Roman Candle just can't catch a break. Sure, their indepently-released debut Says Pop (Outlook) was released in 2002 to critical acclaim, leading Rolling Stone to dub them "explosive new darlings." But after being tossed around by their first major label and watching their second fold just days ago, the Chapel Hill-based rockers are once again living in label limbo. Don't feel too sorry for them, though-their 2006 release, The Wee Hours Revue (V2), has been lauded as one of the year's most intelligent, well crafted albums. recess' Eric Bishop spoke with frontman Skip Matheny about pop music, surviving the music industry and the band's uncertain future.
recess: In your song "Why Modern Radio Is A-OK" you sing that "a pop song used to be a powerful thing." Why isn't it a powerful thing anymore?
Skip Matheny: I don't think that people are writing songs on a big, grand scale like they used to. Especially if you're talking about modern radio, I don't find new songwriters that really blow my mind like older songwriters do. I don't think it's a craft that people pay a lot of attention to these days. We certainly pay attention to it, but we don't really find a lot of new songwriters that write a lot of lyrics... You know, certain old songs used to be really songs that you could mark your life by because people were treating them as individual pieces of art-that's the kind of stuff that I do think is harder to come by in the world of pop music these days.
I understand that you're writing a guidebook to surviving the music industry.
I was gonna try and write a book that I wish I had found on the floor of some club bathroom so that I could read it and go, "Okay, there's a shortcut here," or "This is a waste of time." Those types of things are pretty invaluable if you're actually trying to learn how to be in a band and not kill yourself or your bandmates.
What kind of new material are you working on?
[Keyboardist and wife Timshet Metheny] and I went to England last year for about six weeks to do some writing and we ended up with this sort of concept record called "Songs for an Empty Room." We were going to record that record as kind of a digital download-only type thing, but it turns out we're not gonna do that immediately, so we're probably going to start working on our second record next month.
With the recent news of your record label V2 Records shutting down, what's the next step for the band on the business side of things?
I believe that all the V2 artists including the really famous ones are like free agents at the moment. So we can hopefully find a new label, and then we'll probably record a brand-new record and then record that concept record on the side.
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