Dear Sarah and Josh, it took us a while to work out what a skin-flute is...
Known for their all encompassing live intro, Phantogram commence their recent Lexington set with a staggering start, and er, shadowing signs of a mental break-down. Asking the perplexed audience “can you hear the voices too?” guitarist Josh Carter halts the show, to reveal the PA system still blaring out a jukebox of DJ noise. Luckily, the duo are used to battling obstacles to get their music heard, from avoiding medical advice to travelling across the globe for one-off shows but as tonight pans out, it’s entirely worth the struggle. Dragging them to a hazardous playground (which we were quickly kicked out of), SUPERSWEET interview the long time friends from Saratoga Springs and soon to be three piece….
SS: You are both pretty dedicated to your work. What’s the fire in your belly that keeps you so obsessed?
Sarah Barthel (vocals, keyboard): I think what motivates us the most is just that there’s nothing else we’d wanna be doing. It’s our dream. We’ve always wanted to be able to get our music out to people and now that we have the chance and help from our record labels to help us get to shows, we’ll do anything to get there.
SS: Ah, but can you prove it, what’s the most extreme thing you’ve done to play a show?
Sarah: We were going on tour with School of Seven Bells and the only time Josh could get his wisdom teeth out was three days before, because it was infected. So Josh got his wisdom tooth pulled, and you’re not supposed to fly.
Josh Carter (guitarist): I got something called a dry socket, where you have an open hole through the roof and it just gives you nasty pain in your entire skull. So we flew out to play a show with Beach House in Victoria, British Colombia, and flew out straight back to start a US tour with SVIIB in a Prius - which is a very tiny car.
Sarah: Josh was sick, throwing up the entire trip.
Josh: We had the choice to back out, but why would we do that, when we are this lucky to do what we do. [Teenage girls walk into the playground] Oh, these kids are gonna beat us up. Ha.
SS: Your live set up relies just on the dexterous skills of you both; can you tell us a little bit about your live-setup and how you translate it from the recording process?
Sarah: Guitar, guitar pedals, loop stations, delay & reverb pedals, two synthesizers, and two samplers, drum machine and a strobe light. It’s helpful when you are playing in a small venue, the sound guy is like, and “no we don’t have any lights”. So BOOM, it changes everything.
Josh: One thing we made sure we did, was write our songs live to make sure we could do everything live. We made the mistake of recording a couple songs that sounded cool on record, but couldn’t do live; it was too much going on to trigger the samples correctly.
SS: You’re getting a new band member – a drummer, have you already made plans what he’s going to take over?
Josh: I think he’s going to help us be our sampling and triggering, because we have a lot of live triggering that we have to juggle with ourselves so it will help free us up. We’ve been touring for a while, just the two of us and I think it will be fun to make our set more dynamic and get a little bit more creative live.
SS: You’ve racked up some serious supporting roles for The XX, and as mentioned, Beach House and SVIIB. Any stories you can dish out from touring?
Sarah: Passion Pit were pretty interesting, they were very entertaining. I didn’t know what to expect.
Josh: It was very useful being reminded how you can have fun when you are touring and you don’t have to take everything so seriously. We’ve been to some crazy after parties. One time we played a show in Berlin, Germany…by the time we got out the bar it was 8am, the sun was up, the birds were chirping and we were just having a crazy, crazy night with this big scary German guy, who was our guide all night. It was in a dungeon of a bar. It was fun though.
Sara: He was like, “You take this shot.”
Josh: He was making us take shots when we were already wasted saying “take those shots dammit!”
SS: Together, you have found yourself getting to grips with learning new instruments as you’re a self-taught band, what’s your next challenge?
Josh: I’ll tinker with everything. I can play a lot of things I pick up but I’m not really great at anything. I guess if I sat down and practiced…but there’s no particular instrument. I haven’t picked up the flute and been like an expert…
Sarah: Haha…skin-flute!
Josh: Ha! Sarah wants to play bass though, I was thinking about buying her one…
SS: What’s been the best advice you’ve been given by a fellow musician?
Josh: Our friend Benjamin [Curtis] from School of Seven Bells told me once to never stop writing even though you are touring a lot. We were talking about how it gets frustrating to just playing the same songs every night. But he said, “don’t stop writing because soon you’ll have to put another album out and there’s only a short time frame” That was good advice, to stay creative and don’t let touring make it stagnant.
SS: Which one is the more dominant band member out of you two, that needs grounding every now and again?
Sarah: We keep each other in line. We’ve been really good friends for a long time now, so we are capable of being like: “Josh, you’re being a dickhead right now”.
Josh: You mean vice versa.
Sarah: Ha! Or “Sarah, you’re being a bitch, just gimme the directions, we need to get the venue because we are late, stop talking/text messaging your big sister”. We are very honest with each other and it’s helpful. It keeps us in check.
Josh: There was a time when we went through an emotional rough patch on tour once and I think for both of us, our songs just took on a whole new meaning because we were able to relate more.
SS: You’ve only made the one music video, and for ‘Mouthful of Diamonds’ you’re dancing Josh…
Josh: It’s pretty amazing huh - my moves.
SS: What’s your next single and what concept would you hope to delve into for your music video?
Sarah: I think we are going to release ‘When I’m Small’ next off the record. ‘When I’m Small’ can go in a lot of directions. I’ve always loved the idea of not knowing if you are dreaming or when you are awake. You’re very unsure if this is a dream or if you are watching a situation happen. We’d use a surreal vibe of cinematography to express the emotion of the song.
SS: What can we expect from your next record, have you already started working out any cracks?
Josh: I think one thing we are in agreement on is to be very pretty and emotional. Not like a bummer, just emotional and more heartfelt than the first album.
Words: Gemma Dempster