Newly signed to Ben Watt's Strange Feeling label, Brooklyn's latest export, Tigercity, have been quick to prick up the ears of journalists and DJs alike, who have been busy comparing them to the likes Roxy Music and The Killers. Their hotly anticipated debut album, 'Pretend Not To Love', is released on 8 Sep, so we thought now was a good a time as any to speak to vocalist and guitarist Bill Gillim.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
Well, I met Joel [Ford, bass, keyboards] and our friend Tim Glowik shortly after they had both started Tigercity, and when they were looking for a singer. I joined the band, we made our first EP, and then we moved to NY. Then Tim left the band and we asked Aynsley [Powell, drums] and Andrew [Brady, guitar] to join, which was a good move, because they completely changed the sound and made it good, and kept us from quitting music and becoming horse farmers. Then we made 'Pretend Not To Love'.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
'Pretend Not To Love' came out of playing, touring and basically being together constantly for the last year and a half or so. The songwriting is almost completely collaborative, so I guess all the good shit and bad shit and weird shit we've experienced together is in there. I can't point to a specific band or album that influenced our new songs, but you could probably say all the things we've listened to, talked about, and read about while driving around America helped shape our new stuff.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
Like I said, it's mostly collaborative. Sometimes, somebody will come in with a rough idea, and we'll all play around with it and suggest new parts or ideas and form the thing into a song together. Other times we'll just improvise and something will kind of take shape on its own. The whole process has become smoother and smoother.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
While our tastes definitely overlap, we all kind of have our own distinct interests and influences. I love The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, Prefab Sprout, Roxy Music, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Gene Clark, George Saunders, John Carpenter, Paul Verhoeven, and a bunch of other stuff, but I'm going to stop because I feel like I'm filling in my MySpace page.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
That's a weird question. I don't know. Maybe, "Hey, what's up...?"
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
Hopefully we'll be able to get it out to as many people as possible and people will love it. It would be nice to see this whole thing continue to grow to the point where we can actually afford to buy food and live in neighbourhoods where people don't kill each other.
MORE>> www.myspace.com/tigercity