Five Stories, Rising

Life, especially in the chaotic world of the music industry, is at best unpredictable. Few, if any, could have predicted that Thursday - an emo-influenced hardcore band from New Jersey - would, two albums into their fledging career, be at the forefront of an impending paradigm shift in both the hardcore and mainstream rock scenes. And I doubt that any of the members of Thursday - Geoff Rickly (vocals), Tom Keeley (guitar), Steve Pedulla (guitar), Tim Payne (bass) and Tucker Rule (drums) - could have predicted that after the smashing success of their last full-length Full Collapse, they would find themselves creatively and emotionally stifled by their independent label, seminal hardcore label Victory Records, and forced to find freedom in the welcoming arms of a major label - the monolithic Island / Def Jam. It usually works the other way around, I assure you.
Forming in New Brunswick, NJ, in 1998, Thursday soon began to make a name for themselves, playing with bands like Hot Water Music, At The Drive-In and Boy Sets Fire. The band released Waiting on regional label Eyeball Records, who realized the potential of Thursday and handed the reigns to storied Chicago hardcore label Victory Records, who quickly recorded and released Full Collapse. The album immediately became a critical and commercial success, launching the band into the limelight - MTV, The Warped Tour, etc. - while also marking a radical new mainstream desire for experimental and atypical music. Almost two years of endless touring, a somewhat controversial label switch and the obligatory underground backlash against a small band gone big can take a lot out of a person, but Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly seems downright chipper. Currently touring across the middle of America in preparation for their spot on this year's Plea For Peace / Take Action Tour and the release of a new five-song EP Five Stories Falling, Rickly shed some light on the past, present and future, unpredictable as it may be, of Thursday.

What's the deal with the Plea For Peace / Take Action Tour?
The Plea For Peace Tour is a benefit for The National Help Line which is the organization responsible for 1-800-SUICIDE. We couldn't be a part of the whole tour because it started too soon after the Warped Tour and we were just really tired, so we took some time off, and this first leg of the tour we're on now is basically just us playing our way out to meet the Plea For Peace Tour in San Francisco.

How'd you guys get hooked up with that?
We were interested in it for a bunch of different reasons. We also just liked a lot of the bands that were on it this year like (International) Noise Conspiracy, and we were able to get one of the bands that we brought on tour, Cursive, on the Plea For Peace Tour as well. They're really, really good.

There's a five-song EP coming out right?
Yeah, it's called Five Stories Falling and it's four live songs and one new song called "Jet Black New Year," and that comes out really soon, October 22nd I think.

Where are the live songs from?
They're from a show in New Jersey, Asbury Park. It's not the most ideal place to record, but we knew that we had to do it in this really specific time frame while we were on tour, so we got that out of the way at a show in New Jersey, so we were really comfortable there. It was really a comfortable setting; we knew a lot of the people who were working the show that day and it turned out really good. It's not like most live records where it sounds really huge and faultless and you can tell it's been doctored. It's really raw and there's mistakes and weird stuff in there, but I like it; it sounds real.

What songs did you put on there?
We put on "Autobiography of a Nation," which kind of has a new intro to it that we were starting the set with, and we put on "Standing on the Edge of Summer," "Paris in Flames" and "Understanding (In a Car Crash)," that has this whole thing tacked onto the end - the first song off the record [Full Collapse], the little intro that has all kinds of different voices, we turned that into a whole song.

What does the new song sound like?
The new song's got more of an influence of, like, Dead Guy, or something that's a little more atonal, you know stranger, noisier. Some people say it sounds like a really dark Sonic Youth, but other people are like, "it's really hardcore." It's kind of hard to pin down; it's really all over the place, for us. Usually our songs are more focused in on melodic themes, but this one has kind of drastically different parts. I'm pretty excited about it though because the whole song is about trying to make yourself into something that you're not, so I think that having a song that's really atypical for us, and that may even have had to be forced to make it work in the end, made the form and concept match together.

Is that the direction that you guys are going to take for the next record?
Probably not. I think it's sort of more of a detour. And it just opens us up to not shutting the door on certain things, know what I mean?

So is the new album basically going to sound like Full Collapse plus a little more?
Definitely going to be plus more. We already discussed that we don't want just do Full Collapse part two; we don't really want to follow it up with different songs that are the same type of thing. So, I think it'll have the same heart, somewhere, but we've definitely been a little more experimental. For us, Full Collapse was really experimental, stuff that we had never tried before. We tried to do stuff that we had never really heard. But now, if we were to play that same stuff again, it wouldn't be experimental anymore.

How do you feel about the whole label situation?
I'm pretty psyched about what's going on now with Island - they've been really supportive, and we're looking to go into the studio around December 1st. We'll probably be in there for a few months just really making sure we get things they way we want them, and especially since we're going to the same studio that we've always gone to. So I'm pretty excited about that whole process and getting to work with them. So far they've been way more supportive than….um…other labels.

What happened with you guys and Victory?
We weren't really getting supported until we started doing well on our own. And they wanted us to go in more of a pop direction, not even like a subversive pop direction, just like a straight up, "Do whatever you can do to get big," sort of thing was what they wanted us to do. And we were kind of like, "We want to do our own thing, and we think some kids will be into it and the kids who are into what we're doing are the kids that we want." We're not trying to take over the world. What's the point? If we weren't happy with what we were doing, what's the point of being big?

How'd you guys end up on Island?
They had been coming to see us for a long time, even back when the record first got released. The thing that was really cool was that they'd see us in front of 10 people, and they'd still just be so psyched, so happy and so into us and we'd be like, "Wow, we just played to no one and you liked that?" And then when everyone knew that we were unhappy with Victory, all the majors came after us. But Island was the only label that seemed sincere, and they weren't really getting involved in the bidding war, which I thought was cool because it showed that they really felt that they were better, because they actually liked us more and would know what to do with us. They weren't just throwing money at us and telling us what we wanted to hear like every other label was doing. So in the long run, we thought that that would probably be the best thing, to forsake the huge payday and hope that you're happy with what you're doing for the next five or 10 years.

It's kind of funny that you guys had to leave an indie and sign to a major label to get more control. It usually seems to work the other way around
Yeah it seems so backwards and wrong, but at the end, Victory was like a major affiliate, so we were at the point where we were like, "Well, we're getting all the disadvantages of a major label already, why don't we go ahead and some of the advantages of it?" We didn't really have any of the backing that we would get on a major, but we got all the criticism and controlling. We just decided to take control of it. If anybody's gonna sell us out, it's going to be us.

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