AN INTERVIEW WITH NIGHT KITCHEN
In today’s day and age, it’s easy to find new artists to listen to every day, maybe even every hour. However, finding an artist that you feel a connection to can take a little more time, but when it happens, it’s worth it. That artist for me is DC based band Night Kitchen, whose psychedelic-esque, indie rock sound (complete with distant vocals and stimulating tempo changes) has the capability of transporting you to a hazy dream state while still being present to your senses and surroundings.
GET TO KNOW THE BAND
can you guys introduce yourselves and what you contribute to the band.
jordan: I’m jordan levine and I play guitar and sing, and I’ve played a little bit of keyboard on some recordings. I write some of the lyrics, emmett and I have co-written lyrics for some songs.
wyatt: what songs did you write the lyrics for, emmett?
emmett: I wrote some of them for “Salt Water Taffy,” “Fever Dream”
wyatt: o h wow I didn’t know that.
emmett: well I’m emmett parks, I play drums. I used to play bass in the recordings, back in the old days, on the first single and for a little on the second release. I write some of the lyrics, like jordan mentioned, and I do other percussion stuff on the recording like african drums and whatever. I dance on the recordings.
wyatt: my name is wyatt and I play bass and make sounds on the recordings.
j: he’s played some keyboard on the recording too.
w: and guitar.
j: and guitar.
so what’s the history behind the band’s formation?
j: well I’m glad you asked. so emmett and I, in like 2012, played together in a band called “Hurlebaus,” it’s spelled h-u-r-l, uhh-
w: you don’t even remember how it was spelled?
e: h-u-r-l-e-b-a-
j: u-s. it’s my uncle’s middle name, it’s a german name, and we started that with some other people. it was more indie rock, emo-esque-
e: shoegazey
j: we played in that band for about a year, did some shows and stuff. we actually did an ep, emmett played drums and I played guitar, rhythm guitar. then that band broke up and we started playing together, just as a two piece. we started recording and we played a couple shows and then we had a couple bass players come in in the interim before wyatt joined, but he’s been our steady bass player for awhile.
e: we’ve been going steady with him for awhile.
j: and he recorded bass on the ep.
how would you guys define your sound, do you think it’s definable?
e: in terms of genres themselves, we could say-
w: “food rock”
j: “food wave”
e: “micro wave,” “post wave”
j: “preheat,” we like to incorporate a food theme whenever we can, a somewhat light hearted connected thread.
e: we’ve referenced food actually in our song lyrics zero times but some of the song titles are after food. one the first songs we wrote is titled “Thai Iced Tea” because jordan and I both really like thai iced tea. we used to go in between class and get some from the thai market in silver spring, so we have an affinity for that. what was the question again?
the question is how would you define your sound? do you think it’s something that is definable?
w: I feel like any sound is definable.
what I mean by that isn’t that you don’t have a definite or definable sound but rather that your music is a compilation of so many genres that it’s hard to define it to be just one.
e: well, I want someone when they hear a genre name for that to be a reference point, not necessarily an actual definition. we sound similar to some bands for sure, I think my morning jacket or built to spill, somewhere around there.
j: indie rock is obviously the umbrella genre and then in that we have influence from post punk and psychedelic rock. our stuff is usually pretty riffy with guitar, we have a lot of rhythm and tempo changes
e: it’s more riff oriented than lyric oriented in the way its written.
REALLY GET TO KNOW THE BAND
since the release of your EP, Hunger Games, last summer have you guys been working towards or on any new releases?
e: at a glacial pace.
j: we haven’t been able to get together that much since I’m at towson, emmett is at umbc and wyatt lives in college park.
e: it really is not that far to be honest, but it takes time.
j: we’ve been working on some new songs. a few new songs that could hopefully go into a new ep, we’re playing a new one at our upcoming show. we like to explore different genres and styles so we don’t really tie ourselves to what we’ve recorded, like we might be changing directions but we’re not really conscious of that.
e: I think our sound will come through in whatever we do, we’re at a point where we know what our sound is but it’s not so much conscious but just who we are as musicians and that we play a certain way and there’s a common thread through our stuff.
j: like this new song we’re working on is a bit more surfy, blues riffy but it not like we’re gonna become a blues bands.
