Pre-Pre-Production: Only Crime

Born out of influential punk and hardcore bands such as Black Flag and Good Riddance, Only Crime draw from years of experience to form a brand new sound. With two albums already out on Fat Wreck Chords, the music veterans are gearing up for their third release. Frontman RUSS RANKIN spoke to LUCY ALBERS about expectations for their next album, along with everything else on Rankin’s mind.



Where are you guys in the process of putting together the new album?

We’ve got a few songs put together that we’re waiting to be mixed. It’s kind of hard, because we all live in different states. We usually meet up in Fort Collins, Colorado, at the Blasting Room [studio] for a week or so and just play music all day. We went there back in March and wrote some stuff. Our drummer, Bill Stevenson, owns the studio and does a lot of production work for a lot of other bands.



Are you working with any producers, or is everything kept within the band?

It’s all within the band. Bill does great editing and we all trust him. He knows our music and our style and there’s really no need to have anyone else do it. The last two albums we did all on our own, too.




Do you plan on having any guest performers?

Not that I know of. If there’s a song or something where I hear a line and think, you know, “Joe Blow would be good there,” I’ll call up whoever and ask if they want to sing it, but right now we don’t have any plans to.



Are there any albums or musicians inspiring you?

There’s a lot of music that influences us. One of the bands I really like are Articles Of Faith. They’ve never gotten really famous, but they were an amazing band. They were from Chicago in the ’80s, but to me they were way, way ahead of their time as far as social commentary and lyrics and experimentations with oblong phrasing and arrangement of ideas. In a time when punk rock was just all aggression and “go, go, go,” they had that, but they also had this experimental kind of music that I really liked.



Do you think you’ll live up to your reputation for lyrical prowess?

I hope so. I think that, to me, each band were very lyrics driven, and the lyrics were very overt. Like, every song was definitely about a particular thing, and that was by design. With Only Crime, I really wanted the music and what we were trying to do musically to take center stage. So I was trying to adopt a different lyrical and singing style to sort of go around the music instead of stepping all over it. Only Crime lyrics are definitely more interpretational and more sort of poetry than a specific idea. I definitely adopted, consciously, a different style, but I hope that the lyrics are still strong and I hope people can still get the big picture. I feel really good about it; it’s been healthy for me, because it’s forced me to look at things completely differently and change everything I knew about writing lyrics.




Do you think the new material still fits the punk genre, or are you sort of experimenting?

I don’t know that Only Crime really have a genre. I know that we’re going to be in the punk section at the record store. We’re in a weird place because we’re guys who, by all means, shouldn’t be playing music anymore because our time is kind of up. Our music doesn’t really fit in with what’s going on today, so we really are sort of our own entity. If you asked me what we play, I’d say we play really, really heavy rock. Some people say we play hardcore. Some people say we play a lot of punk rock. It’s so subjective now. I wouldn’t be able to put a label on it now even if I tried.




It’s funny you mentioned that it seems like you guys shouldn’t be playing music anymore. What keeps you guys playing this music?

I think the main reason Only Crime started was because all of us show at different times that the bands that we were in previously–which were all pretty successful–were destined to play a certain kind of music. It’s easy to get lost in playing the same kind of music over and over again because that’s your bread and butter, that’s what you’re known for. Some people are trying to do other songs or other musical impulses and have no outlet, and Only Crime sort of became that outlet. When we first started the band, we wanted to see what it would be like to create different music with a different cast of characters and see how that would sound. We hang out together and enjoy each other’s company, and maybe down the road people will think it’s important, maybe not. We’re definitely not very popular or successful, we’re not selling many records, but we feel like we’re leaving the music legacy that we can. We feel like what we’re doing is important. We can push the barriers and we can do it without the pressure of success. When you’re successful, everybody expects you to keep doing the same thing. We sort of feel like we can just do whatever we want, we don’t have a record label saying ‘you have to have this album out by this date’.




Will the new album be released on your own or on Fat Wreck Chords?

Fat is our label right now. We haven’t really thought about that. We’re more concerned with putting material together. We definitely want to put a record out this year, before 2010. That’s our goal. Whether or not we’ll do it is another story. It really depends on everyone’s schedule. Like I said, we all live in different states, we’re all either working and/or playing in other bands, all the other guys are married or have families. But it definitely is a priority for us to get a record out this year. A record that we can really feel proud of and a record that will further define the ground we’re trying to break here.




What kind of reaction do you want or hope to get from listeners?

Most of the people I talk to who like Only Crime are kind of my age. It sounds like music that they listened to when they were younger. I really like it when music fans get into our music [and they] don’t even know about [bands] we’ve been in before because that means we’ve kind of crossed over and touched somebody that wouldn’t normally be in our target audience. I think that our music is just about pushing boundaries and experimenting and distorting guitars and drums and vocals in directions they’re not supposed to go and just seeing what happens. Our music is designed to motivate people who come to our shows to tear the club apart and burn it down; either that, or just sit back and study and try to figure out what we’re doing. So we have different reactions. Really our music is being put out there, and people can take what they want from it. Some people like our band because of what we’re doing musically, some like the aggression of it; it’s really different for everybody. alt