FINCH

Part 1: Alex and Marc speak about playing Give It A Name, Marc joining the band, and swinging producers...

Left: Alex Linares, taken at Bristol on 29th June 2005
Photo by Dann Jones

Finch's debut album What It Is To Burn was as impressive as it was influential, paving the way for a whole host of heavier post-hardcore rock acts to invade UK shores. After their star seemed on the way to its zenith, they headed into the studio for their second album. And didn't come out for a while. Reports came out of the studio that the band had parted ways with their founding drummer and recruited former Counterfit drummer Marc Allen to fill in. Rumours that this new album would be a change in direction for the Temecula band were confirmed with the arrival of the ironically-titled Say Hello To Sunshine, and album which while fulfilling the dark promise of its predecessor was at once heavier and more disturbing than their debut, trailing hatemail and new fans in its wake. Ruth Midget caught up with the band at their Manchester show at the beginning of July.

In the first part of our two part interview with the band, the hyperactive Alex Linares ("Hi, I'm Nate." "Dude, she knows who you are.") and new boy Marc Allen speak about playing Give It A Name, Marc joining the band, and swinging producers...

How's the tour been going? Last time you did like a smaller tour, but this is the first proper tour you've done...
Marc: Yeah, I guess so, yeah.
Alex: Oh the last one actually had some really sort of decent size, like almost like a thousand. This one's definitely like a step up. This one's like 2200, so...
Marc: We just wanted to do like a couple of kind of smaller shows before the record came out, try out some of the new material and then come back after the record had come out, and hopefully people will be a little more familiar with the new songs.

Did you choose your tour support?
Alex: We did, and Million Dead was definitely apart, the best pick of the litter, and we're really glad we picked 'em, 'cause we didn't hear 'em beforehand. We all got a link sent to us, to listen to their music, and it turned out it was awesome, so...
M: I had heard like one song on a Rock Sound sampler. I liked it, so I was really into it. I think they also requested youcodenameis:milo, but they weren't really available, but they seemed like a pretty cool band as well.
I know you're touring with RX Bandits in the States – I would have figured you'd be bringing them over again...
A: Maybe another time, they're a lot of fun. We always talk about doing a world tour with them, but I don't know how logical or even possible that would be. Maybe we could do a tour with them over here. I know kids like 'em a lot here.
M: There's always somebody telling you the reasons why you can't go out with certain bands or something that's always kind of like a pain in the butt (Alex nods in agreement). You're always kind of tug-of-war-ing with somebody about what you wanna do and what they want you to do.
A: It's really hard for people to get their like schedules lined up correctly, you know?

I heard you cancelled a show in Amsterdam or something a few weeks ago... Oi!
(Alex leans over and grabs my questions, and starts reading them with a knowing look on his face)
M: To be honest, unfortunately we're towards the end of the line of people that find out what our dates are. So basically we hear news of like other European shows or whatever, but they'll cancel things before we even know about it. So we would get emails from people being like "oh, you were playing here and now you're not – what happened?" And I'd be like "wow, I didn't even know that was scheduled!" It's a bummer.
A: I think sometimes things get like prematurely announced, well before it's kind of like locked in, or before like we figure things out, and then announce that it's like not going ahead. It just always seems to get f**ked, it always seems we get to hear about it being cancelled after the fact, which puts us in weird positions. Like (angry voice) "why did you cancel Download?" I'm like "look, man, I dunno what Download is. I didn't know we were supposed to be playing it!"
You never heard of Download festival?
A: Not 'til recently. I'm American. A sheltered American at that.
M: We're down to play everywhere. We've been talking about how we wish that we'd played actually more of Europe, because we tend to play UK, and maybe Paris, and a couple of Germany shows, but we'd love to play some other places.
A: Yeah, I'm sick of you guys. (They laugh)
Thanks!
A: I'm kidding. I'm not really sick of you guys. I really enjoy to England. Manchester's actually one of the better cities.
M: Agreed.
A: I think this might be my favourite. I always have a good time.

