Maybe it’s not that much of a revelation when a band puts their stamp on a music scene by releasing songs from GarageBand. But the chances of sustaining momentum in Philadelphia? Uhh, yeah. Whatever Slutever. Nicole Snyder and Rachel Gagliardi are the obnoxiously bitching punk duo that are Slutever. In the past six months I’ve seen them go from some band Reading Rainbow likes to a band that makes Philly music news and gets played on Sirius XMU’s Aquarium Drunkard radio show. And at some point, even a ‘fun’ band begins to take itself seriously. The fantasy life that is college has just finished for one of these girls, and no, her plan is not to just smoke mad blunts. Slutever have planned a seven week national tour, partially funded through a Kickstarter campaign, starting on July 1 in Boston. Their first tour across the states. And to think the last time I saw these girls we were trying to figure out how to gain entry to a Dum Dum Girls show. It’s Slutever, right?
TWIAPC: Did you get to smoke with Dum Dum Girls?
Nicole Snyder: We wish.
TWIAPC: Well, I remember seeing you with them right when they were trying to load out and leave.
NS: For like a minute, toward the end of the night, Reading Rainbow and Dee Dee were standing outside. They were talking about how they were gonna go back to their place and smoke a blunt, and I was like, “I wanna come,” but we didn’t.
TWIAPC: I think that was the last show I’ve seen you at. What was the last show you went to?
Rachel Gagliardi: Last night I saw Bright Eyes and it was the first time I’ve ever seen them. And I was crying. It was amazing.
NS: I’m going to Kurt Vile and Pissed Jeans tomorrow.
TWIAPC: Speaking of shows, and having funds to play them…you have a Kickstarter for your upcoming tour. Who is your dream donor?
NS: You mean organ donor, or…?
TWIAPC: That was actually my next question.
NS: [Philadelphia indie promoter/booker] Sean Agnew wants to go bowling with us.
RG: Also, Sean Agnew saw me moshing last night, which is awesome.
NS: It’s cool when it’s people we don’t know or aren’t from the Philly area notice. It just feels good to know we have peoples’ attention outside of our local scene.
RG: I would say…[Phillies pitcher] Cole Hamels.
TWIAPC: You have a crush on Cole?
RG: I have a huge crush on him.
TWIAPC: You know his first name is Colbert?
RG: (gasps) I didn’t! Oh my god.
NS: Colbert Hamels? That’s so cute.
RG: Oh my god. He would be my dream donor. Because that would mean that the Phillies know about us, and that would be wicked.
TWIAPC: How about the dream donor of a body part?
NS: I want… Tommy Lee’s shlong.
RG: (giggles) I want Pamela Anderson’s boobs…
TWIAPC: Is that it?
RG: That’s it.
TWIAPC: What’s the first thing you’ll buy once you get your Kickstarter money?
NS: We’re gonna spend it all on a country club membership.
RG: Yeah, we’re gonna join that Fishtown Country Club and it’s gonna be awesome. It’s like a $1000 a year, per person. So that’s why we picked $2000.
NS: Yeah, one full year of…
RG: It’s got a pool…
NS: Yeah, I don’t like swimming. But hot dogs. Little weenies.
TWIAPC: Wait, you’re starting a country club in Fishtown, or joining one?
NS: We’re joining one. We’re not that ambitious.
TWIAPC: OK. It sounded like you had it all planned out with the hot dogs.
NS: We’re gonna break up actually, because we don’t really like each other anymore.
RG: If we get the money, we’re not even gonna get it until like August.
NS: Yeah, this is like, once we’re out of our initial money, this will be an extra boost.
RG: We’re using the money that we’re making from shows for gas. Put it that way.
TWIAPC: Rachel, what are you doing after…well, now? You’re graduating today.
RG: Next year I’m pretty excited because we’re going to live together, which means it’ll be easier to practice more and we’ll set up a little art studio/recording space. And I’m going to start a record label…
NS: Bomb. Dropped.
TWIAPC: With other people?
RG: No, solo. I mean, Nicole will probably help me.
NS: Yeah right. If you pay me I will be your employee…
TWIAPC: You could always intern.
NS: Yeah right. I’m already Rachel’s intern.
RG: Basically. Fetch me a latte.
TWIAPC: So, you just want to put recordings out, or do more than that…
RG: Yeah. Well, that’s what I want to ultimately do. I figured I wasn’t going to start it for a few years, maybe five years later, but the more I think about it I think I should just start it now, and then if it fails it fails. Because I’m not gonna have any more money then. I want to use all of my graduation money toward loans, rent and the label, and I think the first thing we’re gonna do will be a Slutever [release]. We have this idea and I really don’t want to do it with anyone else. But we haven’t started it.
TWIAPC: And it’s just an idea right now?
NS: A pretty strong idea.
RG: It’s a concept album. And we’ve been trying to do it for so long and we thought we found a label and that fell through. If the first thing we put out is a Slutever thing, then I feel more confident than putting out someone I don’t know.
NS: And just with the nature of what we’re trying to do with this release, it would be a lot more fun to have only our hands on it.
TWIAPC: Does it help that you might know some people who have their own small labels?
