Pigeon Spins Featuring an Interview with Bowling Shoes

Bowling Shoes - Factory Pop

...

• AGREE
• DISAGREE

Interview with Bowling Shoes

1. What was the driving concept behind Factory Pop?

I wanted to make a record about employment, anxiety employment and growing up.

2. How does this album differ from your previous work?

It is the darkest and hardest sounding album that we have. The production is more vacuum sealed than any other project we have done.

3. Which track do you think best represents the band right now?

As of right now? I have three choices— Probably the tracks “Simon” or “Me N My Truck” or “We Just Keep On Missing Each Other”. Those songs feel like the biggest hint on what direction we may go in in the future.

4. How has Boston influenced the sound or themes of Factory Pop?

Boston is a cold and cranky place. This is a cold and cranky album. But it is also a huge college town, and our time at college here influenced the fine art lens and art rock background through which we maybe view ourselves and our multi-media work.

5. What was the most challenging part of recording this album?

We treated it more like a prolonged producer project, and perhaps we didn’t buckle down with the focus necessary to create and distribute an album on time. Maybe that’s why it took three years to make.

6. How do you approach balancing experimental ideas with your signature sound?

We try to make it so that every record we do has a different over all aesthetic. Every album needs to feel like an era. We try to transfer gimmicks from our traditional “quirky”sound into the new genres that we explore on every album.

7. Were there any unexpected moments during production that shaped the final result?

We didn’t decide until the last minute where we would do most of the guitars and vocals for this album. Because of this, the majority of it was tracked in a converted office building suite. That certainly had an unexpected but notable effect on the sonic character of the album.

8. How do you decide which songs make the cut for the album?

Whichever songs felt the most like a conveyor belt in a blank white room.

9. What’s your favorite lyric or line on Factory Pop and why?

I think that “what has become?” on “Pallet 13” is a hilarious and melodramatic way to start the song — that intro has always made us us crack up.

10. How are you approaching the album cycle? Any unique strategies for connecting with fans?

We are trying to build a world, play as many shows as possible and to put out as many music videos as possible — 3 things that we haven’t particularly cared about as much in the past.

(•)> That's all Folks! Check out Bowlling Shoes on the Pigeon Spins Playlist