photo by Shervin Lainez
story by Michael Todd | photos by Ben Semisch
Maybe it's the quick cuts. Maybe it's lead singer Jeremy Mendicino's fiery eyes or guitarist Holden Lewis' stomping feet.
Or, then again, perhaps it's partly due to the bright colors behind them — flowery pinks, blues, oranges and greens — colors painted on the walls of a Boston attic. Whatever it is, I find myself tapping my feet to a volume-less video as I prepare to interview Mendicino and Lewis of the band Pretty & Nice. Having seen the Love Drunk video many times before, since it was first published last May, I know the "epic tune" that will erupt out of my headphones when I plug them in and listen again.
It's this song, this rocker that Mendicino and Lewis discussed in-depth as they sat in their van outside Jackpot Music Hall in Lawrence, Kansas, last night. Today, they're driving north to Omaha for a show tonight at The Waiting Room with fellow Love Drunk veterans Jukebox the Ghost. After tonight's concert, Pretty & Nice will play Record Store Day, on Saturday at 9 a.m. at Homer's. The in-store will help to both entertain record collectors in line and celebrate the band's own 7-inch release for the musical holiday that contains their single "Q_Q."
And in just more than a week, on April 30, Pretty & Nice will release their full album, Golden Rules for Golden People. Among all the shows and releases, learn more about "Yonkers," how it evolved from another song on an earlier LP, how it takes on two cities and the archetypes they represent and how the Love Drunk video shaped the band's perception of Nebraska.
Hear Nebraska: Let’s start with a couple questions about the Love Drunk video. Why did the band choose to play “Yonkers” for that?
Jeremy Mendicino: There are probably a bunch of reasons. We had been playing it for awhile, so we knew it really well. We had already released it, so it wasn’t something off-limits to play, as we were figuring out how we were going to put out the album finally, just the details of that. It was a song that worked logistically and also was a rocker. It’s an epic tune, so it works well for the video. I'm probably the worst person to be answering that question (laughs).
HN: How did you find the location in the video?
Holden Lewis: We went and looked at a bunch of different places to try and find spots. We had a bunch of different ideas, and the place we had booked to do it, which was a thrift store, a vintage curious shop, wound up being closed for a short period of time because of some business issues.
We had seen that attic before when we had gone there to play a show that got shut down by the cops before we played. So we just went, watched some bands play then threw down our stuff and left.
JM: Yeah, three flights of stairs, too.
HN: What did you think of the song when the video was shot last May, and how do you feel about it now?
JM: We liked it then and we like it now, that’s for sure.
HL: It’s been a regular song at pretty much every show we play. It’s a crowd-pleaser (laughs), so that’s good.
JM: It’s a song that’s been out for awhile, so that’s helpful. It’s a crowd-pleaser especially because people know it more than the new songs.
HN: Tell me about how the song was written. Who wrote which parts?
JM: It started as an exercise, sort of. It grew from a piece of another song that we ended up recording later. The first song off our last CD, “Hibernate.” It was a piece of that song as it existed at the time that we transplanted and used as the foundation, the opening of the song. That exercise was meant for us to have fun and reuse parts of songs to marry different songs together.
HL: Specifically, we had been working on that song “Hibernate” for years. We had different ideas for it, and there was one specific part we weren’t going to use in it, and I really wanted to keep it, so we wrote a different song around it. The verses were a throwaway idea from “Hibernate” that I think Jeremy had forgotten at the time. But I was, like, “No, we need to find that. I loved it!”
JM: So you can kind of splice “Hibernate” and “Yonkers” together in a couple places.
HL: Yeah, and the name “Yonkers,” I think we were setting up drums to do some recording. We were walking outside and dragging our junk into the van, and I feel like I was singing the Yonkers, bonkers line that wound up being a catalyst for the song in a way.
HN: Yonkers and Malibu are two places repeated in the song. What’s the story behind each place’s place in the song?
JM: One part happenstance and one part archetype. Malibu is the ultimate luxury suburban American dream in a way. And Yonkers is not at all that.
HL: I had grown up with my stepdad, who grew up in Yonkers. He used to always talk about how horrible it was there. In my mind, it was that disparity between the two, but in actuality, I’ve never been to Yonkers. I know Jeremy has, though.
JM: I think we’ve driven through it. What show, is it 42nd Street that has a whole song about Yonkers? Anyway, it’s a location people know about. And then that crazy song with the same title came out.
HL: Yeah, awkward timing for us to release that song in spring 2011, though, when that other “Yonkers” song by Tyler, the Creator was enormously huge.
JM: Popped out of nowhere and punched us in the butt.
HN: In the recorded version, it sounds like the vocal track is doubled in some parts by a voice many octaves lower. Is that right?
