Visions of cheerleaders oftentimes bring up teenage girls in mini-skirts supporting the local varsity team, but that's not always what a "cheerleader" is. Enter Philadelphia indie pop outfit Cheerleader, the latest buzzing band to enter the scene.
After forming in 2011 as a bedroom project, Cheerleader reached critical acclaim from the likes of NME for just a few short demos on a SoundCloud account. Carrying that momentum into the new year and a new EP, On Your Side, the members of Cheerleader are bringing their positivity and infectious hooks to a town near you this autumn.
Following the release of their debut EP On Your Side and in anticipation of two New York CMJ 2014 shows, Music Times chatted with Cheerleader members Chris Duran, Paul Impellizeri and Carl Bahner about life on the road as an indie band, the group's astonishing early success, and mixing poppy music with a melancholy attitude.
Music Times: For those who might be unfamiliar with Cheerleader, can you kind of walk us through the story and history of your band?
Chris Duran: Sure, so Joe [Haller] and I actually went to high school together. We met in like 2003 and started playing music together pretty soon after that. We went to college separately, but came back together after that and started doing Cheerleader in 2011, and made the first few songs then and put them up on the Internet. It kind of just went from there. We put a band together and started writing some more songs.
MT: Why the name Cheerleader? Were you guys cheerleaders in high school or something?
CD: It actually came from before we made any songs. Joe and I were kind of working on recording together and we would be talking to each other about songs and be like "Oh, man that guitar you made was so cool!" or "That vocal part you had was so awesome." I was telling a friend and she was like, you guys are such cheerleaders for each other. The first song we made, that name kind of popped in my head, and we realized it kind of felt right with the sound of the song and we decided to go with that.
MT: What was your first song together?
CD: The first song was "New Daze."
MT: Oh yeah that's on your SoundCloud. So I noticed your sound is really sunny and fun and Cheerleader is a fitting band name for that. I kind of always wondered about the people behind indie pop, in general. Are you just a very optimistic, happy people? How did you develop on that sound, was it an extension of your personality?
CD: Oh awesome, thank you. I think we definitely also like kind of melancholic songs too, where maybe the music is happy, but the lyrics otherwise, or some variation on that. I mean we're definitely huge Beach Boys fans so that feeds into it -- and The Beatles, and a lot more classic stuff like that. So I think that's partly where that comes from. But overall, we're huge fans of music.
MT: I always think the dichotomy is so interesting, the happy sounding song with the darker lyrics, like "Pumped Up Kicks" or something. It always makes for a really interesting listening experience. So kind of retracting a bit, you got a lot of buzz quickly after releasing your free SoundCloud demos, with NME giving you pretty good feedback. How did you deal with that success? Were you surprised?
CD: I think we were just excited and thrilled to get it. It was a nice, obviously the confirmation that what we were doing was something people were liking, and it was obviously worth pursuing. It was probably a little bit too, like "Oh man, now we have to write more stuff and hopefully it's as good." But yeah, overall we were just really honored to get that feedback.
MT: Did you kind of panic after that and write a bunch of new stuff?
CD: Oh yeah, definitely. We're always working on something, but there was definitely a little bit of a panic mode for a second.
MT: Did you find that the pressure affected your songwriting? Or was it still just kind of the same process?
CD: I think timeline helped us; it made us feel like we should get stuff done as quickly as we can. And in the beginning we were kind of using pretty minimal gear, which also limited what we were doing. We're in the same apartment now, which wasn't the case then, so there were definitely a lot of restrictions like that, that were kind of helping.
MT: Yeah, you know kind of get the pressure going, and it can inspire you. You have to get it done, you have to be efficient.
So then, you finally released an EP On Your Side earlier this month. And I read that the songs were written over a five year period, is that correct?
CD: Yeah, yeah.
Carolyn: So what's it like having it finally out? What was the process of getting all these old songs, did you re-record them, did you just work with what you had?
CD: We demoed about half of the songs, in the way that you can hear those songs on SoundCloud, the early ones. I think one or two were probably the ones to make it that five year period. But for the most part it was written over the course of like three years. So yeah, I think that's where that longer span comes from.
MT: So what has been the fan reaction, the critical reaction to On Your Side?
CD: It's been so long, so were just excited to have the songs out there, to have people finally be able to hear them. We're touring on it now and just being able to finally share the songs after working on them for so long and getting done with the band is definitely really nice.
MT: Yeah I can imagine. Do you have plans for a full LP anytime soon, even though I know you just released your EP.
CD: That is also in the works and tentatively, I believe it's coming out in the new year, after the new year anyway.
MT: Can you give us any more details on your album?
CD: I don't know, it's a little murky. But I think it's from the same session -- I think I can probably say -- and we did do more songs than on the EP.
MT: You made a very varied Spotify playlist for the road, with the Pixies and Diarrhea Planet, it was very interesting. Can you kind of talk more about your Spotify playlist; it's interesting to see what musicians listen to on the road.
CD: I'm going to give you our drummer Carl [Bahner], who actually made that playlist.
MT: I was just asking about that Spotify playlist you guys made. What gave you that idea? Is that really accurate of what you listen to on the road? What good road music?
Carl Bahner: I mean I think it's pretty accurate. On the first part of this tour, when we were doing the Midwest, we did a lot of long drives, like six or 10-hour drives at a time. And we do definitely listen to quite a large variety of stuff, but I felt like those songs kind of sum up the general, different vibes that we go for.
I mean obviously we'll probably listen to some more chill stuff if we're doing late night drives. Or we'll try to listen to more obnoxious, need-to-wakeup music, if we need to get up before the musician morning starts. But I feel like most of those were kind of like the most popular songs that would come up. We'd be just driving, and we wouldn't know what to do, so we put on Spotify.
MT: Speaking of touring, I guess in addition to the music that you'll listen to on the road, do you like touring? What's your favorite thing about being on the road?
CD: Can I pass you off one more time? This is our bassist Paul [Impellizeri]...
MT: I was just talking about touring. How's your tour been going? How's life on the road for a smaller band?
Paul Impellizeri: I mean right now, it's pretty nice. I'm lounging in a row. I've got the whole row to myself. But it's good. We all squeeze into a van and just the open road and our destination in mind. We get there, and we get to see a lot of places. We don't get much time to explore, but we get just a little taste of everywhere. I guess for us, it's been to take advantage; we got an awesome opportunity opening for Colony House and Knox Hamilton. They're both incredible bands and bring a crowd out pretty much everywhere. As a band just starting off, we're kind of lucky to be able to play with them. So the road's been good to us.
MT: Where are you guys right now?
PI: Maryland. We're on our way to Washington, D.C. We got a show there tonight.
MT: Have you played CMJ before?
PI: Cheerleader hasn't. I've played in a different project years ago, but it's great I love CMJ. It's definitely gotten bigger over the past few years, but I look forward to it every year. This will be my third year just going, and it's always fun. There's never a boring moment... There's so many up-and-coming bands coming in. You can pop in anywhere and see the next big bands perform.
Cheerleader will perform as a part of the CMJ Music Marathon tonight (Oct. 23) at The Mercury Lounge at 9 p.m. and Friday (Oct. 24) at the Union Pool in Brooklyn at 8:30 p.m.
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