Splendid: Do you see commonality between what they do and what you do?

Mike Drake: I see some. I think their stuff is... They've been around a lot longer and they've certainly got more recognition. I mean, they're in Big Star and REM. We're lucky that we got to play a couple of shows with REM, but we're definitely not at the level where we can call up Michael Stipe and say, "Hey, you want to go look at records?" They're definitely in a league beyond us. Musically, there are some similarities. We both like a lot of power pop, a lot of harmonies. They're kind of rocking their stuff up a lot more on this tour...

Splendid: I noticed that. I'd heard a few songs off their new record, which is sort of melodic and almost baroque, and then they get up on the stage and turn it into this rock thing.

Mike Drake: Yeah. I kind of have mixed feelings about that. I'm a huge fan of what they do. They're basically an awesome rock band on this tour, but they also have this really cool, kind of delicate, like Hollies thing, which is not coming out on this particular tour.

Splendid: Whereas your music is pretty consistent. What you do on stage is very similar to the record.

Mike Drake: Yeah, especially with this record, because we kind of wrote it with the intention of having a record we could play live.

Splendid: Tell me about that. This was a different approach for you?

Mike Drake: Yeah, definitely. Before now, we would always record it in our studio or our house or something. We would take forever and put a million instruments on it, like harpsichords and things. We were always going for baroque... sorry. But then when we came to play the songs live, it was always like covering someone else's songs. We had no idea how to do it with just a guitar and bass. So this record, we said, let's keep it really simple. Let's spend a week practicing. Let's spend a week writing songs. So we went in there and recorded it and mixed it in about ten days.

Splendid: So were they all new songs that you hadn't played live before?

Mike Drake: Oh, yeah, they were brand new. We had rehearsed them for about a week before we recorded them.

Splendid: So it's almost a live album.

Mike Drake: Pretty much. Our drummer did all the drum takes for thirteen songs in two days. It was pretty crazy.

Splendid: Did you do it in the home studio again?

Mike Drake: No, the reason we didn't do it was because we wanted to have a time constraint.

Splendid: Oh, I see, because you can fool around forever when you're at home.

Mike Drake: Right. We're always tempted to say, "Oh let's go back and remix that one." We realized that it started to suck that way, that the demos were always a little bit cooler than the final product. So we said, "Let's just make a record of demos," go in there and knock it out really fast and have it be kind of raw with mistakes.

Splendid: Is there stuff on the record that you can't listen to now?

Mike Drake: No, I love it, actually, because it's like demos -- I just love it more, the mistakes and the weirdness of it. The jagged edges... It's not that jagged at all, comparatively. But for us, there's some stuff that we would have sanded down a little bit more.

Splendid: You have a new line-up with this record.

Mike Drake: Yeah.

Splendid: Tell me about the new people in the band.

Mike Drake: We have a new drummer. That's probably the biggest news. This guy John Hofer, who plays with the Mother Hips. He used to play with Persephone's Bees, and he plays with Kelley Stoltz, who has another record coming out on Sub Pop. He's just kind of a local bad-ass drummer guy. Our old drummer Jim was... he moved to Kentucky. He was flying out to play shows, but it didn't really feel like it was working for him. And it was a drag for us because we never got to practice.

Splendid: Why Kentucky?

Mike Drake: We toured with The Apples in Stereo. Their home base was in Lexington. He just kind of realized how awesome Lexington was... like it had great sushi and was really cheap.

Splendid: Compared to San Francisco, almost anything would seem cheap.

Mike Drake: He wanted to play music and have that be his career, and he couldn't do that in San Francisco, so he's there now and he loves it.

Splendid: And the other new person, you have a new guitar player.

Mike Drake: Right, yeah. This is an interesting story, actually. The guy is Bob Reed, and his old band was The Overwhelming Colorfast.

Splendid: Which you and Matt Harris were both in, too.

Mike Drake: Right. We were in the last line-up of Colorfast, before they broke up. We left the band to start Oranger, and it kind of broke up Colorfast.

