THE DOUBLE
TEXT AND PHOTO
ARYE DWORKEN
DATE JULY 26, 2004

Right now, the focus is on The Double, New York’s most promising fledgling band, and appropriately so. Out of all the bands in our scene that are active today, the new Brooklyn art rockers are the most likely to succeed and to have prosperous career. After all, The Double has all the qualities of an innovative band: a drive to sound different without trying too hard or articulating desperation, a brilliant tension and a subtle yet convincing fury, and most impressively, the dripping anxiety sieved through their migraine-ridden instruments painting a vibrant canvas of resonance. Their sound embraces the natural inclinations of a bored twenty-something looking for substance and the road less traveled.
Every band, every record, evokes an emotion. With The Double, mine just happens to be the fragility of life, the unpredictability of the human condition, and the confusion that comes along with certain unexpected turns (the emotional roadmap that took me to The Double was a curvy and complex one). But after repeated listens to The Double’s debut, Palm Fronds (Catsup Plate), I can’t help but think that this is exactly what the foursome intended to convey to the listener. Songs like “Up All Night” and “Firecrackers in Sawdust” sound unpredictable and challenging, even if the group insists that that’s not their objective. The compositions need to be digested and considered, pondered and internalized. But the sporadic and distorted sounds of manipulated guitars coupled with the electronic Eno-like landscapes won’t inhibit the record’s accessibility because at the heart of every song is a simple pop structure. The confusion and randomness of their jumbled effects won’t bewilder you: they will affect you.
I sat down with David Greenhill, bassist and vocalist, Jacob Morris who plays keyboards, and Jeff McLeod, the drummer, in a non-ironically rustic bar in Williamsburg (Douglas Beaman, the guitarist, showed up mid-interview). David, the founding member, along with Jeff (hence the name “The Double”), doesn’t appear the typical New York lead singer type. He’s slightly bookish with glasses and has a very ‘regular’ haircut. Moreover, Greenhill is sans attitude, wearing a button down shirt and brown slacks, not a pair of tight vintage jeans and a thrift shop castaway. Jeff, who is articulate and passionate about The Double’s music, seeks integrity with a capital ‘I’. His lanky frame becomes frantically alive during shows, more than compensating for his seated position in the background behind the drum kit. Rounding off with the slight and reserved Morris and the innovative, yet tardy, Beaman, The Double is humbled and honored to be the focus of our collective attention. Interpol has just asked them to open for some upcoming shows. John Peel requested that they come to England to record a revered Peel Session. Their live show, as mentioned, is a must-attend for any disenchanted rock fan. It’s a great time to be in The Double. And based on the independent media’s reaction, their future is one of hope and potential fulfillment. Like the healing after heartbreak, there is finally something to look forward to.
How many interviews has The Double done so far?
Jeff: This is our second interview, actually.
David: Do we want to tell people that? Don’t we want to look a bit more professional than that?
Wasn’t Palm Fronds recorded ages ago? Why is an album that was recorded in 2002 only seeing a release now?
Jeff: We started recording the album the summer of 2001.
The Double has been a band for almost three years now. You’ve gained a great deal of experience since then-wasn’t it a concern to release music that potentially is the musical equivalent of an awkward high school photo?
David: I’m still very proud of our album. We wouldn’t have put it out otherwise. It’s very different from how we sound live but I don’t compare the two. I see them as two different translations.
Jeff: I don’t think any of us have an outright devotion to capturing our live experience. I know for me personally, I love when bands sound different live than what they sound like on the record.
David: This record encapsulated a time for us, before when we were playing shows. When we were locked up in our apartments trying to be as creative as possible. This is a very important time for us.
Palm Fronds is headphones music. Listening to the music feels to me a near-intense experience. Is it weird hearing people say your music is like that?
David: We always wanted to be adventurous.
Jeff: It goes from Bob Dylan and Neil Young to Japanese noise-there’s an idea that we love the songs David writes on the acoustic guitar but then we try to create bombastic, piercing sounds above the simple layers of songwriting. Both those components are important to the band; making beautiful music but also making people pay for it.
Let’s say I’m someone who has been raised on Top 40 music all my life. How do you explain music such as yours to someone like me? Is it music to provoke? Is it to make me uncomfortable?
Jacob: We’re not doing anything to be antagonistic. Often times, we like extreme sounds and textures. It’s not meant to push Top 40 ears away. That feels so elitist, and I’d like to think we’re not.
Jeff: I love simple acoustic guitar songs, so if we decided to do something like that, we could pull it off. But the sounds that we make and the envelopes we push feel closer to the world we live in, than in the perfect pop world. I find the random noise around us, the banging of someone working in their backyard, the engine of a truck…I find those sounds to be weird, freaky and fun. To me, they feel like the New York City, or any city.
David: We also wrote a lot of the songs when we first moved to the City and maybe unconsciously, those sounds represent the chaos and energy of the City.
Was there ever a point in recording the album when someone said, “this is too much. We should pull back”?
David: No, not at all.
This may be a hard question to answer. There are turning points in someone’s life which influences them to create something different. What was that point for you?
Jacob: I love pop music as much as I love anything else but I reached a point as a musician that I wanted to go beyond that. You need to grow up because you can’t be sixteen years old forever.