The band’s name comes from the children’s book In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, what was the inspiration behind the choice, if any?
j: I read that book when I was a kid, Sendak is the same author who did Where The Wild Things Are and it’s just a book that I really liked as a kid and it’s really weird, he got into some strange territory as a children’s book writer, like it’s pretty surreal. It’s about this boy who’s dreaming, similar to Where The Wild Things Are, he’s flying in a plane made of dough and these fat bakers try to bake him into a cake.
e: we also love getting stuff from other people’s work.
w: we love stealing.
e: thats our main demographic of fans, accidental clicks.
j: also, i was just thinking about this but, today you can kind of appropriate things that exist already and bring them into new context.
you guys also have a podcast entitled “Live From the Night Kitchen,” in which you interview bands form the DC area. What was motivation behind this side project and do you aim to continue it?
e: me and jordan both love podcasts, all kinds of stuff comedy stuff, political banter
j: I think I might of came up with idea like “why don’t we do a podcast?”
e: it was actually me and you, but okay
j: we know all these cool bands so it was a way to invite them to come hang out
e: and to see a free live show pretty much
j: we had played on Third Rail Radio at UMD radio station-
e: and that inspired us, we played a show there and got interviewed there and we said “this is cool, wouldn’t it be cool to have this instead of an outdated medium like radio?”
w: shots fired.
e: but we like the idea of having that as a podcast.
j: it’s kind of an excuse for us to hang out with a cool band and to give them a platform to get more exposure for their music as well as at the same time promote our band passively because it’s just us as the interviewers and I think it’s cool to get a look inside what we are as people, it’s a just natural way of reaching to our audience.
MELTED EXCLUSIVES
artist /song/album that makes you feel a heavy dose of nostalgia?
e: I’ve got a couple, one for me would be “Wildflower” by Tom Petty. I used to hear that in my dad’s car all the time, especially on this one road trip we took to the Cleveland area when I was nine years old.
j: for me it’s Sublime because my older brothers were into them and when I didn’t have a taste in music yet, my taste in music was Sublime for a few years, Sublime and Bob Marley and stuff like that, I haven’t listened actively lately but it’s good music but it’s also kitschy in some way.
w: a song for me that makes me feel a heavy dose of nostalgia is actually “Blue” by Eiffel 65 casue for whatever reason that was the first cd I ever owned. I borrowed it from a friend because he had the whole I album. I would just listen to it constantly, that whole album.
what’s it like being a band in the 21st century?
e: there’s no excuse not to have your stuff out there. if you have stuff, it’s gotta be out there because there’s bandcamp and youtube and there’s all these platforms to share your music and your art and its great.
w: I’d say it’s confusing almost compared to past time.
e: it’s hard to consume everything that a band puts out there but there’s more stuff, there’s always something to discover.
j: I think in some ways it easier and in some ways harder. like in the old days, you had to stand out and get signed to a label and they would do a lot of the work for you. now, I feel like labels are having a hard time, people have taken the path of releasing their own stuff, which might be a little more difficult to do as a band, to make enough money and survive on that, for us it’s always just been a hobby.
w: I feel like music scenes and genres are a lot less localized. I feel like the internet has disrupted that, you don’t have as much people in the same place listening to one type of music.
e: did that ever happen though? I mean I don’t think people are listening less to local bands, I think it’s the same or more.
w: eh.
e: there’s always record stores. overall, it’s way easier.
j: but in some ways it’s way harder. it’s harder than when you’d get a record deal, now there’s a lot more diy.
e: but there’s more control and leverage, which is better for the artist.
w: summary, it’s awful.
If you could live in any past decade, which and why?
e: the distant past.
j: that’s a reference to an Everything Everything song.
w: that’s a tough one. I’d probably go way back, like 1700s or something
e: there’s this band jordan and I played with a couple years back, the Brothers Kardell, and in one of their songs the lyrics are “I want to live in the 18th century, when the world was just a mystery” and I’m like “ah yeah, I feel ya brother.”
j: I think for me, maybe the 60s, with all the cool music that was coming out.
e: you could trash women and african americans all you want without consequence, jordan misses that.
j: I would be on the other side of that
w: you’d be young Bernie Sanders
j: I’d be a young Bernie Sanders in the 1960s
interview by LYDIA VELAZQUEZ
photo by WYATT REXACHS
BANDCAMP
We had a pleasure talking with Lydia from Melted Magazine. Check out our interview here.