Your first UK date since you recorded the album Say Hello To Sunshine was Give It A Name. That must have been kind of intimidating, especially as it must have been your first show in the UK, Mark.
M: Yeah, uh, it was a huge clusterf**k. We'd basically got off the plane, I think got situated, and then came to the venue... or maybe we went right to sleep and woke up and came to the venue. I'm not sure I remember right. Finch has all the gear over here, like Alex's old drum set and stuff, and we set things up completely differently. So basically I had like an hour and a half to get the drums out of the cases and set up the way that I want 'em, and change all the hardware and get it all set up, and then play to the biggest crowd I had ever played to in my life overseas. It was just really intimidating. We got up onstage and the monitors didn't work for the first almost three songs, and rightfully so the show didn't turn out all that great. It didn't get reviewed very well (Alex laughs) and I think it was just because, you know, it was mayhem onstage. We couldn't hear anything, and everybody was just out of it, because we had just flown super-far.
Yeah, it did feel like something wasn't going right!
M: Oh well! It happens, you know? You always have like those nights when it's kind of beyond your control, there's nothing you can do, it's out of your hands. But you do the best you can in that kind of situation.

Why did Pappas leave?
A: It's 'cause we asked him to leave.
(Huge Pause)
M: (Cracks up) You creep!
A: No, he, um... We parted ways with him. It was kind of something that needed to happen just so this record could be written and created or whatever. Like the other four of us and Pappas just were splitting heads about music. Whether I think he knew it at the time, he definitely, I think, felt secure in [the] place he was as a drummer, and what he always played, and we kind of wanted to move out of the box. I don't think he wanted to, or was ready to do it, or could do it, or... who knows? It just wasn't happening. For the record to happen, it just needed to happen with someone else.

So how did you come across Mark?
M: One thing I was going to add to that was I'm sure I can understand if everyone wasn't seeing eye-to-eye. I knew Randy and Alex from a few years ago when they did Warped tour, and my old band Counterfit did Warped tour as well. I'd met them, and I guess Randy was a fan of the band. And he called me one day... Actually, he called me a few times. Whenever we'd talk, he'd be like "you gotta come up to Temecula, and just jam with us stuff and we'll just like play music". And one day he called me and he was like...
A: (Whispering) We cheated on Pappas..!
M: He called me and he was just like "you gotta come up and jam", and I was like "alright, I'll come up in a couple of days." So I drove up to Temecula – it's only like an hour away from where I live – and like they had a drum kit set up, I just brought my snare drum, and we started playing these songs. I didn't know it was Finch by any means, I mean, I thought it was very different from the stuff I had heard on What It Is To Burn. And I was like "oh, is this a side-project for the band?" And they were like "no, they're Finch songs", and I was really surprised. And so I guess, from an outside perspective, I can see how if Pappas wanted to continue playing music that was fairly similar to Finch, or even along the lines of 'Project Mayhem', stuff that was heavier and more metal, it's still very different than what we ended up doing on the record. There's a lot of mathier stuff, or stuff in weird timings. I dunno, that's how I started playing. They asked me like a while later if I would play on the record, and I was totally into it. I mean, I... I dunno, I dunno what I'm saying!
A: No, that was good. And that's how I feel about that!
M: Yeah, that's how I feel about that!

So when was the point when they actually asked you to join properly?
A: We started asking him from like the first day, and he was like "No... No..."
M: Well, I was in that band Counterfit, I'd been playing with that band for about five years. I wasn't just going to up and leave, and I didn't feel like I could...
A: We offered him money to.
M: Nah, it was just I didn't feel comfortable playing in both bands, 'cause I knew it would hurt both bands because I would have the time to do so. Finally Counterfit ended up breaking up - not due to Finch by any means, just due to musical differences - and then I was able to devote my time to the band. But I felt like it would really screw Finch up if I was like "no, I can't be out touring" when they needed to be out touring. I got a taste of it when we were recording, because I wasn't officially in the band, and Counterfit needed to be doing stuff, and I was like "I need to hurry up and record and get home", and it was just hectic.

