Spill! Todd Jordan of Brighton UK's My Device

 
My Device photo by Tear-n Tan 

Late last year, GAT's Carly was able to make a dash for NYC's Cake Shop to catch up with some friends for a last-minute gig. Catching a later Chi-town bus than expected; the trip itself throttled this girl into the city in a shady under two hours which was frightful at the time but meant that Girl About Town was absolutely supposed to catch the set of openers from Brighton UK, My Device, who had released their latest album "Jumbo Fiasco" on Shifty Disco. Creating a buzz for themselves; the band were playing a week's round of live shows in the city with the headline on this particular evening being one of the band's own influences. The feeling all around was jubilant, and the set was furiously played with enough live energy to propel the crowd of onlookers to the front of the room to watch the action unfold. Afterwards, we were able to catch up with Todd Jordan, lead singer of the group, who gave us the run-down of the band's adventures on their first American city week-long tour in The Big Apple.

Girl About Town: How long has My Device been together for?

Todd Jordan: Seven years, but we were only good for about three of them.

And, the material you played tonight; was that from the new album?

We've got two albums, but there's only really one that we're plugging over here. About half the stuff is from the new one, which is Jumbo Fiasco (that's the one on Shifty Disco). The other half is stuff that we've written since then, that we just think is fun to play.

 
My Device photos by Tear-n Tan

Your live sound is a crossover between harder rock, and an early 70s punch reminiscent of The Flamin' Groovies Cyril Jordan and the album Teenage Head. A little bit of a 70s and 60s garage crunch mixed with punk. Where do your influences lie?

No one's ever said any of those things ever like that to us before. We really like The Fall, and we looove Ex-Models. Which, it's quite amazing to be playing here with Knyfe Hyts (pr. "Knife Hits") tonight. We're Devo fans, The Birthday Party, all of Nick Cave's stuff. I could go on and on, but I won't...

My Device is really animated while performing, I love that you all work together--your bassist (Russell Eke) really leans on your drummer, nearly on top of eachother with you (Todd) engulfing yourself into the crowd! So, this is your first time out to play the US, correct? What's your experience been like so far being away from home and Brighton?

First time out of England, yeah! It's been absolutely amazing, it's been THE most incredible time we've ever had. Every single person we've met....bar one cab driver, who was really angry at us for no reason at all....has been the most lovely people ever--ever, ever, ever, ever. And, we were expecting, like, people to be a bit stand-offish I guess, because we're not just from out of town--but we're from England, and we didn't know how well we'd go down with the American crowds. But every single person we've met has really opened their arms and have done everything they can to help us. It's been amazing!

 
 
My Device photos by Tear-n Tan

And what's been your favorite US show so far?
Tonight.

Tonight; The NY show (here at the Cake Shop)?

Absolutely. They're actually all NY shows, we're doing a week of shows here in NYC. We're doing five dates. The first one was when we arrived, and we played like, a loft in Bushwick (which was really fun) that's actually where we're staying with a group called The Library Is On Fire--who are incredible. And last night, we did Goodbye Blue Monday, which was really weird with everything nailed to the wall--again kind of a similar vibe to the loft show. What we're really not used to, is in England; every band gets a soundcheck, so, like you know, you turn up an hour before you're supposed to  play, and you fiddle with the things, get everything sounding right....

They don't have that here all the time--depending on the band, but you do just go on sometimes!

Nobody told us....you just walk up about ten minutes before you play, and then you just play. The first two shows we were a bit surprised. But once we shook off this anal-headed thing where we have to get all of the knobs in the right position....and just f**king playing, it's nice--it takes a lot of the stress out. There shouldn't be any stress; it should be a stress-free environment.

‘You can tell they’re a band who love distortion
pedals and bending weird sounds out of their 
guitars. They’re not a virtuoso band, which is 
cool, because rock’n’roll shouldn’t be about 
that, it should be about heart and passion and 
ideas and romance’ - NME 

 
My Device photos by Tear-n Tan

Your most recent album, Jumbo Fiasco (on Shifty Disco), was released just before '08 in England and you are just finding your way to the US. Are you hoping for a release over here or anywhere else?