Splendid: Good one.

Mike Drake: I was the number one person on the Colorfast mailing list. I saw their first show. I was the hugest fan. Yeah, and we basically broke up the band to start Oranger.

Splendid: Tell me about Overwhelming Colorfast, because it's a familiar name, but I can't remember any of their songs.

Mike Drake: They got a lot of Hüsker Dü comparisons, but really they were kind of like... like Beatlesque, super well-written pop songs, with really, really loud guitars. You know, Weezer opened for them on some early shows before Weezer was known and basically brought the Colorfast record in to Ric Ocasek and said, "This is what we want ours to sound like." They were on Relativity and they got a big tour with The Ramones, and then Relativity decided they were going to be a hip-hop label and dropped Colorfast. They were probably one of my favorite bands ever. Bob is an amazingly great songwriter, and he's a total shredder on guitar. We needed another guitar player to play some of the songs on the last record, so we asked him to sit in on some of our shows. It was just really fun to have him around, and it was nice to have an extra guitar so I could focus on not having to play three different guitar parts.

Splendid: And also singing.

Mike Drake: Yeah, I end up stuck to the microphone. So he's running around the stage now, trying to knock people over.

Splendid: Excellent... So that's the new people, and then the core of the band is you and Matt and Patrick. So I was reading somewhere, didn't you manufacture a whole history for your band, with spurious album titles and stuff like that?

Mike Drake: Yeah, that's true. You actually did some research. On the very first version of our web site, Matt and I got really drunk and we were trying to write the discography section of the site. We decided that since we didn't have a history, let's just pretend that we've been around forever. And so we did, like, our 1967 psychedelic record, which was called The Invisible Chocolate Glove, and then in the 1970s we did a quadruple live album -- you know, total rock excess. We called it Quadruple Live Bongo. We came up with song titles, cover art...

Splendid: But don't you wish, at this point, that you'd actually done those albums?

Mike Drake: Oh, yeah... That's kind of the idea, too. We still talk about doing that -- let's just get really fucked up this weekend and do a Krautrock record. And we did a couple little soundtracks like that. We haven't put them out yet. We're doing a Topanga Canyon circa 1972 record now that's almost done... it's all like super country, California slicked-up country.

Splendid: Trying to catch a little of that whole Eagles thing?

Mike Drake: Yeah, exactly, before it becomes hip, before it catches on. We're always five years ahead. We're trying to catch up now with the fake records... So if you look at that section of the web site, there's a few up there.

Splendid: From the title of the new record, New Comes and Goes, it sounds like you're not terribly worried about musical fashion and what's trendy and all that.

Mike Drake: No, in fact, we kind of deliberately try not to worry about it. I feel like our whole thing from the beginning was not to try to follow any trends, because as soon as you try to follow a trend, it's already passé. You're just on the bandwagon, but at the very end of it. We make music that we like to make, that we have fun making, and then if people like it, that's great, and if they don't, at least we had fun making it.

Splendid: I've talked to a couple of bands that sort of got accidentally caught up in one of these trendy things... They were doing what they were doing all along and suddenly what they were doing became hot. It sounds like a weird, disorienting experience. Can you imagine a situation like that where suddenly what you're doing is on Spin and MTV and all that stuff?

Mike Drake: Well, on a small scale, that almost happened to us with the Elephant Six stuff. We were into The Beach Boys and The Who and a lot of 1960s psych stuff, and we did our own recording. We thought The Apples and Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control were super cool. We almost got caught up with them, and when we were touring with the Apples, Robert said, "You know, you guys are really lucky that you didn't get on the Elephant Six collective, because I'm so sick of it right now." It's like this big label that you get stuck to. He's interested in tons of different kinds of music, but you get kind of lumped in with that sound, then it becomes restrictive. That works for some people who are totally happy in that one sound.

Splendid: But you have to have trumpets on every damned record from then on, right?

