News The Neighbourhood: ‘The Most R&B I’d Get Is A Justin Timberlake Album’

Having set music blogs around the world on fire since January, charming Zane Lowe into proclaiming their first three singles as successive ‘biggest track[s] in the world’, and having maintained their anonymity to an incredible degree, I finally managed to coerce Jesse Rutherford, lead singer of Californian band The Neighbourhood, into joining me on the couch for a chat about his band’s new EP (‘I’m Sorry’), sweaters and The Cardigans.

Jesse Rutherford from The Neighbourhood, nice to meet you. How does it feel to be in the buzz band of the moment?
Wow, what a question! It feels very, uh, very cool. I worked for it, you know what I mean? So it feels right, it feels good.

You’ve only been around for a few months, released two songs on the internet, and blown up through the blogosphere – but you’re very anonymous! So, how did you guys meet and come to be The Neighbourhood?
We’re all really good friends. I met two of the guys…actually, I met three of the guys about three years ago – which would be our two guitar players and our now bass player – and me and the two guitarists wrote our first EP, which comes out on May 7th. Then, the other two guys got added on actually just a couple of months ago. One of our friends got added on to play bass, honestly he’s just a really close friend of ours, so he didn’t even know how to lay bass, but we were like, “fuck dude, we need a bass player…you’re our friend…you look cool…just…come in the band” [laughs]. So that happened, and then, our drummer, I’ve know for a long time and then I introduced him to the guys probably about a year and a half ago, and, uh, everybody just got along real well. But, our drummer was actually in New Orleans for college, but then he dropped out a couple of months ago when everything started really moving for us. He was like, ‘”I’ve got to drop out, you know?” So, we were all just friends and then it just made sense that we made music together.

So The Neighbourhood have been going a lot longer then just the four months you’ve sort of been present in the public eye?
About double that length. So, about eight months total, we wrote and recorded everything, yeah… about eight months ago… Maybe nine.

How did you come up with the name for the band? Especially as it’s the UK spelling of Neighbourhood rather than, say, the American spelling…
Well, I wanted the name The Neighbourhood, I just thought it was cool and, you know, when you’re in a band, often if you want to name your band something, you’ll check other places on the internet to see if somebody else already has the name, and somebody already had it the other way, the normal spelling! So I was like “Fuck!” and was thinking of other ways to do it, and then our manager – he’s from New Zealand originally, so he’s had a lot of overseas experience, like, internationally he’s worked with a lot of companies and people, so he understands the whole world a lot – so then he suggested, “Hey! Why not the UK spelling of it?” and it worked out really well; especially because we knew our sound was gonna be, we were like “ Ok. I think the UK might get us more first,” And then you guys did, which was fucking awesome, because you’re way cooler than America!

What do you think it is that made it easier to blow up over here, rather than, say, California and the States?
You know, honestly, I think it’s because you guys care! You guys care about new music a lot more. You guys are like all the cool kids that like invent cool, you know what’s cool first so you could, like, represent it, be it, before everyone else gets to it and goes “Oh! That IS cool, huh! Ok, I like it!” You know what I mean? You guys kind of set the standard, I think, for a lot of music at least. Basically, the chain of events were: Female Robbery, the first song we put out, was premiered on NME.com and Kirk, our manager, called up Zane and was like “Hey! This is happening and whatever”, and they were just talking about it and shit, and Zane was like, “Wait! You have to let me premiere it first!” So, that was really cool, and then Zane caught on with that one, and then he did ‘Sweater Weather’, and then another song right before the EP.

