Photo by Sarah Hesky
Riding high on the release of their rock-solid debut EP, Versions Of You, Alt Citizen caught up with Los Angeles based upstarts Rocket to discuss leading the next generation of alt rock, memorable moments recording, and an alternate soundtrack for Ratatouille.
Rocket and the new EP, Versions Of You, exemplifies a type of heavy, guitar-forward indie rock that embraces the same bombastic qualities that set Dinosaur Jr. apart from their peers in the 80s and 90s. It’s still a unique approach today. Why do you feel that indie rock is typically so averse to really letting it rip with the guitar heroics?
Baron (guitar) – We love Dinosaur Jr.!
Alithea (vocals, bass) – I think there’s a lot of good bands, especially right now (and I think there always have been, maybe they haven’t been so huge) that have been playing similar type of music or “letting it rip.”
Desi (guitar) – For a long time I thought indie rock was really jangly, little surf guitars and subdued sounding. Light and not heavy [but] that’s not all it is. It’s such a broad term now.
Baron – There’s almost two sides to it. There’s the side where you’ll never hear a Big Muff on anybody’s pedal board or anything like that, it’s just clean guitars, and then there’s a side with gnarly, growly guitars. I feel like they don’t normally intertwine, but it’s cool whenever bands do!
Rocket interprets the standard soft-loud-soft formula a little differently, never letting off on the gas pedal but juxtaposing the high-octane instrumentation with a lighter approach to the vocals, to similar overall effect. How do you balance larger than life instrumentation with more intimate vocals and lyrics?
Alithea – I think a lot of music where people are going really heavy with the guitars or really heavy with the drums then the vocals always kind of tend to lean that way.
We all love a lot of different kinds of music and when we started playing and writing songs together, it was natural.
I don’t know how to scream. I don’t really get that loud and so it just felt natural to bring that softer approach in the melody, lyrics, [and] vocals. Not so much in a shoegaze-y way, although we do love that, but more in a nicely balanced little package.
A lot of the EP moves with a similar pace and attitude as Foo Fighters’ golden era output that supercharged introspective indie with stadium-sized alt rock muscle. The main riff of “Portrait Show” specifically recalls the tone and styling of “Aurora,” and “Normal To Me” has a percussive density and rolling cadence that would have been right at home on the Foos 1995 debut. How does Rocket pay homage to your fore-bearers while redefining these traits into your own perspective as members of the next generation of alt rock?
Desi – We definitely love that era of the Foo Fighters. I can’t say that when [the] songs were being written [Foo Fighters] were I big inspiration, but it definitely came back around. And we have one really big Foo Fighters fan in the band so if you hear that, it’s definitely there!
Alithea – A lot of times when people see us play, they mentioned that because, [Cooper], you rip like Dave Grohl!
They’re a big inspiration for us. Sometimes their music gets so big, but they can still be such a melody-forward band. That was our main thing. We really wanted to have strong melodies alongside strong guitars, and we didn’t want to forfeit either, and so we were like, “we can make this work somehow!”
Desi – I do think we wear our influences on our sleeve. I don’t think it’s too hard to tell what kind of music we listen to. We definitely try to keep it as original as we can while still giving a nod to our favorite bands when it’s appropriate.
90s/00s indie and alt rock are clearly touchpoints for the band, but there’s also a strong undercurrent of more angular shoegaze along the lines of Swervedriver on Versions Of You that makes its presence felt in tracks like “Sugarcoated.” It’s a surprising additive that positions the EP across a wider spectrum of alternative music. As the alt rock as a genre matures, do you think it’s necessary to pull in a wide variety of styles to make an impact, or can an album still be successful staying within a single lane?
Cooper (drums) – Listening back to the EP and stuff we’ve written over time, I think there’s a really large variety. Every song has a different feeling to it. Either way you go, you can be successful with what you do.
We put a little bit of a certain artist in each song that we write, so it’s always very broad. I don’t think there’s a specific style if you go through the whole EP, everything has a different vibe to it. It works that way because you get a little bit of everything while making the music you still like. It’s worked out for us well and it just it works together, even though it’s not all the same kind of sounding thing.
Desi – If you go back and listen to our demos from that time and even now, the songs that we picked to be on the EP I think are the most cohesive. But there were some wildly different songs…
Alithea – …that we wanted to put in there, but it was at the forefront of our minds to make the most broad, but still cohesive like body of work.
Obviously the tones are going to be cohesive and melodies as well, and my vocals are the same throughout, but really trying to make something interesting and interesting to us, mainly, stuff that we wanted to go back and listen to while still thinking “wow, these make sense together.”
