NYLON - August 2008 - (Page 128) WHIZ KIDS They may have come out of nowhere (well, Florida), but Black Kids are already on their way to becoming everyone’s favorite new buzz band. By Jonathan Durbin. Photographed by David Reich If the diversity of a band’s fans is at all an accurate way to measure its popularity, then Black Kids aren’t doing half bad. “Our drummer’s brother lives in London and found one of our songs on a jukebox in a pub there,” says Reggie Youngblood, the band’s singer and guitarist. “He played it, and then he noticed that someone’s grandpa was singing along—and he knew all the words. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Musicians are supposed to be more jaded than this—and when it comes to other subjects, Youngblood has the kind of swagger you’d expect from the frontman of one of Rolling Stone’s 10 “Artists to Watch” of 2008—but here the vocalist’s surprise is real. And, considering Black Kids’ recent meteoric rise, it’s understandable. Before last summer, the Jacksonville, Florida, quintet was almost unknown outside the South, playing shows in their hometown at one or two clubs, and supporting larger acts who were passing through. But that changed after they appeared at last year’s Athens Popfest in Georgia: The band earned glowing reviews from both the mainstream and online press, and then, proving themselves savvy marketers as well as talented musicians, they offered their demo EP, The Wizard of Ahhhs, for free on their MySpace page. The songs’ high-energy meld of pop-rock-dance and Youngblood’s plaintive voice (which often eerily recalls that of the Cure’s Robert Smith) worked well to bring them broader acclaim. Since then, they’ve toured pretty much non-stop, signed with Columbia, and, last month, released their debut LP, Partie Traumatic. Produced by Suede’s Bernard Butler, the album features new songs done in Black Kids’ distinctive indie-dance style, as well as crowdpleasers from the EP like “Hurricane Jane” and “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You.” The latter is a sugary pastiche of underground pop with lyrics that have a gender-confused twist: Youngblood sings: “You are the girl that I’ve been dreaming of ever since I was a little girl.” Needless to say, Youngblood never was a little girl. “It doesn’t mean anything more than that,” he says. “It’s just a way to make a dull lyric a little more interesting.” That vaguely antagonistic posture—a challenge to fans to figure something out that doesn’t need much figuring out—is at the band’s core. Comprised of Owen Holmes (bass), Kevin Snow (drums), Dawn Watley (vocals and keyboards), plus Youngblood and his sister Ali (vocals and keyboards), Black Kids ripped the band’s somewhat misleading name straight out of the headlines: “We were going through a lot of different names,” says Youngblood. “And then we came across this e-mail that a woman had sent the mayor of Jacksonville, complaining about these young black guys, referring to them as ‘kids who play basketball.’ She kept using that euphemism over and over again, when she obviously meant ‘black kids.’ So, for our name, someone suggested Kids Who Play Basketball, and Ali said, ‘That’s lame, why don’t we just call ourselves Black Kids?’ I was like, ‘That’s pretty fucking ace.’” After being on tour for five months straight, the band members are currently looking forward to some time off at home—a chance to recover, however briefly, before hitting the European summer festivals. Things have changed between trips to Jacksonville, and it’s clear that Youngblood and his cohorts are still getting used to their growing stature. “Back home, when we were playing the same two bars over and over again, there were probably 40 of the same kids who’d come out,” he says, “and you can only ask those people to come out so many times. But the last time we played there, the place was packed with people we didn’t know.” He smiles. “I’m curious to see who’s going to be at our next hometown show.”
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