Did it feel weird at first having someone else drumming?
A: No, no, no. It felt awesome right away. I don't like to speak negatively about Pappas, and I'm not going to speak negatively about Pappas, but, when we were trying to write with him, we would literally spend an entire day on one part of a song, which is like fifteen seconds or something! Like fifteen seconds of music, just trying to lock it in and get it right, and get it like we heard it in our head. We all had this idea of how it should sound, but Pappas wouldn't necessarily understand the part, understand what he was supposed to play. Then me and Nate would try to show him how to do it, even though we're not drummers, by doing something really cheesy like tapping on our chest, or something, any way we could do it. And when it wasn't coming across, it was really difficult, and most of the time, those ideas were just getting thrown away.

As soon as we started jamming with Mark, we started showing him some of our ideas and he got 'em in seconds, and made writing easier. And also, besides him understanding it, he also brought more to the table, 'cause he's a guitar player as well, you know? He can write guitar parts or melody, as opposed to some drummers, or even some singers who don't play instruments, can't really bring to the table songwriting ideas, or whatever. So... I forget where I was going. What was your question again? (Laughs)

So when you were recording, did it take a year or something?
A: We started May... of 2001, and we've been recording ever since. (Laughs) No, uh, of 2004.
M: Yeah, it took less than a year.
A: No, it took almost...
M: Well, I recorded the drums in May, and then we pretty much finished up in...
A: (Laughs) Thirteen months til it came out!
M: Yeah, it took quite a long time to come out, but I think mixing and mastering aside we finished in February? Or March? March because we went out...
A: January.
M: Oh January. Okay, I dunno what I'm talking about. But we finished in January, so it took, I dunno, eight months, nine months?
A: But also there was a tour in there, there was a Christmas break. We took a month off at Christmas. Gotta celebrate Christ.
M: There was a lot of jugging with people we were working with. We didn't have a specific idea of how we wanted it to sound, we knew that we would know when we heard it.
A: Yeah, we were taking swings at it. It basically just like picking up, a producer and swinging them (does an impression of playing baseball with a producer as a bat) like this, seeing if we could hit something that we wanted.

Well, that would explain it if you managed to get through quite a few producers!
M: Yeah, it was just a lot of the ideas were general ideas, and we wanted to try a lot of different things, and get it sounding different than how the last record sounded. Especially somewhat in the post-hardcore genre, with a lot of the new bands that are coming out, the records sound really similar, you know? Really punchy metal drums, and super-thick, and whatever. We just wanted something that sounded a little more natural, so every single song with guitar tones, we'd use different guitars and different amps with different settings. We really treated every song like it was its own piece of music, instead of recording the whole album sounding the same. So, different drums, at least different snare drums, and different sounds, and different cymbals, and then different guitar amps...
A: We wanted it to sound like we were a band. We didn't want it to sound perfect. We felt like our last record was too... almost clinical, 'cause everything was just so in its f**king place. You could see everything coming; you heard the first chorus, you knew the second chorus was gonna be exactly the same, and it was exactly the same because Mark Trombino was just like (Mimes chopping up the track and arranging it) "ah, there we go!" Just like, cut it, take it over there.
M: I think that was part of the reason why we ended up parting ways with him, because he likes to do things in a really mechanical formulated way, and he had some ideas on changing the songs and making them a little more poppy than we would have preferred.
A: More formula...
M: Yeah, more formula. We wrote a lot of the songs and finished them because that was the way we wanted them to be. That's how we wanted them to turn out, and so when he wanted to change them, we were really butting heads on that type of thing. (Alex steals my questions again... Next time I'm tattooing them on my arm.) And after that we went through a couple of producers, just...
A: 'Cause it was fun.
M: (Laughs) We didn't really have the same ideas. We tried it out and then we realised it was going in a direction, but it wasn't necessarily the direction we wanted it to go in.

