to listen to all the time. I would listen to side one of Led Zeppelin II over and over again. I knew the songs and I loved them. Finally, at some point I wanted to see what side two was all about, so I flipped it over. To this day, I don’t think of that album as being one album, I think of it as being two albums almost, it’s weird. For us, when we put out an album, we always do our track listing like that too, so that the album is split into side one and side two. A lot of times if you have a twelve track album, then track seven will be kind of like track one of side two. That is something that we always think about because I like vinyl and because I know the record will come out on vinyl for some people. That’s why on this album track seven is “The Artist,” which could be a track one because it is a banger of a song. Track six kind of has an ending like it could be the ending of a record. We are very conscious of vinyl and it is very important to us. We will always put all of our albums out on vinyl.

YOU WORKED WITH JORDAN VALERIOTE ON THIS ALBUM. WHAT DID IT FEEL LIKE WORKING WITH A NEW PRODUCER?
He is great! It is really weird how we got in touch with him. Originally we were going to work with Cameron Webb again like we have on the other two records. We were going to do some demos with this kid Jordan, who Paul heard about because of some band he was managing did some demos and they sounded really good. Jordan is like 22 or 23 I think, he’s a young kid who lives out in the sticks a little bit. His studio is basically an old building on a farm, I didn’t think too much about it when we went out there. We started working with him and I could tell he had a good attitude. He’s kind of quiet with a laid back personality. When he started getting tones, I was like “OMG! How is he making this sound so good?” It didn’t sway my opinion from working with Cameron, we were still going to work with him. When it came down to recording vocals, it was just me and him. He was just so good at knowing what a good take was, advising me on things to do and I couldn’t believe how great he was. He figured out harmonies before I could and I’m pretty good at that. This guy was unbelievable. About a month after we did those demos, Paul and I started tossing the idea around about Jordan doing the record. We sent the demos to Cameron and he was like “Who the fuck recorded these? They sound incredible.” Cameron was fully down with mixing the record and getting Jordan to record it. He was totally comfortable with that and we thought it was a good way to do it. That is what we did, it was great and we kind of had the dream team together. I really hope that some other bands hear this record and say “Holy crap! This kid is awesome.” He is still relatively cheap for now. I don’t think being a producer is for everyone because it’s long hours, it’s a lot of time, it’s a lot of patience and some guys are not cut out for it. To be a really successful producer, you need to have an insane work ethic. Right away when I met Jordan, I knew that he had that. That is the biggest thing, you can’t be lazy when you are a producer or it’s going to show in your recordings.

YOU GUYS ARE CO-HEADLINING THE TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY RUN OF THE ‘TAKE ACTION TOUR.’ AS A BAND YOU GUYS RECENTLY CELEBRATED YOUR TEN YEAR MARK AS WELL. DOES IT FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE BEEN A BAND THAT LONG?
No it doesn’t. It’s crazy to think back. I ran into a friend yesterday. I hadn’t seen her in eight years, but I remembered our conversation and everything about that day eight years ago. It’s crazy to think eight years have gone by and I can still remember pretty much every show pretty well. We are in our eleventh year now, actually entering our twelfth year. We are still enjoying it, we are still having a good time and we are feeling revitalized now after doing four albums on Victory and putting out the Decade Live release. When we were writing these new songs and we didn’t know who we were going to sign to or anything, we felt revitalized. Chapter one had kind of closed and chapter two was opening. We are really excited again about this.

IT’S LIKE A NEW BEGINNING FOR YOU.
Exactly, it is cliché to say that maybe, but it really did feel that way. We were getting along better than we ever had, working harder than we ever had and it’s a really great feeling.

THAT IS GOING TO BE APPARENT IN YOUR SHOWS ALSO. YOU ARE OUT WITH BAYSIDE, POLAR BEAR CLUB AND OTHERS. HOW ARE THE FANS RESPONDING TO THE NEW MUSIC?
It’s been great, it’s been really great. I think when we wrote this record too, we were a little more conscious of how the songs were going to go over live, more so this time than with other records. These songs have been going over so good live. Right away they are latching on to them and going crazy. That is always a good sign.

YOU ARE ALSO GOING TO BE DOING SOME EUROPEAN FESTIVAL DATES. HAVE YOU PLAYED ANY OF THEM BEFORE?<
Yes, many times! They’re awesome. Europe has it figured out; they know what they are doing with festivals. There are also some good American festivals.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE INTERVIEW. WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD OR SAY ANYTHING?
Check out our new album “Rescue” and also if anybody can spare any money for the people in Japan. I know it’s been a while now and there are other things in the news, but the problem is still over there in Japan. If you haven’t donated anything yet, if you could please do that, it would be really great for those people.

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Tags:  Silverstein  , Shane Told, interviews

Shauna O'Donnell    May 02, 2011