NYLON Magazine - September 2007 - (Page 149) FAST FORWARD They may be named after obsolete technology, but VHS or Beta are totally ready for the future. By Kate Williams. Photographed by Jelle Wagenaar There’s a certain kind of confidence that comes with the end of things. Leaving a lover, quitting a job, saying how you really feel and then heading out the door: It’s exhilarating, it’s freeing, and VHS or Beta seem to be brimming with it. The Louisville-based band is now a three-piece, having kicked guitarist Zeke Buck out; they’ve gotten older and smarter, and singer Craig Pfunder, drummer Mark Guidry, and bassist Mark Palgy admit that, a decade into being a band, they’re more comfortable and appreciative of each other than they’ve ever been before. At one point during the interview, Palgy says “I think it’s nice to look at my band members, and you know, everyone’s just grown so much and I’m really proud of everyone.” He clearly means it, and Pfunder hugs him. It’s all very emotional. The decision to ask Buck, one of the band’s founding members, to leave was not done on a whim. “It was the only decision we could come to,” says Palgy. “There was no other option. Just like any relationship, any marriage, any kind of bond you have with someone. If you listen hard enough to yourself, you’ll know the answers. It was to the point where there was no way we couldn’t make that decision.” He continues. “And since then we just we’ve been happy, you know?” When VHS or Beta first formed in the late ’90s, the then-divide between dance music and indie rock was, they say, like “the fucking Berlin Wall.” “In the ’90s, music was very lifestyleoriented,” Pfunder says. “Either you’re in a rock band or you’re a raver.” But they were indie rock kids going to raver clubs, and their selfreleased first album Le Funk was the odd mix of groovy French-inflected house from a Southern rock band. “We always said to ourselves that we didn’t care if we were doing this early or first, someone’s going to make it,” Pfunder says, and he gives credit to the Rapture for doing so and bridging the dance music divide. “When their single came out, there was a general consensus among the nation then that it was OK, because all of a sudden you see these guitars and a guy screaming over a house beat.” Their second album, Night on Fire, was, Pfunder says, an attempt to add vocals into the mix, and Bring on the Comets, their latest record, out this fall on Astralwerks, is the ne plus ultra of this. “We were really trying to make the best songs we could, regardless of how dance-worthy or credible it was,” he says. “We still want fun and that atmosphere at shows, but the whole record definitely isn’t written for people to just drink some Red Bull and go out and dance to.” The songs are still capable of kicking an after-hours house party up a notch, but this is definitely a more personal album than its predecessors. “I think one of the biggest things is that there’s a part of us that doesn’t give a shit anymore about what kind of record we should make or are expected to make. And that’s liberating, you know? Just to fuck it,” Pfunder says. “We are a new band now,” adds Palgy. “And it took a couple of months of being like, ‘Where are we?’ Finding ourselves over the course of a year was really incredible.” “And we know that at the end of the day, we gotta believe in the music we’re playing or we’re not going to succeed as friends, or as a band,” Pfunder says. “And now that this record’s done, something feels so brand new about it. It’s liberating. It’s like, how are we going to follow this up? I feel like I can’t wait to get back into it again.” Palgy and Guidry nod. They are, of course, right there with him.
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