Interview with 2/14

The New York city based 3-piece 2/14 recently released an outstanding new release titled Juliette's Garden.  Their sound has elements of pop punk, alt rock, emo, metalcore and more, but is refreshingly their own.  I recently talked to band founder Sky Carlson about the roots of the band, the new release, future plans and more.  

First off, I want to congratulate you on an outstanding debut.  It really sounds like the work of a veteran band and the recording is great.

 

Can you give me a little bit of history on the band?

 

I started writing music not too long before graduating high school. I had some friends I’d jam with, but they weren’t ready to take it seriously and I eventually decided it was time to move on. I had a demo of a few of our songs, and after a little while I found Ben through his YouTube channel - he had drum covers of bands like Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine.  He learned the songs super quick, and we ended up recording the album after five practices spread out over 2 months before and after the holidays. Since then, we’ve been playing a lot of shows and getting our name out there.

 

Your bio says that your bassist Dylan joined the band after the album was recorded.  Are there other musicians on there or is it just you and your drummer Ben?

 

It’s just me and Ben on the record - I laid down the bass tracks in one session after the guitars were done.

 

Tom Lord-Alge mixed the album.  How did you get him involved?

 

Our manager reached out to his, and after he heard the recordings, he was down to mix it. It was a dream come true to work with him.

 

You produced the album yourself and I have to say it sounds great.  How was that experience?

 

It was really stressful but a lot of fun. It was a big exercise in punctuality, efficiency, and quick decision-making.  I could’ve handled it better at times, but I learned a lot from the whole process, and I’ll absolutely do it again.

 

You open the album with the one two punch of the instrumental “Intro”, which is an absolutely pummeling track and then “Crystal Ball”, which Is one of the faster tracks, kinda taking me back to the earlier days of the second wave of punk.  Can you tell me a little about those two and the decision to open the album with them?

 

The intro was inspired by the 2000’s metalcore scene, when those bands started playing melodic death metal riffs with all the chugging and breakdowns. It kinda started as a joke, like “what if we had an intro track that tricked people into thinking we were a metal band?” But when I started putting some riffs together it sounded awesome and the energy fit in really well with the album. “Crystal Ball” is one of my favorite songs, it perfectly represents the time of my life I was looking back on and incorporates everything I love about classic pop punk. There’s no downtime at all on those two - I wanted to kick off our debut with songs that made a statement about who we are as a band and what we’re bringing to the modern rock landscape.

 

To me “Escalator” has a little bit of a Nirvana vibe to it.  It’s a more midtempo track, but still has those faster blasts and there is a real sense of tension running through it.  Is that what you were shooting for with that song?

 

I’ve never tried to sound like Nirvana at all, it’s pretty much impossible to replicate uniquely amazing songwriting like Kurt’s. That song draws the comparison pretty often, maybe because of how I sing it. I never really thought about it like that, but the first draft was written during the height of the pandemic so there was probably a lot of underlying angst and tension at that time. I was definitely going for something simple but dynamic and emotionally raw, like the whole thing could fall apart at any moment.

 

Since I live in PA I have to ask if there's a story you care to tell me about the song “Allergic To Pennsylvania”?

 

My first semester after high school was at Penn State, and this girl and I were trying to keep our relationship going long-distance.  We’d be talking on the phone every night for hours, it was really unhealthy for both of us.  She ended up meeting another guy at her school; I was staying friends with her and playing it cool to save face, but on the inside I was totally crushed.  I stopped going to class and just stayed in my dorm all day wishing I were someone else. But in the end I realized I would never change myself for anyone, and that’s kind of become a common lyrical theme in our music.

 

I love the twisting and turning tempo shifts of “Can I Be Your Oli Sykes”.  Can you tell me a little about putting that song together?

 

It was purely coincidental. I liked the idea of the riffs and vocals alternating in the verses, but the vocal melodies I wrote were somehow at different paces for every section. We don’t even really think about the tempo changes when we play it live - oddly enough it just feels really natural.

