Belmont Lounge, NYC
Monday July 7th, 2003
Words by Courtney Reimer and Rodrigo Perez
Intro by Rodirgo Perez
Photo courtesy of Plus 1

Stellastarr* will be the first to insist, they’re not just another Gotham band. And as far as we know there’s no Casablancas modeling agency or dirty money behind them (at least not yet). Thanks to good timing, word of mouth, and a solid stage performance on their side, the Stellas have cultivated a following and could be on the verge of something.

Still, it’s hard not to be suspect (envious?) of their good fortune. Despite a seemingly out-of-nowhere press deluge, the quartet has actually been around the New York block and paid their dues (at least in one form or another). Though they admit to taking their cues from ’90s sweater geeks in the past, their sound has evolved closer to something plucked from the ’80s; a shock of dark-pop.

We chatted with three out of four Stellastarr* bandmates at the noisy Belmont before a Placebo show (yeah, that Placebo). But, despite the approaching menace of a band we were all not too fond of, the Stellas made for good conversation and did their best to justify their existence in these skeptical times. Shawn Christensen, the affable and handsome singer even offered us his calamari – after paying for it himself (RCA, are you listening?).

With a much-coveted bit in Vanity Fair, a swelling fanbase in the U.K., a blurb in Rolling Stone and now a groundbreaking interview here in your trusty ‘SUP magazine, the Stellas could be on their way to becoming household names. But, only time will tell if your mom will namecheck them over chicken pot pie.

South By Southwest kind of got the ball rolling for you guys, right?
Amanda: Yeah, an NME writer saw us. He just came up to me after the show and was like ‘You guys were great.’ After that he just really started pushing us, and he’s been really great.
Shawn: All kinds of people that would’ve never seen us before were exposed to us down there. At that stage in the game, we felt like if we’d leave the city, we’d play empty rooms. But it was a sold-out show. A couple days later we played a brunch, which was pretty well attended for a brunch show since no one’s up at that time at SXSW.

So after that you guys did the Carson Daly show?
Shawn: Two days later, they booked us.

Did you guys meet Carson?
Amanda: Yeah, he’s really nice actually.
Shawn: He’s trying to change his whole TRL image. He actually had some pretty decent acts on his show like Interpol, The Walkmen and French Kicks.

Carson’s starting a label, right? Didn’t he try and sign you guys?
Shawn: Yes, they would’ve, but we were already pretty far with RCA in negotiating. They did a sort of tricky thing that we probably shouldn’t really get into. By then we were already pretty far on our way with RCA.

Did you have any trepidation about signing to a major?
Shawn: There’s always a fear when you go to a major. The plan was to do an indie label, but you know what? The major labels were – this may sound weird to you – but the major labels were much more understanding. They were actually getting our vision more. Ironically enough, they were much more at ease with us having creative control and our vision.
Amanda: They were really flexible.
Shawn: They got it. There’s this big fear, ‘Oh, it’s a major label, we don’t really want to have to deal with that.’ But one of the draws to RCA for me – and I don’t think they’d be offended by this -I feel like they’re an indie label with major label power. Their roster is so small it’s almost ridiculous. It’s smaller than most indie labels. It’s only 25 acts, including Elvis. Seriously, they’re probably only going to have 18 or 20 releases this entire year. Our album will have time to breathe at RCA. They’ll have time sort of push it, promote it and market it well. And it’ll be more of a priority there than it would be at other labels.
Amanda: At a label you have to be a priority or you’re just screwed, no matter what. We were going to go with a label that really and truly was going to make us a priority and weren’t just bullshitting us.
Shawn: Maybe we were being snobby or snotty about wanting [control], but that’s what we wanted. We wanted to be paid attention to. We have control over the album covers and the vision. We design all that stuff ourselves, and we can just walk in the office tomorrow and most people will know who I am. I can go into the art department and we can work on things together and it’s a very nice, intimate setting there.