JM: There’s a lot of stuff happening on the recorded version, with different intervals, different parts. There’s variants of dropped-in bits, mangled bits and dry bits and wet bits. Gotta be at least six vocal tracks, but not all of them are going at the same time. They’re for different sounds, different effects, different feelings.
HL: There’s some pitched up, some pitched down, some cut up. And the cool thing about the recording is that the second half of it is a spliced recording.
JM: There are two different takes from two different pieces. The outro, it slows down a bunch. We recorded each other recording the song then picked up on it more than a month later and realized that the end of the song was way too fast, and it didn't feel right, so we started a whole new recording basically from the cowboy bridge part on.
We erased the original one after that point and recorded a drum track that just naturally decreases without a click track. That used to bug us a ton. We used to think it was really obvious, and then eventually, we realized that no one gave a shit anyway or could even tell that there’s a total ritard in the tempo at the end. I could talk for hours in a dorky fashion about this stuff.
HN: That’s all right. That’s the intent of this column. Now, tell me about the first and last chord in the song, and what mood you think it communicates.
JM: It’s a happy chord, I think. It’s an energetic chord. It’s a major seventh, a positive feeling chord. All in all, the song includes bits of terror and craziness, but it’s generally a positive song. So I guess the chord is indicative of happiness, growth. There was absolutely no conscious thought to the key of the song or anything, though.
HN: Could you talk more about the lyrics and what they mean?
JM: Well, first off, from our perspective, it’s important to say that we don’t think of lyrics as having one meaning for everyone. For us, they mean certain things and evoke something. But whatever they mean to you, they mean to you. They mean that.
But for us, they have a lot to do with just getting rid of old ideas about selfishness, greed and getting caught up in materialism and all that junk. New-agey happy stuff. Anything else I'm missing?
HL: No, I think you hit the nail on the head.
JM: I don’t like talking about lyrics very much because they could mean so much more than I think they mean. I know they mean a lot more.
HN: Lastly, what was your experience like shooting a Love Drunk video, and how did it change your perception of Nebraska music?
HL: I don’t think we had an impression of Nebraska music before really. We had been to Omaha once and had a good time, but it was a one-night quick thing, and we didn’t play with local bands. So we didn’t have an impression and didn’t know what to expect, but it was really fun working with Django and everybody.
Everybody was super nice and excited to tell us about what they do and the scene in Nebraska. That was really exciting, and their excitement became our excitement. They did a stellar job obviously, and we get compliments all the time on that video all the time, even now a year later.
JM: Yes, Nebraska yields some good humans.
CHORDS
F / C# / F / C# / F / C#
F / C# / F / C# / F / C#
F / C# / F / C# / F / C#
F / C# / F / Dmin / A
F Dmin A F Dmin A
Welcome to your weekend in Malibu
F Dmin
Summer mother
A Eb
Atomic bummer in the big black light
Bb E7
Tonight's the night
F Dmin
Plug in the
A F Dmin A
Romantic sugar-talk
F Dmin
To take your mind off
A
We turn your mind off
F C#
We give you pleasure
F
Begin the Winter of Lightning
Dmin
Totally frightening
Gmin/Bb
Terror in uniform
A7b9
Solar decay
F
Winter in Yonkers
Dmin
Totally bonkers
Gmin
I build the totem pole
A7b9/C#
But what do we say?
Amin E C Amin E
C Amin E7 C Amin E
T-shirts and parking in Malibu
C Amin
Sell the water
Ab C/G F#7 F Ab
Everyone is nuts in Malibu!
C/G F#7 F E7
Ride a wave down the ave- nue!
(instrumental section in C)
C
Open up your coffers ! Open !
C Dmin
We make you want to keep it open
C
Blue Umbrella
C
Hide me from the sun
C C->Bb
Wind in the willow whipping wildly
(instrumental section)
Eb Cmin
Fmin/Ab Bb E7
Eb Cmin C
F
Happy and underfed
Dmin
Love is the word you spread
Gmin
Call it sensational
A A7b9/G
Float in mid-air
F
Happy and underfed
Dmin
Sad isn't truth, you said
C
Zombies of capital
C# C
Don't hear, they're asleep
F
Winter of lightning
Dmin
Terribly frightening
Gmin/Bb
I ask the wiseman
C# C#min
Why you so brave?
F
'I know the ostridge,
Dmin
Excellent posturing,
C7 C7/E
I know the zebra,
C# C#dim
Stripes never fade
F Dmin Gmin/Bb
Until the lightening…
C#min
Now let us pray!
F Dmin
Weekend enlightening…
C7
Until the lightening
C#min
takes us away…'
F Dmin Gmin/Bb C#min
Winter of lightening…
F Dmin Gmin/Bb C#min F
Michael Todd is Hear Nebraska's managing editor. Thank you to the band for transcribing the chords and lyrics. Reach Michael at michaeltodd@hearnebraska.org.