In the last few years, pastiche has become an increasingly common — and valid — compositional approach in the indie music world. Young musicians like Dan Deacon, Vampire Weekend, and Girl Talk have all successfully appropriated pop music signifiers and strategies to the acclaim of bloggers and music fans everywhere. Cleveland-born and New York resident Joe Williams is quickly joining the indie dance ranks with his playful composite of 70s glam rock, 80s synth pop and 90s electronica. As a teenager, Williams played in various noise and thrash bands, including playing gigs with noise acts like Sightings, Melt Banana, and Black Dice.
His debut album, Smoke (Tigerbeat 6 Records), which came out in November of last year, was entirely written, recorded, and self-produced on a laptop in his bedroom. The shimmering, accessible pop songs on Smoke take cues from glam rock (the shaffle stomp of “Fleetwood Crack”), sunny afro-pop (”Going Down”), and slick, detached new wave (there’s even a cover of Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy”). And indeed, comparisons have already been made to Roxy Music-era Brian Eno, Marc Bolan, David Bowie, and Beck.
Williams is currently enjoying his first headlining tour, sharing the stage with Rings, Emeralds, Health, Ecstatic Sunshine, and others. This Saturday, Williams will take the Appel Commons stage, as the Fanclub Collective’s first concert of the semester. We recently spoke to Williams, whom we found to be as precocious, self-aware and sardonic as his slickly produced records. In the middle of buying postcards from a Texas strip mall, he talked to us about doing more remixes, his approach to experimentation, and the joys of fake I.D.s.
Popcorn Youth: This is your first headlining tour. Do you feel like there’s more pressure to do well?
White Williams: Performing is a lot more fun. There’s less pressure when you’re headlining — when you’re supporting it’s totally different. I just think you’re treated better, things are more comfortable, and your scheduling is a lot tighter. We’ve been pleasantly surprised compared to the other tours where we were supporting, and it’s really hard to tell who’s there to see you. I was almost scared to headline our own tour, but it’s been so much fun. It’s insane. But it’s a good experience. We’re all a lot more comfortable playing now.
Popcorn Youth: So this headlining tour is pretty much your longest tour to date, the one you’re currently on?
Williams: Well, we did a 30-day tour with Girl Talk. This is a little bit longer, but it’s going by very fast because we’re having so much fun.
Popcorn Youth: Is the Cornell University show an official part of the tour?
Williams: It kind of book ends the tour. We’re doing three or four shows at Princeton, Haverford College and Cornell.
Popcorn Youth: What are your thoughts on playing college shows? Do you prefer it?
Williams: We don’t have a lot of experience doing college shows. We’ve only done two, and one was pretty fun — UCLA was pretty fun. It’s hard to say because a lot of the shows are free to get into and that sometimes changes the…. [pauses] Sometimes it works in your favor, because the people who are there are more eager to get into it, which is cool. But it can go the other way, like people who just go to socialize.
Popcorn Youth: Well surely that’s true with bar shows, too.
Williams: Oh, definitely.
Popcorn Youth: Is there a type of venue that you prefer?
Williams: We like venues that can benefit from our production, like a room with a full system of subwoofers. But the way you’re treated is really important, too, like how the staff treats you, or how the staff treats the people who go there. It’s really conditional.
Popcorn Youth: What is the setup like on this tour? What gear are you bringing?
Williams: Guitar, bass, a computer doing drum samples and a synthesizer — and I play the synth and sing through a vocal effects. I performed everything on the record and recorded everything myself, so I had to find people to learn the songs and come on tour with me. When I made Smoke, there was no one else on the record besides myself, but this has been the same three people on the tour.
Popcorn Youth: Did you always know you wanted to incorporate a live band aspect to your shows?
Williams: I don’t know — I’ve done solo shows before, and they’re not very fun. I don’t like it, it just feels like karaoke or something. (Laughs)
Popcorn Youth: Will you be playing any new songs on this tour?
Williams: Yes, we will be playing a couple of things that weren’t on Smoke — one song, and two instrumental songs. But the set usually changes; sometimes we won’t play a certain song because we get tired of playing it, but it just depends on that day. For certain songs, it just depends on how we’re feeling, what sounds good that day, certain concessions like that.
Popcorn Youth: To go back a bit, what was your exposure to music like when you were growing up in Cleveland?
