The Bravery’s SAM ENDICOTT Stirs Things Up

When New York hipster band, The Bravery, came onto the scene in 2005 they were part of a synth-heavy wave of rock bands with an ’80s sound, think The Killers and Franz Ferdinand. But they’ve managed to stay true to their original sound and not lose their identity. The Bravery’s impressive self-titled debut made them an instant buzz band. The group, singer/bassist Sam Endicott, guitarist Michael Zakarin, keyboardist John Conway, bassist Mike ‘Dirt’ Hindert and drummer Anthony Burulcich, made a splash in the UK first, then won over U.S. audiences.

The band’s sophomore effort The Sun And The Moon (2007) was an adventurous release that built upon their catchy, danceable sound and definitely took things up a notch. A year later they released the remarkable double disc remix The Sun And The Moon Complete that offered an entire different interpretation of the same songs. We’re not talking a ‘remix record’ here, these are two different releases that can easily be played back to back without creating a sense of repetition.

The Bravery’s latest effort, Stir the Blood, was recorded in an abandoned church in the woods of Woodstock, NY, and comes across as more frantic and schizophrenic. The line ‘stir the blood’ is actually taken from the song “Jack O’-Lantern Man” and is an expression that means to awaken passions and create emotion and energy. It sounds cool but it also really seems to hit the mark in this case.

Raised in the Washington, DC, suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, singer Sam Endicott received a degree in psychology from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he was a classmate of Bravery keyboardist John Conway. A move to NYC soon followed and The Bravery formed and found themselves a part of the hip Williamsburg scene.

Venice recently sat down with Endicott and discussed his curious songwriting process, the development of the band’s signature sound, and his dark, obsessive nature that came pouring on in song.

Venice: Congratulations on Stir The Blood.

Sam Endicott: Thanks.

Last time we talked I commented that it felt like it was a quick turnaround between records for you guys, and you said the label felt otherwise.

Oh yeah, we had to push it back because they kept putting unrealistic release dates on it, and I’d say there’s no way we’re going to get it done by then, and we didn’t, and we’d push it back. But, finally, we got it where we wanted it and now it’s all good.

Did you feel any pressure to deliver?

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to not repeat the same thing over and over again. I’ll rewrite a song a hundred times, over and over and over again, until I get it right. I hear them in my head and then it’s a process to get it to sound on tape as it does in my head. It can be really confusing and you can try it a hundred different ways. If you heard the original versions of the songs you wouldn’t even recognize them. But we don’t let anybody hear that shit.

When the band started there were a lot of comparisons to the Killers and they’ve gone a bit schizophrenic to find an identity, but you’ve really seemed to have found your niche. Has it been difficult to keep the integrity of your sound and not always repeat it?

I think I understand the question. [laughs] There are some things that are inherently part of The Bravery sound, and these are things that happen unconsciously. My voice will always be the same, and the way that I write songs will always be similar, and the chemistry between the players will always be similar. That is beyond anyone’s control, so anything that we do will sound like us in that way, and that’s true with any band. But beyond that, we make an effort to try new sounds, new sonic landscapes, and I think on this record, working with John Hill, brought a whole new soundscape to the music.

Last time we talked, before the record’s release, you described it as “a little spacey, a little darker but an energetic party record.”

Our mixer, Michael Brauer (My Morning Jacket, Doves), said our songs are happy from the waist down and sad from the waist up.

There’s definitely a darker mood to this record. Is that just where you found yourself?

When I write the songs it’s just on an acoustic guitar; very simple chords and vocals and then all the sonic stuff comes after that. And the songs at their heart were darker this time around. Even some of them are kind of violent. So when it came to the recording process, the sonic process, we tried to create sounds that reflected the moods of the songs at their core.

The album starts off with “Adored” a Katrina love story. This record really seems to be story-oriented.

That’s true. A lot of my favorite lyricists will write little stories to music. A little country stuff is always like that. So I started thinking in that mindset and just put things from my life, or other people’s lives, into stories.

Do you then come up with characters to tell that story in “Adored”?

We played New Orleans and I found myself at a bar at 8 in the morning called the Bucket of Blood. I don’t really remember how I got there [laughs], but there was this guy next to me at the bar and he told me the story.

Is everyone and everything fodder for a song?

When I go through a period of writing songs it’s like I put out a net and try to catch as many things as I can and always be consciously aware of what’s going on and how something someone says, or something that you witnessed, or feelings that you have can be put into a song.

There’s a line in “Adored” where the character says, “We’re meant for much more.” Did you always have that feeling about your life?

I think that a lot of people have that feeling. I struggle with that a lot. I always feel that I’m not being productive enough or creative enough or not being a good enough person.

It’s not all about a week’s run at Madison Square Garden?

No, it’s about whatever makes you have a sense of value in your life, whatever gives you your sense of worth.

