(culture)
SAVANTS Savants, with their lo-fi, often psychedelic sound, share more DNA with bands from the ’70s New York rock scene than with their contemporaries. But if there is one time stamp that points to some millennial malaise, it’s the “Something Part One” lyric: “And when in doubt/ I prefer to be vague.” At the dawn of their eponymous debut album’s release, we caught up with the brains behind our favorite New York band. BUSRA ERKARA
WHO EXACTLY ARE SAVANTS? TONY PRINS: I play the guitar and sing. Charlie Porter is on drums. Charlie Halsey is on keys, Mitch Wilson on bass, Joseph Perry on organ and lead guitar, Leo Skillet on percussion.
WHEN AND HOW DID THE BAND START? CHARLIE PORTER: In the summer of 2012, Tony and I were working for a brand in lower Manhattan, and we started listening to records and going to shows together. Shortly after, we decided to do our own thing.
HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE NAME SAVANTS? CP: When we first started hanging out, we were kind of throwing that around as like a
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slang term. We’d be at shows, and we’d be like, “Oh yeah, this guy’s a real savant.”
TP: It was a way of complimenting people that were doing something right. And it also just looks really good on paper. THERE IS A CBGB VIBE TO YOUR MUSIC. CP: We use a lot of analog gear in our recording and demoing process. So it has the warmness and sound of a lot of the records we like from the ’70s and late ’60s, but we’re trying to put our own twist on it.
ANY STRONG MUSIC MEMORIES FROM YOUR FORMATIVE YEARS? TP: I remember being in a gym class in high school where we were doing a wrestling exercise, and I was finding the brute force and the violence hard to get into. Then my gym teacher put on “Beat on the Brat,” and it charged me up. I was like, “Wow, this music has a good heartbeat to it!” and it kind of just made me want to make something that had a pulse like that.
photographed by xenia rollinson.
BOOK REVIEW:
LURID & CUTE BY ADAM THIRLWELL An urban novel set in a nameless city and a crime story told with fake guns, Adam Thirlwell’s latest book, Lurid & Cute, is packed with contradictions and idiosyncrasies that far outstrip the parameters of its title.
Twice named by Granta as one of Britain’s best young novelists, Thirlwell has never been short on famous fans—the club includes Tom Stoppard and A. S. Byatt. Fittingly for a writer’s writer, Lurid & Cute should not be judged solely on its story but more so on its singular style. Sacrificing coherence for audacity, the author is at his most captivating when capturing
the poetry of life’s mundanities, what he calls a “catalogue of sighs.” Whether it’s dog walkers, mothers, lovers, or liars, Thirlwell has a gift for taking the unnoticed and making it unforgettable. JACK DELIGTER
