A lot has changed since then, as I witnessed backstage at Irving Plaza for Riff Raff’s CMJ show, when he showed me his layer cake of a pink diamond wristwatch and declared: “I done froze time.” Science doesn’t know if lots of diamonds can actually slow time down, but for Riff Raff time has stopped; fame has arrived and more of it is on the way. Riff Raff’s next solo effort, NEON iCON, is coming out on Blackberry commercial personality Diplo’s Mad Decent label in January and will feature collaborations with Drake, A$AP Rocky, Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, Future, and Mac Miller. His collaboration with Action Bronson, Galaxy Gladiators, is also scheduled for release early next year.

When Riff Raff arrived, the first thing he did was drink half a bottle of CÎROC vodka. Backstage, Riff Raff was like some gaudy celestial body whose gravity held everybody and everything, including at least ten blunts, in a tight, perpetual orbit. I became one of these many satellites, Riff Raff’s miserable prying space junk, hoping to get some new album details or ask where he got his tracksuit. But Riff Raff had entered a heightened state of awareness, where your effort to snag his attention became nothing but a buzzkill (not to mention impossible). Riff Raff was now in performance mode. When Riff Raff gets high he begins to freestyle, twisting anything he hears or sees into his trademark absurdist couplets. If he hit on something clever and deranged enough he would motion to a posse member and they would record it. Riff Raff has stated before that he doesn’t write and this must be how some of his verses are composed.

If you’re going to meet Riff Raff you need to bring offerings; blunts, limited-run Adidas Mutombos, girls, the promise of more fame – all of these are good offerings. Since I could offer none of these, my experience was kept superficial. My busty female companion, however, had a much richer experience when she asked for a picture and Riff Raff, gazing at her cleavage as if addressing it alone, poked it gently and said, “Ooh, you’re cute”. The next day my companion posted several of these on Instagram, including one of Riff Raff talking to Lil Debbie with the caption: “Riff Raff talking smack to Lil Debbie”.  Lil Debbie called my companion a “lurking bitch” on Instagram. They have beef now.

The hip-hop community has been slow to embrace Riff Raff. Ebro, on Hot97 once famously ridiculed him for looking like a grotesque parody of the hip-hop lifestyle. Some wonder if Riff Raff is a character or mask put on by a white boy from the Houston suburbs. I don’t have an opinion on this other than to say with Riff Raff the mask is real; there is nothing on the other side. The truth is that Riff Raff is a surprisingly good rapper who brings fun and humor to popular music without being ironic. On top of that, Riff Raff is not going away anytime soon. He’s not a one-hit wonder, in fact, Riff Raff’s massive and growing following is not the result of traditional media or chart success. His use of social media has been ingenious in that he has found a way to turn going viral – usually something unpredictable – into a quantifiable hustle. Last year alone he made over 90 music videos, many of which have over a million views. That seems pretty real to me

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Day one, I went to Banners CMJ Party at Pianos to check out a young, beautiful, and much-hyped Brooklyn psych-rock band who will remain anonymous. What happened next saw me trying to find the exit as quickly as possible because I was in the presence of musical anathema: the genre known as too cool for school. In music, as in any other form of art, if you’re not doing it for yourself, you’re not doing it for anybody. So I went upstairs to check out the smaller stage and promptly found myself bobbing up and down to infectious and bittersweet pop songs, one after the other, belted out by a slightly distressed-looking singer whose arms tend to pitch upwards and hang in the air like he’s waltzing with a ghost.

How Sad are a great band because (to borrow Updike’s words on Nabokov) they play music the only way it should be played: ecstatically. A few days later, I met up with singer Harris Gilbertshper before How Sad’s last CMJ show to learn more about this compelling Montreal quartet:

Jack Kredell: Can you say something about how you got started? 

HG: It started out quietly about a year and a half ago as a way for us to play loft parties and have fun. We were all in different projects and we’ve all been friends for a while so it just came together. Things started to happen when people from POP Montreal saw one of our loft parties and invited us to play a few festivals across Canada. Since then we self-released an EP [Indian Summer] in September and did a little touring. We have a few more festival dates, and then we’re going to work on a full-length. The plan is just keep playing.

JK: So tell us about the name, How Sad.

HG: It’s funny, whenever I write really happy music, I usually write very sad lyrics. Everyone is always like, “You guys are such a happy band,” but the music isn’t so happy if you listen. A lot of these songs were written during a difficult year for me. I was going through a break up, moving around a lot, and was homeless for a bit. Actually, the song “Indian Summer” is about this time I slept on the street in New York.

JK: That sucks. Do you remember where it was?

HG: I think it was in the Lower East Side on 3 avenue and something. It’s also the name of a song by The Adicts. That song also sounds very happy when it’s actually very sad.  Boy meets girl and falls in love, girl runs away. How sad. Sounding happy while not being happy.

JK: You guys remind me of Sunset Rubdown a bit.

HG: Yeah, I think for all of us Montreal has been a big influence. I moved to Montreal when I was 18. Those are the bands – Sunset Rubdown, Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade – those were my heroes at the time.

JK: I kind of hate the “what are your influences” question. I mean there are the shameful influences and then the influences you want to be your influences. 

HG: As for the shameful ones, I try not to be too shameful. I listen to a lot of pop music. I really like the new Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus singles. They’re great songs written by great songwriters. Obviously, there’s something there if millions of people like this music. But the biggest influence, I’d say, has been Bowie. But when it comes to influences and being influenced, especially at the level of an individual song, it’s very… schizophrenic. There aren’t a lot of instances, if any, where I can say I listened to this band and then wrote this song.

JK: There’s some danger in putting your first EP online. Has releasing it on your own worked in your favor?

HG: I don’t know. At a certain point we just wanted people to hear the music. If somebody came around and wanted to re-release it with a couple new songs I might do that. It’s always never the right time. I know people who hold onto stuff for years and then they’re releasing music they made five years ago and by then they have two more albums. So at a certain point you just have to make a call: ok, I can write more songs, I can write more music, let this stuff go and keep working.

How Sad debut EP Indian Summer is available for download here. And booking agents, if you’re listening, please snatch this band up and send them stateside so we can all have the pleasure of How Sad once again.

The post How Sad speak to their debut EP “Indian Summer” and much more appeared first on Quip Magazine.

That sound is dominated by post-rock influences but cleft in places where lighter and brighter things have made their mark – such as the warmth of Oasis. There’s a swirling, droning quality to the upper ranges that is fed and supported by a brisk and invigorating rhythm section. The Darcys will playfully entertain pop song structures and tonality before ultimately revealing a different and more oblique harmonic disposition (remember, this is a band that released a track-for-track homage to Steely Dan’s Aza). The songs are like constellations in that you could trace the outline of a pop song but in reality it’s just a collection disparate stars.

In the age of Youtube I often wonder about the usefulness and audience for live show reviews. So far, at CMJ I’ve seen a handful of bands where the YouTube clip would’ve sufficed. What can I tell you about a band’s live show that two or three minutes of streaming reality can’t? In the case of The Darcys, only this: go. You can catch them tonight, Friday October 18^th with Flagship, Duologue, Misun, Claire, and The Ceremonies at Spike Hill in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

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