Williams: Well, I was born in Cleveland on the west side, it’s called Rocky River. Basically, I bought a drum set and started playing music with my friends. We didn’t really know what we wanted to do, we just kind of were just making screaming songs where we were singing and freaking out and sometimes they were 15 or 20 seconds long. (Laughs)
We were doing that band, and I was really young, like 15 years old, and we played a lot of shows, with Melt Banana and Sightings and The Rapture. We were exposed to a lot of different types of music right off the bat, and I was pretty quickly getting into electronic music by the time I was done with that band. By the time I was done with that band, that was nine years ago, and so, so much time has passed since then.
Popcorn Youth: So was it a natural progression to move towards laptop-based music?
Williams: Well, even when I was in the band I wanted to incorporate electronic samplers and drum machines, things like that. So I don’t know if it was deliberate, or more just a result of my tastes — of just being outside of that music genre and wanting to hybridize, to make a hybrid between what we were doing then and what I wanted to do with myself.
Popcorn Youth: Do you still try to follow where noise music is going these days?
Williams: Well, sure — I mean, I don’t know, it’s such a weird word. I’ll hear a band that could be described as “experimental” or having a certain sound, but I don’t know if you could describe it as having a “scene” in New York. And definitely our music didn’t come out of any scene, really.
Popcorn Youth: Well, yes, obviously I didn’t mean “scene” in that sense, I meant more like similar sensibilities or aesthetic.
Willliams: Right. Well, recently we played with this band in Cleveland, Emeralds, that were really cool. Mostly synthesizer stuff, ambient.
Popcorn Youth: You mentioned Sightings a bit earlier. Do you still keep up with them?
Williams: Not in a while, no, but I heard some new songs off of their new record that Andrew W.K. produced [“Through the Panama”], and it sounded really good. When we played with them back in the day, like 2000 or 2001, it was much more aggressive back then than it is now.
Popcorn Youth: True. I also read that you liked Burning Star Core…
Williams: Yeah, I love them, and Spencer [C. Spencer Yeh] is my buddy, and I really like his stuff a lot.
Popcorn Youth: I think a lot of people consider your back story unusual because you started out when you were only 15.
Williams: I don’t know. Is it? (Laughs) I can’t tell. I grew up kind of sheltered in some ways, so maybe being exposed to that stuff was important. But it’s almost misleading because it was so long ago, and the types of music I did then versus now are so different. So it’s just hard when people want to know how you started music, but then also make sense of how you became the person that you are now and how you make the music that you do now, and, well, it’s just that time answers that. It was a long time ago.
Popcorn Youth: So you live in New York now?
Williams: Yes, I just moved back in December. I moved in when I was 20, and I lived there for like a year and a half there on and off, working here and there.
Popcorn Youth: Did you move for your music?
Williams: Oh, no, no. It was for school. I was working on music when I was living there, but I went there for work. I went to school for graphic design
Popcorn Youth: What was it like transitioning from Cleveland, Ohio to New York City?
Williams: It was pretty easy at the time; I had a lot of friends out there and my girlfriend at the time lived out there, so I just lived with her. I didn’t have to pay a lot of money for rent and I had a full time job, so I was really busy. It was fun — just get a fake I.D., you know? (Laughs)
Popcorn Youth: What are your thoughts on living in New York now?
Williams: I know a lot of people are in bands that want to “make it,” and they’re in New York or L.A., but I don’t think it matters where you’re from anymore, really. I don’t know — I made music in my bedroom, so I feel like that disproves a lot of why people move to cities for music. I mean, it really wasn’t a motivating thing for me — I just wanted to live in NYC because a lot of my friends lived out there. I’m also never there, so it kind of makes no sense, in some ways. I just pay a lot of money for rent and I’m always on tour. But I like it when I get back and I see my friends and catch up.
Popcorn Youth: Maybe that might be true because of the possibilities of the Internet…
Williams: Well, it could be the Internet, or it could be that it just never mattered. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. But right now, I would say yes, I’m sure the Internet has had something to do with it.
Popcorn Youth: How did you get involved with Tigerbeat 6 Records?
Williams: In 2002 or 2003, I did a remix for another artist on Tigerbeat, Luke Venezia [aka Drop the Lime]. I did a remix for him and the label liked it, and I just stayed in touch with them. And I was still figuring out my sound and how to record, so once I had accumulated enough music that I felt I might want on an album, they said they would put it out and that was it. I didn’t “shop” my music around or send it to different labels or anything like that — I didn’t promote my music in any way, at most I would show it to my friends, and that was all. Just my close friends would see it, especially my friends who also made music on computers. And they could give me advice; like, if it was only three-quarters complete or something, and I would need advice or critique. But the fact is, that I had no aspirations, really. But they picked up on it, and then we went on tour, and I got a booking agent, and other people just found the music, I guess. Then we signed to Domino Records just a few months ago.
