Cymbals Eat Guitars and the Beauty of Patience

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Cymbals Eat Guitars and the Beauty of Patience

The critically acclaimed indie band new LP 'Pretty Years' is the best of their career. Now it's time for the world to listen.

​Joseph D'Agostino most assuredly did not order potato wedges. He's sitting out on a heavily wood-accented, new American-style café's patio ("If u look up gentrification in the encyclopedia," he texts before arriving, "It's this place") in Philadelphia's Fishtown neighborhood, only a few blocks from the space where D'Agostino's band, Cymbals Eat Guitars, are rehearsing in anticipation of nationwide fall tour in support of their fourth album, Pretty Years. It's mid-August, and it's hot—drummer Andy Dole and keyboard player Brian Hamilton both order large ice teas, while bassist Matt Whipple quaffs a cold beer. The liquid goes down quick, and soon an affable waiter drops a fried chicken sandwich in front of D'Agostino, who is wearing a Swearin' T-shirt with the sleeves wisely scissored off. The gigantic potato wedges—which appear to have been hacked from two mutant russets—are on the plate too, though they shouldn't be.

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D'Agostino had ordered a side salad in their place, and when the waiter apologizes and offers to take the plate back to the kitchen and swap the sides, D'Agostino declines. He'll keep the wedges.

"I'll take the salad too," he adds in a polite but firm manner that suggests that the greens will not be showing up on the bill. Obviously this exchange is no #trufflefrygate, but it is yet another pop music anecdote that reveals more than just a starch preference.

Cymbals Eat Guitars have lived many lives and escaped certain death in almost equal measure. Coming up with the likes of other New York indie darlings like Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Surfer Blood when they self-released their debut Why There Are Mountains in 2009, the band was not so unfairly lumped in with the then-buzzing 90s guitar band revival, using the modest hype to establish a name for themselves. But that same year, half the band jumped ship, leaving Cymbals to regroup and make 2011's polarizing, mazy, weed-fueled Lenses Alien, a record they no longer play live. "I don't think people should read into the fact that we don't play Lenses Alien live that we're not proud of the record. It's just a bummer to play," Whipple explains, eliciting laughter from the other three members.

Needless to say, Lenses did not make them stars, and the future of the band once again looked hazy. "Our career is over, rock is over, we're not a buzz band anymore," Whipple jokes, only kind of. But the Hail Mary that was 2014's LOSE—a rawly emotional, hook-stuffed capital-R rock record—unexpectedly put Cymbals Eat Guitars back on the map. "We were starting at zero with LOSE in terms of a base to tour on, buzz to capitalize on, whatever that means," Hamilton says. "Which is why we did so many support tours, because we kind of just felt like we were in a building period, as opposed to a 'coasting on what we've already built' period."

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But despite LOSE's critical success, it didn't make much of a commercial dent, and coasting simply wasn't an option. The band knew they had to use what little momentum it afforded them, and fast. Pretty Years, the quartet's fourth (and what many are already arguing is their finest) album was written in six months, tracked in four days, and mixed in four.

"Well it goes back to the question of momentum, and LOSE putting us back on the map. So we felt that if we took another three years to make another album, it would take us back off the map. Even though we had success, it would just kind of disappear, they way things do when you go away for a long time. Unless you're Frank Ocean or Bon Iver. Or My Bloody Valentine," D'Agostino says. "So we just set out making something as quickly as we ever had."

"The questions the band had when we started writing LOSE weren't there," Dole adds. "We had kind of figured out how to do it better."

D'Agostino's salad arrives, gratis. He is appreciative. He knows what he wants, knows how to get it, and at this particular moment in time, he wants a side salad and for Pretty Years to be a big goddamn deal. "There's mounting pressure every time to perform, and have the record perform, and to get further than we have been. It's sustainable—we go out on tour and we don't lose money, but we want to try and, you know, do better. Play bigger shows."

Bigger shows came thanks to LOSE, but they didn't come easy. "We became kind of a monstrous live band touring for LOSE. We did 200 shows. Huge shows—we've never played in front of that big of crowds. Like opening for Brand New, that kind of thing. So we just kind of got this bravado happening that definitely… it was definitely a very indie thing before LOSE, and touring for LOSE, and after that I think we kind of stepped into this… like being showmen, a little. And trying to play to the back of the room, which I think informed the decisions we made to make Pretty Years," he says. "It was fun because we did so much support touring, and we played these big shows playing to like 3,000 people, maybe… zero of them who were there to see us," Whipple laughs. "At the same time as it was fun to try to put on these big like, swingin' rock shows like we never had before. It was also really fun to like, be the weirdest band on those bills, and to play the record that we had made and were supporting, and have people tell us, 'I've never heard anything like that before.'"

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Among the converted included Bob Mould, who the band supported in the fall of 2014. One night—after a gig at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC—sticks out in particular for D'Agostino. "Bob blew our minds after the show. He was like, 'You guys were so good tonight, you made me step up my game.' It was the first night on tour he had done, like, a Hüsker Dü encore with— what's that last song he does with the fucking… is it 'New Day Rising'? With the crazy noise outro?" "Something with a crazy noise outro, probably from Zen Arcade," Whipple offers [Mould closed with "Chartered Trips" that night]. "There's this crazy storm of noise, and Bob was just like fuckin' screaming," D'Agostino continues, "and then he proceeded to do that every night of the tour. It was just like, 'Damn, man. Bob Mould had to step up his game 'cause we were good!'"

