The gal pals passed out chips to stage-front fans during their encore, which included sunshiny baroque heartthrob, “The Lucky One” (reminiscent of ’70s prog-rockers Renaissance). Like an electrified Shaggs, only with better fashion sense, haircuts, and performances, Au Revoir Simone bring palpable schoolyard innocence to fully realized synthesized adaptations.
I spoke to the cordial Erika prior to their one-hour set.
Have you ever heard of ’60s New York duo the Silver Apples? Brainchild Simeon Coxe used primitive homemade synthesizers, an audio oscillator, and other contraptions to make textural psychedelic elixirs in an obliquely roundabout way not far removed from Au Revoir Simone.
Yeah. He wrote some offbeat surreal stuff. Being in a keyboard band I had to do my homework. So I found out.
Were you into ’90s lounge-core sophisticates, Stereolab, as well?
Yes. I worked at college radio and someone gave me a pile of CDs and I got into them. Annie was more of a punk kid, but Heather loved Stereolab and Björk. I’m a huge David Bowie fan who enjoyed all his different eras.
Bowie’s late-’70s Berlin Trilogy, Low, Heroes, and Lodger, were successful experimental projects with avant electronic artist, Eno. Some of Au Revoir Simone’s weird interludes seem affected by his work.
Thanks. We listened to each of the new tracks by themselves and realized we’re all the same age and came from similar backgrounds and in the scheme of things we had the same spiritual and personal philosophies. So Still Night, in similar fashion, became a concept. But we’re separated from it because we’re in it. So it’s hard for us to answer ‘Who are you?’ But it turned out to be thematically connected.
How’d Thom Monahan’s production help make Still Night better?
Thom’s a brilliant guy. He’s real good at listening to and interpreting music. He really captured each sound and made it beautiful. He was using two or three different mics so we could decide later what to use. He knew which corner or space in the room would make certain sounds. He also knew so much about keyboards. We’d go to a dusty Chinatown apartment to borrow equipment that’d make us sound way cooler. We did recording at my apartment, Thom’s apartment, and (his wife) Shirley Halperin’s parents place.