It does cover a broad range because that was exactly the goal, trying to put a little bit in there for everybody and for ourselves, since we have so many different musical influences.
Cooper – It all sounds a little different, but I think you can always tell that it’s us.
Versions Of You, the EP’s title, calls to mind the sort of multiplicity of being we all experience as we grow up into our true selves. How does this concept of multifaceted self-discovery inform the context of EP?
Alithea – I think it’s just all over it. When we were writing the songs, it wasn’t necessarily so much on my mind, but as I started writing the lyrics and as we started getting the songs done that was when I sat down and I looked at it as a whole. I was like, “this makes the most sense.”
I feel personally in a multitude of ways about it. Some of these songs we wrote when we were a lot younger, and so in a way that feels like each one of these is a little snapshot of where I was emotionally in that time frame or where we were as a band.
Some of the songs are much newer, and when I sit back and listen to the lyrics or think about where I was trying to come from, certain songs definitely were touching on that point of different versions of myself or the different versions of other people that you will come across just being in any sort of relationship with someone.
I could almost say 100% of [the EP] is not about romantic relationship versions of that person, it’s more like overall life and friendships and a lot of familial relationships. People will assume it’s mostly about romantic relationships, but it’s not. It’s mostly about knowing people for so long and the different versions of themselves that they will show to you and the different versions of yourself that that are there to receive that.
“Future Memory” touches on the fleeting melancholy that happens during a moment of disassociation in the midst of happiness or contentment, the realization that this specific feeling is temporary and will soon exist only in a memory. There isn’t a word for it in English but in Portuguese the term is “saudade.” Fond memories with a hint of sadness. Is this a concept that Rocket empathizes with on Versions Of You? How did communicating emotional memories shape the way the EP was written?
Alithea – I think that’s an overall theme for my brain, that’s like my whole life!
I feel very deeply and sometimes I struggle to always have those very, very deep feelings be the most positive things. I tried my hardest to turn that into something like [saudade].
I remember when we first started writing the EP and we had a lot of the music down, then I would come in. I never sat down and was like “I’m going to have it be about this specific thing,” it was more like “what is this song in the moment and what does this song evoke from me, just listening to it?”
A big thing for me was I want these songs to be something that we enjoy listening to and something we like playing, but I mainly want them to evoke some sort of feeling. It isn’t always the happiest feeling necessarily, but just some sort of feelings. Those are my favorite songs, when I listen to a song and it evokes a certain feeling, I want to listen to it again even if it’s sad. Definitely with [“Future Memory”] that’s exactly what it felt like to me, and lyrically you can pick up on that.
Listening to the EP, the sequence feels very cohesive with references to adjacent tracks peppered throughout. Was the EP written with a narrative arc in mind, or did it the individual elements naturally coalesce into an overarching structure?
Desi – I feel like it just fell into place because the track listing was different 3 months ago. It got changed around and we were like “this is also really cool, let’s roll with it like this.”
Some of these songs were written at such different times, going back from when we first started to while we were recording, and we were like “let’s try to do something different and change it up.” [The songs] came about in such different ways but any sort of consistency or cohesiveness comes from us all being a band and writing every song.
Alithea – In “Portrait Show” I mentioned “pipe dream.” That was just something for myself, just a little fun little Easter egg, if you will. There’s other examples of that as well. In another song I say “trial run,” but not in the song “Trial Run.”
A lot of albums that we all really like, even love, with every song you’re like, “damn, this is very cohesive, but it does all sound kind of exactly the same.” Although sometimes if the songs are good enough, that’s not even a big deal at all. That’s like the greatest feeling. You’re like, “I love this little formula they got going on!”
We really wanted [the EP] to feel cohesive, but not all the exact same. All the tempos are almost exactly the same, but it doesn’t feel that. It was so funny, we discovered after we would record a song and it would be 141 to 143 BPMS and we like. “how did happen again!?”
At seven tracks, Versions Of You isn’t quite an album but is certainly more substantial than your average EP. As the band’s first collected release, how do you feel Versions Of You stands as a representation of your sound and ethos? Is the EP a jumping off point for a similarly themed full-length album, or have you “gotten it out of your system” so to speak and are looking ahead to expanding into different directions in the future?
Desi – All the above, really. I think of it as almost like a sample platter. All these songs are so different, how do we get an EP together to give a taste of all these different things we can do? It might not come across that way to the listener, but it definitely does to us.
