Cymbas Eat Guitars: Mountains of Uncertainty

With a meteoric start thanks to the good graces of powerful Internet buzz, Long Island's Cymbals Eat Guitars has become one of the most talked about up-and-coming bands to come out this year. Sporting a sound that throws a grab bag of devices that range from horns to hazy distortion at a wall of insistent grungy rock angst, the band also has the goods to back it up. In advance of the group's show tonight at Local 506 with fellow New York buzz band The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Diversions Editor caught up with lead singer Joseph D'Agostino to talk about the inspiration behind his fearful, yet wondrous songwriting.

Diversions: Is your last name actually Ferocious?

Joseph D'Agostino: It's actually D'Agostino like the grocery chain. I guess it's just like a stage name that no one actually uses. At least no one I know.

Dive: Why did you come up with it?

JD: I didn't. A friend of mine made it up in high school. It was formerly a name of a band that him and I had in high school that stuck. Our friend Ray in eleventh grade came up with it. He actually designed the initial cover for the soft release of Why There Are Mountains.

Dive: You guys have really blown up recently with all the coverage from blogs and outlets such as Pitchfork.com. What has that experience been like?

JD: It was very flattering. I've been a Pitchfork reader for a long time now. I've always been reading their reviews. I was very excited by it. I knew the implication when the review came out. We're going to have bigger gigs and bigger things to deal with. It was a combo of overjoy and a little bit of stress.  We weren't exactly ready for the prime time. We had to do a lot of work to catch up. It ended up being a great feather, personally, in my cap. I've gotten so many of my favorite bands from them. It's a great honor. Then playing the (Pitchfork Music) Festival was incredible. To open the festival with our opening track from our debut record, it doesn't get any better than that. I'm very grateful to them.

Dive: When listening to your record I was struck by the that idea of the "American Hazy Sea," all the doubt and fear of what there is in the land stretching around you. What were you trying to say with that?

JD: I like to have the big reveal. I like that idea. The whole moving concept or motif behind the record is being in awe of how may lives and how many pep e have lived and died. That whole part of "Hazy Sea" -- Why are there mountains?/Then the last fire dies/We rebuild with foundations/Set just slightly higher/On compacted ash and bones." That's all about remains just sort of building into mountains of carrion. That sounds dark, but it's not really as dark as it seems. It's tinged with hope and wonder I guess. As far as the song structures go, I write one piece at a time. One hook at a time especially in the beginning part of my songwriting, it felt most natural to string these hooks together and make music that unfolded in movements. Not like orchestrally like Arcade Fire, it's just very ADD, but at the same time we're trying to make it cohesive. There's barely any repetition of lyrics or hooks. The next (record's) sort of moving off in another direction but I think it's building on what we've done so far.

Dive: That's interesting that you see the idea of our piling up bodies as hopeful. But I also took it to signify a sort of fear of the unknown, for instance in "Indiana" where you talk about seeing "evil at the heart of each well-lighted home."

JD: That's very cool. That's good that you took that away. That's definitely a big part of it too. Naturally when you're a human there's dread in the unknown. That factored into a lot into a song like "Indiana". That was my first time out to the Chicago/Indiana area. I was visiting a girlfriend who went to Notre Dame. I had no idea what I was doing chasing this person out there.

A lot of the lyrical concerns revolve around uncertainty. I'm concerned that there's nothing after death. A lot of that comes in the song "Like Blood Does." That whole noise rush was sort of meant to represent the rushing sound in your ears that you must feel if you're about to die.

Dive: That's pretty intense.

JD: That's a song we never play live. It's impossible to translate. "Like Blood Does," that whole intro, it just sort of zaps energy. I love that song and I would love to someday be able to bring it live. It's sort of our most Wilco song. Making it a studio confection with all these studio elements. I love Wilco. I don't know if you got that from this record. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is like my favorite record ever.

Dive: You've talked about how the imagery on the album is meant to signify both the ultimate uselessness of human endeavors and also how wondrous those things can be despite that. Which side of that dichotomy do you usually end up on?

JD: I find it very discouraging sometimes. Everybody feels emptiness and depression at points. The more and more that I think about things -- I'm young still, I shouldn't be this hopeless -- , but it seems like anything that could possibly happen aft death It's not really possible. After you have people that are close to you that pass away, and after your parents away, you just want to believe you're going to see them again. It's a wonderful existence. It's wonderful while we're here, and it's also awful while we're here. But I don't believe that there's anything after this. And I don't believe that there's any deeper meaning.

Dive: Why choose to make art if there's no deeper meaning?

JD: I don't want to sound like one of those, but I'm just do it because I don't know how to do anything else. I've always been sort of a fuck up. I've never had any drive. I'm not a stupid person, but I could never find a will to succeed at any of my endeavors. Now I seem to be. I enjoy what we're making, and I love music. If there really is anything else up there or out there then music, the feeling you get when you listen to a really awesome record, gets you closer to that entity. I'm not really thinking about long term implications of art. So many great records that come out every year are largely forgotten three years later. Really the only way people keep listening to you is if you keep making music. But I don't know why I'm doing it. It's something. It's better than studying comparative literature and feeling like a complete fraud because you're not interested in any of the books in the curriculum, and you're taking tests blind. Right now I'm standing here, the van door is open and we're at a rest stop, and there's all these mountains. And we're on the side of fucking highway. And I wouldn't rather be doing anything else.

Dive: Well, from the way things are going, it looks like you might be able to keep on supporting yourself this way. How does that feel?

JD: That is a delightful prospect. I hope with all of myself that the songs keep coming. I don't know how they come or why. I know what affects me and why I try to sit down and write something. I hope that I'm able to keep doing it and make a career out of it. Maybe one record is enough to support a career. You look at a band like Interpol. They play Madison Square Garden, and they only have one good record. I definitely have one more good one in me. The three songs I have in me right now are really fucking good, and they're better than anything we've done so far. When I think of all the different stars that have had to align for us to be able to do what we're doing right now, it's kind of staggering. And it kind of seems, not pre-ordained, but wow we're really lucky. That makes me question my everything. It's just a lot of uncertainty like you said. And that's reflected in the he music.