 

“Dust Bunny” starts out with just acoustic guitar and sounds kind of introspective.  It’s definitely the most subdued track on the album until you let loose at the end.  Can you tell me about changing things up on that song?

 

I wrote it backstage before one of my first shows. I was just messing around a bit on my friend’s acoustic guitar to calm my nerves, and I ended up playing that opening riff. I instantly knew I had something with serious potential, I wrote all the lyrics as soon as I got home and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

 

I really like “Souvenir From A Power Trip”, which is kind of different from the rest of the album.  It has a really cool groove to it and some interesting sounding guitar.  What can you tell me about that track?

 

It was a brief collection of riffs that I structured at one of our rehearsals. Ben and I recorded it in the room with each other without a click track, so layering the guitars in post was a lot more difficult than the other songs. We kept it because I wanted a quick blast of energy, but I also wanted something that stood out from the rest of the songs and did something a little different.  I can tell I was listening to a lot of Rage Against the Machine at the time, but the drumming borders on hardcore punk and makes it pretty unique.

 

The title track closes the album out perfectly.  It’s another track that is really different from the rest - the dynamics are incredible and it’s so atmospheric and powerful.  Is that a sign of something we might possibly hear more of on future releases?

 

Thank you - I’m not sure. When I wrote it I was really lost in my life.  I was struggling so much with growing up.  I’d just come back home feeling like a total failure and a disappointment to everyone - it’s a lot of stuff I’m still dealing with but I’ve been able to grow from.  The song is so emotionally overwhelming for me, I have a hard time listening to it and being reminded of where I was back then.  It’s hard to imagine ever recreating something like that, but songs like those are never really planned to begin with.

 

I read somewhere that you are already working on songs for another album.  How has that been going and what’s on the agenda for the band now that Adrienne’s Garden has been released?

 

It’s been going well. We’ve been performing at least 2 of the new songs in our sets. I think the songs I’m writing are progressing the sounds we established with this album. More energy in the fast songs and more emotion and vulnerability in the sad songs. 

 

All the songs were written by you before the other members were in the band.  Is that something you think will continue or do you think the songwriting will become more of a group effort?

 

It’ll likely continue that way; lyrics and melodies are all really personal to me and I can’t imagine utilizing anyone else’s contributions in that regard. I’m also super picky about the flow of our songs and how they’re structured.

 

You’ve got videos out there for four of the songs and they look great.  Did you collaborate with someone to make those?

 

I edited the music video for “Crystal Ball,” it was largely a collaboration with a Pratt filmmaker named Mrugesh Thakor.  He was moving out of his apartment and told us we could play there for a music video, so I took his cuts of that footage and spliced them with clips of us hanging out in Brooklyn and a video of one of our shows in New Jersey.  There’s a lot that I would do differently now, but I love the rawness of it and it matches the spirit of the song really well.

 

The music videos for “Escalator” and “Dust Bunny” were done with a local cinematographer named Fengze Liang. For the first song, he just filmed us playing and hanging out in a furniture wood shop that we rented for the day. But the second one was a lot more planned out and there was a real vision going into it - we’re really happy with both of them.

 

The visualizers for “Graduation” and “Escalator” were done really quickly on the city streets with a friend and a camera just to have something cool to promote when those singles came out.

 

Is there any significance to the band name?

 

It’s Valentine’s Day, and the day I was supposed to perform for the first time in high school.  There was a lunchtime karaoke event that they were going to let my first band play three songs at, but it didn’t end up happening because the school didn’t let us use their drums.

 

Do you have any plans for a physical release?

 

CD’s will be coming soon! I’ve always loved them and their jewel cases.

 

Is there anything else you would like to share with readers?

 

Thank you for reading about us! I hope you love our debut album and I’m so excited for what the future holds.

(2/14  -  2/14 Facebook)