Mike Drake: Yeah, and our interests are too fickle for that. The reason our record sounds like it does is because we happened to be getting into a few bands that we hadn't gotten into before, right before this record. And arbitrarily, we were like, "Let's try to use some of those sounds." When we do the next record, I have no idea what it will be. Probably polka or something.

Splendid: Tell me about the bands you were listening to when you started working on New Comes and Goes.

Mike Drake: We were listening to a lot of early Roxy Music. It was really cool. I didn't ever get into Roxy Music, because I had always heard them later on in their career, when Bryan Ferry was kind creepy...

Splendid: But so stylish.

Mike Drake: Yeah, really stylish. But the early stuff is just really weird. I'd never sat down and listened to it carefully, because they'd gotten lumped in with glam and I was like, okay, they're like T. Rex, they're trying to be spacy or whatever. But no, their stuff is totally kick-ass, musically. It kind of fit the sound we were trying to make, keyboard-wise, with Patrick. I didn't want him to have to figure out how to do a harpsichord. I just wanted him to play a Rhodes that was run though a distortion pedal, one sound that was really gnarly, kind of mean, and that was right there in Roxy Music. And then there's all these weird Brian Eno freakout synth noises that were going on. We happened to have a theremin, so we said, "Okay, that's perfect. We can use that." So we just had a blast. The songs are really simple. They're catchy. The lyrics are kind of funny and a little obtuse. At times creepy, in a cool way. I was really, really into Roxy Music.

Splendid: I noticed that you were travelling with a theremin. That's the garden song?

Mike Drake: Yeah, "Garden Party for the Murder Pride".

Splendid: That's a cool song. It has that bass line that reminds me of something from 1970s AM radio.

Mike Drake: Yeah, it's a total cock rock kind of song. We actually wrote that one while we were doing the record, because I figured we needed something that was a little more straightforward rock. We put that one together at the very last minute.

Splendid: How do lyrics come into the process? Is the song pretty much done and then you write lyrics?

Mike Drake: I wrote all the lyrics in the vocal booth, right before we recorded them.

Splendid: Yeah... It doesn't seem like a difficult poet, singer/songwriter kind of thing, where everything is nailed down.

Mike Drake: I've always liked lyrics that leave you kind of trying to dig around, that make you come to them. If you lay it right out there for everyone, I feel like it's a little annoying.

Splendid: Has your music changed quite a bit in the last several years? I was reading some of your earlier reviews and they were talking about The Who... and I just didn't hear it.

Mike Drake: Oh yeah, it's really changed since then. The big change was our drummer Jim leaving the band. He was pretty much like Keith Moon. He got all these Keith Moon comparisons. He was an amazing drummer. He was pretty much the frontman for the band. When he would play, people would ...he was an astounding drummer. And really entertaining. He would run around the kit and do stuff while we played. We had a lot of fun with that because we could do these bombastic, Who-type songs and pull it off. But I didn't want to keep doing the same thing. We just got bored with it. So this new record is totally not like that at all.

Splendid: So who else besides Roxy Music?

Mike Drake: I think we were listening to a lot of ...It doesn't sound like, but we listened to a lot of Wire's Pink Flag while we were doing it. I kind of wanted to...I just liked how raw and simple that record was. It was kind of like this very cool, temperature-cool, punk rock record. It wasn't this hot, nasty punk. It was more reserved and restrained, but still really raw. A little bit arty but not over the top. I thought it was really cool, that we should try to do something that's really simple and rough, but still really hooky. But it doesn't really sound like Wire at all. I think we recorded in a studio that was a little too nice to do that. And we had too many instruments, too. You have to really strip down to do that. I don't know. What else were we listening to? That's really about it. We didn't have a lot of time to ...

Splendid: To think about it.

Mike Drake: That's kind of what I wanted. Everybody in the band is really good at playing their instruments. I figured it was probably better to keep them reacting to stuff really fast, have everybody go through stuff together. The reason why it sounds like it does is because everybody's doing a lot to add their own input at the last minute and try to keep their heads above water.