What sort of bands do you listen to, do you listen to mainly UK bands then?
No actually. I, personally, don’t listen to a lot of music that much. I kinda just make our own shit and listen to that, otherwise I just listen to rap, hip hop stuff. I was revisiting Dr Dre, The Chronic: 2001 and some old Jay Z shit, and my sister had those CDs so I put them on and tried to listen to them – it’s really hard for me to listen to music though as I have a really short attention span. But, the guys and I, if there’s one band that we definitely love, and everyone in the band really takes after, not takes after but really appreciates is The Cardigans. The Cardigans had an album called ‘Gran Turismo’, that I think was probably the best album of all time! It’s an amazing record. We write pop music, you know? The album I’m talking about, ‘Gran Turismo’, ‘Lovefool’ isn’t even on there! There’s a song called ‘My Favourite Game’ on there, now that was a big one too, I don’t know if you remember that one? But, yeah, that one’s cool.

You mentioned hip hop then, and my research dug up a bit of trivia on your good self, that you used to be in a hip hop group, called The Good Boys. How important is hip hop and R&B to your sound because you can definitely hear elements of both in the first two tracks?
Yeah, and I think with ‘Wires’ you’re really going to hear the hip hop element really come out. It’s very important, it’s honestly really shaped our sound. When we produce and write the songs, I obviously do my vocals and lyrics, but I also do all the drums on the records, and that’s very, very important to our sound – to have that hip hop feel on the drums. As far as R&B goes, it’s interesting because I’ve never listened to R&B or really liked it that much - I like pop. I guess the most R&B I would get is a slower song on a Justin Timberlake album [Laughs], but like I don’t even really like those ones that much really. I think it’s the way our music sounds and works with the melodies I choose that make it kind of R&B, you know?

You’ve got a very distinct sound, and yet there are a lot of comparisons to people like Lana Del Ray and Foster The People. Do you appreciate that, or do you want to just ditch the labels and do your own thing?
I’ll be honest; I know all the guys in the band can agree too… I think Lana makes fucking awesome shit. I think she writes really good songs and also we’re friends with Emile, her producer, and he’s a huge inspiration to all of us I know, especially for me as far as production goes on that end. The tracks he built around the songs she wrote, and then her voice on top of it and her lyrics and everything are pretty fucking cool. Foster The People just had one of the biggest fucking hits of the past year or whatever, and that’s really cool that people are saying “Hey, ‘Sweater Weather’ is gonna be the new ‘Pumped Up Kicks’.” Fuck man, cool! I can’t be mad at that, we’re not here to be super cool or indie, or like “fuck everyone”. We like pop music, we want to be part of it, we wanna fucking run it, and own it! So, how could I get mad at being compared to two artists, three or four or whatever, of the biggest names out there? That’s awesome.

Is that the way the EP is shaping up then? It’s going to be a lot more pop or is it going to be a lot of experimentations, with each track being very different from the last?
I can honestly say, I’ve had this question asked to me before now, and I’ve thought about it more and more, and every single song is honestly taking it to a new place, it’s different in its own way, but they’re all so cohesive with each other. They just roll real smooth together, they’re dope, it’s cool. To me, everything we’ve put out is already like, yeah - they’re pop songs. But other people are seeing them as cool and shit, which is great but, we’re not trying to be super dark and cool, we’re just writing songs that we like and think are good.

You’re very “mysterious” about your releases and stuff. There’s not a lot of information out there, is that deliberate, are you waiting for the EP launch to sort of go on a huge promo binge?
I just don’t think that we…I mean, you’re seeing me now, and there’s probably a couple of pictures you’ve seen but I have tattoos and a fucking greasy haircut and shit. I’m not trying to toot our own horn or anything, but I think we’re a pretty good looking group of guys and all of that bullshit. We just didn’t want to attach that right away, because, automatically it gave away everything about us, and it’s so easy to judge a book by its cover. I judge every book by its cover, I’m so bad with that, but it’s just the truth! So, instead of letting our faces and tattoos and stupid shit like that speak for us, I wanted to let our art speak for us. The direction of our art and our music, with cool black and white imagery being attached to it because that made a whole lot more sense and it fucking worked! People ate this shit up! I can’t even believe it, and I couldn’t believe how long it took people to figure out who I was but people were going on a fucking manhunt for us, it was crazy!