You guys made a great, covert video for “Hatefuck” but it made me wonder if you can sell your record at Walmart?

There are weird legal things about that. You can’t actually write “Hatefuck,” you have to abbreviate. And that was really annoying and we had a battle about that.

You can take that song on many levels, from violent to being about kinky sex. It’s all about interpretation. Do you ever wonder how someone might interpret your lyrics?

It is what it is. It’s definitely not meant to be any kind of situation where something is happening against someone’s will, not at all. It is possible to love something so much and also fucking despise it and really detest it.

This record also really seems to be very obsessive.

You think so? [laughs]

I’m not sure where you found yourself…

When I write songs I just carry around notebooks or write on whatever and when I get home in the morning my pockets will be full of napkins or whatever I wrote on. And I do this for months and months and months, and then I’ll go back and pour over it and see all these themes that I didn’t even know were going on in my head and the songs come out of that. The songs are a way of explaining what’s going on in my life to myself. It helps me understand it.

The track “Jack-O’-Lantern Man” is really an angry one. Is that a story, or about you?

It’s a lot of stories from my life put together. I think that song is about blind, idiot rage and doesn’t necessarily make sense. I get so angry sometimes it’s like I’m out of my mind. A lot of what I write is in notebooks and is that kind of thing, and I’ve never really put it out there before because it’s almost distasteful to me, but it happens a lot and is part of me so it’s starting to bubble out in songs like “Jack-O-Lantern Man” and “Hatefuck.”

Dirt sings “She’s So Bendable.” That’s the first time you’re not singing lead on a Bravery song. Were you comfortable stepping aside?

I thought it was really cool. He brought in a song and I said, ‘this song is really cool.’ And I worked on it with him a lot, and John Hill did as well. I think it came together really well.

You’re 35 and I’m guessing the ’80s had a profound effect on you, right?

I think at a really early age I heard a lot of new wave stuff but it’s funny because I got to it in a very roundabout way because what was the big influence was moving to New York and starting to hear the underground electronic music coming out of New York. A lot of that stuff was borrowing from the ’80s but I didn’t realize that so much at the time. So when we started doing this I think we were naïve about it and didn’t realize how much it reminded people of the ’80s. And as soon as our friends started hearing it they said it really made them nostalgic or made them want to the do ‘the robot.’ [laughs] Or reminds them of a John Hughes movie. But I’ve gotten into a lot of those new wave bands since then from people telling me you should really check this out; so I got to it in a backwards way.

You wrote three songs on the new Shakira record. Were those songs, in their genesis, ever going to be Bravery songs?

“She Wolf” and “Men In This Town” were totally collaborations between me and John Hill. We just got together and created the music start to finish. She did the lyrics. There’s another, which I think is supposed to be on the Latin version, that’s based around an arpeggiator synch sound that I had written as a Bravery song but I couldn’t get it to work right, and then John really liked it and we worked on it together and then she really liked it.

How trippy is it to write songs for such a worldwide superstar?

It’s pretty cool. People say, “What a departure for you but when I hear “She Wolf” it sounds like a Bravery song to me. [laughs] It’s based on a disco bass line like a lot of our stuff is.

Do you ever worry what that kind of collaboration can do to street cred?

I don’t have time to worry about cred and all that bullshit. I just like being creative and being around creative people and do things in a lot of different mediums. I learned things from that experience that I will take into The Bravery. When I directed a video I learned things from that that I can bring to my music.

Is there a chance that Stir The Blood will have a remix counterpart?

Like Sun And The Moon? Probably not. The amount of time it took to do that, at this point, I think we’d rather be creative in other ways.

When The Sun And The Moon first came out, were there any plans to come out with the remixed The Sun And The Moon Complete?

Yeah, there was. That was the idea to do it as a double disc and it kind of got fucked up along the way and ultimately everything came out but it wasn’t initially released at the same time.

I think the second version of “The Ocean” is actually one of the best Bravery songs.

Thanks.

It’s a lot more than your generic remix record.

It’s not really re-mixes. It’s more like re-imagining it.

What inspires you? What makes you put pen to napkin?

I’ll focus on something that’s going on in my head or if there’s a situation in my life I’ll try to write it down, not lyrically or poetically, but straight forward like you would in a diary, and then when I come back later I’ll read it and try to figure out the most concise way of saying it. Or see what resident images are in there and those things will become the songs.

What do you hope someone takes away from listening to Stir The Blood?

I try to make music that works on two levels. I don’t think it’s someone’s job to analyze it. I think music should just make you feel good, so hopefully people can listen to it and just feel good. But, if you do want to think about it, and think about the lyrics and what I’m saying, and think about sonically how it moves you, then I think it’s important to give people something they can think about, that they can sink their teeth into. ▼

For more info on The Bravery see www.thebravery.com or www.myspace.com/thebravery.