In the age of the mp3, the Shills have recorded a concept album. The hometown rockers have used their diverse musical backgrounds to painstakingly weave us an intricate tale of a metaphorical man on a metaphorical deserted island, and you jackasses go and buy individual tracks here and there. Oh well.

Besides figuring out the hard way that the concept album is a dead art, Bryan Murphy, Eric Ryrie, Dave Sicilian and James Zaner have been spending their time touring up and down the east coast, complete with a multi-show stint in Nashville. Back in August before they hit the road, Gab and I got a chance to sit down with the guys and talk about the new record, where their heartfelt verses and rockin’ hooks come from and why they’re considering releasing the album as one long track.

–Jessie Rogers

OPENING ACT: THE SHILLS AND THE TEAPARTY TEN

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?

Bryan: Cheerios. I eat Cheerios everyday, I love that shit.

Eric: I like Rice Krispies

James: Honey Crunch

Dave: I like Honey Bunches of Oats

You wake up after a crazy night out with a tattoo. You don’t know where it came from– What is it?

E: Probably some sort of Muppet.

B: See, Dave passes out so I could drag him and get a penis tattooed on his head so that’s what Dave’s tattoo would be. I would get Frank Zappa’s ’stache.

J: A lightning bolt.

[Gab makes stupid Harry Potter reference that no one appreciates.]

B: Wait, I didn’t mean pass out, I meant black out.

You wake up in the morning and you are one of Jim Henson’s Muppets. Which Muppet are you?

E: Ernie. My aunt always used to call me Ernie so I always associate myself with Ernie.

B: I am definitely going with Animal.

D: The Swedish Chef

J: Snuffalupagus

If you were a kitchen appliance, what would you be?

B: A food processor. I can grind things up and make it really mushy.

E: I don’t have an answer for that, I don’t know.

J: Dave, you would definitely be a toaster.

D: I was going to say an ice makes because they are really useful and awesome.

You can never have too much ice…If you were a type of cheese, what would you be?

B: I am going to go with blue cheese. You can put it on anything, occasionally smells bad.

E: Dave, your cottage cheese.

D: Why am I getting so many of these things projected on me?

Who would you rather punch in the face, Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles or Mouth from The Goonies?

B: Definitely Long Duk Dong

D: I’ll go with Brian. Fuck that guy. I probably blacked out when it happened anyway.

[Everyone laughs]

J: The other guy, sure.

Would you rather be a sumo wrestler or a rodeo clown?

B: Those rodeo clowns drink. They are really drunks, it’s a fact actually. My grandfather lives in Georgia, he knows those guys, he sees them at the bar all the time and they are like trashed. They talk about it, “Ah, that bull got me in the ass.” They are always trashed, that’s what he says!

If you were a particular style of facial hair, what would you be?

E: Since I can only grow a mustache, I would have to be a kickin’ mustache. I would be that mustache. [points to Michael Epstien of The Motion Sick who happens to be walking into Upstairs Middle East Bar]

B: Full on beard, a big one! Like ZZ Top.

D: I am going with a Fu Manchu.

E: James is a neck beard.

J: Yeah, neck beard…I would be peach fuzz. [everyone laughs]

What is you dance-around-your-house-in-your-underwear song?

B: There are so many! “The Way you Make me Feel” since I was a baby.

D: Basically anything Michael Jackson.

B: The other one is “Raspberry Beret” I love that song. And honestly a Mushuga song. It’s called “Soul Burn.” It really gets me siked up.

J: I bought Michael Jackson’s Dangerous the day that he died. The moment I requited my love for him, he had to leave me.

What’s your favorite word?

B: Fuck!

E: Nice, with an Australian accent.

J: Barrow. I just learned that one. The barrow is the shady part under the tree near the roots.

D: Whatchamacallit because I say that all the time.

Also a delicious candy bar…

THE MAIN EVENT: THE SHILLS TPB INTERVIEW

How did The Shills form?

E: Me and Dave have been playing together forever. Technically, me and James started it and then we got Dave and went through a million different members. We had a different singer and we were a band around town for a year called Gallery. Then we fired her and picked up Bryan from Craigslist. It’s sort of a typical story.

What is it about the line up right now that makes it special?

B: We have been together for five and a half years. It’s a matter of everybody having a similar goal for the product of the music and then there is just a general want to create music. It’s easy to work together for years and years and years even through pissing and moaning and fighting and all the other stuff. It’s easy because there is a common thread, which is creativity wise and wanting to be a part of a band and playing constantly. So, it’s easy to make it work. There are no arguments about the music, which is usually the easiest thing to deal with.