Jeff: I like Interpol a lot but I’ve personally decided to try not to write songs like that because I’m obsessed with sounds and structure that has aggressiveness. For example, I’ve never been into speed-metal because that’s angry aggression. When we record, we create sounds that make me feel like we’re being innovative. Sometimes I’ll think, wow, this is something I’ve never heard before.
There are some early reviews that are giving your sound an immense amount of relevance. A local paper said that your pop experiments are the most exciting sounds in town. Is that what you’re aiming for?
David: It’s really truly surprising to hear that.
Jeff: I think it’s really self-destructive to believe in what everyone is saying. You can let it make yourself feel better but once you buy into all the hype, you basically start making music for the hype. You will find yourself writing music to be that band people initially became interested in. You don’t move forward or bring your audience with you. Bring an audience along with you, not going along with the audience.
Were you nervous about coming to New York and immersing yourselves into a scene with so much competition? A band is almost coming out of the woodworks daily.
Jeff: It’s great to have a scene but in the end, you realize that everyone is just trying to get heard. So you try to help each other out. Look, there are a lot of bands in New York that haven’t been so nurturing to us but I still like what they’re doing. It doesn’t make me bitter at all.
David: I think we’ve found our niche.
Donald: When we were upstate, it just seemed like a natural progression to come here. We never considered any other location so we were never intimidated by coming here.
Jeff: Everyone we grew up with moved here. People we played with in bands, guys who we saw when they were shitty musicians moved here. So it’s not so daunting when you’ve seen how bad these guys used to be.
What was the first show you played here in New York?
David: We played a house party show in Brooklyn. A portion of the album had been circulating amongst friends so there was some curiosity.
What about the first venue?
David: Knitting Factory, the Tap Bar. You know, that middle room.
It’s my impression that you’re all pretty reserved and sedate guys. What happens on stage when you’re before an audience and you decide you need to challenge them?
Jeff: It’s weird because I guess we’re all pretty loud. But I’ve always felt that we’re giving the audience everything we can give them. Whatever the audience thinks of our music – I’ve never intentionally tried to antagonize.
No, I don’t mean it in a negative sense. I’m not saying ‘challenge’ in a bad way. One thing I’ve heard is that people need to connect the live experience to the album because the two are so different.
Donald: Well, the album is very dense because it was an intense experience.
David: It took us over a year to make this album.
Jacob: It was often in David’s bedroom in very closed quarters.
David: It was a formative time because we had no idea where things were going to go and in retrospect, that was a really cool time. A period of my life that I’m quite fond of.
What’s the direction of the new material that you’re working on?
David: Well, our approach to writing is that David comes up with a song and as musicians, we create layers and flesh it out.
David: It’s very group orientated.
Jeff: I have been playing music with Dave for a long time and he is a very encouraging songwriter. He totally encourages us to make additions and suggestions.
Besides being a band, you all seem personally invested in one another. You are all friends outside of the band.
Jacob: I love the dynamic that we have together and that’s one of the reasons I’m in this band, one of the reasons why I moved to New York.
Now The Double is traveling to England…
Douglas: We have a couple of club shows and some radio performances and we’re also doing a Peel Session.
Wow. How did that happen? That’s really impressive.
David: We just sent in the album and a demo and John Peel contacted us and told us he wanted The Double to come a play a session.
So this is the beginning of your outsourcing from New York.
Jacob: I have the flexibility to do this. I’ve been unemployed for quite some time because all I want to do is play music. I don’t need to do anything else.
How does a small band like yours afford a trip to England?
David: We’re making some money but not a lot. We just want to break even. We’re not looking to make a profit.
Jeff: We’re going to crash at people’s places.
What’s the future for The Double?
David: We want to record another album hopefully soon and find a place for it.
Jeff: I don’t think the album will take a year to make.
Douglas: We’re also really used to playing the newer songs. We’ve been playing some of them live for almost a year.
Have you been talking to labels? Have new people been coming to you about a prospective deal?
David: Oh yeah. Absolutely. It’s kind of weird.
Jacob: It’s like being single and being asked out. What could you do for me? Tell me more about you…
Jeff: The thing about Catsup Plate [The Double's current label] is that it’s such a cool label to start out on. We own our own songs and we could re-release Palm Fronds sometime down the live if we wanted to. I’m personally really happy with the number and type of people Catsup Plate has gotten our album out to.
Douglas: Recording this album was something we just wanted to do. I’m not sure if we thought about putting it out there. So a small indie label is surpassing the expectation that we initially had. Our music is made in a grassroots sort of way and distributing it in a similar fashion feels like the sensible thing to do.
The Double would like to emulate the career of whom?
Jeff: Well, right now, we just want to have a career. That’s our highest priority. We want to maintain what we have and not burn out creatively. But if there was one person I had to name, it would be Robert Wyatt. He played in the Soft Machine, Pink Floyd. He had a long career and even has relevance today. People who know music know who Robert Wyatt is.
I wonder if he’s made any money off his career.
The fact that he doesn’t suck at sixty years old, the fact that he’s never sucked is a big deal to me. Screw the nest egg. That’s not important. Making music that both you and your audience care about…that’s the most important to us.