That’s No Moon first appeared on the radar a few months back (thanks, Facebook). Made up of Ben Wilson (vocals/synth), Hayden Cler (guitar/vocals), Kyle Prillaman (drums) and Paul Little (bass), who I interviewed this Wednesday. You may recognize Hayden and Kyle from the long-running JigGsaw, and Paul previously played in The Signal. I’d place sorta-single “Love Bites” halfway between Braid and Pinback. Punkish for sure, but there’s a definite math influence and jittery, syncopated chords that could arguably be traced back to “The New Nathan Detroits”. However, the chorus introduces a dancey, four on the floor backbeat and the song maintains a solid pop sensibility throughout. I can’t imagine it being anything less than a great time live, which probably means I should mention That’s No Moon’s upcoming slot on the Hathaways full-band debut show. Also performing are Village, Steve Ucherek of the Living Blue/Blackouts’ current project.
SP: So have you found it to be pretty easy getting a band off the ground in Champaign?
Paul: So far yeah, we seem to have pretty good turnout at our shows.
SP: What’s your favorite venue in town to play?
Paul: I really like Cowboy Monkey, especially getting mixed by Karl Lund, it always sounds really good there, and it seems that we always draw a better crowd, this will be our third or fouth time playing the Monkey since we’ve been a band, and its been a good show everytime.
SP: You’re currently in the process of recording an EP, right?
Paul: Yeah, that should be finished and out in May sometime, I don’t know if we’re gonna have a show or not yet, but hopefully. It’d be cool to do it at Mike ‘N Mollys, like outdoors. We’re doing all the recording in our drummer’s basement, and mixing it ourselves. Me and Kyle were in a band called the Signal before this, we did the same thing with that band so we’ve got a process down. Kyle’s getting really great at recording our stuff now, he’s actually gonna be interning at Great Western Recorders soon. So we want to get a solid ten or twelve song set down, and go over to Great Western and record it for an album. We also have two other shows coming up aside from Friday, we’re playing at Hangar 9 in Carbondale, its their first show back from reopening, and then we’re playing Squarefest in Charleston on March 26th it’ a one-day event at a bunch of different venues down there.
SP: What format are you releasing the EP on? Any plans for a vinyl release?
Paul: We’ve been talking about maybe doing a vinyl, but we’d have to find a cheap place to get it done. I alone have kind of been pushing that idea in the band, but I think it would be a good idea. But yeah we’re probably gonna have the CD first, and then maybe a vinyl.
SP: Have you thought about touring at all?
Paul: We might go to New York and back this summer. JigGsaw’s old lead singer Mark [former bandmate of guitarist Hayden Cler] moved to New York, so he might hook us up with a few shows there and then we could just book out and back. I don’t know though…its kind of hard because Kyle’s going for his pre-law and might then be going into grad school, but he seems to be more into the band than in law school. We might actually be playing the Metro and Reggie’s in Chicago this Spring…
SP: How’d you get in touch with the Metro? That’s a major venue…
Paul: Hayden’s ex-girlfriend works up at a radio station in Chicago, so she hooked us up with them. And actually, the lead singer for Big Science who we played with at Mike ‘N Molly’s actually works at the Metro. Reggie’s actually got in touch with us and asked if we’d play up there, we just have to get like 30 people to come up for the guarantee. That should’t be too hard because we have a lot of friends and family in Chicago. But it’ll be fun to play Reggie’s, and definitely fun to play the Metro. [Ben]’s also friends with So Many Dynamos, so we’ve been talking about playing with them at the Metro as well. But I’m excited to be playing with Hathaways and Village, those bands both sound great. I’m actually from the same town as Village’s drummer.
SP: Have you thought about releasing a single?
Paul: We should, we have a single ready called “Love Bites”, and four songs up on our Myspace that you can listen to, and our single’s up there. We’ve been talking about doing a concept video for it, with an actual storyline. Most of our songs tell a story actually, like “Love Bites” is about a vampire, we have a song that’s an old Chinese fairytale…overall, we like to mix a lot of different styles into our music, we have some country influence, some reggae influence, a little latin, it’s jazzy but kinda dancey, it’s fun.
That’s No Moon perform tonight (February 18th) at Cowboy Monkey with Village and Hathaways. The show begins at 10 p.m. and carries at $5 cover charge.