Architects 'Revenge' Bio 2006

ARCHITECTS

BRANDON PHILLIPS (Guitar/Vocals)
ZACH PHILLIPS (Bass)

ADAM PHILLIPS (Drums)
MIKE ALEXANDER (Lead Guitar)

With REVENGE, the ARCHITECTS have designed a scorching, vitriolic rock & roll album steeped in the art of getting even. Cops, politicians, ex-lovers and even dewey-eyed, nostalgic Gadjits fans all get thirty lashes on the white hot follow up to 2004’s acclaimed Keys To The Building.

Frank Lloyd Wright they are not. I.M. Pei they are not. Mike Brady they definitely are not. But this Kansas City foursome plays it like it means it. The ‘it’ in question is raw, inspired, melodic and, at times, deafening rock music. In REVENGE, the ARCHITECTS have drafted a boozy, bluesy and – above all else – heartfelt album, where punk fury and whiskey-drunk prowess meet and exchange dirty looks.

“The goal was to make a record that would capture the live sound of our band,” says frontman BRANDON PHILLIPS. “For ten years, in this band and The Gadjits, the band we were in before, the struggle was always to make a record as good as the live show. But we never quite gave ourselves over to the dark side as much as we did this time. We wanted to get something gritty.”

From the earnest, blistering Midwestern punk of “Widows Walk” – which recalls the magic of both Soul Asylum’s Hang Time and the Replacements’ Tim – to the hard snarling, cop baiting croak of “Badge” and the spirited, muscular “Grace,” REVENGE is a restoration of faith. For BRANDON and his younger brothers ZACH (bass) and ADAM (drums), who all did time as the aforementioned Gadjits before conspiring with lead guitarist MIKE ALEXANDER, the overwhelming notion on ARCHITECTS album number two is that ‘loud and fast’ rules.

“I have nothing against a ballad. I just don’t have a lot of use for it,” says BRANDON, who draws inspiration from everyone from Tod A. of Cop Shoot Cop and Firewater fame to singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams. “I kind of got bummed out writing ballads or slow songs that we weren’t going to play live. Because when you do that, you know you’re going to try and play it live and you really hope that it’s going to go over and it never does. And it just doesn’t. Unless you’re Keane and you got famous off your ballad, it’s not going to happen.”

“I’m old school Vaudeville like that,” he continues. “If it’s not going to make the show better, then you’re wasting your time on it.” “Don’t Call It A Ghetto,” for instance, is alive and direct, finding PHILLIPS (who says he lives in a “questionable” neighborhood) venting about corrupt local politicos and the omnipresent hover of police helicopters alike as his bandmates pay homage in amalgam to The Who, AC/DC and The Afghan Whigs.

“I went to jail because of that song,” BRANDON admits. “We had a show that involved our band and six strippers – it was a birthday party that one of our friends was throwing for his wife – and it was real rock & roll. Everyone was drunk. And there were a couple hundred people crammed into a space that was big enough for fifty people and then the cops showed up. When I saw them out of the corner of my eye, I said, ‘Let’s try to get one more in.’ And the cop was really pissed off that we dared to play another song after they showed up and he took the microphone away from me. He was a real substitute teacher about it. He was unplugging our stuff and pulling our cords out. So we maybe got a little mouthy about it. Then me and the owner of the establishment both went to county that night.”

Despite their issues with authority, the group – with the assistance of producer John Seymour – pushed itself to make a record more consistent with the grit and guts of their club shows. Recorded in just four days, the songs are urgent and compelling. Less thought out than anything he’s written in the past decade as both a Gadjit and an Architect, BRANDON has stopped sweating his lyrics – much to group’s benefit.

“In the past, I was flipping out about every turn of phrase, and I don’t think it made the songs any better,” he says. “I look at songwriting over the last ten years as practice. From here on out, I’ll write songs but my favorite thing to do now is write all the music and wait until I have to go in and record it. Then I write all of the lyrics two minutes before I have to do sing them. I just work with a gun to my head.”

That ‘Russian Roulette’ approach to song-craft may seem fucked, but in some inexplicable way it has yielded one of the most exhilarating indie rock records you are likely to hear in all of 2006. Perhaps it’s because the passion behind this thirteen-song cycle is close to PHILLIPS. And REVENGE, he confesses, “just may be one of my favorite perspectives to write from. People who are jilted because they were passive or took any other route than the confrontational route – that angry, ‘walking along the railroad tracks kicking rocks’ headspace.”

“And that’s the theme of the record – that and “Reciprocity,” BRANDON adds. “I pat myself on the back for the contagious chorus that is “Reciprocity.” I want you to say, ‘I give good reciprocity.’ To me that’s equally marvelous and disastrous. I’m pretty sure I stole that from the Burt Reynolds movie “Hooper.” In the opening five minutes of the movie, Jerry Reed makes some joke about Burt being humble. He says, ‘You give good humble.’ I just thought it was a funny-ass thing to say. I stole the context and made it tragic.”

One thing that isn’t calamitous, however, is the group’s desire to shift monikers and move forward. With the arrival of their sophomore disc as the ARCHITECTS, BRANDON wants to put the past behind them. “Changing our name was kind of an unsuccessful attempt to sever ourselves from the stuff we just didn’t want to do anymore,” he explains. “When we were The Gadjits, people expected us to play all these ten year old Gadjit songs that we wrote when we were 17. And maybe you’re not so keen on that anymore. I’m in my late twenties. And people have the nerve to act disappointed about it. I’m like, ‘Are you joking? Have you heard anything I’ve done since I was 17? It’s infinitely better, trust me.’ But rather than get all Billy Corgan about it, we just decided to slip one past the goalie and change our name.

But getting back to the ARCHITECTS’ themes of reprisal, BRANDON concludes, “I think revenge is an easy thing to get behind. I know if I heard a song about it with a big chorus, that would be a song I’d be drawn to.”

There’s no way around it. Revenge is sweet. Exact expiation baby.