Popcorn Youth: Would you like to keep making remixes?
Williams: Oh, yes. I’m doing two remixes right now — one for Born Ruffians, on Warp Records, and then I’m also doing a remix for Muscles, from Australia, he’s a Modular recording artist. That it’s for right now, but I’d definitely like to do some more collaborating and remixing and producing maybe, if that works out.
Popcorn Youth: Is the process of doing a remix vs writing your own song different?
Williams: No, not really. It’s pretty much the same, I would say. It’s just taking pieces of sounds, treating them and reacting to that.
Popcorn Youth: It took over two years to record Smoke. Was that intentional, or just how it happened?
Williams: It was more just the time period of all the songs that I had made under that project; maybe about a year, start to finish, with the oldest songs and the newest songs that were recorded. I also had a job, and was going to school full time and I wasn’t working, so I can only have so much time to work on things. I tend to work fast, but I only had a few hours a night to work on it, and I couldn’t work on it everyday, so it was just when I had time.
Popcorn Youth: Do you have other songs that you wrote during that time that were not included in Smoke?
Williams: Oh, yes, yes, I have a lot. They’re all in various degrees of completion, but it’s, like, hundreds. I mean, like five or six or seven are totally finished, but then the others are more like drafts, ideas that need to get resolved.
Popcorn Youth: Do you have plans to start working on a new record?
Williams: Oh yes. I started it when I was last at home, but I’m not at home that much, so when we’re finished promoting the record in Europe, I think I’m going to start back on the second record. At first I was really antsy, and really ready to start working, but now I’m kind of enjoying the break, I’m learning a lot more, in terms of music and things that I like, and what I want to do. It’s just a different perspective, when you give yourself time away. I wouldn’t normally want to do it, but there’s a good side to it. Normally I would just want to keep churning out songs and not tour, I wouldn’t have had a problem with that.
Popcorn Youth: So you will be going to Europe soon as well?
Williams: Yes, we’re going to Europe in April for 30 days or three weeks or so, and then back to Europe in June. And we’ve gotten offers to go to Brazil, so that might happen, too.
Popcorn Youth: Will this be your first time touring in Europe?
Williams: Yes, that will be my first time touring in Europe. I’ve been there before, but I’ve never toured there, so I’m pretty excited.
Popcorn Youth: What’s the most difficult part of writing a pop song?
Williams: For me, the music is just a result of whatever happens in the studio that day. It’s really subconscious in some ways; I don’t find it easy or hard. Everything is an experiment… You make a song and you get some education from what that song was, and you put that into the next song. It’s a continual thing.
Popcorn Youth: What kind of recording software do you use?
Williams: I used Logic for a long time, but now I use Abelton Live, pretty exclusively.
Popcorn Youth: Do you see yourself someday making a record in a studio?
Williams: I think the next record will be mixed in a studio, and I might go into a studio to do some overdubbing, but I think I’ll always work from home, because I like the spontaneity. It’s just better to work that way, to be able to work whenever you have an idea, rather than booking studio time. It’s really strange to me, I think, that all of your ideas are “supposed” to come during that week.
Popcorn Youth: Did you do any of that with Smoke?
Williams: No, that was totally recorded and mixed by myself. There was no studio at all.
Popcorn Youth: Did that time feel like a learning experience?
Williams: Probably. I think that’s all that it is, really. You make a song and you get some education from what that song was, and you put that into the next song. I think it’s a continual thing. Definitely before I did Smoke I really was learning back then, what I liked about music and stuff like that.
Popcorn Youth: Do you think White Williams carries on the spirit of DIY that you were exposed to growing up?
Williams: I don’t know, maybe — I mean, that’s a weird word. We don’t actually make our own records, or make our own t-shirts. We help with the art, and I think we all have strong opinions about how those things should look. I don’t know if DIY is the right word though.
Popcorn Youth: Had you released anything prior to White Williams, like CD-Rs or cassettes?
Williams: I didn’t release anything, I just kept it to myself. It was totally in solitude.
Popcorn Youth: A self-imposed solitude?
Williams: I guess, yes. I just didn’t feel like I needed to go to shows with 10 CD-Rs and hand them out. It just didn’t make sense; I didn’t think that was the way to make people like your music. It was always just to make myself like the music, and once I appreciated it, then maybe other people would. That’s basically what happened.
White Williams will play Appel Commons this Saturday, Feb. 16 at 8pm.