“We were kinda nervous about getting in trouble about the whole thing; we felt like we were going to be the ‘subjects’ of all the teachers talking about it,” Iwanusa said, when I first interviewed him in 2007. “Like, we’re in the spotlight, kinda in a negative way, maybe.”
Some unique parent-teacher conferences— and a write-up in Spin—kept things on an even keel until graduation, when the band hit the road in earnest.
The Subjects’ 2007 debut album, With the Ease Grace Precision and Cleverness of Human Beings, earned praise from the likes of Magnet and Punk Planet, and comparisons to The Kinks, Pavement and The Replacements.With its optimistic yet self-conscious mood, the album also seemed at times like a cross between The Modern Lovers, Big Star and perhaps Charlie Brown.
Now based in Brooklyn, with schooldays long past and its debut album two years old, the band is attempting to reinvent its sound, and finding plenty of post-scholastic experiences to draw on. Iwanusa has since earned a degree at the School of Visual Arts; Smith has worked various jobs outside the education field and Carbonetti, the other former student, does custom work for 30th Street Guitars. “He puts guitars together that have already been shaped, but then he wears them down and makes them look old; it’s pretty cool, and people are going crazy over them,” says Iwanusa. “His claim to fame is that he just sold one to the guy in Animal Collective.” In fact, Sheinkopf is the band’s sole reminder of its roots, still teaching part-time. Perhaps as the result of waning student-teacher inequalities, Iwanusa says the band’s music has become more democratic.
“When we first started, it was mostly [Sheinkopf] writing, and I would write a few songs, but now I think we pretty much write everything together, or it’s pretty equal,” says Iwanusa. Road-testing newer material while touring with friends The Walkmen has encouraged The Subjects to hone in on crowdpleasing hooks.
“I just feel like these songs are a lot tighter, and even more like a pop song than our last record,” says Iwanusa. “It’s pretty satisfying when you come up with a song and it’s catchy—you get the same feeling from that that you get from writing this huge, complex thing. I think there are still some things that are complex, and there are still harmonies that are all over the place, but I think it’s a much tighter version of that.” The Subjects are currently recording overdubs and mixing at Gigantic Studios in Tribeca; the bulk of the tracking was done over two weeks last June at the Key Club, a studio in Benton Harbor, Michigan, not far from where Iwanusa grew up. “It’s a cool place—they recorded The Kills there, and some Franz Ferdinand stuff,” Iwanusa notes.
“And it just seemed good because it was out of the city, and it seemed like a good choice. It was close to my family’s house too, so we were always over there.”The band hopes to release the album in September.
Until then, it’s worth checking out “Goldenshire Boogie,” from a recent split 7-inch with The End of the World.The lowbudget video, in particular, helps convey the band’s oddly affecting dynamic. In an overgrown, leafy junkyard, Iwanusa lightly taps out a shambling rhythm on the drums with a maraca, as his band mates fall in around him. Guitarist Carbonetti, dressed in shades, a vest and a T-shirt with a sad clown down the front, coaxes a long cascade of chords from a hollow body, whose timeless clean jangle could have been recorded at any time in the rock era.
The mop-topped Sheinkopf swipes a finger across the strings of his old bass, and fesses up: “Well I’m not that pretty, I’m not that tall.” His voice cracks a little on the high notes; his band mates join in swelling reverb-tank backing vocals, as if to prop him up with their multiple octaves. “But I’m out there as we speak/ with a foot in this dumb parade.”
> The Subjects
Feb. 25, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 212-533-2111; 7:30, $16/$18. Also Feb. 26, Music Hall of Williamsburg.