It probably helps that you’ve got a Tumblr just full of abstract photos and print screens of reviews, as well as the #RADSweater comp. I fell through the Tumblr earlier and just loved the sweaters, I was even trying to find them on Google to buy them!
[Laughs] Oh no dude! I’m sorry about that! A lot of people have asked “hey, where can I get that?” But no, I do all the art for us, for the band, like, everything you see I do all the art for. So, I thought that would be a cool kind of thing to do to pump up ‘Sweater Weather’, when it was coming out; so, yeah I’d just sit on Photoshop and just think of weird shit, like random movies or TV shows or whatever, and just put them on Twitter. And it worked out really well, so yeah; it’s pretty cool, I wish we could print all of them.

You were talking about the black and white aesthetic being important and obviously this comes across in your videos. You’ve been compared to Hitchcock and Goddard, in reviews for the video. Is that deliberate as well, or is that just a coincidence? Obviously you’re very image focused, maybe not personally but for the band it’s very heavily aestheticised?
Totally, yeah. None, of it’s on purpose; I just knew, “OK! Everything needs to be black and white, and has to be cool!” And then, two of our best friends made the video, both of the videos actually. Our friend Zack Sekuler, made the first video and he also made ‘Sweater Weather’, but then our friend Daniel came on to do ‘Sweater Weather’ as well, and, S’weater Weather’ is when it really came together and you could really see because ‘Female Robbery’ was stolen footage basically, we just put it to the song because it worked out well. And then, ‘Sweater Weather’ was taking that look but into our own hands, and taking it a whole new level. The next video will be the same too, we’re working on that one, so that’s gonna be cool.

Can you say anything about it? What’s the vibe for that one?
Honestly, we haven’t even started yet, we’re still figuring out – I think we know what song it’ll be for but we’re not sure yet, and it’s funny, it’s just sitting down to lunch yesterday with Zack, our video dude, so, we’ll figure it out. I don’t even know yet…

But it’ll be black and white?
JR: Oh, yeah! Everything you’ll see for this campaign, for this whole the ‘I’m Sorry’ EP project, everything will be black and white. Where we move next, I don’t know, we’ll see.

Does that extend into the live performances as well?
For the most part, yeah. You’ll probably always see us wearing black, or black and white, and grey. I wish there was a way so that people’s eyes just saw us in black and white. I just think it’s so cool and it makes everything look like really harsh or really pretty.

I was going to ask if there was another meaning to the band logo as well, the upside down house?
I just had this idea because we had Zack, I know I keep talking about him, have you seen The Neighbourhood logo? The one at the top of our Tumblr, the writing? Zack made that, and it’s gorgeous, I love it. But it’s so long and our name has so many fucking letters, so I was like, “I’ve gotta figure out a way to compact our whole fucking thing into a box shape; and I was like “Ok…A house”, a house turned upside down just made so much sense…it’s so popular nowadays, and I kinda did it almost in a kind of halfway to being sarcastic way, but, at the same time it’s badass, just taking a fucking stupid house clipart and turning it upside down. Everybody’s doing upside down crosses, inverted crosses, and that band Trash Talk has an upside down ‘P’ sign, I keep seeing it now.

Any shows on the way?
7th of May is when we kick off a small California tour, and it’s called the Cali-Four-Nia tour, Cali-Four-Nia, get it? That’s pretty much it, San Francisco on the 7th, LA on the 8th, San Diego on the 9th, and then the 11th we go to Monterey Bay; yeah that’s when it all kicks off for us.

And what’s the vision beyond that? Are you going to try and hit any festivals maybe, or a longer tour?
JR: Honestly, we’re still figuring it all out.

Is it just back to the studio to write some more stuff?
We are going to get back to the studio, and record more. I know we have plans to get out to the UK; I know that that’s a big plan of ours in the very near future – no dates or anything worked out right now. And, we wanna play around California probably for a little while more. We just really want to get acquainted with, and let people know where we’re from. The whole California thing is important to us.

The Neighbourhood’s debut EP ‘I’m Sorry’ is out now.