What bands are you excited about right now?
I’m into a little bit more organic music at the moment, like folk fusion stuff. Animal Collective is a pretty cool band. I love Bright Eyes and Cursive and all the Saddle Creek bands: Rilo Kiley, M. Ward, Iron And Wine. I’m also into Converge. Converge is still a band that kicks my ass. I think that’s the best rock n’ roll band that’s around right now. I’ve fucking eaten through every one of their albums. They’re fucking amazing. People don’t realize it.
Can you pick a song on Artwork and describe what you like about it?
The song ‘Watered Down’ came about from me and Dan driving from the studio or something one night talking about rhythms that carry on through different generations. You’ll hear them, but you won’t realize it. So that beat in ‘Watered Down’ is just doo doo doo bah, doo doo doo. It’s got like a ‘50s kind of feel. But then it’s also in a lot of ‘80s music too. We were just talking about songs that have that beat and how funny it was. And then we went to our practice place and he started jamming that. And I made a little loop over it. And it was pretty much that right there.
How did you choose Artwork as the title for the CD?
Well, originally Bert had written it on a folder with some art that we were turning in to our label. He just wrote ‘Artwork’ on it with a big silver pen. It looked so cool—just the way Bert had written it and everything. We started to talk about how ironic it was that life is art. And life is work. It’s just funny how they seem like opposite ideas or whatnot. It’s just kind of there to ponder. It seemed to be right with, like I said, getting new management, taking over all the decision-making in the band—a lot more of the work that goes into it. It seemed fitting.
Artwork will be available Sept. 1 through Reprise Records. Catch The Used at Looney Tunes in NYC on Sept. 2 and at Vintage Vinyl in Fords, NJ, on Sept. 3. theused.net.
