When I was in 11th grade a friend introduced me to Miniature Tigers. At the time they had just come out with their debut LP Tell It To The Volcano. It was funny, witty and the type of music that made me feel culturally and intellectually superior to the rest of the mouth breathers in my high school. Eight years and four albums later Miniature Tigers is releasing their fifth studio album, I Dreamt I Was A Cowboy. Like every other one of their album releases, this is a definite move away from their previous album(s). I Dreamt I Was A Cowboy feels like a full circle. The album artwork, as I learnt from the boys, is a reference to their first album. But the album also seems to encompass and reference their vast and diverse musical repertoire while still finding new space to breach.
Your new album I Dreamt I Was A Cowboy just came out, let’s talk about it.
Charlie: We just made it at home, mixed it and mastered it, didn’t really go into a studio or have any budget on it. We did it ourselves and sent stuff back and forth on a few tracks. Usually we’ll go in, I’ll write stuff, they’ll write stuff and have demos and we’ll go into a studio and recreate it together. But this time we just didn’t have a budget or any real time to do that necessarily. We usually work with a producer or someone else and this is the first album we’ve really done ourselves.
We’ve had great experiences working with producers, like our last record we worked with this guy Chris Zane and we recorded that in Jamaica and then in his studio back here in Tribeca. It was very fun to work with him because he really understood the sounds and tones we wanted and could bring them out in a way we couldn’t and still probably can’t do ourselves and that was perfect for that record. But this one I think part of the vibe was how homemade it felt and we just wanted to hold onto that and not recreate or recapture the vibe.
Where would you place the sound of I Dreamt I Was A Cowboy among your last few albums?
Charlie: I feel like there are little elements from each album that I can hear. We’ve always tried, with each album, to do something pretty different from the last one whether it’s the production of it or lyrically or whatever it is, we always try to approach it from a different angle so we’re not repeating ourselves ever. There are new elements that we haven’t really messed around with or sounds that we haven’t worked with previously, but it does tie a lot together. Even the album art referencing the first album. It feels like completing a circle of some kind or like it all congealing together for one sound of this band.
AJ: I agree with that but also I still think its a forward progression, like Charlie was saying. Each album adds onto what’s going on from the previous album. There’s stuff going on on this album that we haven’t done before but there’s also a feel of the other albums too. The room is kind of remodeled, you know how you update your room? It’s like that.
Rick: Same house, different room. I think this is probably our most beautiful record, probably our softest record. I think it’s a very warm California, tender vibe compared to some of the other stuff so that feels new to us. We’ve had elements of songs like that in the records but I think this one is definitely a collection of that kind of thing and I’m loving it.
That makes sense, you guys rarely re-visit the same sound twice, you always find a new place to move.
Charlie: Yeah I’m rarely into bands that never do new things but then there are bands where I almost want them to stay the same. We’ve always been inspired by people who make art that’s always different, Stanley Kubrick for example never made a movie in the same genre twice. Or Beck, someone like that who’s always trying new things, we’re always really into that. People that try something new every time is exciting to me as a listener. I feel like that’s definitely cost us some people that liked that band that were really turned off by certain shifts in our sound.
Are you guys going on tour?
Charlie: I want to do more shows at some point, it’s hard at this level we’re at cause we’re kind of just, we’re a cult band you know? We’re not really a huge successful band necessarily or financially at least. It’s hard to tour and be able to afford to tour so I don’t know, I guess we’ll see what happens next year.
AJ: So buy the album if you want us to tour.
Do you think the internet has been good or bad for music?
Charlie: I think it’s ultimately been good in the sense — I wouldn’t have met Rick if it wasn’t through the internet. We met on Myspace. He has music Rick Alvin and I was a fan of his work and we were mutual appreciators of each other’s and became cyber pen pals through MySpace in those days. Even years before we met in person that’s kind of how the band got started.
Rick: We became good buddies while we were still in high school. We finally met when he moved out to LA and then started actually getting the band together.
Charlie: So in that sense it’s great, it’s also great because there’s a lot of bands that probably wouldn’t be heard unless they had a huge label behind them so I think it’s good. Financially it’s not the best because there’s still a lot of work that has to be done to make sure people are paid fairly for certain things and it’s getting better. You do get a little bit but it’s not really enough, it’s not substantial enough to pay your rent so I’m not sure how artists can keep going unless you have a trust fund or have a silver spoon in your mouth or something. Or maybe you’re a lot more successful than we are [laughs].
Rick: Even at our stage when people meet us they’re like “what’s it like?” They make the assumption that we’re doing this full time.
AJ: But even bigger people and bands struggle too. That’s why they all have other things going on, movies and whatever else. I remember when Grizzly Bear was at their height they had that New York Times articles and they were pretty much like we’re broke. And Kanye’s 50 million in debt so…
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Interview by Tamim Alnuweiri. Follow her @tamimalnuweiri.