Possibly early next year (2009), it's coming out in the rest of Europe. Really, one of the reasons we came [to the US], is that we were hoping to stick in on some shelves in America. We have the album, we just want to put it on some shelves, that's all we want.

Are you waiting to work on new material, or are you doing that now, regardless of whether it gets picked up or not?

We write all the time, but, you know what it's like--you don't choose when to write new material. We play all of the time because it's fun. It's not symphony music, you can't just sort of write it down, and then pull it out of a drawer later and play it exactly the same way. You've got to finish it there and then....and then try and record it before you forget it. And because, I don't know how to write or read [sheet] music. So we're always writing. Fortunately our drummer lives in a recording studio in Brighton, so we can record stuff really easy and then it's just, there. We've got about eight new songs. I'm sure by the time, if we ever (fingers crossed) get to do another album, we'll have grown sick of the load of them, and we'll have new ones--if we start early that means we can pick the most fun ones...

  
My Device photos by Tear-n Tan

"Their second album hurtles through 14 relentlessly intricate songs in 35 minutes, evoking classic art-pop from early Eno, The Fall and XTC through to current post-punksters The Futureheads and Young Knives, dispatched with the intensity of hardcore punk. Their humour and skill hits hardest on Eat Lead, a thrilling attempt to shoe-horn every great post-punk record into three minutes of gung-ho optimism." - Q Magazine

What's the craziest song you've ever written, besides "Super Tonio" about a baby named Antonio (who is, erm, very large)?

Well we just write about what interests us, really. We do have one song that was based around an accident. We had half of a song idea; we were playing around with it as a joke--it was like this really fast country and western song about how, 'we do what we want! when we want!'. It was just supposed to be an in-joke, and then we did this show in Brighton at our favorite venue, and it was just by luck--like, it was a really crazy one, with loads of people out and we finished too early and we needed to play more stuff, and all we had left was this half-finished song. So we were just like, do you guys mind if we play this song even though it's not finished. And we didn't have an ending, and so we played it until we'd got to where we got, and then I threw my guitar on the ground, and took the mic and ran around and talked to people....and then Russell threw his bass down, and then it just ended with the drums. And, it was just because we didn't know how to end it. We went back to the studio and we were like, 'we should try and finish that song,' and then we decided not to. And now, that's sort of how it happens every time. So there's now a set point in that song where we just, sort of, drop our instruments....

Was that the song that you played tonight?

Noo, that was--I broke a string--and I had to run and get the spare guitar backstage, so...

Well, that was really great live stage entertainment--quality!

Thank you! I break a sh*t load of strings. Yeah, we use the thickest gauge strings we can buy and still they're going and going, and going, all the time. When we're in England, we make sure to bring four guitars to shows. We couldn't bring any musical gear here, so we just posted our effects pedals ahead of us, and then went to the guitar store and bought the cheapest guitar models we could find, and I actually just plan to smash mine up on our last show here because it's just too big to bring home, so...

Our last question is normally reserved for the question "what is your favorite thing about Philadelphia," but, since you've never been...

No, wait--I actually do have a favorite thing! It's this thing I use back home on my bagels--Philadelphia Cream Cheese, a low-fat cream cheese. I really love that. (Ed note.: Kraft's Philadelphia Cream Cheese was first created as a brand name in New York, at that time the name 'Philadelphia' was tacked on because in the 1880s the city of Philadelphia was considered to be "the home of top quality food" (- Kraft 'Philadelphia' brand name history)

My Device - band site / shifty disco records / myspace

Comments

[Todd]

Wow, I remember that. It was a fun day!

[Carly Marcoux]

Hi Todd! It was *really* fun! I'm glad I had the chance to speak with you afterward and see your band play live. Great CD as well! I'll look forward to seeing you stateside hopefully in this new year, and to hearing more re: your latest exploits via Dave/Shifty Disco! ~ Cheers!