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*Interviewed by Troy Culpan
Signed to the credible DFA label, Free Energy, released their debut album ‘Stuck On Nothing’ in Australia on Friday June 4.
Free Energy is a five member Philadelphia based power pop-rock band whose members include Scott Wells, Paul Sprangers, Evan Wells, Geoff Bucknam, and Nick Shuminksy. Album producer is James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem.
Opening the album and lead by a simple cowbell, the 70’s inspired self titled single “Free Energy”.
The band’s debut album ‘Stuck On Nothing’ is not music for the arms-folded set holding up the back wall. “With Free Energy, the first thing we do is make sure the drums sound awesome,” explains Sprangers. “Then we build on top of that, so everything is solid, well thought out, and distilled to its essence.” The vocals are always audible and up front.
The ten songs of ‘Stuck On Nothing’ began life as a string of modest, homemade demos, but only as a jumping-off point. “You can just make little four-track things that are pleasing to listen to, but we’re a rock n roll band, and rock n roll music is supposed to be dance music,” insists Wells.
Free Energy make singing along just as easy as stamping your feet and clapping in time. “There’s a lot of optimism and positivity in the music, lyrics and imagery,” the singer concedes.
Do not resist the exuberance.
You’ve been a band now for almost 3 years can you give us some background on Free Energy and how you came about?
Yeah well we signed to DFA Records 3 years ago, Scott and I, based on demos that they liked and after that we just spent a year kinda recording more demos and eventually James kind of got it in his hands for him to produce it and Scott and I moved to New York from Minnesota and lived in NY for a while recording with James. As recording began to take longer than expected, we realised we needed to live somewhere cheaply so we moved to Philly and then towards the end of the recording process everyone moved out to Philly and we practiced in a house and started getting the live band ready about a year and a half ago.
Was it hard to finally get your album ‘Stuck on Nothing’ released?
Um, no its just been a very slow process, we’ve let it take its own path, nobody has pushed too hard anywhere like our manager is really cool and our label is cool. Helped us negotiate the waters of EMI and helped us with playing it for people there who got excited and then other people got excited and it was just like been a very slow but steady growing thing. It’s hard to explain but its really cool but I feel that its very rare to be given time to develop as a band and so it feels like a classic rock band.
You have a very retro sound that has been compared to everything from Journey, The Cars, Cheap Trick and even Thin Lizzy, how do you react when you’re given this kind of praise?
Well obviously, its pretty ridiculous because that’s the music that inspires us and we aspire to and we all know that’s the cannon of rock music and informs everything we know culturally at least in the States its been in the background of our lives, it benefits us as I don’t know if there are a lot of bands at the moment that take these bands as inspiration and it also harms us if people really love Thin Lizzy and they listen to our record and obviously it doesn’t sound like Thin Lizzy record, so I just hope that people take it with a grain of salt.
Who are some of your biggest influences?
Growing up definitely, Nirvana, Pavement, Public Enemy, everything, I mean Michael Jackson, Guns N Roses, Metallica and these days, well mostly we listen to music in the van on cassette tape and we listen to some really weird shit, like we’ve been listening to a lot of late Tom Petty, Peter Gabriel, Scorpions, Seger.
The title track, named after the band I have to say is my favourite purely for its use of the cow bell. Whose idea was that?
The cow bell? Oh man, I think it’s just a practical usage, we love cow bell and definitely. I mean I don’t know. No one has asked that. Maybe it was James idea?
How did you get involved with James Murphy of LCD system who produced your album? Did he just like what he heard?
No he didn’t ha ha, well he did eventually. The guy who runs DFA day to day, his name is John Gelkin, he saw our vision and heard the demos very rough and he heard how they can fit and in the back of his mind I think he always wanted James to produce it and he kept gunning for James and James is really busy and didn’t have time but eventually it really sunk in and James realized that we talked a lot about music and records and realized that we shared a lot of the same reference points and that we were on the same page and then he got excited and realized what it could be, but it was really John Gelkin that connected us with James and let it grow into what it was.
You performed on Letterman earlier this year! How was that?
It was awesome, it was really fun.
I can imagine that you’ve gotten quite a live following, what can fans expect at a Free Energy show?
Well, luckily fans have been dancing at all the shows, its crazy. I dunno we put everything into the show and we really try to make sure people have a good time, its like come and see us and it’s a giant party and we’re kinda like the house band at this party.
3 years ago would you have ever thought you’d be speaking to someone in Australia about your debut release?
Absolutely not. No way. It’s amazing, it blows my mind.
Hopefully we can see you down here.
Dude, honestly that’s the one please we would die to come, we’re obviously huge huge huge AC/DC fan and I feel like people would really like it there in Australia.
In a music industry full of far too much pop, dance music and not enough Rock were you nervous recording a clap your hands, stamp your feet kind of album?
No, because we’re too in our own bubble, we’ve always felt like weirdos so I dunno, DFA are so encouraging. James and John both were encouraging, we think and in our heads we think it’s the coolest record ever made and we assume that it’s gonna be huge so we’re pretty oblivious to trends ha ha.
Now I love the videos you’ve brought and it looks like there’s a lot of work put into them; was that fun making those?
Yeah, a lot of work and extremely fun, people put so much good energy into that. I’m really psyched about them.
Is there a meaning behind the name of the band?
Literally, it was a song and I thought that the riff that Scott came up with sounded like Free Energy and after we had exhausted every band name possible, finally someone had pointed out Free Energy actually has a lot of other meanings and connotations that are conducive to the spirit of the music and what we’re doing.
What’s next for Free Energy?
Well we are going to tour our asses off, try to play for as many people as possible. We have a tonne of songs ready to record but I think this is our priority right now in touring to as many places as possible. We’re on the road now for a 9 week stretch with a little time off but we’ll be touring very steadily all through this year and next.
And hopefully a promo tour down here.
I know, we really want to, we will it’s just a matter of if its August or October.