E: I feel confident playing with these guys.

Describe your creative process.

E: Bryan and I write the music

B: I came from a conservatory where I was studying composition. I was doing jazz mostly and some classical so when I came back to join a band I found their music to be pretty interesting, but I didn’t really like the style. So I came in with a compromise as to create new things. As an added member who writes a lot as well, we ended up having a ton of music right away. Which is still the case now. The one unique thing about us is that we have a two-headed writing “thing”. There are very few times where more is coming from one place than another. It’s pretty equal, which has given us a two-headed sound as well. His [Eric] style is very different than mine and how Dave and James arrange in and write their parts to it is a whole other sound.

E: [Dave and James] have just as much to do with the way a song comes out as what we put in.

B: Yeah, it’s just a strange process where there is two people coming in with two different ideas so it’s constant creativity which again is another reason why we really haven’t had any problems. When there is tons of music to work on, we always have our noses to the grindstone.

J: In a way, Bryan’s really trained background and Eric’s non-trained background brought Eric up a level and brought Bryan…

E: And brought Bryan down a level. [everyone laughs]

J: In a way, Bryan’s talents challenge Eric and they try to meet each other in the middle somewhere with that style. Bryan has his background; Eric has his background…that’s their writing process.

B: I fee like the middle ground is you guys [Dave and James]. You kind of squeeze it down. You take one side [Dave] and you take one side [James] and you push it.

D: Even though Bryan and Eric are the primary writers, I still feel like we write as a band. A song is usually never completely finished until we all get together.

B: Yeah, almost never.

D: We’ve got parts and we all seem to know where it’s going to end up eventually. We are good at working together in that way in that we can bang stuff out pretty quickly.

B: We don’t have to worry about being one sound. We are totally cool if because of that process that you get a ton of different sounds. To me that only gives us an advantage performance wise because you can create different stories with different genres along the way.

Bryan, you came from a jazz background, what about the rest of you guys?

E: I learned how to play by ear. I picked stuff up from my friend and my dad plays a little bit. I am a musical mutt, where ever I can get it from, I can get it from

D: James and I went to Berklee. I came from more of like a jam-bandy background I guess. I did not start playing until I was about sixteen. I did not get serious about it until I was about eighteen and transferred to Berklee when I was about twenty or so. I find myself liking to play funkier stuff, but not necessarily rock n roll. I like trying to add that to this music without trying to force it.

Where is everyone from?

B: We are all pretty local. All from Massachusetts. Mass boys.

Let’s talk about the new record.

B: It’s a concept record. I started writing it outside the band as a solo project and then I brought a couple of the tunes to rehearsal and they liked it. They we went head-on with a bunch of stuff Eric had that we had never heard and pieced the whole story together with little bits of music.

E: I mean, there is a different story between the music and the whole lyrical aspect. The lyrics are Bryan’s idea.

B: Yeah, the concept is mine, but the music was put together piece by piece.

E: It’s basically what we had left over from the last record. All these little ideas that we just flushed out and there were a lot more there than we realized. At first, we were just going to do an EP with three or four songs then there were six songs and before we knew it, we had fifteen songs. It sort of came together on it’s own.

B: I had this idea of it being this epic struggle coming from a metaphoric stance of a man on an island, which represents much deeper greater things society-wise. What the boat represents. What the island represents. To any person those things are more than one thing metaphorically and to try to piece that whole thing together was something I have never done. I wanted to do it and I knew these guys totally had my back and it took us a year and a half to make it. But, it’s one straight thought from beginning to end. It has been interesting for us seeing how people buy it online because people are buying individual songs, which is very weird in our minds. That has taught us a very big lesson, which was, concept records are dead [band laughs]. But it was definitely the most rewarding thing musically in my whole life.

D: Or we’ll just release it as one track. [laughs]

B: [Laughs] But yeah, it was a big endeavor but it was a lot of fun to make. I think it’s the best thing we’ve done.

E: it kind of came out of left field. It’s very different from the record we made before, which is funny because a lot of the songs were written at the same time. We did a lot of exploring. The last two records was us trying to define our sound. This new record says, “Here’s what came out when we sneezed.”

B: It was a way of cleaning house too. It’s a very short record. It’s thirty-six minutes and it’s fifteen songs.

J: Every song is not your traditional song.

How do you guys translate album into a live performance given that it’s a concept album? Do you play the whole album through?

