Interview by Malcolm Lasky
Save Ends is a punk-influenced indie band from Boston, MA. Rice and Bread recently caught up with Christine Atturio, one their singers/guitarists, after their special Pre-Fest set in Tampa, Florida to talk about how they chose to do their special set, the writing process for the band, and the fantastic-ness that was the Battlestar Galactica remake.
What made you decide to do the Strength vs. Will EP for your special set at Pre-Fest?
We originally were going to do half a cover set of The Anniversary. Because people say we sound like them, even though we really don’t. They just have a girl in the band and a keyboard. And then we got an email from Fest saying, “Don’t do cover sets!” and we’re, like, “Crap!” So, we chose to do Strength vs. Will because that was the first time that we put out music and people were into it. Plus, it was cool because we haven’t played those songs in a while.
I really love “Resurrection Hub” and “Sweet Defeat,” but I don’t think that you played those either time I saw you guys play the Icehouse in NY. Am I wrong on that?
Well, we stopped playing “Resurrection Hub” for awhile because we were terrible at it. But then we when we played it three weeks ago, we thought, “Oh, we did an okay job. Maybe we’ve matured enough to play this song and not have it sound like crap!” We’ll play “Sweet Defeat” every now and then. We just got to a point where, when we came out with the new record and we’d been playing the other songs for so long, we just wanted to play all the new stuff because we were pumped on it. But now we’re going back and we’re like, “Hey! We wrote a really good EP, and we should play those songs!”
So, what’s the method of writing a song in Save Ends?
It used to be we’d bring stuff to practice and work it out, when we were trying to feel out being a band. These days we’ll go to practice and start jamming on something and then figure out what the feel of it is without trying to pressure ourselves to create a song. We’ll all take it home and let people figure it out before we come back together. So, Brendan [Cahill, pianist and co-vocalist] or I will take it home and we’ll start figuring out lyrics and melodies for it and see where it goes. Then we just keep bringing it back to practice until it becomes a song that isn’t pointless [laughs].
What is the song “Kurzweil” in reference to?
It’s a reference to Ray Kurzweil. So, that guy wants to figure out how he can never die. That’s what that song is about; how he’s wrong that it’s a smart thing to do. Brendan wrote a lot of those lyrics; he just brought all of those to practice one day and had the whole song laid out.
Ah, I was thinking maybe it was about Alvin Kurtzweil from the X-Files.
Oh!
Yeah, but I realize now that they’re actually spelled differently. So, what are the meanings behind “We Are the Only Ones” and “Resurrection Hub?”
Well, “We Are the Only Ones” is about how… well I’ve been friends with the same group of people since college. And sometimes I feel like we are all holding each other down a little bit, in the way we’re so… engrained in our friend group, and sometimes it’s hard to get away from. But I would never, ever give it up for anything. It’s a very weird dichotomy between how do I be myself and evolve as a person, while I still really want these people in my life. “Resurrection Hub” we thought of as a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, but in the Battlestar Galactica universe. In the BSG universe the Resurrection Hub is where when the Cylons die; they go to resurrect in their new, but completely the same, bodies. So the idea was that you just give up on the life that you have right now, you end it, and then you can start over in the same body, with the same memories.
Man, I miss Battlestar Galactica.
Me too. I cried when it ended.
I never watched any of the other ones though.
Well, Razor is whatever. That one is like a mid-quel between season three and four. But the one that’s really, really, really awesome is… I forget what it’s called [note: The Plan], but it’s basically the series compressed into a two-hour movie, but told from the side of the Cylons. So, you see the reasoning behind all this stuff that you didn’t understand why it happened, and you see how manipulative Cavil is and how much he fucked with the other Cylons, and is an even bigger player than you ever imagined.
Save Ends‘ most recent album, Warm Hearts, Cold Hands, is out now on Tiny Engines.
-Video courtesy of Mike Plante
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