You guys had another band before Stellastarr* called Ghistor and it sounded like Weezer and was kind of ‘alt-rock’?
Shawn: I was obsessed with Weezer at the time. I was obsessed with Weezer and Bob Dylan. I didn’t sing in that band, so for me it was very Pixies also. That was the big problem with that band, overall. Our influences were far too contemporary and our influences were people who had just released albums a year earlier.
Amanda: Yeah, like Nirvana.
Shawn: Yeah, not very far back. We weren’t thinking far back. I hadn’t gotten into Leonard Cohen or anything like that. I wasn’t even really into David Bowie. I really love David Bowie now and I didn’t even know much about him yet.

What year was that?
Shawn: I graduated in ‘99 so it was like late ’90s.

Speaking of influences, who are your influences now?
Michael: The Jesus And Mary Chain is my favorite band. Tom Waits is a huge influence on me.
Shawn: Bob Dylan is the single most, largest influence on me. I learned how to play guitar from a Bob Dylan book. I played his songs and I got obsessed over his lyrics. There’s never a week that goes by that I don’t put on some Dylan.
Amanda: I listen to The Police a lot, Sonic Youth and David Bowie. As an influence, bass-player-wise I’d definitely say the Police and Sonic Youth.

You get compared to lots of different bands. There’s Brit-pop and there’s New Order and The Cure, especially in Shawn’s voice. There’s some Robert Smith in there.
Shawn: It’s like that or David Byrne for me.

David Byrne?
Michael: Have you been to our show? I see more David Byrne onstage.
Shawn: I don’t know much about either of them. You know actually I have a theory that I myself don’t think I execute very well. I wanna have the ability to change my voice or change my vocal approach per song. Just like you’d change an instrument or change your tuning. I don’t like it when a singer sings exactly the same all the time. I wanted to alter my voice for certain feelings of certain songs, depending on the mood. If the songs don’t just go in one direction, why should I have the same exact vocal approach? In doing it, I think I just ended up having inflections and stuff that reminded people of other singers.

Tiwas released your first EP. What role did the Tiwas club night [a recurring Don Hill's Saturday night gig], play in your band’s life?
Shawn: A pretty large role. Some of our biggest shows were there.
Michael: In the earlier days that was the hot place to play.
Shawn: Don Hill’s is actually a really great place for shows and Tiswas in itself is a Britpop sorta night. I don’t think [Tiswas founder] Nick Mark would like that term, but it kind of is. He plays Stone Roses, James, the Pixies. Ultimately, though, it made sense for us because it was music we were already dancing to so why not play there? He wanted to start a label. He had the Realistics on there and was looking for a second band and we wanted to cut an album. And he said he’d fund it for us, so we were like ‘Sure.’
Michael: We still haven’t signed anything with him.
Shawn: We should.
Michael: I don’t think we even shook hands, you know.
Shawn: We decided to go 50-50. We didn’t care that [the label] was just one guy. We loved that. And we didn’t have a manager back then because he would’ve probably hated that. We would never have gone to another label if he’d had decent distribution. Or at least we wouldn’t have gone on a [major] label this early in the game.
Michael: This album was recorded as a Tiswas record. RCA bought it, basically, off of us. We did some touch-ups in the spring, but it was basically done. We were like ‘Nick, we can’t quite give you a record if you can’t put it out.’ (laughs)
Shawn: Nick’s cool. They gave him a nice chunk of change to do things with other bands when they bought out the album.
Michael: We overcompensated nicely so we could set him up a little bit.

You’re already pretty big over in England.
Shawn: Well we have radio (over there).
Amanda: They all knew the single, and when we played the single, everyone cheered. We’re not used to that.
Shawn: In the U.K. after a show, they’d have the magazine, and we’d have to sign them. We’d sign the NME. In America we don’t have radio play and we don’t have a magazine on a national level that’s plugging us like that. So obviously it’s 50 times the size over there. The U.K. is like the size of Texas.
Amanda: It’s tiny. It’s like one state.
Shawn: America’s huge. It’s a huge market, so it’s a lot harder to break in this country.

