‘We’re no weekend warriors’

(© Bekah Cope)

Lees de Nederlandse versie

“This is how we pay our bills: we live music,” says Ryan Sambol, talking about Live Music, the third album from the Strange Boys. “Some bands are weekend warriors; they only do what they do at the weekend. Not us, we’re not half-ass.” [Smiles] The US band sounds a bit less raw and wild than before; their ramshackle garage-rock guitars are now mixed with rootsy piano and harmonica. Which takes them somewhere between Black Lips and The Band. Twenty-five-year-old Sambol still sings with a hoarse, whisky-soaked voice, but he has also revealed himself to be an interesting lyrics-writer, capable of characterising his generation with a few telling strokes of a pen. “I stopped being stoned all the time. I’ve become a bit more realistic and I focus less on trifles, even though this record was made in a haze. The effect will only really be heard on the next album. [Smiles] Lots of people in my generation run away from their problems and everyday worries with drugs and alcohol. It’s only when you stop that you realise how much energy you actually do have for tackling life.”

You guys live in Austin, Texas. How are you coping with the crisis?
Ryan Sambol: Most places are pretty shitty at the moment. Our society is organised all wrong: the wealth isn’t evenly shared and one political party is always trying to force the other off the road. I think you can only achieve anything by changing everything. And the Internet and TV have made us socially shallow. Nothing has much depth any more. Lots of people are depressive, but they don’t know why. Their lives have developed into a quick post on Facebook. Little snippets of irony.
The drawings on the sleeve of the new album are by you – and you paint too. Are you an art-lover?
Sambol: More or less. I am fascinated by artists who have complete control over their output. I went to the Picasso museum in Barcelona just recently. Nothing got in Picasso’s way. If he wanted to paint something, he painted it the way he wanted. And I’m not like that at all; I’m constantly struggling with that. But I try to get as close as I can. Painting and drawing is just a little hobby. I’m really a reader above all. I even spend more time reading than listening to music. At sixteen I attended a summer course in Oxford. A guy who ran a little bookshop introduced me to Verlaine and Rimbaud back then. He also gave me The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet and Journey to the End of the Night by Céline, stuff that really impressed me. But my favourite writers are still Americans: London, Steinbeck, Vonnegut...

Your song “Doueh” refers to an African artist. But you can’t hear that in your sound.
Sambol: I got to know that music through a friend in Portugal. There is something traditional in it, but it is very soulful too – I haven’t heard that for a long time in America. OK, we’re certainly an American band. You can’t change anything about your roots. In Europe a lot of bands sing in English – I find that strange. To get into a better market? Fuck that. After all, you can’t express yourself well enough in a different language, surely? Anyway, English sounds awful compared to most European languages. Recently I was on a train in France and the conductor asked me to get off. That sounded like the most beautiful poem I had heard in ages. [Laughs]

The Strange Boys 3/4, 20.00, €12,
ANCIENNE BELGIQUE, boulevard Anspachlaan 110, Brussel/Bruxelles,
02-548.24.24, info@abconcerts.be, www.abconcerts.be