Aren't there different people working on the different songs?
M: As far as mastering goes, or mixing.
A: But Jason Cupp produced everything. Even if it's credited as not, he did everything.
M: (Laughs) Yeah, there are some disputes on that one.
A: There are some people that get credited for what they didn't do... Not naming names...
M: Rich Costey mixed three of the songs. He mixed 'Ink', 'Bitemarks...' and 'Miro', and we were really happy with how those came out. We actually had a bunch of people test mixing, and we were pretty bombed on how those were sounding as well. Because you can mix it however, it can sound like anything, and so a lot of people had different ideas and they weren't hitting it. Jason, in the beginning, wasn't hitting it and Rich mixed those three songs, and we were like "Perfect!" Pretty much changed a couple of teeny things, it was exactly what we wanted. Trying to describe how you want music to sound is like... It's indescribable! You sound like an idiot! It's stupid. Jason was trying to mix things, and we were going "oh no, bring this up, bring this up! Maybe that'll do it?" Finally we heard Rich's mixes, and he did something we couldn't explain, and all we needed to say to Jason is "something a little closer to this".
A: I think his mixes actually turned out better than Rich's, now that I've listened back to it.
M: Yeah, 'cause we got a basis for what we wanted and we could move forward from there.
A: It seemed like Jason got better with every mix he did too. Rich Costey did great too, though. We were hoping he could do the whole record, but he was too with his schedule, and (whispers jokingly) he's expensive!

So did you know Jason beforehand? I kind of get that impression from what I've read...
A: We met him one day while we were still writing the record. He was Mark Trombino's engineer, so the two of them came down to hang out with us, and Mark went in to hear some of the songs, and he wanted us to get comfortable with Jason, because Jason was gonna be (pause) doing all the work. (Laughs) He was basically like, came in "this is the guy I hired to do your record, this is Jason." No, he engineered the drums and stuff while we were still working with Mark, and then when we started working with Ben Moore, Ben is more like an analogue guy who did stuff with like tape machines, and all analogue stuff; but we had to do the record in Pro-Tools, just 'cause of the tracks we were planning on using. [Mark's] drums alone are like 20 tracks, and one a 24 track tape machine, with like one track for click, we're left with three tracks. We were like "we have to do it on [Pro-Tools]."
M: Yeah, really expensive. A lot of companies stopped making reel-to-reel tape as well, 'cause it's so phased out of the whole recording process.
A: We were working on Pro-Tools, and it wasn't really Ben Moore's thing. So we brought Jason in to engineer and stuff, and when Jason came back we hit off with him again. Jason just rules.

It sounds like you pretty much went along at your own pace, and didn't bow down to the pressure of "we need this track by this date..."
A: Oh, they tried. We were always like "yeah! Totally. We'll get it done in like two weeks." (Laughs) I remember the President of Geffen called me, and was "hey man! What's going on bro?" and I'm like "not so much, man, just walking in the studio..." and he was like "oh! Awesome! How's that going? You guys almost done?" I'm "yeah, we're..." and I was going to tell him what was going on, and he was like "Alex, Alex, dude, what's going on with your band, man? I mean, what's going on with your record?" I was like "We'll be done in like two weeks, tops. We'll take two weeks." And at this point, we were still working on bass, so we still had like vocals and all my guitar to do, which took another three months from that time! But I was swearing, I was like "Two weeks, man! Two weeks, we'll be done."
You bulls**ed the President of your record label?!
A: Quite well!
M: You gotta do what you gotta do!
A: It wasn't the first time!

To read the second part of our interview with Alex and Marc CLICK HERE.
To enter our brand new Finch competition, CLICK HERE.

by Ruth Midget

Further links

Drive Thru Records

The online site for Drive-Thru Records, home to bands such as Finch and Allistair

Finch music.com

Official site. Contains music, merch, tickets and much more

Perfection Through Silence.cjb.net

Great Finch fansite, with news, photos, tours and more!