Here Is Radiation City's New Single, "So Long"

Radiation City is a jazzy, groovy indie-pop quartet from Portland, and their music is full of the sort of kidney-thumping percussion and fuzzy tones that makes healthy young people want to move close and do weird stuff to the lower halves of each other's bodies. So when they sent us in their new single for "So Long," we fought all those urges and just put it up on the internet. You should listen to it now, and it's extremely easy and non-labor intensive—just press the little button below.

I'm a big fan of these guys, so I recently met up with them at their drummer's home. What happened between us that evening resulted in one of the most viciously awful hangovers I've ever had in my entire life, but it was worth it just to talk to these guys about Nancy Sinatra, missing teeth, and gentle gesticulation.

I should mention here that the track is from Radiation City's sophomore record, Animals In The Median, which comes out on limited-edition yellow vinyl (yeah, and regular old CD and digital formats too) through Tender Loving Empire on May 21. You can pre-order it by clicking right here.

Noisey: Hello Radiation City. You guys have a new album, but I don't care—I want to get some answers about two of the songs. In "So Long," you refer to "gesticulating." In "Summer Rain," you refer to a man turning into a woman. What's going on?
Cameron: The premise of "So Long" was the idea of gentle gesticulation. A metaphor for being too nice about everything. The idea is to shed that whole idea. It tends to be pervasive in Portland, because everyone's too nice to each other. I think that song was written out of frustrating moments, when you're like "Fuck! Everyone's too nice! Just say what you mean god damn it!"

What about "Summer Rain?"
Randy: I don't know. I guess I've just always been fascinated with women. A lot of my most important role models have been women. I think they're better than men, and it's about wanting to become a woman. I'm not talking about switching genders. All the metaphors in the song are about being brave, going into potentially dangerous places. There's a memory about when I got stung by a jelly fish in Hawaii. There's this beautiful blue water and you obviously want to go out into it, but there's the high tide. It's filthy with jellyfish getting washed in. The idea behind the song is you should still go in even if you might get stung. It's still worth empathizing with the feminine side of human nature, even if it puts you in a less than favorable position sometimes. Sometimes you get hurt.
Cameron: I think that relates to the band in general. We've had a nice balance of women and men in this band, compared to most bands at least. It's lovely, but it's also dangerous.
Lizzy: And I feel like the three dudes are effeminate in a good way. You guys aren't super masculine, and Patti and I aren't super feminine either. We sort of become one.

Tell me about Soap Collectors.
Lizzy: That was a band I started with my step brother. He and I both moved here in 2008 from the Midwest. We had only met one time before that. Our parents got together through the internet, we met once, and then we happened to both move here. He's a graphic artist, he does screen printing, but he'd never really dabbled in music. I was primarily a musician, so when we started hanging out he was pretty much my only friend. We started working together and came up with Soap Collectors. When I met Cam he had a project he was working on in San Francisco called Spesus Christ. I thought it was really interesting that we both had these S.C. band names. Then Cam moved up here and we started playing in each other's bands. Then Riley, who plays in Unknown Mortal Orchestra now, was our drummer. It was awesome, and it didn't gain a whole lot of steam in Portland. I don't think we knew what we were doing exactly, and then Radiation City was kind of born out of both of our projects.

Soap Collectors.

I'm also somewhat familiar with Apes Tapes. I'm curious how that came about, and what's going on with that these days.
Cameron: To answer the last question first, pretty much nothing is going on with it these days. We're focusing so much time on this band. We haven't had time to focus on releases and make them the things that they should be. It began as a mode of disseminating our music and this community of musicians we had formed when I first moved back. Lizzy and I started working on it, and by chance we met this group of kids who was all doing house shows together. I feel like everyone was like-minded in their goals, so we started this community-based label. Tapes were super cheap to put out, and we loved tapes because we grew up with them. It felt like a more tangible medium than CDs.
Lizzy: To put it bluntly, there's no way we could have afford to put out CDs or vinyl. We were actually just talking about this like half an hour ago. It was really to have a group of people in Portland. We said "OK, there's a group of us. We can each spread the word, and focus our efforts." I think we got more press locally than we would have gotten on our own. It ended up not becoming what we hoped it would, but I think if this band succeeds in a way that we have more time—
Cameron: —We can resurrect it.

So you guys have done a cover of Astrud Gilberto, and I believe there was an Outkast album cover at some point.
Randy: Yeah, there was a new year's show a few years ago. It was The Love Below, we covered the whole thing. It was funny, because we were supposed to be the second of three bands, and the first band's singer got sick and cancelled. So we ended up playing a set as Radiation City and putting on costumes.
Cameron: There was a guy in a Batman suit on a balcony.
Lizzy: Yeah, there was definitely some jay jay coming from the balcony that night. People blasting skirts. It was super fun. I think the idea of doing that was ambitious in itself, so the idea of doing a cover is something we probably haven't talked about because it is so ambitious. That album is so perfect as it is.

