Culture Brats

Showing posts with label Stephie Coplan. Show all posts

Ready For World Domination: Our Interview With Stephie Coplan

LINK | Posted by Chris on Wednesday, December 28, 2011

This is my fourth post about Stephie Coplan & The Pedestrians in a little over two weeks, so I might come off as a little obsessed. So be it. Give them a listen and you will be, too.

Stephie was nice enough to fuel my obsession by talking with me about how they came up with their band name, "Jerk!," the upcoming EP, her influences, touring plans, and her New Year's resolutions.

How'd you guys come up with The Pedestrians?
That's so funny. We actually went to Chipotle. I'm not even kidding. This is going to sound like a fake story, but it's totally true. We went to Chipotle one night right after we got together and we were pretty much like, "OK. We need a band name." We had been kicking around a few ideas for a few weeks but nothing really stuck. We just sat there and ate burritos and brainstormed. My bass player John said offhandedly, "Pretenders. Performers. Professors. Pedestrians." And I was like, "That's it! Pedestrians!"

We thought it would be easy to market ourselves if we could do stuff with street signs and traffic lights and the colors red, yellow, and green. We were going to go for a whole theme and none of that actually ended up happening. We've haven't done anything. We were going to call our album something like Yield or Stop And Go or something like that. But something about Pedestrians just sounded cool to us.

I love the song and video for "Jerk!" It's gotten some great buzz online. Has it been a crazy month for you?
Yeah. Oh my God. Definitely. Right after Thanksgiving is when we put it up. It helped that it got on the radio in Boston on the commercial alternative station. It's been crazy. Actually, to be honest, it's always cool of course when a blog picks it up and features it and stuff like that, but the cool thing for me has been hearing from friends I thought had kind of forgotten about me. It's so weird because Facebook is amazing in that I think it's removed the need for high school reunions and stuff like that because at any given moment you can tell exactly what your friends are up to. But I didn't think that anybody ever paid attention to me or knew what I was doing and now I've been hearing from people that I went to middle school with, elementary school with, preschool, people that I knew for only a summer at summer camp. People who I thought had totally forgot about me are telling me how much they like the song and that's just so cool to reconnect with everyone.

CD Review: Stephie Coplan & The Pedestrians

LINK | Posted by Chris on Tuesday, December 27, 2011

A lot of independently-produced debut albums sound like independently-produced debut albums: trite lyrics, off-key vocals, and poor musicianship because they're often recorded too early in a band's development. Some bands' debuts, however, sound as if they've been together for years. Stephie Coplan & The Pedestrians are ready for their closeup: their self-titled EP is fun, catchy, witty, intelligent, and begging for you to take it home.

The album leads off with "Jerk!," which oozes with attitude and demands to be played loudly and screamed along to by everyone who's ever been wronged by a lover yet can't seem to break the ties with him or her. While "Jerk!" might remind you of Garbage, the rest of the album is totally different and sounds like Ben Folds due to Coplan's amazing piano skills and humorous lyrics. "Caroline" is Coplan at her Foldsiest and is a great character study. The funniest song on the album is "Take Me Back To The Suburbs," with its unbelievably catchy "get me to the burbs ASAP" refrain and pop culture references to Anthropologie, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, The Simpsons, Will Smith, Starbucks, Twitter, Urban Outfitters, Weeds, and The Wire. "Suburbs" was my favorite song on the disc until I spent this past weekend listening to and appreciating "We Don't Need Much," the album's closer, on a nonstop loop. "We Don't Need Much" is a sweet and mature song about love being more important than material items, and sounds like classic Liz Phair if Liz Phair had turned in her six-string for eighty-eight keys.

Stephie Coplan & The Pedestrians is a great album. My only fear is that the critics' inevitable comparisons of Coplan to Ben Folds might overshadow the greatness of this EP. But I don't think that will happen because Coplan owns these comparisons; she wears them like a badge of honor. The question is: does the world need a younger, hipper, funnier, and prettier Ben Folds?

Yes. Yes it does.

And so do you.

Stephie Coplan & The Pedestrians will be released on January 21, 2012. You can preorder it on their Bandcamp page for five bucks and will be able to download "Jerk" on the spot.