Photo/Nell Alk
Rare Form
By Nell Alk

Making music since “2002-ish,” The Forms’ first album, Icarus, dropped in 2003. Their more recent, self-titled release hit shelves in 2007. The New York based band is currently touring the U.S. and they next take on the Midwest. I was fortunate enough to catch up with them in Brooklyn before they departed the Northeast to head down South. Lead singer Alex Tween dedicated time before their show to answer some questions, and to ask a few of his own. As an added bonus, he divulged why he considers The Forms to be a closet pop band. Read on to learn more…

Where did you come up with the title for your band?
It’s a lot of different things, actually. I have a background in classics, like Greek and Latin and history and all that. It’s a little bit of a Platonic reference; The central piece of Plato’s philosophy is the forms. And it’s sort of this kind of ideal of perfection that everything on Earth is a secondhand copy of. So I kind of liked it for that and, also, I liked the juxtaposition of what most people think of as “forms,” like tax forms and hospital forms and stuff like that. It’s just kinda banal and absurd. And I just liked the sort of lofty element, plus the totally silly one.

That’s a lot deeper than I anticipated. I was thinking shapes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that too. It has those kinds of connotations too.

Your cover is very graphic; you can understand how I may have misinterpreted.
Yeah, exactly. I just like the openness about the name because it also means that we can do any kind of music we want with that name. Like, if you’re a band called “the dance crashers,” or something like that, or “dance hall crashers,” you can’t go make a country album or something, you have to sort of make dance music, you know? I never want to feel trapped like that. I always want to be able to do whatever.

You guys can transition genres.
Yeah, yeah.

You’re like a chameleon.
Yeah.

Or could be.
Or could be. Yeah. The option’s there.

And the first album is also a nod to Greek mythology.
Yeah, I just like the Icarus myth a lot. Just the whole idea of fearlessness and reckless abandon that ends in disaster. But, you know, at the same time, maybe it’s better to be like that than just to play it the safe way. So, that’s kind of the angle the record took. I don’t think we played it safe with that record at all. It’s sort of a weird record.

So you guys worked with Steve Albini? What was that like? Because I know he’s legendary, having worked with bands like Nirvana…
Yeah, yeah, he is, he is. We did both records with him actually. The first time we went there, you know, the first five minutes, I maybe was a little bit intimidated, ‘Oh we’re working with this guy who recorded Nirvana.’ And after about five minutes it was totally fine. He’s a completely down to earth person. He’s a very unusual guy; he’s extremely smart and acerbic and witty and cutting. But, all those things – I have pretty thick skin – doesn’t bother me. He has this unbelievable wealth of experience. He’s recorded thousands of bands and he just knows exactly what to do in every situation and it’s just so great to work with someone like that because we’ve worked with other people who were not like that and it was – it’s not as good.

How did you land him initially?
I think he’s easier to find now ‘cause he has a website for his studio in Chicago, Electrical Audio, so you can just kinda book the time there, call up. But, back in the day, it was just kind of a little bit underground network, sort of. So, you know, the drummer Matt somehow got the phone number of Bob Weston, who plays in Steve Albini’s band, so we called Bob and he gave us Steve’s number. So, it was just kind of, like, ghost to ghost, this underground thing that we were able to find him.

Okay, craziest gig or coolest city or one of those generic questions about touring, or what you take away most from touring, anything about…
[Laughs] Touring is a lot to my liking just because, especially now, there’s mobile broadband so you can stay tapped into home all the time. And it’s so different, ‘cause usually it’d just be a long boring drive for eight hours, nothin’ to do other than fight with your band members. But now, you’re still kind of home in a lot of ways and you can even work on the road, which we do. It’s like night and day the technology that’s happened in the past year or two that’s enabled us to really make touring that much easier and fun.

As for a crazy story, we were in San Francisco where some guy came in and it was really late at night and we were the last band, and this guy comes in and he starts throwing ice at us while we’re playing our last song. And then we didn’t stop and he threw a glass at Matt the drummer and it shattered into a thousand pieces right behind him, it whizzed by his ear. We didn’t know what was going on. And, then, shortly after, we finally ended and the guy told the club owner that if the bands were playing loud again – apparently he lived there – next week, that he was going to come back and throw knives at the band. I think he lived maybe upstairs or something and was mad at us because we were being too loud too late at night.

