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Interview: Chris Chu of POP ETC

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POP ETC are an indie rock band from Berkeley, California. Having released their new album, Souvenir, in January and a tour with The Moth and Flame and Banners underway, the band have been super busy. Recently, Legendary Kids Press caught up with frontman Chris Chu at the band’s show in New York to discuss the year ahead.

Hey Chris! How are you? Thanks for taking the time to do this interview.

I’m doing good. Thank you!

You guys have recently started your tour with Banners and The Moth and Flame. How are the shows treating you so far?

Yeah! It’s going great. It’s a really cool tour. I’ve never done one quite like it because the bands have just put out new records or EPs, so each night the line-up changes - sometimes we’re headlining or in the middle. It’s hard to explain.

When [you] always opening or headlining, you start to have this rhythm that you logistically figure out when exactly you have to get to the show and you set all your stuff up. But now it’s constantly changing, so it’s kind [of] fresh every show. So that’s cool. It’s a little weird, but it’s so early on in the tour, so we haven’t quite gotten into the rhythm of it yet. But it’s interesting.

How long is the tour?

This is the fifth show and we have another four weeks, so it’s pretty long and it goes through SXSW.

Are you excited for SXSW?

Yeah, definitely! I’m excited for the whole thing. We haven’t really toured in a long time, so it just feels good to be playing shows and seeing people responding to the music, since we’ve been in the studio for so long.

When you’re on the road in a new city, what do you guys look for/enjoy doing?

We are super into food and we have toured around a bit, so we do kind [of] a food itinerary set up and we book a hotel in the areas we know there’s good restaurants that we [want to]. So we are a bit obsessive about that.

Then, of course, I think a lot of people don’t realize that, when you’re touring, how much time there is that you’re not rally doing anything. There’s a lot of waiting around to soundcheck and play the show, and the show is just an hour of the day, so you have a lot of time where you just kind of need to keep yourself busy. So we really just load up on books, music, movies and tons of stuff - anything to keep ourselves inspired.

I think that’s the one downside [for] me [on] tour. I like to write everyday and make something everyday and it’s hard to do that on tour, so what I do is store up inspiration, engage with stuff and stockpile up ideas in a sense, and when I get home, I just unleash it all.

Has there been a city that’s stuck out to you on the road?

Each one is so different and unique. In the world, I love touring Japan and going to Tokyo - such an amazing city.

That actually leads perfectly into my next question. What is it like playing outside of the US?

Oh, yeah! Awesome. It’s honestly the best. It’s always great getting to play in a different country, just because you know you’re in new places and you get to explore, and you’re playing to people who are responding to your music differently. You know everyone’s music culture is different and that’s all just interesting when you really connect with a culture and people.

[With] Japan specifically, I can give a long lengthy explanation on that, but I’ll keep it short. We just really love Japan and every time I go there, I just feel at home and [have] a really deep connection for the country and its people. Starting with, because I was born there, even though I’m Chinese, so that’s a weird story, but yeah, it’s so much fun playing there. The people are so respectful and attentive, which is very different from lots of places.

I bet it’s very different from the US and especially New York.

Yeah, definitely! Like you said, New York especially, you kind of have to win people over. And I understand it. We are oversaturated here with events and culture and music. But I love it here too. We live here, so we’re biased.

Moving over to the music. Congratulations on the new record that recently came out in January. How was the process of creating the record and what was different about the making of Souvenir than the previous record?

Thank you. Yeah, it’s been about a month that it’s been out. It was very long - that’s the main takeaway I have from that process, but intentionally. We just really wanted to take our time with it. Between this, the POP ETC record and The Morning Benders records, it’s the fourth album that we’ve made.

I think we were just feeling the grind of that album cycle, where you just make an album, go on tour for awhile, come back, make [an] album and do it all again. So we kind of just wanted to take a break from that and write for a longer period of time and naturally see what emerged from that process, and we ended up just writing hundreds of songs and a lot of albums that were false starts that we ended up throwing away.

I’m just really happy [that] we took that much time because now I feel that we have this album that is obviously really special to us. I think because we allowed ourselves to have that time and that freedom, it feels very much a product of the three of us because there is not one song on the record that we weren’t excited about, and that takes a lot of time if you’re running things in a democratic way, [where] you write a song, someone doesn’t like it, you go back, tweak it a little and keeping trying over and over. It just takes a lot of time. But yeah, we were just really happy with the outcome, so it was worth it to us.

It was worth it in the end. Do you have a favourite song on the new album?

It changes often and it changes as we play them live too because songs just take on a life of their own by seeing how people respond to them. Lately, [I’ve] really been liking “Backwards World”. I like it because it has more space and breathing room. When you play it live, you kind of can feel people moving and engaging with it. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Makes complete sense. What are some songs or artists you’ve been vibing to lately?

Yeah! I’ve recently been on a Bruce Springsteen kick. I always - well, obviously everyone has - listened to him at some point, but I kind of have gotten in some period of this catalog around the 80s. The River is one of the albums I really love, [as well as] Tunnel of Love - they’re both amazing.

We listen to our friends’ bands a lot too. Our friends WATERS we really love. I actually work with Van on a lot of stuff, writing songs and collaborating. I’ve known him for almost ten years now.

Nice! Solid decade of friendship. Do you guys have some things planned for the rest of this year?

Well, we’re doing this tour for four more weeks and then we’re going back to Japan. We just got confirmed for Summer Sonic, which is amazing. The line-up is awesome [and] Radiohead is headlining.

We have been talking about several things in America - touring things - but I don’t know if I can say anything. We just want to keep putting stuff out. I think because we took so much time away to make this album [that] it made us realize how important it is to just engage with your fanbase and just put music out into the world. It’s important to withdraw as well, but we’ve done that. So we want [to] stick our teeth into it, you know.

We’re hoping to just put out, you know, even it it’s just covers [or] b-sides, but just continue to put stuff out and giving people music, more of that.

That was the last question. Thanks again!

POP ETC’s new album, Souvenir, is out now via Rough Trade Records. The band will be on tour with Banners and The Moth To Flame from February 29-March 31.

By Gina Garcia

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