For more than thirty years, the CMJ Music Marathon has been the world’s most important platform for learning about new bands and discovering new, untapped wells of glorious music. This year, October 15-19, at more than 80 different music venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn more than 100,000 fans came out to see more than 1300 artist performances. At the festival’s Hotel on Rivington press lounge on one of those days I was lucky enough to get to sit down and chat with seven new bands and talk to them about their music and their future.
To say that an outfit like the Long Island based NGHBRS is anything other than what they are…would require vowels and that’s something that this group has got no time for. Whether it’s the quirky spelling of their band’s name or their innovative and fun music video for song “Hold Up Girl,” NGHBRS fits right in, inside the sound vortex that is “Billy Joel meets Nirvana.” I got to sit down and chat with some of the band recently about all things music, DIY, and artistry CMJ style. But the first thing to do was find out about this spelling issue.
“We have no vowels because when we were first doing research into a band name there are all these totally unrelated search results for the word “neighbors.” Neighbors is an Australian soda brand, and then of course all the real estate results and all this other stuff so we figured we’d stand out better with no vowel. Now that’s the trend.”
You mean like hash tags and stuff like that?
“Well yeah and there’s just all these bands with no vowels in their name.”
If you were there first, you own it.
“We’re trendsetters.”
So how did you all get together?
“We started the band 4 years ago. Our previous bands we all knew each other. But then when both our bands broke up around the same time, it just made sense for us to start playing together.”
What would you call your musical style?
“Rock and roll, high energy, 90’s rock, alternative rock, pretty much every other genre under that umbrella. Grunge, jazz, definitely some blues in there too. We all listen to music from all across the board; some bizarre stuff.”
Apex Twin?
“Absolutely.”
What does it mean for you guys to be here playing at CMJ?
“We came {as spectators) to CMJ and discovered so many bands that we were just stoked on. We love playing in the city too. We just released an album this past summer; so all together it’s pretty amazing.”
So tell me about this music video you guys did.
“We did this thing where we made a bunch of fake accounts on instagram and we shot a lot of videos at different spots and we made an Instagram map at all these different locations. Basically the video is just scrolling through a phone, going through their news feed, and everything just sort of syncs up.”
Do you all have day jobs or are you independent?
“We’re working towards that; we all have jobs right now just to get by. We practice multiple nights a week and really the only time for us to practice is after 10pm.”
I don’t want you to be my neighbor!
“Yeah we have a studio it’s in a pretty industrial space.”
What does Indie mean to you?
“Indie’s got so many different faces. It’s kind of gotten a negative connotation.”
Do you consider yourselves indie?
“Not really. I mean in the DIY sense and bare bones just making it happen then we’re indie in that way.”
What are your feeling on Auto-Tune?
“People are going to do something like that anyway; whether it’s called Auto-Tune or something else. We take a lot of pride in doing things our own way; we played our whole album live. It takes a lot of rehearsal to get something like that.”
What’s your feelings of Lady Gaga?
“I’m personally just kind of sick of her, but I do respect the fact that she’s out there and doing her own thing. Not a huge fan of her music, but she deserves respect.”
If you could add any musician living or dead to your group who would it be?
“Kimbra.”
Really?
“Yeah, she’s cute too.”
If you could score any film or director, who would it be?
“Scorsese. There’s a lot of dramatic twists and turns in his films.”
Is that in keeping with your style right now?
“We’d have to make some adjustments, but that’s the thing about our band is that you never really know what’s coming next.”
Do you guys know what’s coming next?
“Not really (laughs) we take it as it comes. You’ve got to take advantage of the things as they’re happening and if they’re not you’ve got to make them happen.”
If you’re interested in finding out more about NGHBRS check in with their website , Facebook page and check out their music video for “Hold Up Girl ” to see if they cross streams with your Instagram feed.