There's little question that Cymbals Eat Guitars have stepped their game up, and in a big way. Pretty Years, which was recorded in Dallas with producer John Congleton (who has worked with everyone from Explosions in the Sky to Angel Olsen, and won a Grammy for his work on St. Vincent's 2014 self-titled LP), is the sound of a band who has honed their live sound so acutely, the translation from club to record is so effortless it's almost goosebump-inducing. "I think it swings for the fences in ways LOSE didn't, maybe," D'Agostino muses. "Pretty Years sounds more like a band in a room and less like… shoegaze. There's a lot of layers and a lot of intricacies. The drums are a little more in your face, the vocals a little higher. The vocal performances are a little more high wire." Maybe it's because the stakes are that much higher, but Pretty Years is far more urgent than anything they've ever released. Some will be quick to point out that there are plenty of classic rock turns on display—from The Replacements punk of "Beam" to the prom-rock of "Dancing Days" to E Street stomp of the tremendous single "Wish"—but that's probably because Pretty Years is a rock record that already feels like a classic, somehow both lived-in and refreshingly immediate.

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Pretty Years is also an especially notable entry in the Cymbals Eat Guitars discography in that it feels like an emotional turning point for D'Agostino, who has long had a reputation for writing from a melancholic—if not downright anxious and depressive—point of view (to wit, much of LOSE dealt with the loss of his best friend Benjamin High).

"I just think after having an emotionally fucked early and mid-twenties, I am beginning to discover that it's possible not to feel terrible all the time, and to stop the voice. You know the one: 'You'll always/ Be a loser/ You'll always/ Be a loser/ You'll always/ Be a loser/ You'll always/ Be a loser,'" he writes a few weeks later in a text message. "They say you can't love someone else until you love yourself. It's a cliché. But I think I've gotten to a place where I'm comfortable in myself. So my mind is free to obsess over other things, rather than relentless raging insecurities. 'Lol.'" "Have a Heart," an unabashed love song, finds D'Agostino in disbelief over the fact that "the shit we were promised/ Really might exist." "Shake anxiety/ See things differently" he sings on the nervously exuberant "Close." And while there are still Jersey Shore heartbreakers like closer "Shrine" ("Even the happiest song I write will be tinged with melancholy, because there's sadness in everything, and it's beautiful"), there's little question that, at 27, D'Agostino is finally starting to feel confident about his place in the world.

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Part of this renewed confidence also very likely comes courtesy of the fact that Pretty Years is the first Cymbals album to boast the same lineup as its predecessor. "The biggest difference I think with LOSE and Pretty Years is when we started LOSE, there was still some vibe hanging over of Lenses Alien, and the old lineup, and the first record. And this is the first record with the same back-to-back lineups," says Dole, who first came onboard with LOSE. "We kind of went into it more as a band. With LOSE we were sort of figuring out where we were headed, where I think we knew a lot more where we wanted to go with this. There was pressure, but we didn't have to search as much."

But certain pressures still do persist. Despite the fact that the band got its start in New York City and later relocated to Staten Island, all but Whipple have put down roots in Philadelphia, a city that any casual listener of current rock music will tell you has become a sweltering hot bed for new talent over the past few years. Modern Baseball, Sheer Mag, Hop Along, Beach Slang, and Restorations are just select few that come to mind.

"I mean I wouldn't say it feels like, 'Ahh, the scene!' and everybody's like best friends, but [Joe] hangs out with Alex [G] and I hung out with the MoBo dudes the other day," says Dole. "I will say yeah, there's a cool scene of… I don't know, I feel like we're calling it a 'scene'… there's like a lot of really good musicians that live in Philly." All agree. "I think from the outside though, it may not be that for other people looking at us and those other things, because I don't think we're identified as necessarily a Philadelphia band. No, we're not. So I think there's still a little bit of a disconnect," says Hamilton, with D'Agostino chiming in, "People are still like, 'Staten Island! So… what's that like?'" So you don't feel like a Philly band? "I live here," D'Agostino deadpans. "I'm not like disavowing. It's cool that there are all these good bands and people might think of us as being part of that, but when I go out and hang out with people who are in Radiator Hospital or Waxahatchee, I'm just like Rachel's [Browne, of the band Field Mouse] boyfriend. Nobody knows our band," he laughs.

But if everything with Pretty Years goes according to plan, that will most certainly change (again). D'Agostino works a day job at a moving company, Whipple is a paralegal, Hamilton makes effects pedals, but the goal is for Cymbals Eat Guitars to be as big of a band as they can be, or at least big enough to comfortably bring a dog along on the road. The conversation shifts to more generalized topics as all but Hamilton mosey over to a dive bar across the street. Why social media sucks, Topo ChicoGame of Thrones spoilers, Jo Broughten (an English photographer who cleaned up after porn shoots to put herself through college, later staging the empty sets to snap vivid still images; one of those photographs now acts as the cover of Pretty Years), and The Path, a Hulu drama about a cult starring Aaron Paul, are all discussed.

"Being in a band is sort of like being in a cult," D'Agostino quips while sipping a Sierra Nevada. "We're all laboring under the same shroud of delusion."

For nonbelievers, now would be the time to start drinking Cymbals Eat Guitars' sublimely spiked Kool-Aid. Hold the fries.

​Zach Kelly is a writer based in Washington DC. Follow him on Twitter​.​