B: We did it for the album release show and we had all the strings and horns too.

E: We had eleven people on stage at one point.

B: We have not since done the whole record through, but we are for sure going to do it again in the next couple of months. We play the tunes based off of the popularity of it. What is downloaded and what people ask for.

E: We know what our friends like.

So in terms of playing live, do you all have any crazy/fun stories from the road?

B: This is our first tour! First FULL tour, yeah.

E: We never felt like we were never done in the studio. We felt like there was always another record to make. This is the first time we all looked around and all agreed that we need to stop writing and we need to get out on the road. That and we don’t have van. (laughs)

B: Yeah so hopefully we will have pictures, video, stories, twitter, all that stuff!

Where are you guys excited to play?

All: Nashville!

E: Nashville is the goal. We are playing at The Basement and playing a house party down there, we can’t wait. We have a lot of friends down there and we have never been as a band, but we are really excited to get a chance to check out the city.

B: I am excited for Philly too because I have never been there. I have heard it’s such a cool city.

[Frenzy of talk about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and unabashed love for Danny Devito ensues]

How do you feel about performing in your home city compared to other cities?

B: It’s smaller and there is more of culture of musicians because there are three pretty prestigious music schools. That helps in terms of connections and contacts. You can make a stream of connections.

E: Boston can feel like the tiniest town in the world. It very incestuous, everyone knows everyone. We have been playing with the same ten bands for the last five years now.

What are your favorite venues is Boston?

B: Great Scott.

E: Yeah, Middle East and Great Scott.

B: Great Scott, best sound, most consistent draw, nicest people…definitely the nicest people. Not that anybody is horribly mean…

All: Well, Harper’s Ferry. Fuck that place. Can you write that down? Fuck Harper’s Ferry. [band laughs]

B: Especially Carl from Great Scott is the most approachable booking agent that I have ever known. It’s definitely the most musician-friendly club hands down.

D: It seems like in Boston, the good venues are in good locations. That’s why the Middle East and Great Scott are consistently good. If you are doing well at Great Scott and at Middle East, you are doing well in Boston.

B: I think Boston is one of the more unique music cities in the country.

E: Especially when we go to New York the sound guys and people who are working the club are always saying that the quality of Boston bands coming through their venue is so much higher than the general quality of all the other New York bands. That makes me happy to hear. It’s encouraging and it gives up a reason to continue to say here.

On a personal level, who are you listening to right now?

E: The new Cursive record is fucking amazing.

B: Hell yeah!

J: Yeah, Cursive. I got the new Decemberists record. Since Michael Jackson is dead, we have been listening to a lot of that.

D: We have a lot of cross over influences, but then we each have our own thing. I got way into Motown stuff when I first started playing bass. I really dig that stuff like old Stevie Wonder, I really dig that shit.

B: I listen to a lot of jazz and I listen to a lot of metal and I am a very big fan of old music. Stuff from the 1940s and 1950s and also psychedelic rock, always have been. Like Yes and Frank Zappa is my hero. I listen to Queen a lot as well.

What Boston bands are you listening to?

All: Shoney Lamar and The Equal Rights!

B: Those guys are great.

E: Some of our best friends are in this band called This Car Up and they are about to break up and it’s breaking our hearts.

D: Mean Creek.

E: Supervolcano, a new up-and-coming band that melts our faces.

B: Kid:nap:kin

E: We love Thick as Thieves.

B: Left Hand Does, they are fantastic as well. We are not very knowledgeable on a lot of the new dance stuff that is happening. I kind of feel weird about that, not being hip to that. I know it’s happening, but I have only seen Passion Pit once.

What’s up next for The Shills other than touring?

B: There is really a matter of getting on the road and or relocating. It’s either one or the other or both of them combined. Our best asset is that we play live really well. That is our best quality. If we get on the road for the next year, two years and be out consistently the hope is that somebody will pick up the album. Find some means to use our abilities to record with these guys as a group to play live to gain some sort of financial intake.

E: The old model is gone obviously.

B: We are not going to print CDs for our next album. We made that mistake for the last time. People don’t want CDs, they want something else. How do we promote? How to we make a financial gain from this?

D: We have spent a lot of time in the studio and I think we need to get our heads out of there. We are really good at writing songs and arranging them and laying them down, but we are not so good at persistently networking and pushing ourselves out there.

E: We are really trying to be optimistic and really get ourselves out there in a way that we haven’t done before. Maybe this tour is the first step. One step at a time and we’ll see where it takes us.