How about New York in particular? How has this city been to you?
Shawn: Our shows have been really good. I’m not really part of the music fabric though.
Michael: We worked for it a lot. We did a ton of free shows at the Luna Lounge and any other place that would let us play. We’d hand out a lot of demos and stuff like that. Everything was free. It cost us, but it brought in people. People wanted to hear stuff and because they knew you were going to give stuff out, they would show up. It’s not hard to go to a free show.

It’s not a bad time to be a New York band.
Michael: It warmed up nicely.
Shawn: It could backlash, you never know.
Amanda: It definitely could backfire.
Shawn: But it’s not a bad time now.
Michael: Yeah, we get a lot of (sarcastic tone) ‘I know. Another New York band.’ That’s how half the articles start.

Have you guys started experiencing any backlash?
Shawn: There’s this whole obsession with where you’re located geographically and I understand why because Seattle was this huge deal. It’s amazing that New York is finally being recognized because it hasn’t been recognized since the early ’80s. I think that’s great. But we don’t know many of the bands.
Michael: To tell you the truth, the best bands in New York still aren’t getting much notice.
Shawn: You can’t make a comment like that.
Michael: OK, but there are great bands that aren’t getting attention and I think it’s because they don’t fit into that [garage-post-punk] genre.
Shawn: Well, actually Elefant’s getting attention. We’re friends with them and they’re getting some press now. Aerial Love Feed gets press sometimes.

Speaking of New York bands, fashion is obviously an significant element for some bands. What role does ‘the look’ play for you guys?
Shawn: Fashion and music are one and the same, but we’re not as obsessed.
Michael: It’s funny, too. We have done one or two things where they get a stylist and they get the fashion clothes in there and half the time we end up wearing our own stuff.
Shawn: We don’t sit down and say ‘OK, let’s all wear suits,’ or ‘Let’s all wear skinny ties.’ We all differ from each other. We have a pretty clear vision. There’s no one wearing baggy shirts and baggy jeans. There’s nothing casual in this band.
Amanda: But we don’t conform to each other, but I feel we still fit together as a group, style-wise.

You want to hate on anyone? ‘SUP’s big scheme is to create a big NYC band battle.
Michael: We’ve been playing with this band called The Vue a lot. They’re nice people and we talked about creating bullshit between two bands for no good reason like, ‘I heard The Vue hates this band and wants them all dead.’ And then they would respond somewhere with, ‘Stellastarr* said they wanna kill Britney Spears and Interpol are assholes.’ That woulda been just for shits and giggles.

Do you ever get the feeling that people may perceive that you might not have earned your newfound success?
Michael: Definitely. I’m sure it’s a common perception. You hear of a band for the first time and you’re like, ‘This band started here.’ But you can Google us and can find articles for the last three years showing you every step that we took. I’m not saying people will, I’m just saying whoever those disbelievers are, there is documentation.
Amanda: Still, there’s nothing you can do about it.
Shawn: You can’t be afraid of it. What are they going to do, come up to me on the street and go ‘You fuckin’ came outta nowhere!’ and punch me?
Amanda: There’s always gonna be rumors, people love talking shit.
Shawn: The Internet is a big gossip thing, I’m sure we’ll be gossiped about.

What’s up with the asterisk?
Shawn: It started out as a kind of a joke, footnote. ‘Yeah, let’s just put an asterisk there.’ We had no idea it was going to be taken so literally. We put it on our website when we felt like that’s how everyone was spelling it everywhere, so we thought ‘Let’s just stick with it.’ I’m sure people are going to think it’s pretentious, but it started out as kind of a joke and then it just stuck.
Amanda: We could B.S. why it’s there, but you really don’t wanna hear it.
Shawn: Everything is kind of an art project for us. Making a song or designing a logo. We actually have a symbol for our band, too. It is kind of an art project for us.

What about the double consonant at the end. Is that your tribute to Ratt?
Michael: Oh yeah, yeah. Print that. That is definitely our reason.
Shawn: Yeah, we love Ratt, that’s our homage to Ratt. Or Puddle of Mudd I guess.