You guys are doing more covers, right?
Cameron: We have a Nancy Sinatra cover recorded, we just need to mix it. So that's going to be coming out sometime in the near future. We prefer to work on our own music, just because time is limited and we have so much material, but it's kind of like going outside of our comfort zone, and learning a new song and re-appropriating it for our own purposes is a good exercise as musicians.
Lizzy: I think that it depends on the type of musicians that you are, but I think that we're all pretty well versed in multiple instruments, and it keeps our chops up. A couple weeks ago we went and recorded the Nancy Sinatra cover and it helped us get into the mode of recording for the next album. Sometimes it feels a little contrived, because we don't want to just be known as a band that's really good at covers.
Cameron: If you look at so many influential bands, like the Beatles, they began as essentially a cover band. Pretty much any band in that era was playing other people's pieces. It's a balance. It doesn't happen that much anymore.
Lizzy: I think if you can do it well, and you own it, there's no harm.

Cam, you're missing a tooth. Tell me a story.
Cameron: I wish it was a good story. It was unfortunately a dead tooth. I had a root canal, and I thought that would fix it. It didn't.

Give me a better story.
Matt: Recently in Portland, a shark and a grizzly bear fell out of the sky fighting. Cameron jumped out of an airplane to resolve the fight.
Cameron: I totally resolved the fight, but the shark fin caught me right in the mouth

Several of you are engaged or dating. It's kind of a Fleetwood Mac vibe. Do you also do cocaine off of each others genitals?
Cameron: We don't avoid that part of it.
Lizzy: We don't have a problem doing that.
Cameron: I feel like any band is sort of a relationship, and it adds an element of complexity to that, but I don't think it's a whole lot different than just being a band.
Lizzy: I think we always put the music first, because before this started we were all musicians. Cam and I were in a relationship beforehand, and Patti and Randy became one after the fact. I don't know this for certain, but I feel like if it didn't work out between any of us we would still try to make it work. Some bands bring on their girlfriend as a fun thing.
Cameron: It seems like that's what happened with Fleetwood Mac. It's slightly different in that regard. I can't imagine there's any band without their struggles and emotional issues.

Is there anything you want to talk about that you don't get asked in interviews?
Lizzy: We actually are the reincarnation of Fleetwood Mac. I think about this question all the time. Minus the bullshit, or the hearsay, we are who we are. We're really genuine, and I don't know if people want to hear that. They want some bullshit, fabricated story about how you became what you are. We don't have that. I think we write good music, and—
Patti: —We have a lot of passion.
Lizzy: Yeah. We have our own stories, and we chose not to tell them. We're just making the music for ourselves, whether that takes ten or 20 years. Or it never becomes anything. It's already for us, and it's what we want, and I think that speaks for itself.

After this interview, I went out to some bars with the band and we talked about this question further. The main thing to add is that Lizzy thinks that people buy into a lot of bullshit, and you should stop following the trends. She doesn't care about sounding like the bands that are making it big, and all of you can suck it.

Also, Radiation City is on tour all summer, and if you live in the United States of America, you can come watch them play. Here are their tour dates:

Radiation City Tour Dates

4/26: Silverton, OR @ Oregon Garden Brewfest
5/11: Wenatchee, WA @ Performing Arts Center Of Wenatchee
5/21: Portland, OR @ Music Millennium
5/24: Davis, CA @ Sophia's Thai Kitchen
5/25: North Leggett, CA @ Hickey Fest
5/28: San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop*
5/29: Los Angeles, CA @ The Satellite
5/30: San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar*
6/01: Tempe, AZ @ Sail Inn
6/03: Dallas, TX @ Bryan Street Tavern
6/04: Austin, TX @ The Mohawk
6/05: New Orleans, LA @ The Circle Bar
6/06: Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
6/07: Athens, GA @ The Georgia Theater [Rooftop]
6/08: Durham, NC @ The Pinhook
6/10: Washington, DC @ Black Cat
6/11: Philadelphia, PA @ Kungfu Necktie
6/12: New York, NY @ The Mercury Lounge
6/13: Brooklyn, NY @ The Paper Box
6/15: Chicago, IL @ Taste Of Randolph Street
6/16: Cincinnati, OH @ Motr Pub
6/17: Nashville, TN @ Cause a Scene House Show
6/18: Indianapolis, IN @ Do 317 Lounge
6/19: Milwaukee, WI @ Mad Planet
6/20: Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
6/23: Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
6/25: Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
6/26: Boise, ID @ Neurolux
6/28: Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom *RELEASE SHOW!* !
7/23: Hood River, OR @ The Ruins at Springhouse Cellar
7/27: Seattle, WA @ Capitol Hill Block Party

* w/ Cuckoo Chaos to support
! Social Studies and XDS to support