Pants Yell!
Records A Proper Album

By Nadav Carmel
Photo by Lara Woolfson

“I look at what we’re doing as a fun thing, as a craft, as an art. I’m not looking to make these imaginary barriers that we’re breaking through. I make music, and people like it, and that’s all I need.”
-Andrew Churchman

“That’s growing up / I wish someone would’ve prepared us for this when we were younger.”

Nostalgic lines like this are peppered across Pants Yell!’s third album (fourth if you count their initial cassette), Alison Statton. It’s true, your twenties are hard and no one tells you. But judging by the band’s success, a lot of people can relate. Nothing is stable — your jobs, your relationships, your sense of self.

“I think your early twenties are really crucial years,” says bandleader Andrew Churchman. For Churchman that meant graduating from art school, touring overseas, moving home, and then writing the band’s strongest album yet.

The original members — Churchman, plus bassist Sterling Bryant and then drummer Carly Smith — met and formed the band at MassArt in 2003. In the short years since, they’ve released a tape on an obscure Italian cassette label (the aptly named Best Kept Secret), a few things on an only slightly less obscure American CD-R label (Asaurus), and their first “real” CD on local imprint Paper Cities. Finally, the band was invited to play the humongous Emmaboda pop festival in Sweden this past summer and toured Europe as well, yet Alison Statton (on the quietly esteemed Soft Abuse) is their first album with national or digital distribution or promotion, and for the first time, the band is seeing an impressive amount of national press.

Named for the singer of legendary Welsh post-punks Young Marble Giants, Alison Statton was conceived, written, and demoed entirely at the upright piano in Churchman’s childhood home in coastal New Jersey. “I’d just graduated college, it was the first time I wasn’t in school, just came back from a tour of Europe with my band, like a dream. So I was definitely in a weird spot at home,” he says. “It was comforting, but at the same time it was a like big kick in the ass. I just need to do something different or I need to get out of here.’ It was either do or die. I was just not going to make another Pants Yell! record, or really go for it, do something better.” So instead of wallowing (“Those are very easy feelings to put down on paper ... it’s very cliché.”), Churchman turned the experience into a sophisticated concept album about what it means to grow up. From the start it’s apparent that the band has grown up as well. The Pants Yell! of Alison Statton is more mature, more confident. Around the simple guitar-bass-drums setup, Andrew’s soft-spoken vocals take turns with keyboards and horns, a little feedback (but only a little), and even a tastefully brief spoken word part courtesy of Ponies in the Surf’s Camille McGregor — all without sacrificing the casual feel that’s part of what makes Pants Yell! so appealing. Much of this energy and cohesion can be credited to new drummer Casey Keenan, of Major Stars. Andrew says: “Casey is the missing piece for Pants Yell!. He was totally such a breath of fresh air, a line in the sand that forced us to really get better. He’s an amazing musician, and has such
a deep history and love for music. The most amazing record collection I’ve ever seen, Casey Keenan has. It’s incredible. And so he brings a lot of really good ideas. Like I’m writing these two-minute pop songs and he’s coming from listening to Soft Machine and Captain Beefheart at 13, and so he has these awesome ideas that he’ll throw to us.”

Which means a lot, coming from Andrew, who himself can toss off nerdy musical references like nobody’s business. The Pants Yell! aesthetic, both musically and visually, has always owed much to The Smiths (not obscure, but who “always have been, are, and will always be my favorite band,” says Churchman), who also get lyrical nods on Alison Statton, alongside Paul Simon and Billy Bragg. “It’s almost like a secret code, this little inside whisper to the club.” And indeed Pants Yell! has been somewhat of a codeword among those in the know, recalling the days of Xeroxed zines and tape trading, even in the era of filesharing and blogs. “We’ve been lucky that the people who have heard our music ... are doing interesting or creative things and we’ve been able to get to people all around the country, or all around the world, too ... It seems like the people who buy [our] records either have labels, or run distribution, or write for this fanzine or this magazine or this weblog. I think it’s just a matter of certain people hearing us and liking it and then wanting to help us out, which has been lucky for us and has been really, really nice ... It seemed like it was this nice little secret.”

All of this can be summed up in the title Allison Statton. According to Churchman, it’s “so British, so sweet, and reminds me of this comforting, amazing music that blew my mind. I really wanted the album to be kind of feminine because we’re all boys now, but I think we’re a sweet band. We’re a sweet bunch of boys. And I wanted the spirit of Alison Statton to evoke that.” Which it does, in spades. You don’t have to get the Young Marble Giants reference to enjoy Pants Yell!, but the band invites you to know. It’s this fraternal (or sororal) warmth and unpretentiousness that has gained them so many devoted fans worldwide. “A lot of later adolescents really like us and get in touch with us,” Andrew says.

A story from Pants Yell!’s European vacation bears this out. After the last show of the tour, in Iceland, “Carly came up to me and was like, ‘These girls over there are buying T-shirts,’ Andrew relates. “...’OK.’ And she was like, ‘They came from Finland to see us.’ We didn’t play in Finland, so they decided to take their holiday in Iceland, these six girls, and came to see us in Iceland. Which was one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to this band. Oh my god, it was so sweet. I don’t know, it’s just crazy. I grew up in New Jersey, I live in Boston, what the fuck?”

And now for Pants Yell! — a little older, a little wiser — it’s time to settle down. There are no big touring plans in the future: Casey is on tour with Major Stars, and Andrew just started a new job. “I only have so much vacation time a year, and I’d like to actually go on vacation when I have my vacation time, you know? We’re gonna hang out, we’re gonna write some new songs and see what happens after that.”

It’s that sense of contentment that Pants Yell! has come to terms with on Alison Statton. “This is where we are,” says Churchman. “I look at what we’re doing as a fun thing, as a craft, as an art. I’m not looking to make these imaginary barriers that we’re breaking through. I make music, and people like it, and that’s all I need.”

www.asaurus.org/pantsyell