The boys of Vietnam are dirty — not necessarily in an unhygienic way (although lead singer Michael Gerner’s inspiring beard looks like it could play host to several species of birds). It’s a foot-stomping, moonshine-swilling, sporting-last-night’s-T-shirt kind of dirt. It’s the kind of dirt rock ’n’ roll springs up from, and it’s the kind of dirt that’s hard to come by in this era of glossed, gelled, and eye-lined alt-rock pretty boys.
The Vietnam vibe hearkens back to a different era of rock ’n’ roll, full of bluesy riffs, minimalist drums, and occasional forays into sonic psychedelia. But Gerner’s ranting, epic lyrics reach far beyond the boundaries of throwback rock. The band’s self-titled debut is a guttural, smoky explosion, featuring production by “Farmer Dave” Scher and cameos by Jenny Lewis, Paz Lenchantin, and Jesse Carmichael. After five years of dingy bars and sidewalk jam sessions, Vietnam is poised to bring some much-needed grit back to modern rock.
After opening for Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins on the Chicago stop of their tour, Vietnam sat down with ALARM to discuss their new album, the merits of thug rap, and how a 65-year-old Puerto Rican who wandered in off the street became a band fixture.
You just finished recording your first full-length album. What was that like?
Josh Grubb, lead guitar: We recorded the record at Sound City. It’s where Nirvana recorded Nevermind; Fleetwood Mac recorded Rumors there. It’s all analog; we didn’t even use a digital pedal.
Ivan Berko, bass: It’s probably apparent when you listen to it, but there’s no looped drums or bass or guitars.
Michael Foss, drums: It’s a live performance, basically.
Was that the intention when you started recording?
JG: It wasn’t a formula like, ‘Analog-heads, check this out.’ When we were doing preproduction for the record, we were talking about how awesome this was that we recording there. We had 18 reels of two-inch tape and we were like, ‘if we’re doing this in this studio spending all this money on two-inch tape, then why screw it up?’ It’s not like I got to play 20 guitar solos then piece them together and make one bad-ass solo. Whatever guitar solo is on the record, that’s the guitar solo.
You’re also releasing a series of 12-inch singles this year on The Social Registry. What can we expect on those?
JG: They feature one song from the album and material that we recorded at home, covers and live material. They’re like mini-albums, packed full of words and music…each one is about 20 minutes long. They’re like mini-LPs.
IB: The album was very much like we’d go in there, this legendary studio, the best equipment, this digital bullshit happening, and we just went and performed every night and got amazing takes. But with the B-sides we did the opposite, the most fried-in-our-brains-in-our-room kind of recording. We just freaked out.
Michael Gerner, lead singer: It’s all recorded in our living room.
IB: Our friend Johnny Su Torres, this 65-year-old guy, came by one day and never left, so we just hit record and he played rhythm guitar and sang, and it came out really amazing.
MF: The day we recorded that song with him we also did our publicity photos. He just wouldn’t leave, and in every picture he’s holding up this [makes “number one” sign] and it’s like, whose father is that [laughs]? He’s this really charismatic, nice Puerto Rican guy. He can sing in English and Spanish; he can sing ‘Earth
Angel’ or, like, any bachata song.
IB: And ‘I Believe I Can Fly.’
JG: He really pisses us off with that one.
So do strange men commonly just wander into your house?
JG: Last summer when we were rehearsing for this album, our electricity was off for three months. And there’s no windows; there’s only one door. So we pretty much hung out outside, and that’s how we met everybody in the neighborhood. And now even if you lock the door, everybody always comes by.
What do you think distinguishes you from all the other bands on the Brooklyn scene?
IB: That kind of thinking is poisonous.’What makes me special?’ Well, you’re not special.
JG: We do it because it’s fun. It’s not a job for us; it’s what we like to do.
IB: One of the bands we went on tour with — I can’t even remember their name, I think they broke up — they came to visit us a year after the tour and they’re like, ‘You guys have bunk beds? You guys are actually doing rock ’n’ roll? My band didn’t do rock ’n’ roll.’ They were amazed by the fact that we believed in ourselves and wanted to do it.
MF: We don’t have bunk beds anymore though.
What music is influencing you right now?
IB: We like underground hip-hop a lot.
JG: We like thug rap.
IB: Dirty stuff.
JG: Three 6 Mafia, 8 Ball, and MJG.
IB: Saigon, Papoose.
JG: Bohagen, Too Short.
Doesn’t quite go with what you’re playing….
MF: But when you think about current music, you think about what inspires you, not on an aesthetic level, but something that sounds amazing, something you’ve never heard before. What are you gonna do, go find a psychedelic rock band that rips their name off from the Velvet Underground or something? No, you’re gonna listen to something that’s so new or so weird that you’re like, ‘I don’t even know what this shit is!’
JG: It’s actually exactly the same as us in a way. We don’t write songs about books we’ve read; we write about what is happening to us — a spade is a spade, a bitch is a bitch. It’s real storytelling; everything’s laid out for you. It’s the libido of life.
IB: A lot of rock music is really alienating to the listener because they’re not really saying anything that’s meaningful.
JG: And it’s very image-based. I guess mainstream does seem pretty psychedelic because it’s this made-up imagery. That may be the one thing that separates us from the rest of the pack. The imagery we use is very rudimentary.
MF: We were trying to talk about what we would do for a light show and I was like, man, a light show. That concept to me is just fucking ridiculous. It seems like another level. It seems like gloss.
IB: We’re still in the bar.
– Story by Gen Koski, photos by Dorothy Hong
Vietnam: www.vtnm.net
Kemado Records: www.kemado.com