Splendid: Do you lose that sense as you play the songs more and more live?

Mike Drake: Yeah... In a way, it kind of gets better, because for one thing, now, people are learning their parts, you know?

Splendid: (laughing) Good.

Mike Drake: We didn't have a lot of time to record it, so you play it until you feel like you've got something that fits, and then you move on. But now we're learning how to play together, and the songs are really coming into their own live, finally. The record is cool, but the live stuff is where it's really starting to happen for these songs.

Splendid: What are your favorite songs on this album? Which are the most fun to play?

Mike Drake: I like "Crooked in the Weird of the Catacombs".

Splendid: What a great title that is. Where'd you get that?

Mike Drake: I don't know. That came out of the vocal booth. I guess it's some weird Roxy Music thing. Maybe it was a little bit of Brian Eno being creepy, creeping around some catacomb or something in a little vampire nightclubbing outfit. But yeah, that one's good. I like "Garden Party" a lot. "Garden Party" is our drummer's favorite, too. He gets to play cowbell. What else? "Haeter" is a pretty fun one, actually. It's a probably one of the more different sounding ones on the record.

Splendid: Now, wait, which one is the ballady thing near the end?

Mike Drake: Oh, yeah, "Flying Pretend". Yeah. I almost didn't put that one on the record, but our label forced us to put 13 songs on. We thought it would be kind of cool... again, referencing Roxy, they always have these long, synthy ballads in the middle of these really cool space rock records. We thought it might be a cool way to break up the record. It's so funny. I've been reading reviews, and some people seem to like that one the best, you know? Like "I wish there were more songs like this that showcase the sensitive nature of the band," or whatever. And then some people are like, "That song's a piece of shit. How did it even get on the record?" It's like this would have been a great rock record, except... I don't know. I like that song. It's a pretty song, and we're probably going to play it once at the record release show and that'll be it.

Splendid: You didn't play that in Chicago.

Mike Drake: No, no, god. We were all about trying to keep up with The Posies and play a rock set.

Splendid: I think critics -- I do this myself -- you tend to latch on to the songs that are different from the others. Just because you need something else to write about, you know, you need another paragraph.

Mike Drake: They stick out. They're salient. They're not like the others.

Splendid: Yeah, it's like that Sesame Street thing.

(This is perhaps Splendid's first and last Sesame Street reference.)

Mike Drake: Yeah.

Splendid: You're on Eenie Meenie Records, now, and I think you've been on a different label for every one of your records.

Mike Drake: Pretty much, although the first two were both on Amazing Grease. The first one was on another label that we started. So we started the first two labels that we were on. And the third label, Jackpine Social Club, was another friend of ours.

Splendid: That's where Kelley Stoltz was before Sub Pop.

Mike Drake: Yeah, Kelley Stoltz. It's more Americana type stuff.

Splendid: It's good stuff.

Mike Drake: He's getting out of this Americana stuff a little bit. He's doing this record by The Harms, which is a really, really cool record. It should be coming out soon. But yeah, and Eenie Meenie is an LA label. It's run by this woman called Reiko and she's super awesome. We ran into her at SXSW, and she was the only person at the music convention who was actually going up to people on line and handing out fliers for her shows. Like "Come to my showcase! Come see my bands!" and we were like, "God damn, she's cool." She put out a couple of Apples in Stereo side projects, so we kind of knew her from that. She just seemed like she totally had her shit together and was really enthusiastic. We were like... Let's try and do a real record and get it out there and see what people do. And she's been great. She's been on our ass every day to be on tour.

Splendid: Are you getting any radio play?

Mike Drake: Yeah, I think so. I forget where we were charting, somewhere on CMJ. Somebody told me it was around 30.

Splendid: What songs do they play, do you know?

Mike Drake: They're playing different songs. I think "Crooked" has gotten some play. "Crones" has gotten some play. That's a little more emo-y.