RG: I interned at a label, Not Not Fun Records in California, because I thought I wanted to start my own and wanted to see how much work it was. And then as soon as I saw them, I was like, “Yes, this is what I want to do.” It’s a lot of work, but it’s also your own time, which is what I want. I don’t mind working all day and then chilling the next day.
TWIAPC: Especially if it’s for your own band’s release.
RG: The only part of the music industry that I do actually like is label stuff. I would like to do booking but I would be terrible at it, because I’m really bad with email and calling people, which is all promoters do. I would be very bad. If someone hired me to book shows for them, I’d be like, “This is a lot of work.” For our band I don’t mind.
NS: Basically, we’re too lazy to work for anyone but ourselves.
TWIAPC: But you’re not, even if that is part of your shtick.
RG: We are shticky. We’re lazy, but the past few weeks have been totally insane. our <i>band</i> is not lazy. Thinking back to a year ago, we played one show. That Best Coast show in September was our third show, and after that we hit the ground running. We were away for the summer when we released the <i>Sorry, I’m Not Sorry</i> EP, kind of like okay, it’s done, we’ll put it up.
TWIAPC: It sounds that way, to be honest.
NS: Oh, yeah. It was recorded on GarageBand with a Mac Book microphone.
RG: When people say we’re lazy, I don’t mind that, but as a band we’re definitely not. We’ve played almost 40 shows in one year. I don’t know a lot of bands that have done that.
NS: And we get paid for probably five percent of our shows, if that.
TWIAPC: Are you at that point where people are counting how often you play in Philadelphia, and saying you can’t play often?
RG: We haven’t played in a while, and we’re playing this show on June 23 with the Coathangers. We’re at the point now where we’ve had to say no to a lot of shows lately, which we don’t like to do, but now we kind of have to.
NS: I get annoyed when I go to the same venues or places I like to hang out, and it will be the same three bands and one touring band. And I’d be like, “I don’t care about these bands anymore.” And I feel like people were definitely getting burnt out on us. The house show circuit is pretty small. We just need to take time off to work on new things.
RG: When we get back in the fall, I don’t think we’ll play too many shows, because we’re gonna work on this release.
TWIAPC: Do you have any concerns about what will be a more serious project in Slutever and Rachel’s other kids music project, The Weenies?
RG: The Weenies was just supposed to be for a school project, but the more I’ve been talking to people, they’re like, “You could actually make a lot of money off of that, and I think you should keep it going.” So I actually think we’re gonna maybe to do more stuff.
NS: The Weenies songs are really fun, too. Not that Slutever songs aren’t.
RG: Slutever songs aren’t fun at all.
NS: But there’s no question that Slutever is the more serious project.
RG: The Weenies was honestly just my senior thesis, but it would be nice to have more than one revenue stream…because I don’t have any money.
TWIAPC: So this isn’t like a black and white thing where you have one band that makes money and the other doesn’t, even if it’s definitely what you want to do.
NS: I feel like is the right time for Slutever. We’ve done way better than we thought we were going to do.
RG: But the older we get, Slutever will become less relevant, and The Weenies is something I could do later on. Especially in terms of lyrical content. We could always come back to children’s music.
TWIAPC: Will the next release be recorded on something better than GarageBand?
RG: The next one we’re gonna do, we’ll probably record ourselves, so that won’t be high production, but we did our last recording in an actual studio. We have at least three different labels that we’re talking with, so if they give us a budget to pay someone to do it, then we’ll do it, but it’s not something that we value a lot.
NS: A I don’t want to lose that garage vibe. Our first album was lo-fi, but we at least tried to have enough layers and melodies so that the fuzz became a part of it and didn’t detract, as much as coexist with it. It’s just a shame when people think lo-fi is a genre, but we had to record it ourselves because no one wanted to record it for us. It was fun to record it ourselves. We were at our apartment and we had total control over it. We could take as long as we wanted with it. That was what made the most sense. And there are a lot of bands that kind of sound the same just because their song quality isn’t great, but that’s just the band’s fault. Production can only do so much.
RG: And for certain genres, you need a clean album, but for punk stuff you don’t really need that. Some of my favorite songs are things my friends recorded, and they are so not high quality.
NS: It’s interesting when some people listen to <i>Sorry I’m Not Sorry</i> and say it sounds like crap. But other people are like “Whoa, you used GarageBand?”
RG: Sometimes it bums me out when bands start out super fuzzy and become produced. I liked Best Coast’s seven inches much more than I liked her album. I liked Wavves first album more than his new album. And I think the songs are just as good, but that preference is just based on production.
TWIAPC: Well, in some ways that new sound made people take those bands more seriously, but also, a lot of initial supporters took them less seriously.
RG: They got taken more seriously so now they have more mainstream fans, and they’re getting played on MTV. It’s not a matter of selling out…
NS: But they’re like a whole different thing…
RG: No, because those early seven inches were really good. I really liked them. I like Best Coast and I listen to her, but that’s just an example of someone whose production I did prefer. I think a lot of people, if we were like “We’re going to do our clean poppy album,” would be like “What?” We would get some new fans.
RS: But we already decided we are going to make a pop album.
RG: We are going to be pop serious. We decided that. But I don’t think the people who come out to see us in sweaty basements will care.
Get a listen HERE
– Guest post by Chris Zakorchemny