French Exit Interview Podcast

Summary: Listen here: French Exit Interview Podcast I like French stuff. French fries, French onion soup, French bread pizza. Hell, I'll even drink a Perrier if the beer is all gone. So it shouldn't be surprising that when I noticed French Exit's name on several show lineups in the Los Angeles area, I pulled them up on the ol' Interwebs and checked out their small back catalog of Bandcamp releases. I was happy to find this seemed to be a band that was able to create catchy, anthemic, mid-tempo punk rock with some self-loathing and self-deprecation mixed in lyrically. In short, right up my alley, though not necessarily something I'd expected to find in my own backyard geographically. I kind of forgot about them until I got a copy of the band's criminally overlooked debut full-length, Guts & Black Stuff late last year. Everything I remembered was there: the crunchy, taut, two-guitar sound, the shouting/singing dual vocalists and the thoughtful yet totally relatable lyrics. To my ears, something else was at play that I hadn't noticed in their earlier work. The album's production was as impressive as the songs and performance. What isn't present is as important as what is: the guitar tones are raw and biting, refreshingly not drenched in studio effects—a “Gibsons plugged directly into Marshalls” kind of thing. Every whoa-oh and every background vocal is so well placed. Nothing is hiding behind walls of reverb. Who was responsible for crafting the band's sound? Turns out their bassist Tim is also the band's engineer, who was present for our interview along with the dual guitarist/vocalists Bob and Anthony. Drummer Duke was absent. Coincidentally, I ran into Bob and Anthony before the interview in the local liquor store, all of us picking up the requisite brewed beverages needed for the interview. I glanced at them and they at me, intuitively guessing each other's purpose as we paid for the goods and left. Four minutes later, as I walked up the hill to Razorcake HQ there they were, beer in hand. We all laughed about the liquor store encounter and introduced ourselves. I was confident this interview was going to be fun and interesting. I was not disappointed. Introduction by: Garrett Barnwell Interview by Garrett Barnwell and Todd Taylor To download the file to your computer, right click the link below and select "save target as..." It's a hefty file, so it may take some time to download to your computer. To play the file without downloading (it depends on your computer's configuration for playing music files), just click it. Your media player should recognize what to do with an mp3. (If it doesn't, you're on your own.) Listen here: French Exit Interview Podcast If you have any problems or helpful suggestions you can contact us through the website here. In the subject put “Podcast.” Hope you enjoy listening. If you'd like to read this interview, zine-style, it was in issue 81 And here are some reviews we've done over the years Guts & Black Stuff Guts & Black Stuff, deux French Exit / Signals Midwest: Split: 7” Worst Case Scenario 7” Demo CD-R