Splendid: It seems like the kind of record that people would be psyched to hear on the radio.

Mike Drake: It's definitely been getting a decent response and touring definitely helps. We haven't toured in a little while.

Splendid: How about the San Francisco scene? It seems like there's so many interesting bands that come from there, but I guess it's not incredibly supportive.

Mike Drake: I think it was a lot tighter five years ago. And now, it's still pretty tight. Most of the people that are in bands seem to know each other or at least know of each other, but, you know, we can go out to a bar and hang out with Mark Eitzel. He's super accessible and super nice. Or we'll meet... Paula Frazer will be at a show. It's good. It's not really clustered by musical genre, which is kind of nice. It's more clustered around what bars you drink at. There's the Moore Brothers. A lot of East Bay bands are great.

Splendid: What are you doing besides the tour to promote the record? Any videos or anything like that?

Mike Drake: No, we haven't done a video for this record. We might... I don't know if she wants to do that or not. I think we'll probably do one. We've been doing the tour. We've been doing interviews, which we haven't really been doing...

Splendid: Thank you, by the way.

Mike Drake: Yeah, it's great. We've been, I don't know, making stickers.

Splendid: What are you doing when you're done touring?

Mike Drake: Well, our record release is here in San Francisco this Saturday.

Splendid: So you're basically done.

Mike Drake: Yeah, we're almost done. Unfortunately, this is the drag of sharing a member of The Posies: when they're on tour and we're not opening for them, we can't really play. So we'll probably play a few local shows and ask somebody to fill in on bass, but we're just going to have to wait until they're done. They're heading right back over to Europe for more dates. We're going to head out this spring and maybe try to do some stuff before SXSW. We've had a blast on this tour. It's been so fun. Everybody in the band gets along so well.

Splendid: So the name Oranger... Oranger than what?

Mike Drake: I don't know. Everyone asks that question. I don't have a good answer, except that we... We made up like 500 potential band names and had this elaborate voting scheme where you could vote a certain number of points. It was really complicated, and the name that eventually won was this name Oranger, which we made up, because we were trying to think of a weird Japanime creature, like this orange blob monster.

Splendid: Right. Was there PAC money involved?

Mike Drake: Maybe. I think there was drugs involved.

Splendid: It's a cool name, and it has all those psychedelic overtones.

Mike Drake: We did want to have a name that didn't have any direct musical connotations -- something where people would say, "Huh, what's that about?" and they'd hear it and our sound would define the name.

Splendid: All right, anything else you want to talk about?

Mike Drake: We played a show the other night that our drummer couldn't play, and we had The Posies' drummer sit in. He learned our entire set on stage and played it.

Splendid: How'd he do?

Mike Drake: He was great. Awesome. Nobody knew. Nobody demanded their money back or tried to punch us.

Splendid: Well, now when they find out, they'll be coming after you.

Mike Drake: I put it up on our blog, actually.

Splendid: Any good stories about The Posies or The Deathray Davies?

Mike Drake: Oh, my god.

Splendid: I love the Deathray Davies. I was bummed when I got to Chicago, because I assumed you'd be playing with them, and you weren't.

Mike Drake: I'm wearing a Deathray Davies shirt right now. The one with Kevin on the mechanical bull. It's great. He's got this look of bliss. It's sort of a religious iconography. But... yeah, just that the Deathray Davies guys are really dangerous. They try to set stuff on fire. You should be careful if you're around them. And The Posies are equally dangerous. Especially Ken Stringfellow.

Splendid: And naked a lot of the time, it seems like.

Mike Drake: And he wears women's underpants.

Splendid: Yeah, you know, that was... Well, I don't want to talk about that.

Mike Drake: Yeah, a lot of people don't want to talk about that. He's scarring the nation.

Splendid: It was a really fun show. I totally enjoyed it.

Mike Drake: That was a good one to see. I'm glad you saw that one.