An Interview with Come from
Qrt's Garage Netzine

When Come's guitarists/singers Thalia Zedek and Chris Brokaw played in Copenhagen as a part of Steve Wynn's backing band at the end of march, Kasper did this short interview about their new album Near Life Experience and the departure of their rhythm group and stuff...

Qrt's Garage: So, you have a new record out?
Chris: Yeah, it's called Near Life Experience, it's on Matador in the US, and Domino in England.
QG: You got a new bass player and drummer. Why did Arthur and Sean leave?
Chris: I think they both just sort of got tired of it.
QG: Why?
Chris: Well, Arthur got married this last summer, so he didn't really wanted to be on the road all the time. He really miss his wife and everything, and just wanted to find some different work. Sean really wanted to go back to school, you know, they had other interests they wanted to check out, and stuff that was kind of difficult to do, being in the band, because the band takes up so much time.

[A pic of Thalia by Chris taken at Copenhagens City Hall Square (from the sleeve of "Don't Ask Don't Tell").]

QG: There are two different rhythm sections on the record?
Chris: Half the record has Tara Jane O'Neil and Kevin Coultas on bass and drums, both of whom used to be in a band called Rodan, from Louisville, Kentucky, and Tara and Kevin both play in a band called Senora Pine [sp?] now, so they are both busy with different things. So they are on half the record, and actually those two will be playing with us here. And the other half of the record has Mac McNeilly from the Jesus Lizard playing drums and Bundy Brown from Tortoise and Gastr Del Sol playing bass, and there is actually a bunch of different people playing on the record; a friend of ours, Jeff, playing trumpet, and our friend Edd from Kustomized playing violin, and this woman Beth playing piano and organ. I think once we figured out it was the two of us orchestrating the whole record we just brought in a lot of different people to play on it.
QG: So is it more a kind of studio album?
Thalia: No, it's not... maybe a little bit more than our other stuff, maybe a little more special things, but the basics of all the songs are still guitars, bass and drums.
QG: How does it sound in comparison with the other two albums?
Thalia: It's not completely different, I think it's a little less complex, maybe, musically, but the songs themselves maybe don't have as many different parts to them, but it's hard for me to know exactly, but that's what people say, that the songs come out stronger.
QG: How would you describe the development that has been on your records?
Thalia: For one thing, Arthur and Sean has left the band -
QG: Yeah, but musicwise -
Thalia: Well, that's a big change musicwise, too, because they had a pretty unique style of playing, so I think maybe more different types of songs...
Chris: A lot of the songs we wrote, I think, particularly on the last one, "Don't Ask Don't Tell," were songs that the four of us had put together, and so for one thing there is more a tendency to have longer instrumental parts on the last one. On the new one, most of the songs was put together just Thalia and I sitting down and playing guitars, structuring the whole song. So I think there's more a tendency to get to the point.

[Chris. Is that a Codeine shirt he's wearing?]

QG: How do you see the difference between what you did in Live Skull, and what you do in Come?
Thalia: Um, I think it's very different. In Live Skull, I didn't write any of the music, just sang, so that's a big difference, and I think Live Skull had a very different feel to it...
QG: Yeah, but I think there are certain similarities, the early Come and the late Live Skull...
Thalia: Yeah, yeah, um - maybe... I think the more noisy type of stuff, and the sort of jerky type rythms are the same, but I think there are a lot of differences too, just the way Live Skull wrote songs, it was more like different parts that were put together, and I think the way we write songs, it's more like one feeling throughout the whole song, that's what we try to do anyway.
Chris: She was in Live Skull, and I was a big fan of them, so it's bound to have some influence. I think there is maybe some similarities the way the guitars go together, cause I think the two guitar players in Live Skull had a really great way of combining their playing, that you sometimes wouldn't know who was playing what.
QG: You are gonna tour europe later this summer?
Thalia: Yeah we're gonna start in the first week in May, until June.

Come plays in Copenhagen around June 1. We'll probably do another interview with them then...