Quiet Color

post and pics by amy davis

Brooklynite rock trio, The Jaguar Club, are like a delicious, Wonka-esque candy creation for your ears. Sweet, then edgy, and exploding with danceable beats, their music is a sonic candy chameleon that can easily find a secure spot with even the most fickle of auditory tastes.

Artist: The Jaguar Club Song: Sleepwalking

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Since first bursting onto the scene in 2006, The Jaguar Club’s music has been tossed into a mixed bag of genres; from indie pop, disaffected post-punk, new-new-wave to emo. But pinpointing a specific genre for the evolving flavors of their music isn’t necessary, when all that matters is that listening to their music and experiencing their mouth-watering live shows is a massive sugar rush that inevitably leads to a fit of dancing.

The Jaguar Club has been riding a wave of favorable album reviews from the September 1 release of their first full-length album, “And We Wake Up Slowly”, which was engineered by Kevin McMahon, the mad scientist character behind The Walkmen’s early work.

These cool and down-to-earth musicians are also celebrating the conclusion of a successful three-week cross country tour, in which they unveiled their new music, as well as a new addition to their live shows, guitarist Gavin Dunaway– a quick-witted comedic gem who can seriously shred on guitar.

Quiet Color sat down with The Jaguar Club-(Jeremiah Joyce on drums, Yoichiro Fujita on bass, vocalist Will Popadic with special live appearances with guitarist Gavin Dunaway)–before their set at NYC’s Cake Shop to discuss new music, a new touring member, and homemade cages. Oh my!

QC: Will designed and built an anti-theft cage in the back of your’95 Chevy Conversion van. How successful has that cage been? Has it served you well?

JEREMIAH: It’s great. It works, it functions. It keeps things in there. The problem is that all these screws are drilled through the wood so that the sharp parts are facing you. It doesn’t secure the cage any more, or keep a robber from breaking in, all it does is that when we’re loading in and out our gear, we’re constantly getting cut up. So that’s the only issue. Maybe it looks more imposing to a robber.

Artist: The Jaguar Club Song: Blood Pressure

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QC: When did Gavin first meet up with the band? Had you already finished your LP?

JEREMIAH: We did the final bits of mixed and mastering in late March, early April.  We had set a release date and were working our press campaign and the digital distribution campaign and all that stuff. In the meantime, we were looking for a guitarist and Gavin responded to our Craigslist ad. He had seen us play a few times in D.C.before that so he was familiar with the band already.

QC: And he was a hit with the band?

JEREMIAH: He blew us away with his ability to learn songs quickly.

QC: How has the energy and dynamic of the band during live performances changed with a fourth member?

JEREMIAH: It’s all for the positive, absolutely. In the past, Will had sort of been chained to his guitar and his pedal board and he’s now sort of free to do what he wants to do — and a lot of the time that’s things like climbing on top of speakers, or going out to the audience, or whatever it is.  It’s sort of given us a true frontman.

From the beginning of the Jaguar Club, Will had intended to just be the singer, but he was always stuck playing the guitar and singing.  He’s really good at the guitar, but it’s just too much because the guitar lines are pretty intricate, and so it sort of freed him up and allowed him to go out there.

QC: How have the audiences responded to the new setup?

JEREMIAH: From where I’m sitting, it seems like (Will) can connect very well with the audience and the audience can connect well with him.  Whereas in the past, he’d have them while the song was going, they’d be captivated by him, but then as soon as the song ended and in between songs, he had to go and switch his pedals, or tune his guitar or whatever, that thing that was there would be lost. This way it keeps the audience together, which is great.

QC: What is the best part about going out on tour?

JEREMIAH: When you go out of town, you get so much better at how to read the crowd.  It’s a real learning process for us.

QC: You released your album on Sept. 1, so after about a month and a half to gauge everyone’s reactions to it, how have people been responding?

JEREMIAH: Pretty good. Across the board, the straight-up reviews have been in the positive direction.

QC: Is there any one track that represents the definitive Jaguar Club sound?

JEREMIAH: We were trying to have a lot of unique tracks, so that it might be difficult to say, ‘This is The Jaguar Club and every one of their songs sound like this,” which I think sort of flies in the face of what has become standard practice, which is you establish your sound and you do it. But we wanted to follow in the footsteps of a different musical tradition like the Kinks, or Blur, where their songs or albums could vary hugely. In the case of Blur, they could have a weird circusy, pop song right next to a huge rock rager.

QC: You guys have done your fair share of press, what vocal or musical comparisons have been the most confusing?

