When I called Fol Chen songwriter/founder Samuel Bing for an interview, I had no idea what to expect. Their bio talks more about Led Zeppelin than it does about Fol Chen or Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune's Made, the band's debut album that features both sunny synth pop and shambling, funereal marches. I didn't even know what my interviewee looked like, because the band's faces are obscured in photos.
The shroud of mystery, it turns out, is necessary for Fol Chen to achieve their mission as a band. Sam revealed that the album was inspired by news that his favorite radio station at home in Long Island had gone off the air, so he wanted to replicate the sounds of his childhood in terms of his own music. We also talked about superheroes, growing up in a small town, and why Fol Chen can't save struggling yarn boutiques from going out of business.
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All your press materials project an aura of mystery. Why did the band decide on doing that?
We wanted to be superheroes, basically. We're on a mission, so the mystery seemed appropriate. Sometimes that needs to be enough. It's nice to have a secret.
How would you describe your mission?
It's a personal narrative. I'm from Long Island, where there's very little culture. We had one great radio station, WLIR, that was the first New Wave station in America. I grew up with it because my brother always had it on. When I went home a couple years ago, I discovered that it had gone off the air and I was devastated. That was around the time I started working on the record, and I began having dreams about how the station hadn't gone off the air but had been driven underground by this evil force, John Shade. And that it was the mission of the band to vanquish John Shade so that WLIR could go back on the air.
Is this John Shade from [Vladimir Nabokov's] Pale Fire?
Only in name. I was reading that book when I found out about the station, and in the book he's not evil; he's just a nice old poet. But in my dreams he became a villain -- you know how dreams are.
The album's title implies that it's first in a series. What's Part II?
That's a secret! If I revealed it in this interview, John Shade would know our next move, and it would make it all the more difficult for us to topple him.
The songs each have their own unique sound but aren't particularly similar to each other. Was the album written as a whole or as pieces?
I was really heartbroken about losing this part of my childhood, so I was trying to recapture all the music I heard on the station. It's not really a concept record though. There's an oblique narrative, in that it's different kinds of pop songs. Stylistically, it is all over the map, and for some people that can definitely be confusing. It makes sense to us as a record, and it feels organic to me. I've always felt like there are two kinds of records: ones like Blue by Joni Mitchell, where there's one vibe throughout the whole thing; and then ones like The White Album, where it almost sounds like a mix tape, and the thread running through it is the band's interpretation of each style. I like that one more.
What was the music that you were trying to emulate?
All the legendary New Wave artists -- Kate Bush, Talking Heads, Public Image Ltd. At the time, it was brand new to me. I was listening to Top 40, because when you're a kid, you listen to whatever's around. So when I heard New Wave, I thought “Wow, what the fuck is this?” It's brain-melting the first time you hear something that's not a pop song. That moment is totally irreplaceable. At the time, I just thought it was weird, and that my brother was a freak for liking it.
This record was obviously very personal for you. How did you go about writing the songs?
It wasn't like therapy or anything. We basically wanted to make a record that was worthy of being played on WLIR. There's one song that's specifically about Garden City, where the station used to broadcast out of, and it starts with a sample of this DJ named Larry the Duck. I remember writing it and thinking how cool it would be if someone from WLIR heard it one day. Just two days ago, I got an email from Larry saying he'd heard the song and played in on his radio show -- he's a DJ on Sirius now. It was really a dream come true. I wrote back this really gushing response, and I think I freaked him out, since I haven't heard from him again.
Did that fulfill some of the Fol Chen mission?
I think all I need to do now is go out for drinks with him and two other WLIR DJs, Donna Donna and Malibu Sue, and I'll be good. It all has to do with that station and my memories of it. There's another song called “You & Your Sister in Jericho” that's about a town next to where I grew up. It seemed more magical than where I lived just because it wasn't where I lived -- like, “Syosset sucks, but Jericho is awesome! Their high school is better, the kids are cooler, everyone's just better.”
It sounds like Long Island is important to you. How's it been moving to Los Angeles?
Long Island itself was pretty terrible except for the radio station. Parts of LA are surprisingly similar to Long Island, especially the sprawling suburbs. I live in Highland Park and it feels like a small town for the time being. Though The New York Times recently published a ridiculous article about Eagle Rock, which is right near where I live, and unsurprisingly they got it completely wrong. It makes you wonder that if they can't write about a city like Los Angeles accurately, how the fuck can they write about anything accurately?
This area was supposed to be gentrified by now, and because it's not, people are disappointed that there isn't a Whole Foods yet. It's a big issue around here. Boutiques are going out of business, and apparently there isn't enough support here for a yarn store. I won't admit to schadenfreude, but it really shouldn't be shocking that in this economy a hipster craft store is not going to make it, and Fol Chen cannot help with that issue. We do one thing at a time. Maybe next time we'll save the yarn store.
[Photo: Juliana Paciulli]