Poor choice in real estate!
Yeah, don’t throw knives at the band, please. That’s all we ask.

So, how do you like Chicago?
Umm, we’ve spent a ton of time in Chicago because both our albums were recorded there and we’ve probably played there about seven-eight-nine times. I like Chicago’s pizza a lot, I like Wrigley Field a lot, you know, I go in there as a tourist so of course I do all the touristy things. But, Chicago, I feel, is similar to New York, probably more similar than any other city I’ve been to in the U.S., so, being from New York –

I can’t believe you just said that, by the way.
You don’t agree?

It’s like, New York and the Midwest. It’s not even close. And, I’m not even from here; I’m from the Midwest. I’m from Wisconsin.
Oh, okay. We were just in Madison as a matter of fact.

I’m from Green Bay.
Oh all right. Brett Favre and company. But, yeah, Chicago. It reminds me of the neighborhoods in New York like Brooklyn, Queens. It doesn’t remind me of Manhattan at all. Like New York is it’s own separate world in and of itself. But, it definitely reminded me of a giant Brooklyn-Queens.

Does everyone live in Brooklyn?
Brendan lives in Brooklyn. Matt lives right on the border of Brooklyn and Queens and Jackson lives in Manhattan. And I live in Westchester, although I’m probably going to be moving back to Brooklyn soon.

You live in Westchester? In a suburb! Are you married?
No. But the band van is my vehicle.

So, you live in a van in Westchester.
I don’t live in the van, I own the van. I use the van. It’s a real pain to park in the street, in New York City, and have people not break into everything, so that makes it a lot easier to just live up there.

Song writing process: Is there one person in particular that writes? Is it you?
It’s somewhat collaborative. Icarus Id’ say was more me. And then there was a side project that we did called The Desert Fathers. That was more the drummer and I helped him with that and sang on it, and Icarus he helped a lot with. With the new record, it’s a little more collaborative between us. I think it shows a little bit. Some of the songs that are on the new record were in the works for a would-be Desert Fathers album that never came to be. It wasn’t the biggest smash hit in the world, but I still think it’s a great record and as good a thing as we’ve done. The rest of the world didn’t quite see it that way with that one. So, the song writing process is a lot more collaborative now. It’s usually just getting lucky. I just think that’s what songwriting’s about; You know, playing a wrong note, something by accident, somebody plays a random thing they weren’t even paying attention to…

Somebody drops the percussions…
Somebody drops the percussions and it ends up being really good. That’s always the way really good stuff works. And that’s totally our process.

Do you feel like you kind of start with words and then go to music or start with music and go to words?
It’s more the other way around. I definitely think we are a music-centric kind of band. Start with music always. In fact start with, like, oftentimes, a melody. Like, that to me is the most important thing in music, in our music. I don’t want to say the most important thing in our music, but it’s very important. And, I think at heart we’re kind of a pop band in some sense because I think with a lot of indie bands, they don’t care about a melody and a melody being memorable or likeable or anything. They just kind of are more focused on the words or just don’t really care if the melody has any of those elements. I mean, for us, it’s always first and foremost, above everything else. Like, if the melody isn’t good, then we don’t do the music. [Laughs] I think we’re secretly a pop band.

If you live in the following cities, be sure to check out the forms, touring through May 2nd.

Apr 24 in Columbus, OH
The Basement @ 7:30 PM

Apr 25 in Chicago, IL
Schuba’s @ 10:30 PM

Apr 26 in Minneapolis, MN
First Avenue @ 5 PM

Apr 29 in Champaign-Urbana, IL
Canopy Club @ 6 PM

Apr 30 in Muncie, IN
Village Green Records @ 8 PM

May 2 in Akron, OH
Musica @ 8 PM

http://www.myspace.com/forms

http://www.theforms.org/