It’s been 10 years since Tapebenders released their first album, and a lot has changed in that time, most notably their band name (they used to be The Elusive Parallelograms) and their lineup (singer-guitarist Andrew Foys is the only remaining original member). Despite it all, though, their sound has remained remarkably consistent, as has their mission to make their records sound as big as possible. Their latest EP, We Are All Gone, is another slab of cosmic indie-rock in the grandiose spirit of Built to Spill and Spiritualized’s most gargantuan records.
Tapebenders record at their own studio, which gives them the luxury of time and the freedom to experiment. Foys says that recording comes pretty easy to the group these days. “Most of the time we just begin our process and follow where it leads us,” he explains. “Then, obviously we’re trying to make it as big-sounding as we possibly can. We take the skeleton and keep adding to it until we reach the point where it’s done.”
After all these years, Foys says he’s still as excited about the recording process as ever. “There’s so much stuff we want to try,” Foys says. “Even when we try to dial our songs back a little bit, they always seem to snowball into something. I just love working with sound. It’s like puzzle pieces you’re trying to put together, so it’s always fun to keep going.”
Figuring out when, exactly, a song is finished may be the hardest part of the process. Foys says that even on the new EP, he hears things he would have tweaked in hindsight. “Honestly, nothing ever really feels done,” Foys says. “I can listen to the songs and say, ‘Man, I wish I would have done this.’ But at a certain point, you reach diminishing returns. For your sanity, you just have to call it, or else you can go on for years, recording indefinitely, and end up with a My Bloody Valentine situation where you’ve been working on the album for 13 years.”
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The band has stayed relatively off the radar in recent years. The last major Tapebenders release came out in 2015, and lineup changes led to some delays between albums. But Foys says the band is recording at a steady clip again and hopes to have another EP out before the end of the year. He says the current iteration of the band is the strongest yet.
“We’re all much better musicians than we were when we started, as far as technical ability,” he says. “The whole recording process has changed quite a bit over that period of time, too. We’ve managed to acquire better gear, and we don’t have to rely on anybody else to do anything. So things are different now, but a lot has stayed the same. I’m still trying to chase the same ideal as I was when we started, which is making the highest quality album that I can. People have grown up and moved on, but we’re still trying to make the best record we possibly can. I still feel like we’ve come no place close to the potential of what we can do.”
Tapebenders play a release show Friday, April 13, at the Riverwest Public House with Beach Static and Deadly Friend at 8 p.m.
