No Longer at Arm's Length
The Receiver transforms Columbus' Prog Rock
By Travis Hoewischer |
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For brothers Casey and Jesse Cooper, it's hard to avoid the term 'serious' when it comes to their up-and-coming band The Receiver.
As you read this, the boys are likely preparing to plug in and deliver their music - a precise mesh of drum and bass laid over a bedding of pristine vocals and electronic arrangements - to a bar crowd that may, at first, not quite know what to think of them.
"You get a lot of dudes standing close to the stage, trying to see whether you're worth listening to or not," drummer Jesse said. "To get those people to stay there the whole show . . . that's the stuff that makes a show. Right now, we're earning fans one at a time, and that's okay with us."
They're earning critical praise at a much faster clip than that. Recording their debut album, Decades, a collection of songs originating from Casey's senior music composition thesis at Ohio State, earned them a deal with New York imprint Stunning Models on Display. After a small tour, the boys went to work on Length of Arms, released this summer locally by Vital Music Records, to glowing reviews, including one in Paste Magazine, which sprinkled praise on the Coopers with name checks like Radiohead, Arcade Fire, and the Beach Boys.
All good fodder for the musical scrapbook, but the brothers are hunkering down for another tour, and are focused on keeping The Receiver in the ears of anyone who cares enough to listen.
"It's about longevity," Casey said. "We're just trying to stay in the game."
As we mentioned, the term 'serious' comes to mind when you hear The Receiver. Do you guys struggle with making that accessible?
CC: We've gotten a lot better with it. The first record was super mellow.
JC: Super-serious (laughs).
CC: It was just too mellow. We toured off of it and we got used to the idea that people maybe got a little bored. A lot of the songs were somber and slower.
JC: They'd sandwich us in a bill with like a singer/songwriter and a hard rock band.
CC: ... or wherever we could get a gig. When we did the second record, I was conscious of that. I wanted to write songs that were more energetic. Even if people didn't like the music itself, they'd appreciate the energy. On the second record, that energy is there.
Casey Cooper, Jesse Cooper, and Sean Gardner of The Receiver
Photo: Christopher Atwood
Your music, both in arrangement and lyrics, is a little bit headier, for lack of a better term. Is that fair to say?
CC: I've always been a fan of music that kind of takes you somewhere else. I've never listened to music just to bounce around and sing along and have a good the time. Music for me is always something I've liked digesting mentally. I like escaping into that world that is being created. That's just the kind of music we grew up listening to. It just translated naturally.
JC: Music to us is something that we take very seriously and we want to present in a way that we like to receive it, or see it played. Music has always been more than something that's in the background to us. It's always been more inspiring.
CC: It's also something, as cheesy as it sounds, that was always intimate to me. When I liked a band, I couldn't wait to show a friend of mine what was so special about a song to me. Like a Radiohead lyric, or a certain part.
Radiohead gets mentioned a lot with you guys. Are you uncomfortable with that comparison?
CC: Oh, no way. They're definitely one of my favorite bands. We're happy to be compared to them. I look up to them. But, when you listen to us and them, we don't really sound that much alike. I never thought we did. Maybe it's just the same aesthetic. Maybe it's the mood. They use a lot of minor keys, and Thom Yorke always deals out strong melodies and those are things I always stress with our songs.
What's the dynamic between you brothers? Any Oasis-style punchouts?
JC: Nah, we're not the type of guys that are always in turmoil. Yeah, we do spend a shitload of time together; we live together, we do the band together, so spats are bound to happen. But, it's over in a minute.
CC: We kind of have different roles in the band, so we respect each other in that sense.
Does that change the dynamic on stage now that you've added a third member (guitarist Sean Gardner) to your live show?
CC: I've grown pretty fond of having him play with us. Adding a guitar in the live setting is cool - plus, just having another body on stage...
JC: It adds to the dynamic. Playing with other people, there's nothing like that. That's something we've been missing as a two-piece. We're playing to a grid every show, so every song every night is going to be exactly the same. It's nice to add that third member to mix it up and get you feeling alive again.
Casey, it's gotta be weird for you to essentially front the whole band in a live setting.
CC: Totally. The whole time (Jesse's) sitting down. I'm the only one standing up there. Having Sean step on stage with me, he's getting into it and it diverts attention from me and my bass guitar . . . and Jesse with his drum faces.
Drum faces?
CC: Oh man. There's a ton of evidence out there. He's the worst, dude. (laughs). I think he saw some pictures of himself and now he works harder on it.
JC: (laughs) It's hard. To really feel something, I start losing consciousness of what I look like to anyone else. It's a bad habit.
Nah. That's what a drummer should look like. So, besides Sean, any plans for expanding the band even further?
CC: Eventually, I would like to have three keyboardists, two guitarists, and Jesse and I. That way all the ground is covered. That would be heaven, because then we wouldn't have play with the computer. But, right now, logistically, it just makes sense (as a two-piece).
Length of Arms got a glowing review in Paste Magazine, and you guys were signed to a label pretty much right out of the gate.
JC: It's definitely something that doesn't just come. Like, 'Yeah, man we're just gonna make this record and it's gonna be great.' There's a lot of legwork that goes into it, that I don't want to say is embarrassing, but . . . it's shameless. I mean, there are so many bands out there, why should someone care about yours? What makes you different than anyone else? It's a never-ending battle to convince people that you're worth listening to.
CC: There's bands popping up every single day. And there's bands breaking up every single day. Our whole theory here - or hope - is longevity. Stay in the game, don't quit after the first record, don't quit after the second record and eventually it's gonna catch on.
Having gotten good reviews nationally has been great - but it doesn't pay our bills. It's putting us in the ballpark.
You seem very casual about the path that the band is on. Do you ever allow yourself to have any "holy @#$%" moments amongst the two of you?
CC: Totally. When we signed the contract, we made it a special event. I printed two copies and set them out on the table. I mean, it was a moment for us.
JC: We felt like we were on top of the world, man.
CC: I remember on the first tour, we did this radio interview and in the studio we were playing it all cool, answering questions. Later, we're at Taco Bell, and I'm like, 'Dude, we just did a radio interview! This is gonna work! (laughs) We even had a couple songs on that Courtney Cox show, Dirt. We sat down, watched the premiere, got the camcorder out. I was geeked when we got the Paste review, too.
JC: We get giddy about stuff. But, we've also been humbled. We're in our fourth year and we're not much more popular than six months after we started. We prepare for the worst of times, but we're ready for the best of times.
The Receiver will play the annual Halloween show at Skully's, Oct. 30. For tracks and tour dates, check out www.myspace.com/thereceiver.
Originally Published: October 1, 2009
