Bio: If you can make it past David Bowie’s codpiece, Labyrinth really is a brilliant movie—Jim Henson at his best, Jennifer Connelly in the role of a lifetime, etc ... (more)
Bio: If you can make it past David Bowie’s codpiece, Labyrinth really is a brilliant movie—Jim Henson at his best, Jennifer Connelly in the role of a lifetime, etc. etc. Just ask Suckers. The way they see it, Wild Smile is more than just a cracked prism of indie pop, a buzz-stirring debut that causes spontaneous sing-alongs and a nagging need to seize the day. It’s a looking glass soundtrack to Labyrinth itself, from the lonesome Kermit the Frog chords of “Loose Change” to the honeysuckle harmonies and triggered timpani rolls of “You Can Keep Me Runnin’ Around.”
“[Producer] Chris Zane actually brought up the Labyrinth reference early on,” explains Austin Fisher, one of the three singers/multi-instrumentalists that created the band in 2007. (His cousin, Quinn Walker, and their kindred Connecticut spirit, Pan, are the other founding members.) “Once he declared, ‘This is some Labyrinth shit!,’ we could see how the production subconsciously tied back to the music we loved as kids.”
Bowie’s just the beginning in that department, too, right alongside such obvious ancestors as the Beatles, Wall of Sound-wrapped girl groups, and just about anything Eno’s ever touched. And since Suckers is a full-on democracy, it’d be impossible to fully understand the quartet’s creative process without considering everyone. Yes, even ‘the drummer’ (Brian Aiken). Because you know what? In this case, he’s also a keyboardist, and exactly what Suckers needed to expand and contract the key ideas on their self-titled EP—ideas that were informed by everything from the oldies station upbringing of Fisher and Walker to the beat-driven soundscapes that Pan sculpts on the side.
Not that you’ll be able to tell who does what half the time. After all, when they’re not swapping instruments, or mics, or melodies, Suckers often sample themselves, whether that means the bubbling bed of loops at the start of “Black Sheep” or the whistle-led soda shop strut of “Roman Candles.”
“We’re trying to create a mood without sounding pretentious,” says Fisher. “They’re not the looped drum breaks you hear in hip-hop, or the cheesy stuff you’d hear in ‘90s music. It’s usually more textural, and since the samples are taken from things we play ourselves, it’s easy to avoid lawsuits.”
It’s also easy to see why Suckers are considered yet another link in a chain of Brooklyn bands that have nothing in common but a desire to do things differently. (less)
