Brooklyn’s fascinating band Ex Cops came on the scene in 2012 with a sound riddled with cloying melodies and energetic hooks. Their first album, True Hallucinations, was extremely well-received by the press, who were mostly captivated by the band’s record store cred that undoubtedly spurned their curious amalgam of different genres.
Brooklyn’s fascinating band Ex Cops came on the scene in 2012 with a sound riddled with cloying melodies and energetic hooks. Their first album, True Hallucinations, was extremely well-received by the press, who were mostly captivated by the band’s record store cred that undoubtedly spurned their curious amalgam of different genres.
With their newest record, Daggers, due out on November 10th, the band has stacked the deck with guest appearances from Ariel Pink and having Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins serve as executive producer, but it’s also taking a big risk in embracing the full pop aesthetic of their music. It’s surely a big gamble, and certainly one that’s caused many mid-2000s bands to deliver mediocre follow-up albums after their breakout records. For Ex Cops though, it’s a gamble that pays off handsomely in a record that showcases intriguing songwriting with a familiar landscape better than the majority of their contemporaries.
Ex Cops come to The Southern Cafe & Music Hall in Charlottesville this Sunday opening for Dum Dum Girls. Before the show, I got a chance to chat with one-half of the stylish young band, Brian Harding, in a conversation that really peels back the layers on their mesmerizing new record.
To start off, I heard that Billy Corgan, who was executive producer on your new record, actually took you guys to your first wrestling match when you were working together in Chicago.
Oh, yeah. It was amazing. I had never been around that environment before which is weird because my best friend from high school is a huge wrestling fan. I was drawing parallels because Billy and her are these intellectually, very well-read people who are genuinely obsessed with wrestling which I find fascinating. He took us to our first match in the suburbs of Chicago. Amalie and I knew nothing going in and that’s how he wanted it. We just went into it blind. It wasn’t like a WCW/WWF thing; it was very small time, cool, quaint, super fun, and definitely artful. Just really interesting. The crowd was good mixture of those intellectual and rowdy people, say maybe 60-40. I won’t say which one is 60 and which one is 40, but they’re all really nice people, you know? No one was even bothering Billy. They were there strictly to see the show, just like us.
So how did you guys get attached with Billy Corgan in the first place?
Our label approached us and asked us who we’d like to work with. We jokingly said Billy Corgan and our label came back to us with his e-mail address and we all started talking to him. After two weeks of courtship, we got along really well and we found ourselves working on demos in his top-secret studio in Chicago. I don’t know that I ever got the actual address of it, he just told us the general vicinity of it. Really beautiful, huge studio though and he allowed us total reign and access to it. He was working on the new Smashing Pumpkins record literally next door as we were working on our demos. I would go and knock on the door, hear a new Pumpkins song, and then he would come help us out with chord changes or whatever. We just would take songs that we already wrote to him and he would shape the song to make them better. The general aesthetic of the record was something he really helped us with.
So with this new record, you guys are pretty blatant about declaring it’s pop music.
I think what we’ve always been is pop. I think everything is pop music really, unless it’s classical or something. I think a lot less reverb, less hazy elements. It’s definitely more pop, but we’ve always been pop. I think everybody appreciates a good song nowadays, whether you hear what’s on the radio or you hear what’s on Pitchfork. Pop is everywhere, just look at indie rockers doing the R&B sound lately. I think people want to make music that they want to hear. That’s the same way with us. We just want to make music that we want to hear on the radio.
How did you approach this record differently as opposed to True Hallucinations?
This time, Amalie and I wrote together. The first album is me writing by myself. This time is me and her as well as some co-writing for the first time with Billy Corgan and a couple of other people. That really kept it interesting so that was a totally different element. On top of all that, we recorded it in Los Angeles after demoing in Chicago, which was an experience in itself. It was definitely a more organized process this go round. The first record took a long time. Honestly, I wasn’t really totally present for that first record, but this record, we were both totally present for it. Just a crystal clear experience that panned out really well.
Why did you guys choose the song “Daggers” as the name of the album?
I think it has a lot to do with the sound: kind of this sharp sound. We just thought that everyone is trying to cut through noise. We obviously have the song “White Noise,” but “Daggers” is a way to cut through that noise and it also has a blood connotation to it that we really dug for the album.
How did working with Ariel Pink come about on the song “Tragically Alright?”
He has a production company with our producer Justin Raisen called Raw Deal and they do a lot of co-writes and things like that. He came over to the house for a couple of days and we ended up working with him for a several weeks and just hanging out. He’s working on a completely different level than anyone else. He’s one of the best songwriters I’ve ever worked with and I really enjoy the track with him.
What else on the album do you really enjoy?
Well, “Black Soap” is really good and a natural one. That was one of the first songs we wrote for this record, which was about six months ago. It’s a good transition from our older sound to our newer sound. It still has elements of the shoegaze and 90s stuff that we love, but it just felt like a natural thing and it’s even more natural that it was the first song written, first single released, and first track of the album. I also really love “Rooms.” It’s my favorite on the album by far. It’s one we wrote a while ago, but we really changed it up for the album. I find myself going back and listening to that one way more than the rest of the album, even though it’s tucked away at the end of the record.
To close out: what were you guys listening to when you were recording this?
Well, we listened to a lot of ABBA. Billy’s a huge fan and Amalie really schooled me on them. I never had much exposure to them before, but they’re really fantastic. Garbage, Beach Boys. Kind of all over the place. We’re just really into the idea of dark pop which hasn’t really been done since The Smiths where you can make a truly happy song and write really depressing ideas behind it. Billy was really good with the concept of that whole idea and that’s what ABBA really did when you look into their music. Some really tragic, heartbreaking songs, but ones that completely fit into playing into a club atmosphere. That’s the kind of music we want to make.
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Ex Cops’ sophomore album, Daggers, is out November 10th on Downtown Records. Catch them this Sunday at The Southern Cafe & Music Hall in Charlottesville opening up for Dum Dum Girls. Find out more information here.