It’s a launching pad, it’s songs we got out of our system. It’s a nice array of songs that sets us up to do a record that will sound like us, but also move forward and be different.
Alithea – I think we can go a lot of different ways now. There’s little bits and pieces of any way we would wanna go. You can only put your first album out once. So with that in our heads we were like, “we’ll put out an EP first and we’ll just see where that takes us,” and then we’re like, “wait, but we gotta put this song on it, we gotta put this song on it!” By the time we knew it, it was seven songs! We have so many more and we just wanna start, wanna get them out and have them in other people’s hands as well.
It serendipitously turned into this sweet little thing, because if you look at the time it’s 25 minutes and 0 seconds, somehow! We picked the right songs, we did the right thing. I don’t know how that happened at all, because we had not thought about that and some of the songs end with a little bit like feedback, they’re longer than they technically would be. It just kinda happened, it came together nicely.
Either in the recording of the EP or the final product itself, is there a moment you’re most proud of? A specific accomplishment or memory that stands out as emblematic of the entire process?
Desi – For me it would be getting it done, actually going through with playing in a band! This is some of our first bands, it’s been a long journey and the fact that we’re doing all this is really cool. That’s a proud moment for us as a whole.
A big moment, for me when we were recording the EP, was the song “Normal To Me.” It was a song that we had written while we were recording and it was such an impactful song. We were gonna have this other song on the EP, but now this one had to take its place because it’s way better.
Alithea – I think that being where we are literally right now is a big thing because, well, it’s just exciting for anybody to do. Like Desi was saying, this is my first band, this is [Cooper’s] first band, this is [Baron’s] first band where you get to go out and do this kind of shit.
I like to pinch myself a little bit because I remember back to a time before we had any music out, before we played any shows and being like, “I will never be able to do this because this is way too big, this is way too scary. I’ve never sang in front of people before, I’ve never played an instrument in front of people before, and this just won’t happen.” And then I was like, “maybe if it does, I’ll remember back to this moment and I’ll be like, I did it!” And now we’re getting to talk to [Alt Citizen] and the EP comes out tomorrow! That’s a crazy, crazy realization.
To us this is the biggest thing ever, having like a whole body of work out for people to listen to. I’m so used to being like, “yeah, we have a couple singles, we have this, we have that.” But getting to play every night in different places, right now we’re in Canada, those are the “pinch me” moments of like, “wow, we’re really doing this and we’re really having so much fun.”
Baron – The reaction from family and friends and people coming to our shows. Even if it’s a handful of people at a random city on this tour, just anybody listening and being receptive to it is such a proud moment.
I have family scattered around and getting to randomly show up in their city and play to them who’ve never heard my band, this music at all, be really into it is so cool. It’s a very proud moment that I don’t think we often reflect on ever until later.
Cooper – We recorded a lot of these a while ago, but I think always getting a take that you’re proud of is something you remember. We’ve heard these songs for so long now so for us we’re like, “OK, great, I could have done this different,” but those moments when we record these songs and are like “that’s the fuckin’ one, that shit is tight.”
Playing live is so different from recording. It’s so fun and much easier to play live but the second you have a click in your damn ear, you just forget how to do everything! So once you get something that’s solid, it’s always nice and you remember that for a while.
If you could replace the soundtrack of any movie with Versions Of You, what movie would that be? How do you think Versions Of You would change the movie, or how would the EP change as a result of being linked to this other work?
Alithea – That’s the best question I’ve ever heard!
Cooper – You should have asked me this three days ago so I had three days to think about it!
Alithea – This is not really an answer to the question, but Elliot Smith’s Good Will Hunting soundtrack is so perfect. Not that I would put us in there!
Wait, you said Ratatouille!?
Desi – I was joking!
Baron – My favorite movie is Point Break, it would be epic! Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves wrestling on the beach.
Alithea – Or Dirty Dancing! I love Patrick Swayze.
Baron – They could be dancing to “Portrait Show”
Cooper – So it’s between that and Ratatouille!
Versions Of You is streaming now on Spotify. Follow Rocket in Instagram.
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Upcoming Shows
10/28 – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club *
10/29 – Minneapolis, MN @ Green Room *
11/2 – Seattle, WA @ Barboza *
11/3 – Vancouver, BC @ Green Auto *
11/4 – Olympia, WA @ Le Voyeur *
11/5 – Portland, OR @ Show Bar *
11/7 – Oakland, CA @ Thee Stork Club *
11/8 Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room *
12/1 – Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room ^
12/2 – Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room ^
* supporting MILLY
^ supporting Julie