JEREMIAH: Will frequently gets compared to Morrisey, or Paul Banks, surprisingly.  And that one sort of throws us through a loop. It’s really strange the press that we receive, especially when you talk about what journalists think that we sound like.  It’s almost always an even-mixed bag between people who say that Will has a monotone croon, with lack of vocal range similar to Paul Banks — and then you’ll have someone say that he sounds like Morrissey, or Brett Anderson from Suede, people who sing with amazing range and vocal dynamics. It’s a really weird mixture; I’m not really sure what that means.

QC: Odd..

JEREMIAH: What I’ve decided on my own, is that there is real variation in any particular song. Some songs might feature a lot more monotone stuff, if that’s what Will has chosen to do, while other songs might feature more his range. There are a lot of songs where the verses will be monotone and the chorus will have a dynamic range.

QC: A lot of journalists have written that you guys are heavily influenced by ‘80s bands.

JEREMIAH: Some people who aren’t more familiar with what our musical influences actually are will typically say our music sounds like ‘80s guitar or ‘80s revival and we don’t actually listen to all that many bands from the ‘80s. For us, besides the Smiths or Echo & the Bunnymen, you’re sort of hard-pressed to find much influence from bands in the ‘80s because it really is more stuff like Blur and Oasis and Suede and Pulp.

QC: On October 24^th, you’re playing your first official CMJ showcase at the Delancey.  What’s your favorite part of the festival?

JEREMIAH: Some people come into town and expect it to be South by Southwest, but it’s not and I don’t think it ever will be.  It’s definitely mislabeled as a festival.  If anything, it’s not really a festival, what it is, is really just a celebration of how good the venues in New York are — and that’s not such a bad thing.  What it’s really about is that these venues have bands in there every night of the week, so next week is more or less the same thing for venues like Cake Shop, or the Delancey, or Bowery or Mercury Lounge. All of these venues are doing the same thing that they’re always doing, it’s just a celebration of the fact that New York’s scene is so big and rich and diverse and so full. So I think that if you approach it that way, it’s great. My favorite is all of the daytime shows and we’re all pretty excited about going and seeing as much stuff as we can.

QC: If you guys could be any super hero, or have any superhero powers, who would you be, or what powers would you possess?

JEREMIAH: I’d have ultra iPhone simulatation with six arms and six iPhones.

GAVIN: I’d be Mr. Fantastic, for obvious reasons.

YOI: I’d have a really good immune system.

WILL (as determined by the band): He’d be Robin and get by on looks and boyish charms.

QC: As a group, characterize each member of the band:

THE JAGUAR CLUB (Collective Answer):

YOI: The Sassy One

GAVIN: The Goofy One

JEREMIAH: Mama Bird

WILL: The Guru

QC: Ask and Answer Your Own Question About The Jaguar Club:

YOI: I see that you kept a blog during your last tour highlighting the ups and downs of life on the road. What does a typical Jaguar Club blog entry look like?

YOI: Well they’re typically pretty long but here’s a taste, courtesy of our recent trip to RPI in Troy, NY.

• October 17th: RPI – Troy, NY.

• It’s 2pm when I come to. I have to be at our rehearsal space in an hour in DUMBO. I’m in Greenpoint. Better drag my carcass-body out of bed and hope that my head doesn’t explode. I vaguely remember being kicked out of a bar around 4am. Jeremiah and our friend Adam were there. Then I jumped onto the bed of a parked semi-truck. Then I jumped down from a great height and fell to the ground. Then Jeremiah and Adam started beating me up. Did all this happen? Can’t quite say.

• I walk down to the G train at Nassau Ave. Transfer at Hoyt-Schermerhorn to the A train. I emerge out of the High Street station just before 3pm. Right on time. I see Gavin at the deli around the corner from our space. We see Jeremiah in our rehearsal space. He’s hung over as hell. So those things DID happen. Funny.

• We pack everything and carry it out on to the street, where Will is waiting with the Blue Torch. We pack everything just like we did on tour and we are off to Troy, NY. I am all of the sudden in the driver’s seat. Carmen, our GPS, is being stupid. It’s like she spent the whole two weeks since tour holed up in a brothel somewhere smoking crack. She wants us to take the Holland Tunnel, which makes no sense. She keeps on saying, “Recalculating,” every time I ignore her directions. Then we hit horrendous traffic on the West Side Highway. Some stupid Asian dude cuts me off from the right side lane and then proceeds to cut all the way across to the left lane so he can go into Chelsea Piers. He nearly kills all of us. I shake my fists at him and cry inside that he’s so stupid…

To read more JC stories from the road click here.

To check out JC’s Eating, Drinking, and Thinking blog go here.

Upcoming Jaguar Club shows:

► Nov. 14th @ Union Hall w/ Bon Savants