It’s not too often that you come across a band that you try to tell your friends about, but have problems finding the right words to describe them. Minnesota’s Bookreader is one of those bands. When you first hear their music, you immediately send all your instant messaging buddies a link, and tell them to “just listen” because words just can’t do it justice. I spoke with Neil Olstad (Bookreader’s drummer) to attempt to give you -- and I -- a greater understanding of the indescribable sounds of the band know as Bookreader.
Like many relationships, the members of Bookreader met at that great bastion of interaction, college. Although, as often happens in college, Bookreader has gone through a number of changes
“The main core has stayed together and that’s Bryan, who sings, Rick who plays bass, and myself. We have all been there from the start but we have had a number of keyboardists and guitarists come through and had to leave for various reasons. We have had one each year basically,” explains Neil. “Last year Bryan and I were in London for first semester and Bryan kind of wrote the record Four Forty Three out there. When he was writing this record, he was hearing a lot of trumpet, so he knew we needed a trumpet player, and that’s where Peter came in. So that’s kind of the origin of the band. We jumped around a lot early on, but now I think we have settled. We have our identity now and we have the right components for that.”
With everyone in place, Bookreader headed into the studio last April to record their full-length album, Four Forty Three. The album’s seemingly ambiguous title has quite the interesting story behind it.
“All instruments are tuned to 440. Rick was tuning up his bass and did tracks for a couple songs and everything was sounding great. But, then we realized Rick had tuned to the pitch 443. If you have perfect pitch you can probably tell the difference, but to the untrained ear it is an unnoticeable change from 440. So we decided, ‘Well, we can just tune the rest of the record to 443.’ I mean it’s fine, as long as everything is tuned to the same pitch. We’re terrible at naming, but then Rick’s accident with 443 came along.”
After Four Forty Three’s release, Bookreader got an ever-increasing amount of attention.
“We have gotten some good local press in the Blaine newspaper, the Farmington Independent, and the Onion did a piece on us. Also, because of the Blaine newspaper, we were on a public access TV show in the Blaine area that talks about entertainment. They have an in-studio band for each episode and they invited us to play. That was fun, no one was probably watching, but it was a cool experience. Also, at 89.3 (Minneapolis’ premier independent radio station) Barb Abney on the morning show picked us out of the system and apparently we’ve been played a few times this summer.”
Their growing popularity last summer culminated in their victory in the Whisky Wars College Clash Battle of the Bands in Minneapolis.
“We won 20 hours of recording time among other prizes. So I think we might record an acoustic EP and then put it online for free.”
Now for the hard part, attempting to describe Bookreader’s signature sound, which has brought them their recent achievements.
“It’s hard because even though I’ve been in bands and have reviewed and wrote about music, I’m always terrible about putting genres on music. Especially being in a band, I hate when someone says, ‘What do you sound like?’ I understand it but I always have the most terrible answers, I never know what to say. I think it’s kind of hard for us, we have a lot of different sounding songs,” Neil explains. “The song ‘I Know Your Social Security Number’ doesn’t sound like any other song on the record. There are a few songs that sound a little like each other, but there are other songs that are polar opposites. It’s tough because with Bryan’s voice and all of the other influences that go into Bryan’s songwriting, like he likes old 70s soul and folk and he loves horns, we don’t really fit into a set genre.
However, Bookreader’s next album is set to be even more ambiguous.
“We’re talking about adding a sax player for the next record. Brian loves high energy soul/funk type of stuff. He basically writes in records, he writes in an album. When he brings his ideas to us, usually we do follow along with what he has in mind because it’s so well constructed, but sometimes it can change drastically. He is very open with it.”
With all of Bookreader’s members back in school, the band will be taking it easy and writing a new group of songs for their next record.
“We’re definitely going to sit on Four Forty Three for a while and then put out another album in late spring, probably April or May again. Depending on how it goes this year, we will spend all winter tightening it up. We probably won’t go back to JPL Records, just because we would like to get a different sound each time. Brian has a few songs written, but nothing full band. So our plans for 2008 are to do it all over again; record a new record and then stay in town and pound it out. It’s really tough, we were planning on doing some towns in the Midwest, but it’s tough until you get a big reputation in town. With tours, you have to have a lot of press behind you, and it’s tough to even get places to let you play without a label behind you. So we just feel the best way to do it is to build it up locally and get some buzz and head out.”
Be sure to check out Bookreader on their MySpace so you can also tell everyone about this amazing and quirky pop band that you just can’t describe. Contact Bookreader at band@bookreadermusic.com or their MySpace to order Four Forty Three and be sure to preview the album by downloading the songs below.
